The risk of sending your ace player out first is that you give the other team literally days to plot a build to snipe him, and it briefly looked like that might happen here. Hannibal moved out with what seemed like a pretty strong early marines-at-the-front-hellion-drop-at-the-back attack, but it turned out to be a hellions-die-in-the-back-while-marines-dick-around-in-front-of-the-base attack. MC responded by throwing the game away with an incredibly bad zealot-heavy push into blue flame hellions, siege tanks and EMP. For his next trick he went with an even more incredible archon-heavy flank attack that (with a little help from Hannibal's overconfidence) overcame a 70-food deficit to win. Dude’s a boss.

Having failed with plan terran, Prime moved on to plan zerg: BBoongBBoong edition. This particular plan involved Terminus RE and two quick expansions into a 200/200 roach-hydra-corruptor ball and 321423 spine crawlers. Somehow this worked; BboongBBoong managed to trade most of his army to eliminate MC’s colossi and then lean on his spine crawlers while he transitioned into the old brood lord-roach-queen-overlord push. MC’s blink micro was excellent, but it just wasn’t enough to overcome BboongBboong’s superior econ and army composition.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say OGS prepared a BBoongBBoong snipe build, but Top’s CC-first full-wall-off on Bel’Shir was pretty cute. Unfortunately, no one told him he needed to re-wall once he moved that command center, and he lost more than twenty SCVs to a series of 3 ling runbys. And he still didn’t wall. There’s a point at which you simply deserve to lose. He did.

OGS wasn’t ready to give up on their terrans, so they sent Nada out to play a safe, solid, patient, and to be honest, pretty boring game. BboongBboong didn’t seem to know what to do about that; he launched a couple of generally failed attacks and just slowly ground himself down against the Terran wall, eventually GGing in frustration.

Prime responded with Check, who realized that he couldn’t afford to play Nada’s style of long-term game and launched an early roach bust. He caught Nada with nothing but a handful of blue-flame hellions, which it turns out aren’t particularly good against roaches. Check traded his roaches for Nada’s army and more than a dozen SCVs, which you’d think would be the end of the game. But no, it just kept going... And going... And going... And then Check pulled a totally awesome four-transfuse save on a greater spire he never used... And then, mercifully, Nada pulled all of his SCVs for one last hopeless push.

Huk and Check spent about 15 minutes macroing relatively uneventfully, and then shit got crazy. Check launched a major ling-muta push as both players went for their fourth bases, suiciding his lings to take out Huk’s main nexus. Huk launched a counter attack at Check’s natural, and Check made the mystifying decision to try to fight a forcefield-heavy army with a mass of banelings. That went about as well as you’d expect, but a last-ditch drone pull let Check clean up the attack. He then responded with a counter-counter attack, sending what remained of his mutas at Huk, who pulled off his own narrow hold thanks to some archons and a key storm. The game moved into an intense back-and-forth, with Huk throwing zealots at Check’s expansions while Check threw lings at Huk’s. Huk’s archons, storms and upgrades slowly swung the game into his favor, though, and Check’s ultra tech arrived too late to do anything but die in a hail of stalker fire.

Down to their own last player, Prime went with their obvious choice for ace. He is, after all, the king. He also turned out to be the king of all-ins, going for a three-rax bio push against Huk’s three-gate expand. MarineKing’s over-reliance on his namesake unit combined with fantastic control from Huk let Huk survive with ease, and from there on out he was able to coast to an easy victory, and the title of "first foreigner GSTL MVP".



Overshadowed this week by Qxc's all kill was Huk's clutch wins against Prime to take the team league win for oGs. oGs is taking this team league very seriously, as they are a top contender for winning the entire tournament. It is with that in mind that you should realize that Huk was oGs' ace player. Huk didn't get the Ace position because he is the white dude and the Koreans thought it would be cool to give it to him, he got it because oGs believed him to be the best, most well rounded player on their team.

Huk vs. Check: Tal'Darim Altar

Huk opened with his trademark great probe harass, denying Check mining on his close mineral patch. Huk opened with the Tal'Darim standard forge fast expand and Check grabbed a fast third to respond - the standard for PvZ on this map. Huk's opening was rather unique, getting his six gateways up without using them right away, and instead expanding. He has both the option to go all in, as well as the option to just expand behind it.

