WCS Korea Season 3
GSL Code S

Ro8: Day 2 Recap
Maru and soO to semi-finals

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Maru and soO advance to semi-finals

by Christelle

The Code S Season 3 quarter-finals concluded as MaruPrime and SKT_soO advanced to join Dear and Soulkey in the semi-finals. The first day of the semi-finals had been full of one-sided matches and the second day ended up being only a slight improvement. Though none of the series ended in 3 - 0 sweeps, Maru and soO looked a step ahead of their opponents mYi.jjakji and SKT_PartinG as they took 3 - 1 victories.




The first match of the night saw past meet present in an action packed match-up between the reigning WCS KR champion MaruPrime and the forgotten champion of 2011, mYi.jjakji. Jjakji and Maru stood as the only two remaining Terran-players in the last GSL of 2013, and there wouldn't be any hiding of special Terran vs. Terran-tactics. Whereas normally the TvT match-up tends to go into the mid and late stages of the game, the series between the two champions was fast paced and full of aggression.

Game one would prove to be a disappointing one for Jjaki, as he decided to change paths from his initial cloaked banshee-build into a widow mine-marine drop after scouting the fact that Maru was going for banshees as well. At first this attack seemed likely to succeed as Maru’s early-game resources were invested in banshee-tech, but it instead proved futile as the fully-loaded medivac of Jjakji’s flew right above a single burrowed widow mine in Maru’s main base, resulting in a loss of the entirety of his early-game investment while having done no damage.

Maru would be able to ride this significant opening advantage all the way to a win, following his cloaked banshee harassment up with a fatal marine-tank push that was far more potent than Jijakji’s last-ditch marine drop. The result was in accordance with Maru’s recent statistics in TvT, winning 75% or more of games that ended before the 10-minute mark.

Where game one ended disappointingly for Jjakji, game two ended discouragingly. Jjakji managed to establish his cloaked banshee tech while simultaneously hiding his factory and tank tech, and after an intense micro-battle between against Maru’s initial force of marines, he began to lay siege to Maru's natural expansion. It looked to be a sure win for Jjakji after he severely delayed Maru from taking his natural expansion, all the while taking his own expansions and building up a substantial army lead. Realizing he would have to take a big risk to get back in the game, Maru loaded up several medivacs full of marines to go for a doom drop in jjakji's main. This daring maneuver ended up paying off in spades for Maru as jjakji carelessly lost a big chunk of his marines that rushed back in defense, all while Maru sent another force to shut down jjakji's exposed fourth base. Unlike jjakji, Maru made no mistakes once he secured the lead, and choked his opponent out with solid marine-tank play.

Finding himself down 2 - 0 in a best-of-five, the forgotten GSL champion managed to reduce the deificit to 2 - 1 in game three. After playing out a closely mirrored game based around cloaked banshees, marines and tanks, jjakji finally came out on top after a successful drop of siege-tanks on the inside of Maru’s unprotected main base to cripple his production and economy.

Going into game four, Maru switched up his opening for the first time of the day and showed us a build that did not consist of quick banshees. After his initial double-Hellion-scout he transitioned into delayed cloaked banshees, their odd timing catching jjakji completely off guard. While Maru managed to defend against jjakji's fourth banshee-opening of the day with vikings, jjakji simply could not do the same against Maru’s banshees as they massacred SCVs while managing to avoid even getting touched by stimless marines. With a massive economic lead, Maru moved out with a final tank-marine push and booked his Ro4 date against Dear.


Mind games. Secret strategies. Drawn out struggles. These are things to be expected when teammates living in the same house are faced against each other in a GSL Ro8. But in the case of 2012 WCS champion SKT_PartinG, all he could bring to his match against teammate SKT_soO was ineffective play.

Parting went up 1 - 0 to begin the series, executing a successful cannon-rush at soO’s natural expansion to force a hatch-cancel and two new expansions on opposite sides of the map. Soo was unable to defend against Partings follow-up zealot-phoenix attacks against such spread out bases and quickly tapped out of the game. With Parting running an 87% win-ratio after winning the first match of a set, the events that followed were all the more shocking.

On the second map of the day – Derelict Watcher – Parting saw his 4-gate after expansion fail miserably, getting crushed by roaches and lings after repeatedly having his proxy-pylons scouted and denied. That was only natural, one might say – hiding ones pylons and intentions when going for heavy gateway pressure is crucial.

Moving onto Akilon Wastes, soO opted for a rush to viper-hydra-roache off three bases after scouting PartinG was going for a fast third nexus. PartinG decided for a slightly unorthodox follow-up, going robo-less while hurrying up to blink and templar tech. In theory these events would seem to favor the Protoss, but when game three boiled down to a skirmish outside of Parting’s natural expansion, a combination of poor storms, poor positioning, and decent blinding clouds saw the Protoss army get completely overrun.

In a final attempt to make it to the Ro4, Parting returned to his gate-expand into 4-gate build on what would become the last match of the day. PartinG's second try was even more disastrous than the first attempt, if that was even possible. The proxy-pylons were repeatedly scouted and killed, and when the lone, high-energy-sentry guarding the entry to Parting's natural got killed by a pack of speedlings before casting even a single force field, one had to ask oneself what was going on in the mind of the usually clinical Protoss player. His all-in crushed and his economy left in shambles by speedlings, PartinG had to concede defeat.