Gone almost as quickly as it came, the Protoss Summer of SOSPA competition has ended. From nine of sixteen, to five of eight, now we are left with one in four. After such a strong start by his colleagues, Pusan has a lot of work to do to see that this tournament retains at least some of the Protoss success that it seemed destined to provide last weekend.

In this news update, thanking the heavens for an adjusted schedule which now sees the final take place next Tuesday, the SRT team is here with our usual bevy of recapping and previewing. Please join me in welcoming back KristofferAG, whose incredibly thorough recap of the Ro8 may in fact include more words than every other SRT15 post combined.

While it doesn't have quite the same narrative as it did earlier this week, this tournament remains incredibly interesting, with sSak still on target for his debut SRT win, Pusan's incredible return to form and Sea looking absolutely determined to be the first player in history to win three SRTs. Tune in on Friday night as the 15th SOSPA Ranking Tournament reaches its penultimate stage.

The 15th SOSPA Ranking Tournament managed to reach the quarter finals before I finally got back to writing these recaps, and it's been a pretty bumpy ride with a bunch of upsets, leading into the first match of the Ro8, with amateur and newcomer Hint going up against sSak. After that, hero would go up against Shuttle.

The first three maps for the bo5 format are the same as in previous rounds, meaning we kick it all off on Match Point. Hint goes for the cheeky plays in his first game, proxying a gateway on sSak's natural and stealing his gas. It fails pretty horribly as sSak instantly pulls SCVs to kill off the pylon powering the gateway, denying any units at all from popping out. After clearing the gateway out, sSak goes for the expansion. But hey, if you fail a proxy, you should definitely proxy again, right? Just north of the 9 o'clock expansion for sSak, Hint proxies a citadel, two gates and a templar archive. Without any scans and no e-bay, sSak is forced to instantly GG as the two first DTs walk into his main.

The second game would allow us to settle in for a nice macro game on everyone's favorite map, Fighting Spirit. Hint went for a very early Nexus, to which sSak responded with a fast third. Hint meanwhile is proxying a citadel outside the 11 o'clock main's bridge. Hint's dragoon pressure forces a cancel on the third, but his citadel is quickly scouted and taken out without doing much. Both players sit back and macro, ending up on 3 bases each, before Hint decides to push on the 9 o'clock expansion again. Ssak is prepared, and manages to defend the base before moving across the map to take out the Protoss third. Behind this, Hint is building up a scary carrier fleet, but sSak responds quickly, and with Hint's below par carrier micro, the Terran takes the supply lead fairly quickly, and pushes in for the win.


It's all tied up as we move on to New Wind and Cloud. Ssak is going for a safe opening, getting out his first two tanks before going for the expansion, while Hint is going for a slow shuttle reaver drop. Sadly for the Protoss, sSak is more than ready with a wraith already out, and Hint loses the shuttle, reaver and the dragoon without anything more than a single SCV kill. Knowing he's far behind, Hint goes for a Dragoon attack with his next reaver, still with a slow shuttle, but sSak simply pulls back to his main, and defends the push handsomely. Hint calls it early.

And with that, it's time for our first game on Neo Requiem in SOSPA history. If you weren't aware, there's a downward ramp into your main on this map, which makes it easy for an enemy to set up and hold a contain. Knowing this, sSak rushes to siege tanks, while Hint goes for a 2-gate goon pressure with DTs. Terran meanwhile decides to try and go for an expansion, but is unable to do so due to the contain from Hint. Hint responds by pushing in with his DTs and goons, taking out all but one tank. Though he is unable to break the front, Hint gets a single DT into sSak's main, which takes out a depot and a couple SCVs before going down. Behind all this Hint has taken his own natural, along with shuttles and reavers. While harassing with the Shuttle, he gets a third up, and soon enough he rolls over sSak's defenses on the natural, and though the Terran defenses hold for some time, Hint eventually breaks through to secure a win.

