Revival tries to sneak a gold expansion, but Lots is hearing none of it and scouts it immediately. Lots counters with the “lower your wall and let the roach rush into your base” build, managing to lose 19 SCVs before he re-secures his base. I guess no one told him that was a bad idea.
Unfortunately for we the viewers, the game lasts for another 10 minutes while Revival masses an insurmountable lead.

Slayers decides to send out a real Terran in Ryung, who goes with a more conventional banshee build that doesn’t involve letting roaches totally ruin you. This gets him ahead, but sloppy play costs him his first push. From there it’s a reasonably exciting back-and-forth game, with Ryung repeatedly overextending, losing some units, tempting Revival too overextend in turn, and then equalizing. Eventually Revival over-over-extends, loses his muta ball in a puff of turret and marine fire, and GGs.

TSL fires back with... JYP? I've never heard of him either, but his balls-to-the-wall macro build was definitely intriguing. His early nexus coupled with enough sentries to keep Ryung trapped in his base forever looked very clever, right up until a banshee flew straight over the forcefields and ran off the 6 sentries that represented all of JYP’s forces at the 7 minute mark. Once he made it out of his base, Ryung took his marine-tank-banshee force straight out to bash some probes. JYP fought a desperate holding action, trying to muster an army that can stall Ryung’s attack before deciding to devote his efforts to a proxy-pylon counter attack. It looks for a moment like he might at least turn the game into a base trade, but Ryung quickly dispels that illusion. It was pretty exciting for a couple minutes, though.

Then it’s Killer time, who busts out a nexus-first to snag a macro edge over Ryung’s one-rax expand. Ryung goes for a relatively blind early-ghost timing attack, but is forced to pull back by Killer’s relatively blind DTs. It doesn’t look like the DTs do much but disrupt mining, but somehow that leaves Killer up 20 food. Killer then builds two robo bays, which looks like a mistake until it proves to be a high-level feint of commitment to colossi that gets Ryung to hugely over-build vikings (or it was just a mistake, but either way Ryung built too many vikings). Killer gets way, way ahead, then almost blunders the game away by getting his army wildly out of position and letting Ryung run right in and annihilate his main. The base trade again looks exciting for a few minutes, but Killer is able to re-stabilize in a new quadrant of the map, get his feet back under him, and collect his win.

In the spirit of “sending out a zerg for ZvP on Bel’Shir Beach”, Slayers tasks Min with knocking Killer out. Killer goes with a forge fast expand into void rays, which gives Min plenty of time to get three bases up and running. Min then sends a flood of 0/0 zerglings into Killer’s flood of 1/0 zealots, which goes as poorly for the zerglings as you might expect. Min moves into a pretty neat zergling drop into mass infestor build, but as is the way of most neat builds, it just wastes his entire army to take out a few buildings. Killer’s counter attack is devastating, and looks like a game winner until a mass of ultras pop out and eat everything. From there the players transition into a kind-of-wacky-but-fun ultra/ling/infestor versus archon/immortal/void ray game. Both of those compositions are a weird, but it turns out the protoss comp almost totally counters the zerg one. Who'da thunk?



Slayers sends out GanZi as their last hope, and he proceeds to play a really boring macro game against Killer. Fifteen minutes into the game, the only damage done to either played is a failed drop. Then GanZi anticlimactically loses his entire army in the middle of the map, and still takes 5 minutes to leave the game. Killer’s manner nexii were the only thing that made this game remotely worth watching.

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For this set, fOu did not pull any punches, opening with GuMiho, one of their strongest players. SloG opened with a double fast expand, so GuMiho's high barracks pressure build just crushed through SloG's small army. Moonan proxied two barracks and pulled all of his SCV's, despite perfect conditions for Moonan's cheese to work, some pretty huge miss micro allowed GuMiho's SCVs to surround the marines and take the game. Oz rushed for a templar archives, delaying his extra gateways, and so didn't have the units to hold GuMiho's one base marine maurader medivac all in. Qxc showed the superiority of the new TvT mech style, as GuMiho tried to go infantry but lost far too many SCVs to Qxc's blue flame flame hellions to ever really make it work. The best was saved for last, as Choya opened warp prism speed colossus drop. Neither player did too much damage to each other in the mid-game as Choya was able to secure one extra base than Qxc and win in the late game. It's a pity that this last match didn't continue, as a full out macro fest with speed reapers and speed warp prisms would have made my day.

