Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over

Weekly Cup Competitions Week of August 24 - August 30

by Wax

Zerg and Solar reigned supreme once more in the weekly cups, but it was Patches' Versus Mod that truly took center stage.

The number of cup competitions under the community-made mod actually rivalled that of the live version of StarCraft II, reflecting the community's interest in freshening up the game—as well as its discontent with 5.0.16. With the coming week's Monday Night Weeklies also being played on the Patches mod (according to Liquipedia), momentum only seems to be growing for this alternate version of SC2.

*Partial brackets may be shown.

August 24: WardiTV Mondays #101

After notching a weekly double in the previous cycle, Solar kept his momentum going with another cup win in WardiTV Mondays #101. The finals ended up being a rematch of last week's Solar vs SHIN encounter, with Solar once again emerging victorious (VOD).

While last week's final helped repair the reputation of ZvZ by giving us a variety of game types and lengths, this week's final was almost a bad caricature of the notoriously cheese-prone match-up. Early game fighting decided things quickly in the first three games, with GG being called at 3:06, 4:50, and 6:15 on the clock. With Solar up 2-1, game four looked like it was headed to another quick conclusion as SHIN launched another early assault. However, the game stabilized this time around, and Solar went on to clinch the cup-winning point in a mid-game Muta war.

*****

August 24: Patches Monday #4

Played under Patches' Versus Mod

MaxPax is struggling in the live version of StarCraft II, but he found a reprieve in Patches Monday #4. Like many previous winners, MaxPax did not dig too deeply into the mod's more ambitious changes, and instead integrated the more obvious upgrades into general 5.0.13-15 macro play (VOD).

However, there were other players exploring what the mod truly has to offer. A match between Fjant and uThermal was particularly notable, where uThermal's Skyterran—cored by SPLASH DAMAGE BANSHEES—went up against Fjant's ANTI-AIR SWARM HOSTS. It's hard to say if either players' strategic approach was correct (well, it was probably correct for Fjant because he won), but it certainly was very fun.

*****

August 25: PiGosaur Cup #96

PiGosaur Cup saw Solar pick up his second win of the week in orthodox SC2 competitions, defeating Percival, herO, and even PiG himself on his way to the weekly title VOD).

Solar's extended his winning streak against herO to six matches in the finals, taking a fast 3-1 victory. The first game looked encouraging for herO, with his three early Void Rays dealing considerable damage (including intercepting an ill-advised drop) and allowing him to snowball to victory. However, Solar hit back with three very quick wins, where Speedlings turned out to be his one-stop solution to all herO-related problems. 2-Stargate Phoenixes, a risky wall-less expansion, and mass Glaive-Adepts were all nullified by Solar making an appropriate amount of the six-limbed (four?) terrors in the early-game.

*****

August 26: Patches Monthly #1

Played under Patches' Versus Mod

The Patches Weekly was followed by Patches Monthly, which again attracted a number of high level players. Not content to be the current best cup player in regular StarCraft II, Solar dipped his hand into the Patches' Mod's prize pool as well by taking the first place (VOD (Polish)).

Fortunately for the viewers, the finals between Solar and Clem saw both players try and flex their creativity. Clem off-raced as Protoss in game one, and utilized the cheaper Dark Templars and increased Warp Prism capacity to go for a triple-Archon drop. However, Solar was well-prepared with Roaches on defense, and it ended up being more of a cute idea than effective opener. Clem went back to Terran in game two, and faced off against Solar's Roach-Ravager-Infestor composition backed by the incredibly potent Roach-half-supply upgrade. Roach-based compositions have an expiration date in live SC2, but thanks to the upgrade, Solar managed to overpower Clem with waves of cheap units. Finally, Clem went for mass Reapers to open game three, looking to leverage the Reapers' new upgrade (+ light damage, + building damage). This was quite effective at pinning Solar to three bases for a while, but Clem couldn't capitalize on the situation as he opened himself up to a devastating Ling-Bane backdoor.

*****

August 28: Rotti's Patches Open

Played under Patches' Versus Mod

The third Patches Mod cup of the week went to ByuN, who successfully cashed in his status as the strongest player in a relatively limited field. Lambo still gave him a run for his money in the finals, taking the series the distance (VOD (Polish)). Overall, the games weren't terribly different from any of the TvZ's you've seen in the past three years, but they were still rather close and entertaining.

*****

August 28: Korean StarCraft League #91

Played under Patches' Versus Mod

The KSL swapped to the Patches mod for the week's competition, giving herO a chance to get a much-needed win (VOD).

One might say herO 'deserved' it as he really leaned into the mod changes to take his 3-0 win over SHIN in the finals. In fact, what herO did looked downright abusive, as he revived his old 2022/23 specialty of 3-base mass Blink Stalkers—but now augmented with the shield-on-Blink upgrade and the Stalker range upgrade.

SHIN can take solace in the fact that we're giving him a shoutout for creativity as well. Against Classic, SHIN used the Brood Queen's 'I am a moving Creep Tumor' upgrade to lay down an expressway for his Roaches and Ravagers, and soundly thrashed his opponent.

*****

August 20: WardiTV Mondays #102

The quest to have a WardiTV Mondays held on every day of the week continued, with cup #102 taking Sunday off the checklist. In a case of triple deja vu, Solar defeated SHIN in the finals for the third WardiTV Mondays in a row, locking in a weekly triple in the process (VOD).

As if SHIN himself found his previous ZvZ finals against Solar to be uninteresting, he changed things up by going Random for the entire finals. Ironically, SHIN drew Zerg in game one, but it still resulted in a fairly entertaining game where he took a narrow victory in a Mutalisk war. Protoss were the next two draws for SHIN, and the results were predictable defeats. Still, SHIN gave a solid account of himself in one of the games, splitting the map with Skytoss before losing the decisive battle to Solar's Infestor-Viper combo. The random dice gave us a ZvZ to close things out in game four, where Solar pulled off a decent hold against SHIN's early Zergling attack before winning with a Zergling counterattack of his own.

Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over

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