Huk followed up with fast upgrades, blink, and hallucination for scouting. Check droned like crazy, using speedlings to defend and harass with a very delayed lair. Check went for a surround with his speedlings on Huk's army, but Huk used his top 3 control to lose nothing with great forcefields. Check got up to 74 speedlings, he was behind Huk in worker count at this point while teching to infestors.

Huk could assume infestor or mutalisk tech due to the high speedling count, and made a great decision to tech to high templar, still using hallucination to scout. No other protoss would be so aggressive against so many speedlings, but Huk's forcefield control is so good that he is able to put a lot of pressure on Check.

Check pumped out 16 mutalisks all at once, but Huk was able to deny due to his great decision to go for high templar. Great storms beginning at the 15 minute mark allowed Huk to be extremely cost effective against Check. At 16:30, Huk made a brilliant decision, as lings ran in to snipe his main Nexus, Huk knew that his stalkers wouldn't be back in time to save the base. So Huk used a huge Zealot warp in to clean up the attack while counter attacking immediately with his army. Huk did some amazing economic damage, but Check made an unbelievable hold with his mutalisks. After Huk survived the counter attack, the game was really over, with Check behind on tech and economy while Huk had the perfect army composition to deal with Check's.

Check wasn't ready to quit though, and continued to macro up a sizable ling baneling, infester, mutalisk army. Huk really sealed the deal with a note from Zerg's book, splitting up his army to ensure that Check's economy was damaged. After that, Huk was up a base, up upgrades, and far ahead in tech, the rest of the game just being a formality until Check's gg.

Summary:

Huk played brilliantly this game, really showing his understanding of the matchup. His 6 gate expansion is a great idea for a build. Hallucination allows him to scout his opponents style and if a robotics will be needed, as well as tell him if he should go 6 gate all in, or just expand behind it like he did in this game. Huk followed up with exact unit composition and execution that he needed to win the game. Be sure to watch this to see top 3 control in action.

Huk vs. MarineKing: Xel'Naga Fortress

As if I wasn't already a huge Huk fanboy never mind, that would be biased of me. Huk played so fantastically this game. Huk went for a one gate fast expand against MarineKing's three barracks timing attack - essentially an all in due to such a late expansion timing. Huk added on two more gateways and saw the attack coming. Huk said to himself "you know what, I can hold this no problem," and lets his nexus complete. Huk held brilliantly, putting top 3 control to work in order to hold the attack. Huk is able to counter for a small delay on MarineKing's already very late expansion. Huk made a smart decision at this point to get colossus while getting up to 6 gateways. MarineKing felt pressured to make something happen so went in for an attack. Huk crushed the attack and countered for the win.

Summary:

Huk held MarineKing's all in with a one gate expand, what a baller.

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In the game to start things off Tassadar gets to revisit his code A finals match up, this time against a much weaker opponent (maybe weaker because of the daylight?). Both players 4 gate and Tassadar simply has better micro and walks all over Superstar, dees boots.

We see yet another PvP to be played, but this time with a more formidable opponent. Both players opt for more techy builds for this game. Tassadar aiming to be the defender with his robo while Squirtle goes on the offensive. Unfortunately for our code A runner up he cant hold his ramp to the rapid blink losing his first immortal and shortly after the game.

Hoping to stop the Squirtle rock from rolling NSH sends out their other S player in Sculp. The two players open standard trying only to expand and build up the usual unit composition. A fairly even trade occurs when Squirtle tries for some pressure, but Sculp does come out ahead thanks to his nice micro. From here he continues to get ahead by harassing while defending pressure extremely well, slowly making his edge less marginal. Squirtle eventually buckles under the marauder might.

Startale tries to answer the flash bang of Sculp with their god of war. Maybe because he thought his opponent wouldn't expect it, or maybe because he's foolish but Sculp tries to bunker rush Julyzerg. Needless to say this gets deflected easily and both players resume their builds. In his next step Sculp begins attacking and harassing July at every front, using his previously demonstrated micro to inflict massive damage. Much like the last game July is chipped away at until nothing is left.

ST has to resort to its last big gun: Bomber. Oddly enough BOTH players open with 2 port, in an identical fashion. Both losing a banshee to a viking almost like looking into a mirror, that is until Bomber decides on a better reaction. Switching out his tech lab and going towards blue flame hellions; these allow him to secure the lead executing some sick harass on the enemy's mineral line. Realizing he's behind Sculp decides on an attack, a timing attack! Set to hit just before his stim finishes...wait what? Or more accurately "/".

