• CreatorPrime
  
  Strengths
  - Excellent at 3-base timing attacks.
  - Airtight defense.
  - Took a crash course in handling pressure situations through WCS Korea, Asia, and World.
  
  Weaknesses
  - Looked very beatable against VortiX at WCS.
  - Very predictable style.
  - Lacks Soul
  
  
• TSL_HyuN
  
  Strengths
  - Shows championship level skills in online tournaments, with a 14 win streak in IPL fight club and multiple wins in despite EU lag in weekly cups.
  - Amazing macro gives him a strong mid-game.
  
  Weaknesses
  - Not nearly as good when playing in a live setting.
  - Becomes overconfident after taking leads.
  - Thinks hydralisks are usable.
  
  

Creator: The Hephaestoss

Among the candidates for #1 Protoss this year, Creator is the only one left with chances to prove that he is better than the rest. Rain is in no more tournaments this year and has submitted his resume including an OSL championship, WCS Asia championship and third place finish at the WCS finals. Seed has bombed out to Code B to be with his fellow ex-champions Jjakji and Fruitdealer. MC and PartinG have done well in foreign tournaments, but no Code S means they'll have to be content with just being the wealthiest Protosses. The door's wide open for Creator to show he was the best Protoss of 2012, but to do so he must at least take the Code S title.

For a long time Creator has been touted as a future GSL champion. His builds and strategies had a huge affect on how Protoss players approached the game in 2012. He built up a strong tournament resume, taking out Life in the TSL4 finals and winning WCS Korea by defeating the best Protoss players along the way. He recently lost in the WCS World Finals, but his path to second place was paved with some of the best Zergs in the world, plus by.Rain. If Creator can win this GSL he will be the youngest champion ever, beating Life by just one day.

Creator’s run in this GSL has been fairly strong. He got second in his first group losing to DRG, but getting wins against both MVP and Bbyong. In the second round, he beat both DRG and Curious to move on from there. All told, he has been fairly convincing in all of his matchups thus far, but perhaps not 100% of what we've seen from him in online cups and lower pressure tournaments. But while his previous missteps were bad enough to keep him out of Code S, he's found enough in-booth form to take him to the quarter-finals this time around.

While Creator’s PvT is famously brutal and nigh unstoppable, his PvZ is much more one dimensional. He focuses much more on his three base timing attacks to just kill the Zerg before he can finish his brood-lord infestor combination. He used to play some late-game PvZs, but a series of agonizing games against Curious (where the Startale Zerg seemed to be playing to frustrate, more than playing to win) in the WCS tournaments seem to have put a stop to that.

One interesting thing to think about ahead of this series is that Creator appeared to grow mentally in at WCS. In the semi-finals against Rain last Sunday at WCS, the scores were tied 2 - 2. With a 32,000 dollar difference between 2nd and a possible 4th, the pressure was on. It all seemed to favor Rain as he was considered one of the best PvP players going in and had already proven himself in high pressure situations. With everything on the line, Creator went for a 4 gate. It was scouted, but Creator pushed through and he somehow broke Rain despite 4 sentries on the ramp with a triple pylon block on top of that.

With that victory, Creator has taken a step toward in his play showing that he has the courage and nerves to do an all-in in the deciding moment and win. Similarly, Creator was daring enough to give up his 3-base attacks to go for a 2-base voidray all-in against VortiX in the quarter-finals when they were tied 2 - 2. It's an important precedent to set, giving his opponents one more reason to fear him in a long series.


Hyun: A Tale of Two Zergs

Has there ever been a player so different in offline and online play? During the day, Hyun is the mild-mannered GSL_TSL_Hyun. A player with broadcast game issues stemming back from the Brood War days, that caused him to be stuck in Code A far longer than he should have been. By night he is IPL_TSL_hyun. An online beast that destroys online tourneys that takes away all of the money away from EU and NA players while collecting his weekly offering from IPL. He has now won 14 IPL Fight Clubs and is so strong that Parting wasn’t even willing to use his immortal-sentry push, preferring to save it for the GSL and WCS rather than risk IPL_TSL_Hyun’s wrath.

