EPTGroup A in Review
By: WaxAngel
Before the actual review, I'd like to mention I'm one of those people who thinks all this fussing around with spoilers is something that should go away as soon as possible. I'd like Starcraft II to become like any other sport, where results are out there quickly. That said, I suppose it doesn't hurt to have some minimal spoiler protection for minority that does care significantly (for now, anyway).
Group A: 
Ns_HS.Jjakji, 
GammaniaSen, SlayerS_BoxeR, SlayerS_GanZi
Match One: Jjakji vs Sen
Game One -
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Jjakji started with reactor Hellions into cloaked Banshees, an opening that caught Sen slightly off guard. Though he fended off the Banshees after taking a little damage, he was not ready at all for the follow-up Marine-Tank-Banshee attack. The attack dealt a huge amount of damage, and Jjakji was able to end the game quickly.
Game Two -
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After a regular Hellion fast expansion, Jjakji followed up with a very strong Marine-Marauder-Stim timing attack into Sen's newly hatched third base. This attack hit at a great time, before Sen had many Banelings or their speed upgrade. Jjakji showed great micro to focus fire down individual banelings, after which he laid waste to the remaining forces.
Sen tried to play the game out, but he couldn't recover from the early loss of his third base. When Jjkaji came with his next attack, Sen just didn't have enough to hold it off.
Game Three -
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Match Two: Boxer vs Ganzi
Game One -
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Ganzi opened the game up with a couple of cute tricks, including a proxy Barracks inside Boxer's natural (just out of sight range of a building CC) and fast cloaked Banshees. In the end though, he only did just enough damage to offset Boxer's fast expansion advantage, which saw both players go into the mid-game pretty even.
Boxer opted for bio while Ganzi opted for mech, and it seemed for a while that Ganzi was getting the better of emperor with good army positioning and movement. However, Boxer had a masterful ace up his sleeve. He secretly massed vikings in his main, hiding them while Ganzi only built a handful for himself. When the two met for a huge engagement, Boxer knocked Ganzi's Vikings out of the sky and dropped his infantry on top of the sieged Tanks to score a crushing victory. Ganzi was sent reeling, and Boxer secured the victory in a few more minutes.
Game Two -
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This game was defined by a series of mistakes from the Emperor. He opened with three Reapers which lost their lives for nothing. He tried to expand on the back of the reapers without enough defenses, which forced him to take SCV losses defending against an early Marine counter-attack from Ganzi. And finally, he tried a two-Medivac drop which he forgot to pay attention to at the worst time possible, losing the entire cargo for nearly no gain. With that many accumulated disadvantages, Boxer just didn't have a chance to win.
Game Three -
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Boxer opened with a proxy Barracks reaper, which was easily stuffed by Ganzi's good scouting. Boxer attempted to follow-up with cloaked Banshees, which were delayed compared to Ganzi's direct move to Starport. Because of this, Boxer did nearly no damage with his Banshee while Ganzi picked up more than a dozen kills. Ganzi decided to exploit the advantage in the short-run instead of riding it out, and clinched the series with a marine-tank attack.
Winner's Match:
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Game One -
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We got to see a straight up macro-battle between the two players, with Ganzi going mech while Jjakji represented no-tank, straight-up bio. Throughout the game, Ganzi played slightly better, getting in nice blue flame hellion attacks while deflecting Jjakji's drop harassment without much trouble. In the end, it was an overambitious two-pronged drop + ground attack that doomed Jjakji, as Ganzi had the positioning and reaction speed to fend off both attacks without much trouble. After Jjakji expended so many units on that failed tactic, he just couldn't put up any resistance against the advancing mech wall.
Game Two -
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Once more, the two players played a straight up macro battle (Ganzi did a few early Banshee tricks), but this time both players decided to go with mech builds. Jjakji seemed to take a mid game advantage after establishing control of the center with his first big push, but Ganzi showed his greater mastery of mech to come back and take the game. Despite being behind on army, he took small advantages just by being more active with his units and taking the initiative. He took a hidden expo at another main, used hellions to cut into Jjakji's SCV count, and employed clever baits to draw Jjakji's army into bad positions. The master stroke was a switch to Vikings and Banshees, after realizing he could not catch up in the Tank count any time soon. This move worked beautifully, forcing Jjakji all the way back to his main and forcing a GG.
Game Three -
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Loser's Match:
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Game One -
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This was an ugly game, where Boxer spent the first half of the match donating his army to Sen with constant over-aggression. After taking a commanding lead, Sen spent the second half of the game donating his army to Boxer, who had turtled up for the long haul. Boxer emerged victorious in the end, as a poorly microed late-game Terran army tends to defeat a poorly microed late-game Zerg army.