With the next game being on Belshir it's only natural that NSH would send out their player most suitable for water. Bomber attempts a timing attack on the just finished 3rd of Seal, but the timing ends up being slow. A timing attack without the timing is naturally doomed to fail. From here the zerg creep literally takes over the entire map that isnt nailed down, and even some of that. Watch this game just for the creep spread, screw the quality! A blob of mutas contain the terran until infestors and brood lords appear, at this point it's only a matter of time. Insert some sick unburrowed surprise infestors with endless broodlings and NSH takes it 4-2!.

The notorious set of games that is shirt-eatingly good. For game one Qxc plays a very solid, straight up TvZ; managing to out macro his zerg opponent with no gimmicks. Qxc went standard marine tank for the win, using great positioning to come out ahead. In game two against BBi, Qxc played another solid, gimmick-less game; Qxc keeps an economic advantage all game long in a fast paced game in order to come out on top. The reaper transition in the late game was just icing on the cake. For game three, Qxc continues with his fantastic straight up gameplay, using superior macro and micro to out-position his terran opponent dreamertt for the win. For Qxc's final game against Mvp, both players opened with hellions, with Qxc out microing Mvp to come out ahead. Qxc makes the game winning decision to follow up with cloak banshee, Mvp isn't prepared and is forced to gg only after losing all of his SCV's.



In FXO's series against Incredible Miracle, Qxc demonstrated just how much he has improved in Korea. His play in all four games was unbelievably solid and safe. His aggression and drop timings were solid; the days of Qxc losing too many units in his harassment may be over. I'll be going through every game played in the series, trying to highlight just how well Qxc played, and how much he has improved.

The Bandanna Terran vs. IMhorror: Belshir Beach

Qxc did a very cutesy (yet safe) opening against Horror's hatchery first. Qxc sent his first marine cross map to do a little pressure while following up with a reactor hellion expand. Once his barracks swapped with the factory, he used it to get a fast maurader, my theory is that this move was made in case Horror was going for some roach pressure, the maurader would be a huge help.

No damage is done early on by either player, as Qxc continues getting hellions with blue flame instead of rushing for tanks (this was likely due to not seeing roaches). Qxc did a nice tactic to harass, using blue flame hellions and medivac micro to kill off a ton of Horror's early zerglings. Qxc followed up with a very fast third base, doing a fantastic job using the bare minimum to defend Horror's mutalisk harass.

Qxc showed off some of his newly found fantastic macro to keep up with Horror economically while also fielding the perfect number of units. Qxc got a mid game raven after seeing burrowed banelings - a great decision. Horror pushed out with a huge ling baneling army around 15 minutes in. Qxc held with some unbelievably good positioning of both his structures and his tanks. After holding off the attacks, Qxc surged forward with his huge economical and upgrade advantage to take the game.

In Summary:

Qxc showed the power of staying on top of upgrades and getting a fast third base. He did an amazing job holding against Horror's huge ling baneling attacks and mutalisks with the bare minimum; using amazing unit and building positions to macro freely. Watch it to learn great expansion timings and building positions.



Qxc vs. IMBBi: Xel'Naga Caverns

Qxc went for a gasless fast expand, playing so safe that he gets bunker up despite seeing that his opponent was getting a fast expand as well. Qxc followed up with the very safe three barracks into tech build, getting bunkers and a turret to continue his very safe build. A small engagement allowed Qxc to kill off a lot BBi's early sentries.

Qxc poked out with some nice pressure while securing his own third base before his opponent. Qxc continued to show his harassment power, using three key marines to continue delaying BBi's mining at his third. After Qxc took advantage of BBi's army being out of position to snipe his third base, BBi was forced to go for a desperate attack. Qxc held with his trademark great micro while continuing to ensure his macro advantage.

Once Qxc had his half of the map, he was way ahead in upgrades and production structures. After using 9 reapers to kill BBi's essential fourth base, Qxc was able to use superior positioning to take out BBi's army and win the game.

Summary:

Qxc really flexed his TvP muscles in this game; gone are the constant (and often wasteful) drops of the past, and in is the fantastic positioning and macro of the future. Watch this game if you want to learn how to play perfectly safe against the standard protoss play as well as learn how to position your army against protoss.