So with the first match of the Ro8 we're already getting a game 5, on Neo Electric Circuit, a superfun no rush 20! Both players got up to three bases fairly fast, before Hint decided to be cool and grab two more before sSak took his fourth. The most exciting moments where those two times vultures managed to kill a couple of Probes. Eventually sSak moves out and sieges up along the right hand of the map, while vultures go into the bottom left expansion to siege the expansion and mass amount of gateways down there. Hint tries to be cute and circumvent the massive siege tank ball outside his main by going through the middle of the map, but with zero stasis and a long line of siege tanks, his army melts quickly, as zealots prioritize hacking away at a tank with a D-matrix on it. With the majority of the Protoss army down, sSak pushes on into the natural and main of Hint, taking out tech and gateways galore, while Hint licks his wounds in his new main in the bottom left. At this point in the game, sSak is basically going from base to base with his army, while Hint tries to avoid any engagement at all, but in an attempt to circumvent the entire Terran force he gets caught off-guard and yet again loses the majority of his army. The game goes on for another 5 minutes because of carriers, but Hint eventually leaves, giving sSak the 3-2 win.




I'm going to go ahead and admit that I expected something in the ways of a complete stomp from hero in this match. Shuttle's vZ has been unstable since the dawn of times, and hero is basically a god when it comes to ZvP. Still, they are two top-tier players, and the games were definitely not a waste of time.

Match Point saw the standard forge expand from Shuttle, to which hero responded with a fast third and a macro hatchery before zergling speed. Shuttle started on his sair tech and was looking to go for a zealot archon composition, while hero got his hydra den up and teched to spire. I guess it should be mentioned that this was a terribly laggy game, just to have that mentioned. Without any major engagements going down, Shuttle was able to get a third up while denying the fourth of hero with a DT. At the same time, the mutalisk harass started in the main, killing off cannons before going to work on the probes. A zealot taskforce with a single DT mixed in was unable to deny the fourth of hero again, while the mutalisks kept tearing up the worker lines of Shuttle. The game seemed to be going in hero's favor, until he ran his mutalisks through three storms, and lost half his army trying, and failing, to take down Shuttle's third.

Suddenly the game exploded. Shuttle tried to take a fourth in the 12 o'clock position while pushing into hero's fourth with his main army, and deny his fifth with a Zealot task-force. His 12 o'clock was swiftly denied, his Zealots to the south were killed off, and the battle on hero's fourth seemed to go on for ages, with hero eventually defending. A second group of zealots finished off the third, before a zergling counter attack once again denied the 12 o'clock for Shuttle, but at the cost of a massive amount of zerglings. At this point hero seemed to be stuck on zerglings against a very anti-zergling army, with archons, storms and zealots bloodying up the battlefield. Defilers were out, but they don't do a whole lot against storm or zealots. It did, however, let him kill off all the Probes on Shuttle's third and last mining base, but hero also lost his fourth, leaving him on 3 bases till he could get his fourth up. With a second burst of zerglings hero was able to take out the third and last mining base of Shuttle, leaving him to long-distance mine from it. Knowing this was becoming a very low-econ game, Shuttle instantly went for hero's last mining base in the south, taking it down before pulling back. Both players were now rebuilding bases, hero retaking his top left fourth for the third time, and Shuttle starting up his third again. At this point hero had no way to handle Shuttle's army as long as there was an observer in it, but being unable to snipe it, the small Protoss army was allowed to take out the last mining base of hero once again, forcing the gg.

Yes, I know it's long, but it was a lovely game to kick off the series, with a surprising outcome. We move on to Fighting Spirit, with the same economical openings for both players. FFE for Shuttle and three fast hatcheries for hero. Once again hero went for the hydralisks first, applying pressure and managing to take out the initial corsair of Shuttle while teching into lair. Shuttle tried to go for some DT harass and HT drops, but hero's reactions were mostly on time. Meanwhile, with no Corsairs and only HT to handle the mutalisks, Shuttle was forced to build a bunch of cannons in his main and natural. With the lag issues gone, hero was able to nicely dodge storms and keep his mutalisks alive to deny the first attempt at a third from Shuttle. Shuttle forced hero back with some more drops that did fairly little damage, but his main army did manage to take out one of hero's bases in the top left. Meanwhile, a zergling run by took out the building fourth of Shuttle, and the reinforcements from hero were enough to clean up the rest of Shuttle's army. For a while it seemed like hero once again was stuck on zerglings, but a sudden swell of massive cows with huge tusks took Shuttle completely by surprise, first killing his army, then his third, then his army again twice. After 27 minutes, hero managed to tie up the series.

