After Khan’s strong win over CJ last week it was important that they use their momentum to secure a spot in the playoffs, and their performance against MBC helped them immensely in ensuring just that. It’s really good to see the veteran protoss of Khan finally stand up for their team with Stork and Jangbi taking comfortable wins. Jangbi in particular, after his OSL wins the night before put on a great show to destroy a struggling Hyun who was once again sent out on Aztec. It seems like MBC is so focused on sending Hyun out to do the same 4 base turtle style on Aztec that other teams are preparing quite well for him and as a result his wins on the map which is considered fairly good for ZvP becoming extremely sparse.
Along with Hyun, Tyson is also having a pretty hard time of it, going 1-4 in his last 5 matches and getting summarily destroyed by Reality. The highlight of this match being a mine daebak that killed almost all of Tyson’s probes at his natural, after which Reality sent out a strong timing push to finish the game. The only real positive for MBC to come out of this match was Sea’s easy win over Sharp. MBSea might be starting to become a real thing in the next few weeks.


Played on the same day as Khan vs MBC this match was much more popular, as it featured Yellow’s last official game before retirement. After a moving ceremony that involved a Korean celebrity singing to him and Boxer trolling with a copy of SC2, Yellow played a fun game against Midas. After sustaining significant damage from a quick 2 rax marine push, yellow went for a 2 hatch mutalisk all-in, sniping several vessels in an attempt to win his last game. Unfortunately Midas’s position was too strong and after a drawn out cat and mouse game with Yellow’s mutalisks he rolled over him for the win. Overall the match was a disappointing loss for KT, however it was to be expected because Flash was unable to play due to his wrist problems. Looking on the positive side, Hoejja was once again impressive, taking a strong victory over Roro on Aztec, and Crazy-Hydra playing an impressive game against mind despite losing. This game was probably the highlight of the night, with CH trying his hardest to overcome mind’s solid late game play on the terran favored La Mancha to no avail. The final game of the day was somewhat of a disappointment. After anyppi’s DT cheese failed, there was a pause. Apparently he had accidentally alt-tabbed and as a result lost several goons and dt’s. After almost a 30 minute delay (thanks KespaDogspa) the game was restarted and anyppi was quickly rolled over by a determined Baby. Fox really needed this victory to keep their playoff chances alive and while their zerg line failed, their new up and coming protoss Wooki and reliable terran lined performed stunningly.


SKT vs Oz matches are always extremely well hyped due to the possibility of a Bisu vs Jaedong game, but alas, fantasy was the one who had to face the dong. Fantasy got by far the worse of the opening build orders, going 14cc versus jaedong’s overpool. Lings streaming into his base forced a cancel on the CC and killed far too many scvs for Fantasy to realistically recover, so Fantasy decided to go all-in with his remaining marines and some scvs. Unfortunately he misjudged where jaedong’s main was as his scv had been killed by lings so he ran off to an empty main while 4 more lings came and eliminated the last of his scvs, forcing him to tap out. It’s been a disappointing round for fantasy, and his current solution seems to be using risky build orders, and unfortunately it is not working out. Another disappointment for SKT here was best’s performance. His build order seemed to make no sense, dropping a nexus after his citadel of adun, only to be easily run over by 3 gate goon/obs and suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of the smirking rookie, Sky.
The real highlight of this match was Bisu vs Hiya. After sustaining several probe deaths to an unscouted bunker outside his 12 nex’s sight range, Bisu tried to double expand to get back in the game, only to have Hiya perform a really quick 4 fac timing attack. For mere mortals, holding this attack would be impossible, but unfortunately for Hiya, he wasn’t playing a mere mortal. Taek Shin had taken to the battlefield, and with exceptional goon micro held off the attack. The game wasn’t over here, as Hiya aggressively pushed towards Bisu’s main on a strong three base economy, but through fantastic storms Bisu managed to hold the attack and finally take the win.


CJ cemented their second place spot in the playoffs with a convincing win over a struggling STX lineup. While the STX terrans managed to pull out some strong wins against the CJ terrans, the rest of the CJ lineup were just too strong for STX. On a day where STX decided not to play Kal and Calm, probably due to poor form of late, the super stars of CJ showed their stuff, with movie and Hydra taking easy wins in their strongest matchups, while snow and horang2 showed that they can perform in their weaker matchups as well. Snow showed extremely good decision making and punished shuttle for being slightly greedy, which is the trademark of a good PvP player. Horang2 on the other hand showed us that he is the king of gateway layouts, rolling over last in what could only be described as a Best-inspired PvT display with rows upon rows of evenly spaced gateways littering his bases. This was a particularly hard loss for STX, as Fox and Khan performed well earlier earlier in the week, and with how tightly packed the trailing teams are in the fight for the playoffs, this was a loss that STX couldn’t really afford at this point.


Once again Ace managed to pull out a solid come from behind win against a strong lineup that is Woongjin. After dropping down 0-2 with Light and Zero coming out strong, Ace managed to claw their way back, with some fantastic contributions from their mainstay players. Piano showed us that BBS really does destroy a 12 nex, bunker pushing into Flying’s main after destroying his natural expansion for an easy win. Ggaemo showed us the power of the hydra bust against Guemchi who really seemed out of his depth against the Acedong. FBH decided he wasn’t going to be terrible at TvP for once and after his 3 base timing attack had wrecked Free’s expansions, who was desperately trying to amass carriers but it was too little too late. FBH showed us a little bit of his old flair, dropping a manner CC in Free’s main to force out the GG. Finally M18M showed us what protoss is all about, taking down the woongjin superstar Soulkey, with some fantastic tactics that included using a DT on a bridge to block and delay reinforcements while he sacked Soulkey’s third and fourth base with incredible daebak storms. A must watch game for any ace fan.