Game Two -
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The two players split and took their respective sides of the map and headed straight into a late-game macro war. Once again, the late game management and micro on Sen's side just wasn't good enough to take on competent Korean Terran, and he came out on the losing end of the engagements. Eventually, he lost his bases and GG'd out.
Game Three -
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Final Match:
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Game One -
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Jjakji went for his own variation of Boxer's patented build by going for two Rax speed-reaper drop while Boxer went for a 1/1/1 variant. It looked like a pure build order win for Boxer, as he had enough troops to defend against Jjakji's reapers while Jjakji himself had almost no anti-air. The game developed into a base trade scenario, and as expected, Boxer's banshees won out in the end.
Game Two -
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This time Jjakji went for Banshees followed by a Marine-Tank push, while Boxer went for a more typical FE into infantry build. The game looked over when Boxer fended off the Banshee harass very well, and had Stim and Shields before Jjakji even had his siege mode done. However, Jjakji somehow managed to pull off his one-base timing attack anyway, forcing the GG from the emperor.
Game Three -
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There was a massive early game slugfest, as Jjkaji desperately tried to defend with his FE build against Boxer's proxy Starport + floated Barracks + reactor Hellions. The situation looked very grim for Jjakji at times, but through some great crisis management, he managed to survive. Boxer had expanded in the meanwhile, and had built up a significant SCV lead.
However, Jjakji struck back immediately with some very clever play. He located Boxer's proxy Starport and camped it with two Vikings while sending a Banshee to attack Boxer. Having followed up with mech, Boxer was forced to wait an agonizingly long time for Thors to stop the Banshee.
Afterwards, Jjakji used dropships well to pressure Boxer into staying near his main, allowing him to push forward with his Tanks and set up a containment position right outside Boxer's base. This stand-off lasted for a fair amount of time, until Jjakji got off a perfect scan just as Boxer unsieged all his tanks to try and inch forward. Jjakji instantly reacted by stimming all of his Marines and Marauders for a forward charge, and annihilated Boxer's unsieged tanks to secure the victory.
Notes and Comments
Jjakji as MKP the Second: My concerns about Jjkaji were partially confirmed in his Code S RO32 group, as he showed some decent but shaky TvT performances. A TvT Achilles heel is a terrible thing to have in what's still a Terran dominated tournament, and I think we can consider Jjakji quite lucky to have not encountered any top tier Terrans in his GSL November run (though he was rather lucky in general).
Obviously, he differs from MKP in that he actually won a championship, and he has a completely different play style, but they're looking like eerily similar players when you assess them as tournament threats: Awesome TvZ, very good TvP, and very hit-or-miss TvT that makes fans fear for their progress. It's still too early to come to a conclusion, but his TvT has not impressed so far.
Just another Foreigner: Granted, Jjakji is one of the best TvZ players in the world. Sen wasn't going to win that one. But losing to Boxer, in one of the ugliest TvZ series seen in the GSL? I guess we can say that Sen isn't a Code S class player yet. I know that the A beat B, B beat C, so A beats C logic isn't valid, but if you consider how well Sen has done against other foreigners... And then take into account a very disappointing and crushing foreigner defeat at HomeStoryCup...
Nope, not a very hopeful start to the year for professional gamers outside of Korea.
Hope for Boxer: Boxer did one thing very well during his stint with the Air Force team towards the end of his Brood War career, as his skills were waning and he knew he could not play his younger peers in straight-up games. He knew how to take games and lead them off the beaten track, creating messy, unfamiliar scenarios where it was anyone's game. Boxer did just the same in his Code S group, playing out a bunch of scrappy games where he came very close to securing a spot in next round.
For the large part, Starcraft II games don't tend to 'break down' into non-standard scenarios as often as Brood War games, but when it does happen, Boxer's large body of experience can give him an advantage. I don't think it's a long-term winning game-plan for Boxer, but I think it could get him into the RO16 in the future if he can get a few lucky breaks.
Code S, Group B Preview
By: Fionn
The group of death.FXOLeenock
You're Leenock. You have just won the MLG National Championship in Providence and barely lost to Jjakji in one of the best series in Starcraft 2 history in the GSL finals. You have been given the opportunity to pick your first round opponent in the next GSL. Do you pick a newcomer without much stage experience like Brown or Parting? Maybe take on someone like Lucky who didn't look the strongest in his qualifying matches?
Nope. I want the former MSL champion, the player who has absolutely decimated everyone he has come across so far in the GSL. I want The Pretender. I want oGsFin.