On Wind and Cloud hero went for a 9pool and instantly won because Shuttle delayed cannons in favor of a nexus. Yay hero!


Once again, we're on Neo Requiem. We don't get the early pool of last game, but we certainly wont get the long games we've seen on FS and MP. Due to the downward ramp, hero easily managed to sneak zerglings into Shuttle's main, allowing him to scout the robo building. Shuttle tried to go for an elevator into the main to bypass the natural defenses, and was almost able to kill off the Spire. However, mutalisks had already been made, and the spire was even defended. With nothing but 4 Dragoons as anti-air, Shuttle was instantly calling the GG, giving hero another quick win, and bringing about Shuttle's end in the 15th SRT.


Match Point is the first battlefield for the two, and we were in for a quickie. Pusan opened a 2gate, which instantly got scouted by Movie. So the obvious response for Movie at this point is to one-up Pusan with a total of 3 gateways. Just as Movie prepares to push out, Pusan starts his expansion, which needless to say, doesn't end up going to well. By the time Pusan sees what's coming his way, it's already too late, and a quick game 1 ends in Movie's favor.

No-one likes being behind a map, and Pusan showed just how much he disliked it as he sent out an early probe to plant two gateways in the middle of Fighting Spirit. Movie got lucky with his scouting probe, and went up to two gateways with a shield battery as soon as he saw the lack of buildings in Pusan's main. The Probe also eventually scouted the two proxied gates in the middle. Though Pusan did make it into Movie's main, there really isn't that much you can do when you have an equal amount of Zealots, but your opponent has the ability to instantly replenish his shields. As Pusan's zealots fell rapidly, Movie's supply didn't drop at all, and the 2-0 was secured.


New Wind and Cloud became the make or break for Pusan. Movie went for a fast expansion followed by a robotics, while Pusan went for three gateways along with his expansion. Pusan soon moved out with a dragoon army, but was met with a scarab to the face, forcing him to pull back. Movie moved out as soon as he got his second reaver and shuttle, but as he did that, Pusan snuck a large dragoon army around the back to counterattack. Movie reacted quickly, but Pusan still managed to kill a large amount of probes before the dragoons went down.

Once Movie regained control of the map, he tried to go for some DT drops that were instantly shut down without doing any damage. At the same time, Movie tried to push into the natural of Pusan, but ended up getting trapped in and losing his entire army. Suddenly, Pusan found himself in a very comfortable position, managing to take his third earlier than Movie, and getting on the offensive with HT drops that wrecked havoc all over Movie's mineral lines. Movie soon enough tried to do the same, with equal success, but it didn't take long for Pusan to realize just how much bigger his army was, and his push on Movie's natural was devastating, and eventually forced the GG.

It's fair to assume that neither player wants to be the one on the receiving end of pressure on Neo Requiem. Both players opened with two gateways, while Movie managed to steal Pusan's gas. In return, a manner pylon from Pusan blocked two Probes in Movie's worker line. Pusan went on the offensive first, grabbing the soft contain on Movie's ramp with a greater number of dragoons, and the uphill miss chance of Movie. This allowed him to grab an expansion in the 12 o'clock main, while Movie had to wait for reavers to break the contain. As soon as he got out of his main, Pusan was in it, with a reaver stealing a couple of probe kills, before making it back in time to defend Movie's push. Once again we ended up with a contain, now with Movie pressuring Pusan. At the same time he found and killed off the 12 o'clock of Pusan, only to lose the majority of his army to some nice shuttle/reaver micro from Pusan, who then took his natural base. Keeping in mind that Movie was still on only one base, he had no way to build an army bigger than Pusan's. Though he tried to claw his way back in, there was little he could do, and his island expansion in the bottom right wasn't allowed to come online in time. Pusan ties it up!