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Opening this match we hear a noise pitted against a familiar terran of ZeNEX. Byun starts off with a build designed to tax his opponent's multitasking while trying to maximize his lead. The banshee hits the mineral line to pull the marines away from the ramp, allowing his hellions to sneak in. Sound does defend rather well given the circumstances but unfortunately loses quite a few workers and ultimately has a much slower natural. Sound attempts to recover from this by pushing to Byun's natural and establishing a contain; however Byun only has to blink to break out. A final back stab attempt as Byun pushes towards his natural is all Sound has left before tapping out.

In his second game, Byun opens in a very similar nature. Though this time the cloaked banshee is not supported directly by the hellions but they are present and both do some damage. From here Byun establishes a comfortable position and manages to push through the zerg's 3rd. Byun's inadequate defenses of his expansion nearly allow Curious to come back into it, but unfortunately Curious' attack timings prove to be a bit off allowing the terran remnants to secure the victory

Both players jump into the next game expansion first, okay maybe not literally but quite quickly. Ace techs to a rather fast colossus while Byun answers with a standard unit composition. After losing all his colossi in the first engagement, Ace techs away from this path making the air units of terran ultimately useless. From here insert an extremely long macro game where the map basically splits and Ace shows his love for the archons. Because of this he enjoys a commanding lead but constantly finds himself unable to break the mass EMPs of Byun. Fortunately for Ace having more bases than his opponent for almost the entire game eventually does allow him to win.

Ace continues into the next game with a forge fast expand, Line answers this with a massive zergling run by that manages to kill the main nexus. From here we have yet again another macro game, where Line techs up to basically everything and takes the map. By the time he's sitting at broods and 5 bases, Ace feels he's caught up as well as he can and attacks. Needless to say this doesn't go so well against a platoon of broodlords. The protoss ball crumbles under the never ending zerg.

Bomber attempts to stop the Line rampage with a tricky 2 port banshee, unfortunately he allows an overlord into his base to scout this. It turns out this isn't unfortunate at all, even though Line scouted the build he didnt prepare for it and loses over 30 drones as well as his main lair. After this Bomber simply pushes in with the army he's built up to this point and wins the game.

ZeNEX hopes to shut down the Bomber comeback with their protoss talent. Puzzle begins with the standard protoss pressure of a voidray supported by stalker sentry accomplishing little more than a brief contain. In retort Bomber executes a massive drop in the protoss main dealing out ridiculous damage while also harassing the main. Though the terran lead is overwhelming Puzzle puts up a valiant fight with guerrilla tactics, delaying the game extensively. Bomber does hold on and secures his second win taking this to game 7.

Bomber goes back to his faithful banshee tech in this final game while Coca takes the more standard tech path towards banes and mutas. A stopped then counter stopped drop allows bomber to achieve efficiency from his harass. From this point Coca begins to gear up the macro mode cranking out a huge army and starting to take the map. However, Bomber catches him being too greedy, and thanks to Coca's inability to adequately engage terran armies he rolls through 2 of the zerg bases. Repeat these failed engagements from Coca a few times over and Bomber wins yet another close game and completes the comeback. SICK? Sick.

Do you and FXO do more training between teammates or ladder?

We mostly train on ladder but go inhouse to practice specific strategies/maps.

Have you made any Korean practice partners?

I've made a couple although the majority of my time has been spent just laddering. Prime and fOu have both been really helpful.

You mentioned in our last interview that you used mainly online tournaments for practice, are you still able to compete in so many?

I compete in as few tournaments as possible at the moment to help maximize what I can get out of Korea. We're currently on a schedule of training for 10 hours a day and it's difficult enough doing that without having to budget my time for tournaments and preparation.

Do you still plan on staying in Korea until September?

I'm planning on being in Korea until mid to late August depending on my performance in Code A (assuming I qualify).

Does FXO try and keep a competitive atmosphere between it's players (I remember Sheth saying you were a rival) or is it more of a cooperative atmosphere?

It's cooperative/competitive. We help each other but we also of course like to beat each other and sometimes resort to fairly obscure strategies or tactics to do so. For example almost every time I play optik I allin or do some nonsensical strategy. I guess it's revenge for all the times he warp prism dt'd me in tournaments back in NA.