Qxc vs. IMdreamertt: Metalopolis

Qxc was able to show off his incredibly safe blue flame hellion opener, easily denying dreamertt's banshee attempt while doing some nice damage with his blue flame hellions. Qxc even hid his expansion, to make dreamertt not feel as far behind as he was. As both players grabbed their third base, Qxc was ahead about 8 SCV's. Qxc used some fantastic micro at the 11 minute mark to take out dreamer's higher hellion count.

After both armies engage a minute later, the players were so close that Qxc only came out ahead with a single siege tank with one hit point remaining. Qxc's third base was much faster than dreamertt's, showing off his great macro and game plan. Dreamer sacked all of his hellions in a failed attack on Qxc's third base. Qxc took advantage of the situation to set up position on the side of dreamer's base. Combining his air control with great positioning, Qxc was able to take the game with a very safe and slow elevator push.

Summary:

Qxc played a fantastic TvT, using a very safe macro oriented build to come out ahead. If you're having trouble with the new mech style in the matchup, Qxc executed extremely well. His build is extremely safe against banshees, even allowing for a potential blue flame hellion drop if his opponent managed to safely expand before he did. His expansion timings were really what allowed him to beat out his opponent.



Qxc vs. Mvp: Tal'Darim Altar

Qxc originally went for the same blue flame hellion opening as last game, but began researching cloak and beginning a banshee after seeing Mvp's high hellion count. This was a great move by Qxc, the high hellion count meant that Qxc could assume a reactored factory from Mvp, and so taking a risk to go cloak banshee was a great decision. Mvp didn't have any cloak banshee defense, so the banshees kill everything and take the game.

Summary:

Despite the fact that most wins based on cloak banshees are cheese, Qxc's was actually a great decision stemming from in game knowledge. The huge hellion count meant that Mvp's gas and minerals were probably being funneled into factories and hellions with an expansion, so Qxc took a risk that Mvp was being greedy enough to ignore cloak banshee defense, and the risk payed off in a big way.



Qxc: Master of Ceremonies

In our interview with the great Bandanna Terran, he admitted to putting a lot of effort into preparing his ceremonies, that effort payed off. The following is a highlight reel of his ceremonies:



More Crowd High Fives to his New fOu Teammates



Concerned Look on Nestea and his Coach's Faces, The Bandanna Man is About to get an all kill:



Bandanna Thrown out to his Adoring Fans



Qxc Humbly Accepts his Gifts; he is but a Man, Putting his Pants on While Backflipping off of a Wall Parkour style. So I Guess not Very Much Like You and I.



A Bouncing Qxc is a Happy Qxc (someone gif this please)

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Hello "Bandana Man," what do you think of your new Korean nickname?

I think it's quite touching. I've also grown rather fond of John Lennon Toto Destroyer as well as the Bandana Terran. Although if I am to continue my reign as Bandana Man I will require a new bandana sometime soon.

Interviewer's note: If someone got Qxc a fitting bandana for Anaheim, Fionn's wish for a pirate Qxc may be in the near future

What was behind the decision to put yourself out first?

With Sheth gone our options were more limited. Sending out a protoss on Bel'Shir was basically out of the question and of the three remaining players (Me/Tgun/Moonan) I felt the most comfortable on the map.

Did you expect the results that you achieved?

I don't know if expect is the right word. I had been hoping for an all kill and I had done some preparation beforehand (researching IM's likely roster and preparing ceremonies of course).

What was did it feel like when IM put out MVP for the final match? Were you nervous at all?

I went into the match aiming for an all kill. I knew that meant eventually I would be playing world class players and whatever nervousness I might have had about that I had already dealt with beforehand. At the time I felt ready to take on anyone IM had.

In all four games, you showed some extremely solid play, what would you contribute your increase in skill to?

Practicing against Koreans has helped tremendously. In order to be competitive here I needed to improve significantly. Additionally my practice regiment has become much more focused (and actually exists) which has helped me systematically iron out my problems and increase my skill.

In our very first interview, I asked how many Korean's have heard of you, and you responded "if all goes as planned, many more than before," do you feel more recognized in Korea now than before?

If the attention I've been getting online is any indication I would say that yes. Many many more Koreans have heard of Bandana Terran.

What future goals do you have for Korea?

I'd like to play in the next Code A. After that I have to return to the USA for one year of university. After that... who knows?

How did you guys celebrate your victory?

We went out and got BBQ. After that I went and worked out. Played some Diablo 2 and just generally relaxed. Our schedule has been pretty grueling and more than anything else I just wanted to take a break. Oh and I also read about 20 issues of Deadpool. That character is hilarious.