Hyun’s arrival was met with a lot of fanfare as he was hyped up by his coach and teammates as the best Zerg on the team in practice. At least for HyuN, unlike some of the other dime a dozen practice-bonjwas, we've been able to see him show some of that in-house skill through the window known as Fight Club. Over the last few months Hyun has been steadily gaining in skill and experience, and he's caught up to and even surpassed many of the current Code-S level zergs.

This season has been his best yet as this is the first time he’s ever been in Code S and he has already made it to the round of 8. He has been slowly closing the gap between his two different personas as his offline play slowly becomes as good as his online play. Despite that, he had a good amount of luck to get this far while he worked out the kinks. In the first round, he was scheduled to play against Rain who had to drop out for MLG. Even with the free win, he still just barely scraped by in second by beating Gumiho. The round of 16, he had a tough time again as he lost the winners match against MKP, but was still able to show his strength in the matchup against solid Code S Terrans like Yoda and Hack.

This is a very special GSL for Hyun as the winner of this match gets to go to Las Vegas to play in front of IPL. With his “title sponsor” looking on, Hyun will be playing his best as his name is synonymous with IPL.

The Breakdown

We have a fight between two online monsters, with both having a history of problems in the booth. While Creator seems like he's cast off most of those problems, HyuN has yet to put in that dominating performance that will let us say with confidence, that he has truly arrived. One thing going HyuN's way is that he hasn't played much ZvP lately in official matches, whereas Creator's dozen or so PvZ replays from WCS Asia have already been released. Remember, VortiX went 2 - 1 against Creator's timing attacks at WCS - with replays to look at, couldn't HyuN hold out even more easily? Creator might have to go somewhere he's not used to going, and play an extremely unpredictable style.

Even with that, I’m giving Creator the edge here. He has the momentum coming from a second place finish at WCS. He now has the killer instinct that is a mark of a Champion. And he is much more likely to play up to his full potential than Hyun is. Hyun’s best chance is to find solve his psychological problems and somehow fuse the mild-mannered GSL_TSL_Hyun and the world-smashing IPL_TSL_Hyun into one.

Prediction: Creator 3 -1 Hyun

• AX.Ryung
  
  Strengths
  - One of the best big picture strategists in TvT.
  - Very good mechanics.
  
  
  Weaknesses
  - Has yet to succeed at this level.
  - Greedy play is somewhat exploitable.
  
  
• MarineKingPrime
  
  Strengths
  - Most experienced GSL player remaining in the tournament.
  - Deeper playbook in TvT, capable of anything.
  - Clutch player in base-trades and other unusual situations
  
  Weaknesses
  - Emotional player, sometimes unstable.
  - Wavers between brilliant and meandering play.
  
  

MarineKingPrime: (Still) The King of the Kongs

It has been 17 months since he has made it to his last Round of 4. Marineking has spent this entire year working tirelessly to try to finally break his Kong line curse. It even looked good a few times as for 1 month he looked to be the strongest Terran in the world. But he wasn’t able to make anything of it as he was still unable to break past the group rounds in GSL. And then his time passed as MVP retook his throne, Taeja became the new rising Terran star and the queen patch ended MKP’s tyrannical reign in the TvZ matchup.

This will be MKP’s last chance this year to escape the Kong line. If there was ever a time for MarineKing to escape the Kong line, the time is now. It is as if the stars have aligned to light MKP’s way. This GSL has had a frenetic and confusing pace to it. There have been numerous upsets with all of the favorite champions and finalists all falling one by one. In the middle of all of this MKP has been clearing his groups with relative ease going 2-0 in both and a map score of 8 - 4. And best of all, even his tormentor MVP dropped out early. With Parting’s win at WCS, MKP now knows for certain it is possible to break the curse. He's the grizzled veteran in the room, looking on as seven talented but wide-eyed newcomers try to find their feet (well, except Leenock...).