Cross spawn on Neo Electric Circuit can literally mean only one thing. Long-ass macro games, and probably carriers from Pusan at some point. Both players seemed just fine with staying back and macro, with Movie being the first to place down his Nexus. The first piece of action came when Movie tried to get his shuttle and reaver out, but he just ended up killing a scouting Probe before pulling back. He also grabbed a third behind this, this base also being before Pusan's. Disaster hit when he lost his reaver and shuttle trying to get into Pusan's natural. Pusan's reavers arrived safely at Movie's back mineral base, but Movie quickly pulled back, avoiding any losses. When Pusan eventually tried to break Movie's front, it was easily deflected. Suddenly, everything exploded into action. A reaver drop from Movie killed literally every single Probe on Pusan's back mineral base, while Pusan tried to push into Movie's natural. Movie's meager defenses looked too little, but with some very nice storms on clumped dragoons, and a little helping DT changed everything. Suddenly Pusan had no army, and Movie had a fourth on the way with a healthy economy.

It took a while, but Pusan eventually mounted a second push, with a huge amount of high templars, blanketing Movie's army completely. It still ended up not being enough, once again Movie held just barely, before going for a drop on Pusan's new fourth, killing half the workers there, at the same time grabbing a fifth base. In another major battle the two players seemed to basically come out even, Movie still not able to take a major engagement win. Somehow, Pusan still managed to have the superior army. As he pushed into and took out Movie's fifth base, he was also able to kill off Movie's entire army when he tried to come save it, as he closed in from both sides and got the superior storms down. Movie meanwhile was still trying to win the game by harassing Pusan's worker lines, but though he did manage to take out all of Pusans worker at his fourth, he had nothing to defend his own fourth or natural any more. Once the storms were expended, nothing stopped Pusan from pushing in and ending the game right there.


Sea has surprised everyone lately with his unexplainably impressive results in TvP, a matchup he's well known for not having under control at all. His games v Lazy started out on Match Point, as always, where he opted for a rax expand, as Lazy stole his gas early on. The Protoss then proceeded to proxy two gateways behind the third of Sea, which instantly got scouted and cancelled. Lazy then decided to go into an expansion while applying pressure to Sea's bunker with his long-range Dragoons. Sea hid his build for the longest time, getting an upgrade for his bio in his main and suddenly slamming down two more Barracks. A lucky scout even found Lazy's proxy reaver and shuttle, which was denied any harass. When Sea wanted to move out however he ran straight into a Scarab, and we all know how Scarabs work v Marines. More importantly, Sea's siege tanks survived, and marines are made quickly. The push continued, with Sea managing to snipe the reaver, before pushing in to destroy Lazy's new third, and moving on to Movie's natural. A reaver managed to save the day just in time, but Lazy would lose his proxied buildings, meaning no more reavers. What followed was a constant stream of units leading to Lazy's natural, which eventually became far too much for the Protoss. Sea took game one!


On Fighting Spirit Sea once again seemed to favor the marine/tank composition, applying some early pressure while grabbing his natural. Though Lazy's natural was quicker, the two players started mining at approximately the same time due to just that, and Sea also managed to pick up a few dragoon kills. Behind this, Sea went for the switch to mech. The coming pressure from Lazy failed solely due to him losing two dragoons right off the bat to some mines, but Lazy managed to pick up a lot of SCV kills. Sea was soon ready to push out again, and against a dragoon only composition, he was able to do a lot of damage. Lazy losing his first reaver to mines certainly didn't help. The constant stream of mech reinforcements from Sea was soon too much, and Lazy was forced to tap out.

So the question is, will being behind with two games motivate Lazy like it motivated Pusan? This could be the end of Lazy's SRT run, and it could be the beginning of something great for Sea. Bo Sung went straight into factory on this map, while Lazy looked to apply some pressure with his first goon and Zealot. However, sending your first zealot cross map without scouting is rarely smart. The pressure wasn't succesful, but Lazy was able to deny Sea's first move-out by killing off the tank. Meanwhile, however, a vulture made it into Lazy's base to see absolutely everything, including the incoming reaver/shuttle that Lazy has proven he loves.