I read a milkis post before this match talking about how Fox is anti-stork. It was amazing then, to see this come to fruition. Khan rolled over fox almost like they weren’t there, with strong performances from the lesser hyped khan players, thoroughly outplaying their opposition. On the other hand, stork was thoroughly outplayed by mind. Attempting to go for carriers on the mech friendly La Mancha, Stork used nicely timed aggression with reavers to stall enough time to get his carriers out. We all know that once stork gets to a certain level of carriers that he’s utterly unstoppable, even in terrible form, however mind was having none of it and attacked before stork could get enough carriers to hold it off. Stork even displayed some fantasy-esque gg timing, waiting a good 5 minutes longer than he should have stayed in the game. Luckily the protoss line in Khan is extremely deep, and jangbi executed an interesting nexus snipe build against Wooki, who looked outclassed by the Jangbanger who is in raging form. Grape did his usual thing and destroyed a lackluster Roro and brave executed some fun choke blocking to throw hero[join] off his game and hit a sweet timing to finish off the set 4-1 for Khan.


KT was once again without their star player Flash for this match but luckily for them the result was a fair bit different to their drubbing from Fox earlier on in the week. While crazy-hydra and Suny had disappointing losses (interesting tidbit: Suny hasn’t won a proleague game for 3 years) the rest of KT did their thing with good success. Tyson attempted a fairly silly build and Stats simply played his solid best and took him down with ease. Action and Barracks won with similar ease in relatively straightforward games. The real exiting games played today were Suny vs Jaehoon and Hoejja vs Sea. Suny and Jaehoon played a marathon game with a map split holding for an extended period of time while Jaehoon desperately defended Suny’s aggression with carriers until finally he reached a critical mass and could roll over Suny’s defenses. All credit goes to Suny though, as he attempted to use lockdown to counter the carriers, but unfortunately Jaehoon was on the ball and sniped the ghosts before they could get close enough to cast their spells. The other fun game of the day happened between Hoejja and Sea. After developing a significant lead in the early to mid game, Hoejja almost let Sea come back with some well executed mass expand mech play on La Mancha. Abusing all the map architecture to its fullest he almost came back until Hoejja executed a brilliant double drop and attack that in a single blow cut off all but one of Sea’s mining bases, sealing the game for Hoejja who continues his good form.


Poor Oz are really taking a beating this season and this match was no exception. If there was a team you would expect Oz to have a good chance against it is this STX lineup with a slumping Kal and Calm, however STX really bonded together and put up a united front as they trounced Jaedong Oz 4-1. Classic vs Hiya was a relatively standard affair, with classic gaining good air superiority and taking the victory. Kal had an insane game against killer, where after holding off 3 hatch hydra, managed to maelstrom 11 follow-up mutalisks and kill them all with 1 storm and a cannon. After that Kal simply pushed out with his goon/templar army and pulled off some amazing storms to overcome Killers complete surround to take a convincing win. Jaedong and Calm played a tense ZvZ but in the end JvZ prevailed and Jaedong took the win. Anytime had a hard time against an in form bogus and finally Hyo(sHy) attempted to cheese out hero who was having none of it and expertly jumped a drone through a choke blocking forge to take down the cannon, and followed up with 5 hatch hydra to overrun a stormless Hyo.


Historically Ace tend to step up their game when they face the competition leaders SKT, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case today. SKT afforded themselves an easy win without playing their flagship players, as their place in the finals was already assured. While Sun was letdown by poor micro and S2 threw away a massive lead by deciding to all-in after he had killed Canata’s command centre and a ton of scvs, the rest of SKT rolled over their opponents. Best took down Firebathero with good carrier and storm usage, which is more and more becoming a feature of Best’s playing, who is mostly known for his macro and not his micro. JyJ had his chance to get revenge after the infamous vessel snipe game where he almost cried, taking down Ggaemo with some excellent Marine/medic aggression. Paralyze was too much for Much to overcome as he held 3 gate with a 1 gate expansion and took his macro lead and destroyed much’s remaining defenses, and finally Soo finished the set off with an impressive display of ZvT playing completely straight up, something that S2 really needs to try and learn from. On the whole it was a bad day for Ace, as losing to a bunch of rookies can’t feel good at the best of times.


CJ was in a similar position to SKT this week and used the opportunity to blood some of their rookie players, and it resulted in a really entertaining set between the two teams. While BByong cheesed out light with a cute proxy factory marine/tank build, snow was outclassed by Zero whose ZvP these days seems to have few weaknesses. Soulkey and Rush played an epic game on La Mancha(seems to be a theme for TvZ’s on this map) with Rush winning in his first ever proleague game against the late game ZvT master himself Soulkey. For some reason Soulkey never once built queens, and instead tried to rely on good swarms and ultra drops to take down the mech army of Rush, but Rush incessantly pushed at both the 12 oclock and 6 oclock expansions until he killed both of them and won the economic game once Soulkey was mined out. The rest of the games were fairly straight forwards, but the real talking point was Rush being set out in the ace match against zero, most likely as a reward for his amazing performance earlier on. Unfortunately he couldn’t repeat his efforts and Zero took the rookie down with ease.