There is even an official King Kong replacement ready in the form of Squirtle. In some ways, Squirtle would make an even better Kong as Squirtle comes from a team known for getting 2nd in Team leagues and has only recently won their first international tournament, something MKP has already done. All MKP has to do is give Squirtle some acting lessons so he can look appropriately distraught after losses, and the transition would be perfect.

The semi-finals and finals being at Las Vegas even favors MKP’s strengths. Among the 8 players left, only Leenock has equal experience both in GSL finals and at foreign lans (Creator has never played outside of Korea and China, meaning he has never played with jet lag). He may even get lucky and have Sniper somehow someway knock out Leenock before they ever meet. And with the semi-finals being played only a day after, the level of preparation will be much smaller. This gives MKP an edge as the lack of preparation will hurt the others more than him. All he has to do is get past Ryung....

Ryung: The Forgotten Son

After leaving his old dysfunctional family that was Slayers, Ryung has found new form. Even before SlayerS disbanded, Ryung had gained permission to move out of the house and play from home, where he started showing good play that made him the team's ace in the GSTL. Considering the drama we've heard of at the SlayerS house, getting away from it all seems to have helped. Now on Axiom, Ryung has continued his good run of form since mid 2012 and made his new team proud. Ryung has always been a Code S regular, but it had been more than an year since he has made a Round of 8. With his change to Axiom, Ryung has finally reached the coveted spot that guarantees him a seed into the next round.

For Ryung, the road hasn’t been easy. In his first round he played his worst matchup TvP, but won off of strong solid play against Vampire twice. In the next round, he had to face off against public enemy #1: The infestor. He acquitted himself well showing extremely strong late-game and map awareness in his games against both Curious and DRG and made it through second in his group. Every step of the way he’s shown exactly why he’s constantly named as the best positional Terran in the game as his army and map awareness is the best in the game, regardless of what race or who he’s playing against. On the massive map of Whirlwind in particular, no one seems to understand how to effectively deploy limited forces across multiple locations like Ryung.

While not as dominating as MKP in the group stages, in the end winning by an inch or winning by a mile has still left them both on even footing going into the Round of 8. This is Ryung’s real test. He has never gotten past this round and his relative inexperience him hurts him here as MKP has already done this numerous times. A win here would move Ryung from the “Solid Code-S Terran” to “Championship contender” if he can get past MKP. Looking ahead, Ryung has already shown the best TvZ this season and has extremely strong TvT. As long as he doesn’t meet Creator in the finals, Ryung could be a darkhorse to win the entire thing.

The Breakdown

Head to head, this will be one of the most interesting and dynamic TvT’s we’ve ever seen. Despite both players being long-time Code S regulars, neither of them has ever played a TvT against each other making this a hitherto completely unseen matchup. This will be a very exciting and dynamic TvT as their strengths and weaknesses complement each other. MKP has some of the best aggressive map control and is very strong at finding weaknesses. Ryung has the best map awareness and is very strong at defense. Both players vary their play between bio and mech. MKP is better at scrappy and weird situations while Ryung seems better at drawing up grand strategies in the late-game. If there's one advantage MKP has over Ryung it’s that MKP likes to mix-it-up with 1 or 2 base all-ins while Ryung is very reluctant to use that kind of play.

Everything will come down to their condition tonight. Ryung is the 1/5th Terran player because one out of every five times he plays like a Code S Champion and the other four times he plays like a regular Code-S Terran. He has already given us the best TvT game of this GSL in his Up/Down matches against Flash. If he can get to that caliber of play and keep it for all five games, then he has a shot of beating MKP. But this is a bo5, and with MKP’s wide breadth in strategy and experience, he will be a tough challenge.

In the end, MKP should be the winner here. MKP’s style, strategies, and experience all make him stronger in a bo5 preparation series in the GSL. MKP is a complete player while Ryung still has a little more work to do to round himself out.

Prediction: MKP 3 - 2 Ryung