WCS Korea Season II

Ro16 - Day Six Recap
Final Day

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

VODs on Twitch

by CosmicSpiral

The last day of the Round of 16 proved to be an emotional rollercoaster as the schedule alternated between crucial brawls and ancillary showmatches. Rain and Symbol had to win or face falling to Challenger League; Bomber, Maru, and Innovation only had to go through the motions and await the selection process. In the end we got a mixture of entertaining and dull games appropriate for the night.

Group A
1.	Soulkey	3 - 0
2.	Symbol	2 - 1
3.	soO	1 - 2
4.	PartinG	0 - 3

Group B
1.	Bomber	3 - 0
2.	INnoVation	2 - 1
3.	Flash	1 - 2
4.	Bbyong	0 - 3

Group C*
1.	Rain	2 - 1
2.	First	2 - 1
3.	hyvaa	2 - 1
4.	FanTaSy	0 - 3

Group D
1.	Maru	2 - 1
2.	SuperNova	2 - 1
3.	Trap	1 - 2
4.	KangHo	1 - 2

*First and Rain advanced after three rounds of tiebreakers.

Detailed match results from Live Report Thread by Wintex.
+ Show Spoiler [Detailed Results] +

LG-IM_KangHo vs. MaruPrime turned out to be what everyone anticipated: a slightly goofy series with neither player really caring about the results. Maru was guaranteed to advance in first place and KangHo was guaranteed to drop to Challenger League and both played rather loosely as a result.

KangHo decided to open Game 1 with a 6 pool plus drone pull and well…Maru did 15 CC on the low ground. Game 2 extended quite a bit longer as KangHo deflected Maru’s proxy reaper harass without too much trouble. Maru successfully got away with a double CC followup but could never turn his faster bases into a decisive economic advantage. In a game reminiscent of his glory days, Losira slapped away every push with overwhelming numbers of zerglings and banelings until Maru had no units to hold back the swarm.

In contrast Azubu.Symbol had to struggle through an uncomfortably close series to earn his quarter-final spot. SKT_soO came into the booth well prepared and completely outplayed Symbol in the first game on Newkirk Precinct. However it was largely due to a huge +2 attack timing that took advantage of his earlier third and close travel distance between their bases.

Instead of continuing this trend, soO elected to go for muta/ling on Whirlwind and Bel’Shir Vestige and allowed Symbol to reach the midgame on relatively even terms. This turned out to be a mistake as Symbol took advantage of superior tech to crush his opponent in the deciding battles. On Whirlwind Symbol elected to get into a base race and sacrifice his third and natural in order to snipe soO’s spire, retaining a +1 attack advantage that he eventually used to shred soO’s muta flock in what was effectively the game winning move.

The final game on Bel'Shir Vestige was particularly nerve-wracking, as Symbol's decision to switch out of mutalisks for a hydra/infestor composition initially failed as soO crushed his first army and denied Symbol’s fourth. However Symbol used his large bank to rebuild his army and, thanks to crucial fungals that prevented a full surround, eradicated his opponent’s mutalisk based army. soO didn’t have the luxury to rebuild his forces and tapped out to the counter-attack.

ST_Bomber vs. STX_INnoVation turned out to be the best series of the night, despite there being only seeding to play for. Bomber pulled off an unexpected upset with verve and style, continuing his impressive TvT streak in HotS.

Game one was a 37 minute slugfest that might as well be the textbook example of bio vs mech TvT. Innovation spread out his infantry everywhere and pulled Bomber’s army back and forth around the map while dropping and harassing his bases. However Bomber made the most of powerful counter-attacks that shut down Innovation’s fourth and fifth expansions over and over again, eventually bleeding the STX Terran dry. Once Innovation lost the majority of his army he lacked the income to properly transition into sky terran and promptly surrendered.

Game 2 was equally tense as both players jostled for position with their marine/tank armies. Innovation took a sizable lead in the midgame when he caught Bomber’s tanks unsieged and set up a light contain at Bomber’s third. With the help of some brave suicidal SCVs Bomber was able to break Innovation’s position and immediately curled around the right side of the map for an attack on Innovation’s fourth. The STX Terran unwisely attempted to break Bomber’s position but lost the greater part of his standing army, and Bomber pressed forward with his superior army until Innovation quit.

For his victory, Bomber was awarded the #1 seed in his group and avoided a potential match with another #1 seed in Soulkey. Bomber ended up successfuly dodging a bullet as 2nd place INnoVation would draw Soulkey instead,

Tiebreakers of Death

SKT_Rain’s Teammate Slaughterfest™ was the only true disappointment. There was at least the promise of intrigue if SKT_FanTaSy could accurately exploit Rain’s weaknesses but nothing of the sort happened. Rain made Game 1 mercifully short, catching Fantasy completely off guard with a 4 gate immortal bust.

Fantasy had the opportunity to make up for it in Game 2 as he successfully established a macro game and went for early nukes off a 3 base economy; he was even able to kill two bases while using good nuke positioning to ward off Rain’s army. However Fantasy could not exploit it due to slight economy mismanagement. The snowballing costs of building those nukes and zealot harassment left him without much of a bank. Rain was just more cost-efficient and over time it materialized into a much larger army that Fantasy could not equal. Since Rain defeated Fantasy his win automatically forced a tiebreaker scenario between Rain, eminently evil STX overlord hyvaa and new eSF hope LG-IM_First.

On paper the group looked straightforward but expectations were defied at every turn. The first tiebreaker being a tie was not completely unexpected due to the volatility of a Bo1 format, but the manner in which it happened was somewhat unexpected. First was “supposed” to be the biggest obstacle to Rain’s advancement due to Rain’s poor PvP results recently and First’s solid results in the mirror matchup. But Rain decided that numbers were silly and boring and no rambunctious upstart like First would stop him from taking his repeat shot at OSL glory. So he beat First not once but twice without the gimmicks and mindgames that are so prevalent with other players, just solid play.

Meanwhile hyvaa tried to kill the viewers through kindness and exclusively played macro games the entire night. His swarm host-centric composition in the late game frustrated his Protoss opponents and led to the tensest game of the night, a ferocious base race against Rain that went down to one extractor and two stargates. And he would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that meddling kid First, who harassed hyvaa into making two game-ending errors. After two tiebreakers Rain and First earned their way into the Ro8, leaving hyvaa to face the wrath of Life in Challenger League.