What is it like for you climbing into one of those GOM booths? Would you say you are going in with a lot of nerves?

There's a decent amount of nerves leading up to the event and playing itself but I haven't found nervousness to be really affecting my play once I've actually started. There have been other factors with live events that have affected me but I don't feel like nervousness is a main factor.

In week one, FXO went 2-4 in a match against the very strong ST, what was that first match like? What did you learn?

I learned that I need to be more prepared in terms of build orders. When I'm trying to play safe it's hard to justify taking a risk that can potentially end the game. After that I became much more perceptive of what timings I needed to be prepared for to go into the mid game.

The following two weeks had FXO being all killed, has that done any psychological damage to your and the teams confidence?

Immediately after the event has been somewhat of a strange situation. Everyone copes with the result in their own way. By the next week we're ready to roll again hoping we've learned enough from the previous encounter and throughout the week to post a better result.

How far in advance does the team begin preparation for the match?

Saturday is our off day. Preparation begins on Sunday and continues until Thursday's match.

If you had to pick one thing that you've learned from your experience in Korea so far, what would it be?

I've learned a lot about the thought process behind taking the game to the next level in order.

You've done some casting with Wolf and the community seems near unanimous in it's love for it, what do you think of the experience of casting so far?

I'm mostly satisfied with my performance although I do regret that I didn't have a cast that really brought it all together the way I wanted. I felt like after the first couple I had been doing a bit too much joking and I had hoped to make the last cast more analytical. For one reason or another I don't feel like it went the way I had hoped.

Have you had a chance to do much Parkour in Korea? Have you found a parkour scene in Korea? Or are you too busy starting one?

I haven't had much time to do much besides practice while here. I've been going to the gym 5 or 6 times a week to keep myself in shape physically.

Where can people find out more about their hero?

You check out my twitter qxc0000 / facebook page qxc / website fxoqxc.com. (Interviewers note: check out his website, the redirect is priceless)

In last weeks match against fOu, did you ever end up scanning the island?

No match is complete without scanning the island. You just have to pay very close attention to see it sometimes.

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What I love the most about FXO, and what was shown in their recent games against fOu, is their injection of foreign creativity into Korean aggressive play. In the series, not a single player just went for a "standard" build. That means no colossus rushing protoss' or slow pushing tank Terrans.



SLoG's double expand in game one was very well planned, and he only barely lost to GuMiho, whose build in reality was really a hard counter to that kind of economic cheese. GuMiho went for five barracks marine into maurader pressure that is meant to punish a greedy Protoss; despite that, SLoG nearly came out on top, with a very well thought out dark templar transition that nearly worked. The Korean Style is using dark templar to delay pushes, the foreigner twist was using them to help secure a hidden third.

I would be surprised if Moonan's proxy two barracks was a random coin flip decision to cheese. According to this week's Qxc interview, fOu practices with FXO quite a bit; thus I wouldn't be surprised if it was a known vulnerability in GuMiho's build that Moonan was exploiting. Moonan's build even had everything go right for him, if it wasn't for a small micro error, he would have taken the game. The Korean style is using early pressure to punish a greedy opponent in a mirror matchup, the foreigner twist was the proxy two barracks, something we haven't seen in quite a while.

Back before the high templar nerf, notable Protoss such as Huk were experimenting with some high templar rushes off of two bases instead of (what was then standard) rushing for Colossus. While the gateway style has made a small comeback, largely thanks to oGsMC, the rushing for high templar phase of PvT development has sort of been forgotten. Oz showed that he is still trying it in his game against GuMiho. Who knows, if GuMiho hadn't been going for a strong one base all in, perhaps we would all be talking about how amazing of a style Oz showed off in his match? The Korean style is gateway openings against Terran, the foreigner twist was the high templar rush.

Finally, our hero Qxc rose up and was able to defeat GuMiho after killing 80 SCV's with blue flame hellions. What made Qxc's build this game so creative wasn't just that he went mech - that is nothing new - but that he opened with a blue flame hellion drop and the main focus of the hellions all game long was to kill SCV's. From what I can tell, blue flame hellion usage in Korea revolves very little around killing your opponent's SCV's, and is more centered on killing their marines. Qxc's blue flame hellion opening was ingenious because if you watch carefully, he actually devised a way to open it while being completely safe against cloak banshee's using some fancy attachment switching. It's that kind of foreign creativity being injected into Korean unit compositions that excites me. The Korean style is mech TvT, the foreigner twist was focusing blue flame hellions on harassment and drops.

