EPT
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Weekly Cup Competitions
Week of December 1 - 7
by Wax
Clem continued to show his cup prowess in the first week of December, scoring a double on the week. However, the true star of the week may have been Solar, who broke through against frequent foil Clem to win the WardiTV Mondays cup.
*Partial brackets may be shown.
December 1: WardiTV Mondays #63
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/wardimon063.png)
Regular cup viewers should be quite familiar with Solar's struggles against Clem, with the Team Falcons Zerg often putting up a good fight but rarely toppling the French prodigy in the end. However, WardiTV Mondays #63 saw Solar get over the hump, taking down his bête noir 3-1 in the finals.
Game 1 suggested the series would end in another Solar loss, with Clem winning in a typical macro beatdown. However, Solar turned things around in game 2, getting an early advantage with a fast Mutalisk opener and eventually closing the game out after a protracted conflict (Clem almost came back despite his early disadvantage). Solar built on his victory in game three, taking down Clem with his Hydralisks in a mostly straight-up game. Finally, Solar closed the series out by staving off Clem's early Hellbat strike and counter-attacking with mass Roach-Ravager (VOD).
*****
December 1: Monday Night Weeklies #32
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/mnw32.png)
Solar decided to retire from cup competition for the week, leaving us with the usual candidates of herO, Clem, and MaxPax to contest for the rest of the cups.
The MNW title was decided in a familiar finals duel between Clem and MaxPax, with the reclusive Dane initially taking the 3-0 victory in the first leg of the double-elimination finals. However, Clem took advantage of his winners' bracket advantage and rallied in the deciding BO3, winning 2-1 to take the cup title despite going 2-4 in maps against MaxPax overall (VOD).
One interesting note in Clem's play was his focus on building-blocking the Protoss's first expansion—perhaps enabled by quirks in the new map pool. Weekly cups are the best place to check on how the strategic meta is evolving in real-time, and it will be interesting to see if Clem continues to pursue this style of play in the coming weeks.
*****
December 2: PiGosaur Cup #60
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Clem scored a weekly double in Tuesday's PiGosaur Cup, winning the competition with a 3-1 victory against herO in the finals. Overall, it was your typically great all-around performance from Clem, with his late-game win on the deciding map of Mothership being the highlight. Clem has really shone in late-game TvP in the new patch—the way he shrugged off herO taking 2/3rds of the map was reminiscent of Maru's extreme turtle-Terran play during its 2018-19 peak VOD).
*****
December 6: Korean StarCraft League #83
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/KSL83.png)
While Classic has gone into a mild slump following his EWC runner-up performance, he still showed enough quality to take KSL #83. The five-game finals against SHIN demonstrated why most Zergs are still ill-advised to go up to high-tier tech against Protoss—SHIN's decision to try and play late-game macro against Classic in games 1 and 5 probably cost him the series (VOD).
