With Flash’s MSL curse coming to fruition last week KT had a really hard time of it, convincingly giving up their #2 spot to CJ with some really poor 1-4 performances. This set seemed to be going in a very similar direction with KT going down 0-2 with another disappointing Flash defeat. This time however, KT’s lesser lauded members decided to stand up and be counted, turning things around and winning 4 games in a row to close out a 4-2 victory over a hapless STX, with Kal and Calm failing once again to win when their team really needs them too.

The real highlights of this match were Shuttle vs Flash and Hoejja vs Kal. As much as I have been ragging on Flash, Shuttle played a really good game. It takes balls of steel to take Flash to a macro game on purpose and some serious skill to beat him in it. Shuttle utilized the power of the mighty carrier to disarm the ultimate weapon and take the win. Kal vs Hoejja was a tad more one sided but Hoejja showed a really cool build which included 3 hatch before pool, a fake hydra bust and transitioning into making a lot of stuff with a lot of drones in a sick display of what could only be described as neo sauron.



While Flash was lamenting in his slump, Jaedong’s win over him last week has seemingly lifted the dong out of his own slump. Jaedong came out first, as is a common sight in an Oz match and he came out to layeth the smack down. This set signaled to everyone that the Dong is back, and his first victim was the poor rookie, Zerg[kal] and then later he came out to seal victory against Sea.

The highlight of this match however was Perfectman vs Hyun. As is standard for MBC these days Hyun came out to snipe a protoss on neo Aztec with what was probably the intention of doing his stupidly overpowered 4 base turtle into +1 carapace muta/scourge build. However Perfectman was on top of this and had a really solid sair count so Hyun started stalling for time while secretly massing up hydra/lurk in a tech switch. Perfectman was having none of it though, securing an easy third base while Hyun wasn’t putting on any pressure and overrunning Hyun when he was going for hive and somewhat bizzarely making queens.



There really isn’t much to say about this match. Woongjin zergs are pretty good at ZvZ these days (yes we can say that about Zero now) and they easily stomped over an impotent Khan lineup. The only game of note was Light vs Stork. We all know how good (read:bad) Light is in TvP and getting matched up against a PvT master like Stork it was no surprise he resorted to cheese. While Stork was going for a blind 2 base carrier build designed to help abuse the map layout to outmaneuver a mech based army, Light dropped 6 rax and went for a marine/medic timing attack. I think any other player would’ve died instantly at this point in the game, and so all credit should go to stork for hanging on for so long. But careful reaver control and 2 carriers can only take you so far and when cloaked wraiths destroyed his carriers he was forced to gg, sealing a 4-0 victory for Stars.



Coming off a disappointing loss to CJ last week, Fox were fired up and ready to take down ace, and that they did with a convincing 4-1 victory over the last placed team. While Fox’s ace, Baby, got taken down in an exciting game by a determined FireBatHero, the experience of senior players like mind and roro, combined with the enthusiasm of fresh faced rookie, Wooki, and sometimes-B-teamer hero[join], Fox was able to comfortably get over the line. Ace’s performance was littered with errors, which while understandable considering their practice conditions, are always disappointing to see.

The highlight here was the Wooki vs Ggaemo game. They played a tense and exciting PvZ, kind of similar to a scrappy boxing match. Their play wasn’t particularly refined, but they just kept on slugging each other until Ggaemo was down for the count.



Coming off their form from last week, I think everyone expected CJ to beat KT, and they did with a somewhat comfortable 4-2 victory. Once again Flash continued his post-title slump with a disappointing loss to Hydra. I think Flash’s loss speaks more to how terrans are approaching icarus. We all know that icarus has some fairly imbalanced positions, and 2 hatch muta is really strong, but it seems like there is reluctance to stray from the regular bio based strategies. I think fantasy and Leta’s example should really be followed more often and 2 port should be the standard on icarus, because watching Flash vs Hydra you really get a sense of the feeling of helplessness that terrans feel when faced against this extreme mutalisk rush.

Moving on to the actual match, the games overall were of fairly good quality, with Stats and Snow playing an entertaining PvP that had Stats triumphing with only his natural still mining. The other highlight was Hoejja, who once again gave the viewers a fun filled ZvP experience. Opening with a over pool gas, he blocked probe scouting with a hold position drone in the recently narrowed choke to the main on Bloody Ridge, forcing Horang2 to bring two probes to get a scout in and see Hoejja going 1 base lair. Preventing extra scouting with speedlings, Hoejja rushed mutalisks off 2 hatcheries at an insane speed, starting his mutalisks before Horang2’s stargate even finished. Horang2 was helpless before the power of Hoejja’s mutalisks and took massive damage. Hoejja smartly followed up by expanding and using hydra’s, timed perfectly just before storm to finish the job.