You'll be fighting your way through the open bracket of MLG Anaheim, how do you anticipate yourself doing there?

I hope to do well but there's a lot of factors that I don't have a good handle on yet. I'm not sure the best way to deal with jet lag as well as the endurance required to play for hours on end. Unlike the GSTL which I was able to test my progress in almost weekly it's been a while since I've played in a LAN tournament. With a bit of luck and my new found power level I expect I can make it quite far.

Scan the island?

Yes sir!

As I'm sure many of you know I made a bold statement indeed. That if FXO were to beat IM I'd "eat my brand new TL shirt". Now I didn't really think IM would take the match as a joke and send out their B team, nor did I think QXC would be a machine of destruction. But I was very happy to see FXO not only win but ALL KILL! So I gladly accepted my defeat in that fashion, and so as to avoid Plexa's lightning I decided to back up my words...

At first I was going to eat this shirt!



But I remembered i said brand new! And being a man of my word I wanted the very newest for TL as this shirt was well over a week old

New shirt still in the packaging!

The shirt itself. Here is the point where I realized I may have gotten in over my head, for I am not a large individual and that is a fair amount of shirt to eat all in one sitting.


From here I had to indulge in the sweet taste of defeat, and oh how sugary sweet it was - not at all bitter like some might imagine defeat to be. The shirt was initially very sticky to the touch and extremely stretchy making it hard to take any sizable bites. This was quite unlike the cotton or fabric like texture I had been anticipating.


I saved the parts with letters for last because just like any good birthday cake we all know that's the best part. With the succulent candy still trapped between my teeth I found myself barely able to finish this post due in part to the sickening feeling in my stomach.

All done!


I feel sick now.

Ah, the week in which people who bought MC get to collect big as he all-kills Prime. Wait, what? He only got one win and then got knocked out by BboongBboong? That’s... Unexpected. Then Prime went win-for-win with OGS straight up to match point? And OGS sent out Huk as ace?? Will wonders never cease! All you TL homers who couldn’t resist a one-point unlikely-to-ever-be-played Huk, congratulations on your 6 points.

Next up: FXO-IM. For those of you who were living under a rock the last few days, I can sum it up pretty briefly: 4-0 QXC. I’m not even kidding. -2 points for IM holders, 9 points for FXO holders (your team is no longer worth negative points!), and a whopping 10 points for QXC holders. Now that’s what I call going out in style, because since that was FXO’s last match no one can leverage QXC’s inflated trade value to swap him for a blue-chip player.

Man, this week could only get weirder if Hoseo beat StarTale and DivineK ate his TL shirt. And... huh. Hoseo did beat Startale, thanks to a couple of key wins from Sculp? Well, I guess at this point none of us should be too surprised by clutch performances from NSH player’s we’ve never heard of (though on a side note, I seem to remember telling people to trade for NSH players you’d never heard of, which given that a total of 7 people have bought Sculp in the entire fantasy league, no one did. Shame on you!). For fantasy purposes, Sculp’s 5 points for a practically free player was the main thing to happen in this match; lots of reasonable players picked up a win each, and a 4-2 score means neither team did all that well.

Looking at the leader board, mrbamboo’s still holding the top spot, but due to the majority of his players having an off week his lead has shrunk from 8 points to 2. Also, Jacob666 crept dangerously close to the top ten without having made a single trade; hopefully he’ll come forward in the comments to laugh at the roughly 10,000 people he’s beating without even looking at his team.
QXC’s all-kill really shook things up; the top ten now consists almost entirely of people who have DongRaeGu and have someone who lucked into an all-kill (xxxxxxb being the only exception). Wait, didn’t I say that last week? Huh. Maybe things didn’t change that much after all.


If you have fOu FXOKoreans on your fantasy team, now is the time to make like Choya and jump on the Foreigner wagon with a F.United trade. Why?



Opportunity.
F.United has 5 sets left to play, while fOu merely has two against ZeNEX (week 6) and HoSeo (week 8), and neither are slouches. FantasyGSTL rewards team wins far more than loses, thus any team with plenty of games left will contribute points to your bottom line. This can be seen in a surprising statistic:
+ Show Spoiler [Stats do not lie] +

Feeling lucky?
Make this trade in week 7. As long as F.United loses against TSL, you are almost guaranteed to have enough TradeValue remaining in fOu to trade down to F.United.
+ Show Spoiler [You cannot argue with math] +