EPT
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/comcups734.jpg)
Weekly Cup Competitions
Week of November 3 - 9
by Wax
StarCraft II fans got to enjoy offline competition for the second straight week, with Ottawa's Stellar Fest coming in hot on the heels of SC4ALL. A number of high level players attended the competition, which concluded with Clem surviving a spirited challenge from Zoun to claim yet another tournament victory.
Clem was less successful in the online realm, where herO, Solar, and Classic divvied up the spoils in cup competition.
*Partial brackets may be shown.
November 3: WardiTV Mondays #58
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/wardimon058.png)
While Clem concluded his week with a win at Stellar Fest, he got off to a poor start by giving up a 1-2 upset to Nicoract in WardiTV Mondays (I couldn't find a non-paywalled VOD so any information would be welcome). herO was the ultimate victor in the mad dash to capitalize on Clem's fall, although he faced stiff resistance from ByuN in the grand finals.
herO's Robo-centric style was just strong enough to get him over the finish line by a 3-2 score, though he might have made it 3-1 if his army control hadn't been so disastrous while attempting a fast Carrier strategy (VOD).
*****
November 3: Monday Night Weeklies #29
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/mnw29.png)
While the weekly cups are usually quite predictable, Monday Night Weeklies #29 shattered that notion with a string of surprises.
Shameless was the underdog star of the tournament, taking huge upsets over herO and MaxPax to reach the winners' final. While he was ultimately eliminated by Solar and then herO in a rematch, reaching the top three was an unexpected yet fantastic result for the Russian Protoss.
Furthermore, we saw Clem knocked out early for the second time in the same day, as he lost consecutively to Solar and herO. While Clem typically gets the better of Solar, this time the Team Falcons Zerg was able to take the victory thanks to a Ravager-Zergling all-in combined with unrelenting offense in a late-game brawl.
Solar made sure to ride the wave of momentum from a rare win over Clem, going all the way to defeat herO in the finals. The initial BO5 followed the usual Solar ZvP pattern of trying to end the games before they went long, but herO's defenses were sturdy enough to earn the 3-2 victory and force a final BO1. However, Solar still had one more trick left up his sleeve in the deciding match, and his Roaches-into-Mutalisks strategy wreaked enough havoc to give him the win (VOD).
*****
November 4: PiGosaur Cup #56
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A rematch between herO and Solar looked like a strong possibility in the PiGosaur Cup, but MaxPax's 3-2 win over Solar gave us a more familiar PvP card of herO vs MaxPax in the finals. While herO has a lot more range in PvP than he's sometimes given credit for, in this particular series he really lived up to his aggressive reputation by taking all three of his wins with early-game attacks (VOD (2h22m start)).
*****
November 8: Korean StarCraft League #82
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KSL returned after nearly a monthlong hiatus, and saw Classic take advantage of a light turnout in the comeback tournament. While Creator has shown he can be a PvP wildcard when he's on his A-game, he was unable to threaten Classic in this three game finals sweep (VOD).
*****
November 6: Stellar Fest - UrsaTV 2v2 Open
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If the earlier SC4ALL LAN went wide by including BW, SC2, and SC64 competitions, the Stellar Fest LAN in Canada went deep into StarCraft II by holding competitions in various game modes.
That included a $5000 CAD (~$3500) 2v2 event—one of the bigger team competitions we've had in SC2. Canadian fans got to celebrate a victory for their home country (kinda), as the Shopify Rebellion duo of Harstem and Lambo claimed the title with a 2-1 win over Zoun-ByuN in the finals.
Although we have seen Zerg play a bigger mid/late-game role in the uThermal 2v2 Tour (the most high level 2v2 competition thus far), Harstem and Lambo went old school and leaned on aggressive strategies in their championship run (VOD).
An FFA competition followed shortly after the 2v2 event, which saw Lambo pick up yet another non-1v1 victory by patiently claiming control of the map center. Now, who said late-game Zerg is weak?
*****
November 4-5: Stellar Fest - Merivale 8 Open
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Stellar Fest's main 1v1 tournament was split into two different halves, with the Merivale 8 Open serving as the Code A to the Constellation Cup's Code S.
The tournament format made the Merivale 8 Open a rather forgiving qualifier into the main Constellation Cup, with the top eight players advancing from a fourteen-player round robin. Lambo came out as the undisputed winner with a 13-0 record, nabbing a cool $1,500 CAD in prize money alongside his main event berth (VOD)
*****
November 7-9: Stellar Fest - Constellation Cup
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/stellarfest1v1.png)
Clem lived up to his billing as a perennial title favorite by winning the $15,000 CAD Stellar Fest main event, but he had to survive a very tough challenge from Zoun in the finals to do so.
Zoun didn't look like much of a title contender in the early going, as he was quickly sent to the lower bracket by Lambo and then struggled to get past a semi-inactive Scarlett. However, the outlook for Zoun improved greatly in non-PvZ line-ups, as he breezed past both ByuN and Trigger with 4-1 scorelines to reach the grand finals from the lower bracket.
Zoun proceeded to give Clem a jolt in the first leg of the double-elimination finals, scoring a convincing 4-2 victory to reset the bracket. As an avid Disruptor-user in the past, Zoun looked like he was relishing the return to a Robo-centric PvT meta as he overpowered Clem in mid-game combat.
Unfortunately for Zoun, Clem was able to recenter himself and make perfect adjustments for the deciding series. Clem went to the extremes of SC2 in the final BO7—playing for three early-game attacks and one late-game slog—and came out with a crushing 4-0 sweep as his reward (VOD (Final Day)).