Finally, we saw Qxc against Choya, who went for a warp prism with speed colossus drop opening. Afterwards though, we saw Choya transition into some more normal gateway heavy play. Qxc was gearing up for some late game reaper harass, but Choya's economic advantage was too large before we could see it come to fruition. The Korean style is late game TvP harass, the Qxc twist is reaper speed, which we unfortunately didn't get the chance to see.

FXO in Korea excites me now more than it did before because of these openings and styles that they are revealing. Everything is grounded in Korean play styles, but they all have a special foreigner twist that only a foreign team in Korea can bring. Be sure to tune in this week to see what they unveil against IM.

It’s that time of the week: you’re finally surfacing from the weekend-induced haze, reaching peak productivity before the Thursday-Friday slide. You’re more focused, more attentive than you have been or will be for days. It’s time to tackle the most important part of your week: managing your fantasy GSTL team. With both NSH’s stable of all-killers and DongRaeGu sitting out this week, was there even anything interesting happening?

Well, chronological order is as good a way to look at these as any. Slayers-TSL, eh? 9 points for Killer and Slayers drops to 0-3 and remains at 1 point. Really though, the most notable thing about this match might be the lack of MMA; players who paid through the nose for Slayers’ top terran have only seen him even play one game (which he lost), and he’s brought them 0 points to date. Suckers!

Up next: FXO versus FoU. Gumiho took a quick three games and 6 points off the top, setting the stage for QXC to become the highest-grossing foreigner to date with a single 4-point win. That’s all players who bet big on FXO got, though; Choya rounded out the match for FoU. FoU owners make bank with a 6 point win, while the poor, benighted souls who put their trust in the power of Korean-foreigner hybrid FXO now have negative 4 points to show for it. Ouch.

Last but not least we come to Startale-Zenex. You may remember from last week that I bought Bomber, so I was particularly worried that Startale would just roll to another easy win without bringing out their ace. With that in mind, let’s just take a second and thanks Byun and SuhoSin for winning enough games (2 and 1 respectively) to make Bomber come out of his hole and dominate his way to eight points and a 4-3 team win. That was really the only particularly notable outcome of this match; Byun snagged four points and the closeness of the match meant neither team took home many points.



The notorious mrbamboo still rules the leader board with an iron fist; he didn’t get any points from DongRaeGu this week, but then again, neither did anyone else, and there’s still no one in the top 10 without Mr Gu. Interestingly, seven of them had Hack for his all-kill, but only one still does; nobody tell Hack or he’ll think we don’t like him.
Most of the new top 10 members are riding the resurgent GuMiHo, usually with a side of FoU for their team. Of course all of them had at least one of Jjakji, Hack or Sage for a score-boosting all-kill at some point. This is because they’re prescient. Well, they could just be lucky, but I think prescient is more likely.


Hey look! NSHoseo is playing again! You can trade for a no-name player and hope for an all-kill! After all, Startale’s not a very good team compared to the unstoppable NSH juggernaut. The only problem is that people have actually heard of Tassadar, so you can’t just go with the lead-off player. I’d recommend just picking someone with a cryptic-sounding name you like.

Now here will be an exciting match! That is if oGs is able to field a competitive line up, they've seemed a little lonely lately without MC to strike fear into the hearts of men facing his team. Sometimes the thought of having to play MC next is almost as powerful as actually playing him, but even support like that may not be enough to take down a team as strong as prime. With the likes of Polt and MKP to back up their roster I predict this series to be a good one, 4-3 Prime.



Do I really need to write a prediction for this one? Really? Not to sound pessimistic or unfaithful to the foreigner creed, but FXO has fallen short against the weakest of teams. I'll eat my brand new TL shirt if they manage to beat IM. 4-1 IM.

vs
New Star HoSe vs StarTale

I think with NSH these days it's basically the fact that Sage is a god and everyone is average yet capable of wins. That's not to say everyone else should be overlooked, but if Sage can keep playing up to his potential I see his team with a very strong chance to take this series. ST will also be very hot off their win against ZeNEX though, and riding the bomber wave of comebacks can be a powerful thing. 4-3 NSH.