With this decision, Leenock is banking on his top level ZvT to be good enough to take down the former Brood War A-teamer, having been able to take down the likes of MMA and MVP recently with his skill. It's going to be hard, but if any Zerg will have a chance against Fin, it'll be Leenock. With his relentless pressure and macro, he might be able to combat Fin's specific strategies and match his macro. Leenock is going to have to a difficult time in his group, having to take on Fin and then either one of the best mech oriented players in the world, Supernova, and the player who knocked him out of the Blizzard Cup, MC.
You can't forget that this group is essentially Leenock vs. oGs. The oGs players will be going into this group gunning for two spots and pushing Leenock out the door into Code A. With the title of God of Zerg still hanging in the air for 2012 with Nestea's stumbles recently, it's time for Leenock to show the past two months weren't a fluke and he's a force to stay for the oncoming year.oGsFin
Call him ForGG, Fin, The Pretender, or whatever else nickname or ID you want to pin on him. All I know is that so far he has only done one thing: win. In Code A, he faced three top players at each race. Sage? No problem, I'll 2-0 him. Polt? Super Tournament champion? Who cares about that, I'll 2-0 him, too. July? Give me your golden mouse, buddy, because I am going to 2-0 your ass as well. With his much hyped up debut in GSL, Fin hasn't disappointed as he hasn't dropped a set yet and is looking towards the top of GSL right away, wanting to win the championship this season.
But it won't be that easy as he'll have to face three hard opponents in this group, two of them being his very own teammates. No offense to the three players he faced in Code A, but I would say his opponents in this group are a step up in competition. MC is a better player than Sage, who is very intellectual and has some good strategies, but can't compare to MC's overall game. Polt is a great Terran, but he and Supernova are two totally different beasts; Polt prefers bio while Supernova prefers mech, and as we all know, a high-level mech player usually beats a high-level bio player when playing at his absolute best. With July, the little Prince of War has passed him by, with the God of War looking like a broken down engine. Rumors of him practicing less are in the air, and his all-ins are becoming more frequent. Leenock will be the ultimate test for Fin in this group and if he can get past him with a 2-0 score, everyone else in Code S should prepare for the worst.oGsSuperNova
Hi, SuperNova. I'm sorry I predicted you to win GSL November and jinxed you into bombing out in the first round, throwing away a checkmate victory against Jjakji in one of the most mind numbing games of all-time. I'm happy you're back from the depths of hell and hope you enjoy your stay back in Code S. I promise I won't pick you ever again to win the GSL, so I hope you enjoy your late Christmas present.
Supernova is the underdog going into this group. Leenock was just in the GSL final and won MLG; MC is coming off a win at Homestory Cup and a strong performance in the Blizzard Cup; and Fin is ForGG, and we all know about his past and his dominating Code A performance. Supernova dropped to Code A and had to battle his way back to Code S, now being put in one of the most difficult groups of all-time and has to play his absolute best to get out.
I can't rave enough about how well Supernova plays mech, and if he wants to advance, he'll need to play it perfectly against the likes of Fin and Leenock. In his first match against MC, it'll be tough, but I don't think he'll be that big of an underdog as many think he will be. MC has been very good lately, but you can't compare someone like Sound, who MC destroyed in the Homestory Cup finals, to Supernova, a player who has made deep Code S runs and is top tier Korean Terran.
oGsMC
The Boss Toss is back, taking more foreign money last weekend with a win at HomeStory Cup, crushing Sound in the finals. With the momentum of that win behind him, he'll be hard to knock off in this group. If he isn't jet lagged or tired, that is. Homestory should be a pretty exhausting tournament. A regular tournament just has you playing, practicing, and then more playing. The focus is solely on the tournament and the money. Homestory is more about the players having fun and playing Starcraft on the side. Will MC be able to cope with the jet lag and after effects of partying it up in Europe for four straight days?
That's really what MC's play comes down to. Will we see the MC that played so well at Blizzard Cup and Homestory Cup, or will we see a jetlagged and tired MC that won't be able to handle the massive amount of games put in front of him in the new group set-up in GSL. I think if MC is playing at his absolute top play, he can get through to the Round of 16, but I don't know if the Homestory Cup trip can be put behind him so easily.
Predictions:
Fin > Leenock
MC > Supernova
Leenock > Supernova
Fin > MC
Leenock > MC
Leenock and Fin advance
Art by Fishuu
Writers: Fionn and Waxangel.
Graphics and Art: Meko and Pony Tales (disciple and Lip the Pencilboy).
Editor: WaxAngel
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