Both players got their naturals up, with Sea denying any scouting from Lazy. Sea had prepared turrets all around his bases for the incoming Shuttle, which Lazy apparently didn't expect, as he managed to lose his shuttle and reaver to them. Sea grabbed the chance to move out, while Lazy decided to move around Sea's army, cutting off any reinforcements. With a second Shuttle out, Lazy dropped dragoons on Sea's tanks while attacking from all angles, which ended up in both armies annihilating each other. Behind this Sea had been building a CC, which he soon floated out to the 3 o'clock position, between himself and Lazy. While Lazy was busy destroying that, Sea ran vultures into Lazy's natural once again, taking out a large amount of probes. Both players secured thirds, Sea once again grabbing the 3 o'clock, while moving out. Lazy's army was still rather large, and as Sea set up a long siege line outside his new 3rd, this time with goliaths to take out the shuttles, Lazy saw no way of winning the game, and GG'd before even trying to break the lines, giving Sea a clean 3-0 victory!

After several rounds worth of platitudes about his encouraging return to form, with Pusan’s 3-2 win over Movie in the Ro4 earlier this week it’s beginning to appear as if this is not just a last hurrah by one of Afreeca’s all-time greats, but actually some of the best post-retirement Starcraft that we’ve ever seen from the MBC captain. Also finding himself in the Ro4 by way of a 3-2 scoreline is sSak, who was caught out a number of times in his Ro8 series versus the daring but ultimately unsuccessful amateur, Hint.

After months of wondering exactly what was going wrong with the TvP of all of SOSPA’s top Terrans, the huge number of Protoss players in the Ro16 left this tournament looking a death-trap for the likes of Sea, sSak and HiyA. While HiyA continued to disappoint as he was eliminated in the Ro16, Sea and sSak have looked strong against all of their Protoss opponents so far. For sSak, the comfort with which Sea was able to deal with TvP in this tournament represents a missed opportunity, with the former SKT Terran having appeared to be by far the best equipped to deal with the number of Protoss opponents left a few rounds ago.


Pusan’s loss to sSak earlier in the tournament represents the only black mark on what has otherwise been an excellent performance by the ex MBC player. Remarkably, given Pusan’s level of activity so far this year, the record between these two players stretches back quite a way, but it’s hard to know how representative those results are of the match-up given Pusan’s improved form.

sSak cut it mighty fine against Hint in the Ro8, and although Pusan’s PvT record is not what it once was, it seems sensible to assume that he’ll be an even more challenging opponent. A finely balanced match-up with no clear favourite, for the moment sSak’s excellent recent PvT record gives him the edge, but Pusan is playing like he was destined to win this tournament and things could easily swing his way.

sSak 3 - 2 Pusan


If there was one word that best summarised Sea in the SRT15 so far it would be “businesslike”. While the Liquid Terran hasn’t played any particularly great series or beaten any truly dangerous opponents, he’s looked pretty comfortable all tournament and, with his loss versus Sky now seeming like a distant memory, his long-term bugbear, TvP, has been more than up to scratch. Similarly, hero has almost slept his way through the SRT15 so far, winning all the games that we’d expect him to win and playing some neat ZvP, but hardly looking challenged at all outside of his Ro32 loss to sSak.

Unfortunately for hero, this appears to be where the party ends, marking what surely must be a record fourth consecutive semi-finals appearance (five if you count SSL8). This means that after this series, regardless of its result, hero will have played in the semi-final of every single SOSPA tournament of 2013. What makes this achievement especially remarkable is how much hero has struggled against Terran opponents, with his only win against Sea coming in what was a pretty desperate period of form for the Liquid player, and followed by a 9 game losing streak, stretching over a period of more than six months.


With our coverage of the last SRT existing as something of a love letter to Sea’s TvZ, there isn’t a great deal to say here. His TvZ record remains among the highest in the entire SOSPA scene in terms of overall win-rate and his recent performances against the undisputed number one Zerg serve to further enforce his dominance of what for a long time has been an incredibly hard match-up for Afreeca Zergs to win in.

While hero’s ZvT has shown some signs of life during the course of his mini-rivalry with sSak, Sea’s talent for TvZ remains absolutely singular and after his win in the final of the last SRT it seems a little disrespectful to even entertain the idea of hero winning a map.

Sea 3 - 0 hero