EPT
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Weekly Cup Competitions Week of August 17 - August 23The PiG Festival playoffs and returned GSTL were the main attractions of the week, but weekly cup competition was also active as always. The cup results mirrored that of larger competitions with Zerg dominating, as Solar, SHIN, and Rogue swept through the weeklies.
*Partial brackets may be shown.
August 17: WardiTV Mondays #100
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The 100th anniversary edition of WardiTV Mondays saw all three members of the Korean Zerg trinity make the final four, with Solar narrowly beating SHIN 3-2 to claim the cup title.
(VOD).
The Zerg mirror has always been an unpopular match-up from a viewer perspective, but the high-end ZvZ's toward the end of the tournament may have been a pleasant surprise for those tuning in. Almost every match type was on display, from BW-esque muta-wars, to Hive-tech sieges, and, of course, a Zergling knife fight that ended in under four minutes. If the community must bow to its Zerg overlords for the time being, at least current ZvZ is looking like an improvement over the ultra-cheesy PvP meta of 5.0.15.
*****
August 17: Patches Monday #3
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Patches' Balance Mod continued to be popular among high-level players, giving us another good look at the ambitious fan-update to SC2. The red Zerg wave was unavoidable even in this altered version of SC2, with Reynor running the table to win the cup (VOD).
While the games played generally like a 5.0.15 revert, there were still some interesting strategic quirks such as Clem giving battle-mech a few whirls due to its multiple new upgrades, or Lambo trying to integrate the Roach's reduced supply upgrade into a more cohesive mid-game strategy.
*****
August 18: PiGosaur Cup #95
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After a ZvZ-heavy run in WardiTV Mondays, Solar picked up his weekly double in the PiGosaur Cup against an all-Terran opponent slate.
(VOD).
The finals saw ByuN attempt to bore Solar to death (as is the current trend), but he ended up suffering a 0-3 loss as he could never get into his turtle stance from an ideal position. While Solar has historically struggled in 'true' stalemate situations, in this particular series, he managed to maintain enough of a resource and initiative advantage to batter ByuN down with continued attacks.
*****
August 19: Kung Fu Cup #20
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Rogue got in on the Zerg party in Kung Fu Cup #20, taking down three of Korea's top Terrans in ByuN, Cure, and Percival along the way. Okay, maybe it's a bit of a stretch to include Percival considering his inconsistency, but he definitely played at a high level in his second place run—at least until the very end (VOD).
The story of the five game finals was Percival's willingness to gamble on greedy CC-first openers, despite Rogue's reputation for mixing in aggressive tactics. This worked out for Percival in two of the games, where he managed to snowball his economic edge into mid-game victories. This set up a big mind-game win at the start of game five, where a seemingly fed-up Rogue launched an 8-Pool, Drone-pull all-in against Percival's Reaper-first start. However, Percival somehow dropped the ball in almost comedic fashion, losing TWO Reapers to Slowlings and Drones before surrendering the final GG.
*****
August 23: Sparkling Tuna Cup #143
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SHIN wouldn't be left out of the Zerg rampage, and picked up a cup title in the Sparkling Tuna Cup as the week came to a close.
(VOD).
Strong ZvP was the key to SHIN's success, as he defeated both Classic and herO en route to the title. Aggressive tactics gave SHIN a dominant 2-0 over Classic in the semis, with a Roach-Ravager-Zergling timing unlocking the defenses in game one, while a Drone-pulled Zergling cheese did the job in game two.
A different kind of trickery helped SHIN draw first blood in the finals, with his hidden-Spire Mutalisks catching herO's Colossus-heavy composition totally off-guard. herO retaliated with 2-Stargate mass Oracles in game two, but SHIN's timely Zergling counter helped him escape a thorny situation and ultimately win the game.
Down 0-2, herO seemed to change his approach to soft-protesting the state of balance and off-raced for the rest of the series. Surprisingly, herO actually pulled back a map as Zerg in game three, with his Zergling flood punishing an unaware SHIN. However, his attempt to play bio Terran in game four was an utter disaster, and SHIN clinched a 3-1 victory with Muta-Ling-Bane.
