Weekly Cups (August 25-31): Clem's Last Straw?

Weekly Cup Competitions
Week of August 25 - 31

by Wax

Protoss were the big winners in the week of August 25-31, with herO and Classic splitting the orthodox SC2 competitions with two victories each. However, the week may go down in history as 'the one that broke Clem,' with the beleaguered Terran resorting to increasingly desperate measures to try and find an answer for Protoss.

Is another match-up/race swap to PvP a realistic possibility for Clem? Viewers will want to keep an eye on his upcoming matches to see if this is just a momentary overreaction, or if they'll have to start calling him the French Protoss in the near future.

*Partial brackets may be shown.

August 25: WardiTV Mondays #49

After achieving a triple in the previous week, herO continued his winning ways in WardiTV Mondays #49 with yet another cup title. While herO had been struggling lately against MaxPax and his revived PvP, he showed there are few other Protoss players who can trouble him by taking a convincing 3-1 against ShoWTimE in the finals of the latest Monday competition.

Going back to the Clem subplot, ShoWTimE happened to reach the finals by upsetting the French Terran 2-1 in the semis. It seemed like nothing more than a nice underdog win for ShoWTimE at the time, but given what would unfold later in the week, it may have been one of the moments that contributed to putting Clem on full tilt (VOD).

*****

August 26: PiGosaur Cup #46

Without any upsets in the lower rounds, the PiGosaur Cup delivered the herO vs Clem finals that was expected when the bracket was first revealed. Unfortunately, the clash between the titans of the weekly cups resulted in a rather one-sided match, with herO taking a 3-0 sweep in a series where none of Clem's early aggression worked out. While it was the kind of match we occasionally saw back when Clem wasn't struggling quite as hard in TvP, it definitely felt more meaningful in the context of Clem's recent string of big losses (VOD).

*****

August 12 - 28: WardiTV Summer Championship

Check Liquipedia for full group stage results

One tournament loomed larger than the usual assortment of weekly cups, as the $5,000 WardiTV Summer Championship came to a close with its double-elimination playoffs. In the end, Classic gave a fantastic performance that reminded us of just how well he had played at EWC before running into the Serral in the finals, taking down a slew of the scene's best players on his way to first place.

That list of best players happened to include Clem, who Classic beat in consecutive series to take the WardiTV Summer title. The first game of the upper-bracket finals ended up being the only normal-ish bout between the two, with Classic taking down Clem's bio in a one-sided game reminiscent of the beatdowns in RSL and EWC. For Clem, that loss seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, as he completely abandoned bio TvP from that point on (despite having piloted it to victory against Goblin, NightMare, and MaxPax earlier in the tournament). Clem opted to play the trendy battlemech composition for the rest of the series, which actually looked like a decent solution as he used it to tie the series 2-2. However, Clem failed to close the series out with proxy-Marauders in game five, which sent him down to the lower bracket for a match against his old rival MaxPax.

Despite having defeated MaxPax with bio earlier in the bracket, Clem was still determined not to play it for the rest of the tournament. He started the series by playing exclusively mech, and ended up trailing 1-2 at the midway point of the series. There, Clem decided he needed to take even more drastic measures, and swapped to Protoss to face MaxPax in a PvP. Crazily enough, taking on MaxPax's world-best PvP somehow worked out for Clem, as he ended up prevailing in a tight macro game. For some reason, Clem switched back to Terran in game five, and closed the series out quickly with some fast 1/1/1 pressure.

The grand finals rematch against Classic saw Clem pick up where he left off, as he challenged the Chintoss with a mixture of mech and off-race PvP. The first two games saw Clem go for mech, which he tried to set up with heavy early-game aggression/harassment. However, Classic's defenses were rock solid, and he jumped ahead to a 3-0 lead (one-map winners' bracket advantage). Clem attempted another desperate Protoss race-switch in the final game, but this time, he fell haplessly to an unscouted proxy-robo all-in from Classic (VOD).

*****

August 29: LiuLi Cup August Finals

The LiuLi Cup's three August weeklies culminated in a slightly bigger monthly final, which invited the top eight performers from the earlier events. A three way race between MaxPax, herO, and Classic seemed to be on the cards, but MaxPax was quickly taken out the equation after being upset by Trigger in the first round.

Trigger himself was then taken out by herO, which set up herO vs Classic in the finals with the crown of ultimate Protoss supremacy on the line (at least for that week). As is often the case when Classic and herO face each other, the finals was a cheese-fest full of proxies and devious tactics. It's also often the case that Classic gets a leg up on herO in the mind-games, and such a scenario played out once more as Classic took a 3-1 victory (VOD).

*****

August 16 - 31: StarCraft Evolution League: Season 2 Championship

Check Liquipedia for full group stage results

Although WardiTV Summer was the biggest orthodox SC2 tournament to conclude on the week, the most richly prized event overall was the $6,100 StarCraft Evolution League - Season 2 Championship (played in the SC: Evolution Complete mod). Good 'regular' SC2 players tend to also do well in the SC: Evo mod, and that trend certainly held in the SEL championship as Classic took home his second big purse of the week.

As usual, SC: Evo is a recommended watch for anyone who wants somele variety amidst the dozens of hours of normal SC2 action we get every week. It so happens to be that the SEL playoffs featured two of the week's most entertaining games—the first being a late-game clash between TaeJa's BW Terran and Rogue's SC2 Zerg on Holy World (VOD), and the other being TaeJa's SC2 Terran taking on Classic's BW Protoss on Sylphid (VOD).

Weekly Cups (August 25-31): Clem's Last Straw?

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