SKT have been marching on really strong this round and this match was no exception. While Fantasy is having a little trouble, the rest of the deep SKT lineup has been doing its job and today it was the classic combination of the two headline protoss’ and the SKT zergs who cleaned up MBC. The standout game was Jaehoon vs Soo. While it is an unlikely candidate for such an honor, but they both played extremely well. Soo came out with an interesting play taking his third in the close location to his natural instead of taking another natural, and then using lurkers to allow him to get to hive tech relatively unmolested. The game stretched out until every base on the map was taken, but eventually the power of Soo’s hive tech was too much and jaehoon was left without any mining bases and his army was cleaned up by lurkers, plague and swarm. All credit to Soo for once again playing exceptional ZvP just like he did against Kal last week.

The other game of note was Shark’s final game as a player. He was sent out against Best on circuit breaker, and while he was obviously out of practice, his 3 base hydralisk play was almost enough to take a win, but Best was able to hold out and take the match in the end.




Yay! Ace won a match! This was probably one of the most exciting sets of the week. While it started off slow, with two relatively boring TVT’s(lol, canata) and a ZvZ, the hype got ramped up once Ace was 3-0 down. I think earlier on in the season this would be the point when Ace would lie down and lose 4-0, but on this day Ace stood up and came back to win 4-3. While the most exciting game of the day was the Ace match, the best game was Iris vs Shuttle. Shuttle, fresh off a win over Flash earlier in the week was sent out on Circuit breaker and ran into the Beserker. After Iris managed to get himself into some sticky situations with Shuttle getting some huge stases, Iris managed to win the game with a combination of aggressive pushing and excellent harassment with a minimum of units.



Once again Jaedong came out with a new fire in his eyes and destroyed Really. Jaedong’s ZvT has been really solid lately and this was no exception, and Really never seemed to stand a chance in the path of Jaedong’s wrath. However, on this day the rest of the Oz lineup couldn’t bring the same fire to their games and as a result the ship went down in flames with Stars rocking Jaedong Oz 4-1. The Woongjin lineup is starting to look really polished as we head towards the end of the season, spear-headed by their Zerg overlords Zero and Soulkey. It’s also good to see Light achieving wins in TvP specifically, with a solid win over Perfectman.

The game of the day however was Zero vs Anytime, for sheer hilarity value. Anytime opened up with a proxy 2 gate in the mineral only third base on Beltway while Zero opened 12 hatch. Moreover, Zero mis-scouted and didn’t see Anytime’s base and wasn’t aware of the proxy until there were three zealots attacking his natural. After losing his hatchery he then managed to quite bizzarely win the game by simply making some mutalisks. There really isn’t an excuse I can give for anytime in this game. He killed the hatchery really early on and then let lings into his main, crippling his economy which allowed Zero’s mutalisks to be so effective. If he’d just retreated, defended and expanded he'd probably have had a really good chance of winning, but sacrificed that by being overly greedy with his zealots and not teching quickly enough.



Now I’m pretty sure nobody saw this coming. Khan had no right to beat CJ like this based on past performances, but beat them they did. Interesting statistic: since Horang2’s February loss to Bisu, he has only been beaten in PvP by Khan protoss. This time it was Jangbi taking down the PvP beast in an impressive display of skill. Combined with Jangbi’s entrance into the OSL, maybe this can be his launching pad to a Starleague run this season. Game of the day award went to Leta vs Grape. Leta opened up with a 2 base vulture drop strategy while grape opened up reavers. While Leta’s harassment was relatively unsuccessful due to Grape’s excellent base setup walling the vultures away from the probes, grapes reaver managed to do a ton of damage before it got taken out by a wraith, successfully impeding Leta’s economy significantly. While leta managed to defend the followup bust with the use of scv’s, the damage was done and grape easily rolled to victory.



Of all the day’s I had to have an exam, it was during this set of matches. Woe is me. But what a joy they were to watch later on (thanks to moktira for his speedy uploads!). Who would’ve thought it would be Wemade Fox of all teams to push SKT to the brink like this.

