EPT
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Weekly Cup Competitions Week of June 22 - June 28With the new 5.0.16 balance patch dropping on Monday, the week's cup tournaments gave us a peek at how high-level SC2 competition might shape up in the coming months. While balance can be volatile in the initial stages of a new patch, early returns suggest Zerg is the major beneficiary of the changes.
*Partial brackets may be shown.
June 22: WardiTV Mondays #92
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WardiTV Mondays gave us one last cup on the old 5.0.15 version, as the new patch would be deployed later in the day. We got a rather fitting send-off as eternal cup rivals Clem and MaxPax faced off for the 23904839th time in the finals, with MaxPax taking a narrow 3-2 victory (VOD).
*****
June 22: Monday Night Weeklies #57
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Technically, Monday Night Weeklies was played on the PTR version of the new balance patch, with the official patch being deployed a few hours later. But for the sake of glimpsing the new SC2 landscape, it had pretty much the same effect and we saw a previously unthinkable Zerg vs Zerg final between Solar and YoungYakov (VOD).
To oversimplify, Zerg success centered around having a lot more stuff at all phases of the game, be it during early-game all-ins or late-game swarm waves. As for the grand finals, it was a typical ZvZ affair you might have seen in any match in the last 5 years, with Solar winning game one by fending off Yakov's Mutas, and sealing the deal in game two with a pool-first all-in (sadly, it was not an 8-pool).
*****
June 23: PiGosaur Cup #87
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Solar proceeded to clinch a weekly double in the PiGosaur Cup, going perfect without a single map loss along the way (VOD).
A 3-0 victory over ByuN in the semis showed how Solar could be shaping up to be one of the strongest players in the new patch. Solar had already been a very capable ZvT player in the previous version if allowed to establish a strong macro foundation, and it seemed all too easy for him to achieve that state in his crushing sweep. As for the finals, Clem's attempts at build diversity didn't pan out, as his mech strategy was crushed by a Roach-Ravager timing, while his 2-Barracks proxy attempt was shut down by Solar's calm defense.
*****
June 23: Sparking Tuna Cup #136
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While we don't always cover the Sparkling Tuna Cup in the recaps, the previous week's competition seemed especially relevant given the new patch environment and quality of players involved. SHIN gave Zerg yet another win in the new patch, taking down herO 3-2 in the finals (VOD).
herO was already the trickiest Protoss player in the game, and he leaned even further into his unpredictability by throwing a different strategy at SHIN in every game. His first two gambits worked out, as he won with a bizarre fast-Mothership into ground army in game one, and another fast-Mothership into Skytoss in game two. However, he gave up a reverse-sweep after none of his subsequent attempts connected. SHIN's Hydras easily shut down Void Rays into Stalkers in game three, while Glaive-Adepts failed to find the necessary Drone kills in game four. Finally, SHIN closed the series out by parrying an Oracle-Chargelot timing in game five.