SKT tried to open the set strong, probably hoping for a quick 4-0 victory, however the combination of Bisu, Best and Fantasy was thwarted successfully and SKT found themselves in the unfamiliar position of 0-3 down and only lesser players left to go out. However, the SKT zergs and By.Sun(or should I say, Rain. What’s next, Thunder?) managed to get SKT out of trouble so that Bisu could redeem himself in the ace match.

It seems like Wemade Fox’s coach has been taking some lessons from January(read: Trolluary) and I think the face palm of all Fox fans was almost audible worldwide when Wooki was sent out for the ace match. The two games of note here were Fantasy vs Mind and Bisu vs Roro. While Bisu vs Roro was notable for being totally amazing, with Roro playing an extremely dynamic style to overcome the PvZ master himself, Fantasy and Mind managed to play a game that can only be described as mind boggling. So let us try and decipher what happened.

Fantasy opened with a proxy 8 rax, while Mind opened rax-gas before depot. Obviously there is a new show on called “who cheeses wins” and mind and Fantasy were trying to out-do each other. As expected, proxy rax’s don’t fare so well when the opponent doesn’t 14cc, however mind decided to let Fantasy make a bunker right in front of his own barracks, and then proxied his own factory outside his main. While Mind did a fairly poor job of defending his wall, his vultures rocked up to Fantasy’s base and I think this was the point in the game where fantasy just wanted to cry. However it wasn’t over yet. Mind let his rax and depot die while he was furiously microing his vultures, and both players ended up lifting their command centers. However at the end of the day, Mind managed to save 5 scv’s, while Fantasy was left with 2 marines in a bunker and his own factory which was landed outside his base which Mind then discovered……..well you get the idea. I think this was the kind of game you wouldn’t want to face your coach after. The decisions made by both players were so horrendous, I was kind of hoping kespa would stop the match and award both players a loss, but when the dust settled Mind was mining and Fantasy wasn’t and he was forced to tap out.

As the road to Gwanganri gets narrower and narrower, the race for the final few playoff spots becomes even closer. Playoff spots could very well be decided this week as there are a number of very important games this week. Spectators better have their Kleenex ready because tears will flow when this week ends. Whether for good or bad, I can not say but the feelings brought on by this coming week will validate to ourselves just why we continue to watch this amazing game. Get the popcorn out because the end of this race hasn't climaxed and oh what a satisfying climax it will be. Ooooh yeahhh.



Want to hear an interesting fact? Flash has lost his last 5 proleague games. Flash has a bad wrist. On the hand attached to his bad wrist, he has 5 fingers. Clearly, this is a sign that the worst is all beyond him and his PL losing stream will finally end. However, for Flash's sake, I hope that KT benches him. There is no reason for him to play when playoff spot is secured and his health is way more important. Now, discounting Flash, there still remains possibility of some amazing games. Hopefully, we also get the Wemade that was up 3-0 vs T1 after crushing Bisu, Best and Fantasy and not the Wemade that ends up losing to T1 zergs. (KT zergs?) Baby also better bring a second layering of rainbow socks just to ensure that he doesn't lose them again too. This is also a huge must win for Wemade as any more losses from now on can mean playoff elimination.



Samsung just came off a huge upset win against CJ that no one expected. CJ fans may blame the loss on Horang2 not eating his Frosted Flakes and Hydra's cyborg eye going rusty and needing to be oiled but Khan finally showed some hunger and playoff desire. They clearly want to go to the playoffs but do they have enough left in them? To make matters worse, I'm sure every Khan fan and Stork himself remembers the last time that these two met. You know that people are still butthurt over what Hyun did to Stork that day but it got the result done. However, MBC's chances of making the playoffs at this point seem slim to none so it's much better for the coaching staff to give the rookies actual TV experience. This is more of a long-term plan in hopes that they will crush when next season comes around. It's not like Khan has ever been adverse to strange lineup decisions though. Never.



CJ may have just been upset by Khan but the real story is how STX lost to Ace. They were up 3-0 and yet still managed to lose. Soon after, FBH was seen hugging his own mother. STX can not afford any more losses at this point as they currently remain out of contention for the playoffs. This does not bode well when they are playing a team who has almost managed to crush everyone that they meet. Trolluary's beauty clearly rendered her team immune to the TigerToss train. When this night ends, we'll see a sad, bleating cheep and the end of the longest party ever in Estonia.



Oh no. The fanboys are coming. The fanboys are coming. The walls LR thread is being swarmed. We're all doomed. No one is going to want to miss this game or the ban list after this game. Jaedong is currently in one of his "don't ever get to play against Protoss for month(s) streaks so hopefully that ends tonight. It would be interesting to see him play Bisu considering how often Bisu has lost to zergs in his past few games. Oz also really has to somehow fix this trend of Hiya and JD both can't win in the same PL series if they want to keep their playoff chances alive. No one knows what side of Oz will show up and that only makes this game more exciting. The only potential drawback is a slew of pvp and zvz mirrors instead of a string of awesome zvp's. Of course, Killer is going to destroy some random t1 noob in the ace match and then proceed to do an amazing ceremony while stripping off shirt and everyone will soon be clamoring for Nada's Body to be renamed into Killer's Body. Fuck Yeah.



Ace has no chance of making the playoffs but it doesn't mean that they are just going to roll over and be placemats. Don't take ACE seriously and you can lose just like that. Woongjin also has a history of losing games just like this so Ace winning here really wouldn't be much of an upset. Zero and Soulkey are also pretty likely to potentially not get zvt with how Terran focused Ace is lately. However, speaking of Ace zerg line, Peace always has some kind of dirty cheese planned and Military Dong is no pushover.


Must-win does not even begin to describe this game. Wemade losing here basically gets to say byebye to playoffs while a Samsung loss is the last thing that Khan fans need right now. Stork's form has been almost non-existent lately but Jangbi really has been picked up the slack. It's almost like Khan Protoss is like Highlander and Jangbi is finally "The One" yet again. Khan's zerg line is nothing to praise either and Wemade's depth has gotten even stronger with the rise of Wooki. Of course, Shine can be seen slithering in the shadows waiting to strike for when the Dinotoss least expects it. Meanwhile, posters in the LR thread will proclaim statements like, "BAN ME IM DONE WITH BW" while pretending to flip their middle finger up upon seeing a smug and victorious Shine standing over a fallen bird.



Another of the must win games that could very well decide just who makes it into the playoffs. For fans of zvp and zvz, this is the match to watch. Any other matchups is clearly bogus and we are constantly going to see only zergs and protoss. One interesting note about this matchup is that JD and Bogus recently met in the ODT where they played on Neo Bloody Ridge, the same map that the ace match is on. What does this mean? Probably some kind of cheese/proxy. It's not like Bogus is adverse to proxying either. Just ask Bisu.



Hopefully, KT is still benching Flash here as him playing would just be nonsensical and stupid. Him playing could very easily mean future damage to himself and a loss to someone like Jaehoon. It also would be really nice to see a MBC victory based on their young blood to give them confidence going into next season. They really haven't had a good year in any regards but seeing them win over a playoff team with players like Tiny, Lazy, Sang, and Check would be the perfect sign that MBC will be a force to be reckoned with next season.



Last time these two played, T1 just narrowly beat Ace and since then, Ace has gotten better and better. Ace is going to fight tooth and nail this game and it's going to be awesome. What Ace lacks in starpower, they make up for in scrappiness. Another interesting thing is that this will be Canata's first game vs T1 since going to Ace. Games vs his former t1 teammates could be interesting although only Canata is able to turn nukes vs protoss into a dull and boring game. However, his ability to fail at cheesing zergs and with how t1 zergs are known for their zvt, we could be in for a barrel of laughs and hyuks. Unfortunately for Ace, the ace map is Neo Aztec and the chances of one of their terrans beating a t1 protoss there in tvp is highly unlikely.



The real winner of this match is the fans. No matter the winner, an entertaining winner's interview is guaranteed. It also would be nice to see Stars win this match just to ensure that they are in the playoffs. However, they need to stop choking in important matches. Who do they think they are, STX? Anyways, Zero vs Horang2 could be pretty cool as well as Light vs any CJ Protoss as Light's tvp has improved a lot since going to Stars. It would also be interesting to see Light vs Hydra but only if Light doesn't have Woongjin Terran syndrome like his previous two games vs the One-eyed wonder. Soulkey and Leta have also had some interesting history so another chance to see them play would be awesome. For example, remember when Soulkey got crushed by 1rax double CC into 3port wraith into standard game? Anything can happen when these two players and when these two teams meet.