EPT
Bah. Enough of personal troubles. There's more to talk about now than life, liberty and the pursuit of information (which are what my inet connection means to me): Starleague started, yowza!
(FYI, the games were played Groups D, B, C and A, respectively. Other than HOT v Reach coming last, there doesn't seem to have been any rhyme or reason to the order the other Groups were played.)
GROUP D
Xellos[yG] (T) ("Seo Ji-hoon") > Mumyung (Z) ("Sung Hak-seung") - Neo Bifrost
Did I not call this one?! Did Mumyung (@1) not play the game of his life here?! Did Mumyung not do the best impression of Sauron Zerg since Blackman in the WCG and have literally half the map covered with expos?! Did Mumyung not pull out all the stops and show an awesomely balanced mix of mass strats and gosu micro?! Did Mumyung not surprise the bejeezus out of everyone, including OGN casters (everyone in the studio let out a huge collective gasp when they saw him do this...), when he showed mass Ultras to stop Xellos's attack on his 12 expo?! Did Mumyung not play almost perfect in this game?!
And did all of the above not matter at all to Xellos (@8) on this made-for-Xellos map?!?! Did I not call this one?! Is there any doubt why Xellos is being called "Perfect Terran?" I mean, objectively, the tide seemed to swing from player to player throughout the match - but you wouldn't have known it watching Xellos play. He just never seemed to lose composure, surprise Ultras or otherwise. It was like he knew, no matter how advantageous things looked for his opponent, that he wouldn't be the one typing "gg" in the end. It was obvious Mumyung came prepared for this battle and I'm really not sure what more he could have done. I'm tellin' ya, Zerg users all over Korea were shaking their heads after this match and considering retirement.
GROUP B
[Oops]Lee (T) ("Lee Woon-jae") > Jinnam (Z) ("Jang Jin-nam") - Gaema Gowon
Jinnam (@5) put up a fight, but Lee (@8) jumped quickly to BCs and backed them up with M&Ms. A tough combo to beat for any T, much less Jinnam. Lee wasn't spectacular or anything (other than his initial bunkering of Jinnam's fast natural, as well as the early move to BCs), but showed solid play. A bit shaky on micro still tho. Jinnam loses again to a Terran player. Jinnam now has only like a 20% win percentage v T in OGN play. The only reason his overall record doesn't seem so bad is because he's 80% v P! I personally like Jinnam a lot. At his best, he's a crafty player who knows how to psych out his opponents from start to finish. But, he really needed to win this one v the unproven Lee in order to have a decent shot at advancing. With games v Boxer (no chance in hell) and Garimto (can prolly win) still left for our Demon Zerg, Lee now has the inside track on the next round. Boxer, of course, ALWAYS has the inside track on advancing into ANY round.
GROUP C
[z-zone]KOs (T) ("Kim Hyun-jin") > [Soul]Chojja (Z) ("Cho Yong-ho") - Neo Forbidden Zone
The match was a lot longer, but Chojja (@7) basically lost the fight at like the 15 min mark when he moved to erase Kim's (@1) fast double CC natural and threw a dozen guardians at it - and got stopped so stone cold by half-a-dozen cloaked Wraiths. No one saw it coming - even the OGN obs were left rubbing their eyes and blinking. After that, it was all KOs. Calculatingly efficient, this kid wasn't fazed a bit by his first Starleague appearance. Chojja tried, but not all his finger movements could stop KOs from M&M/tank/dropping him to a slow and seemingly-inevitable death. Impressive stuff from KOs.
HOT_Forever (Z) ("Kang Do-gyung") > [Oops]Reach (P) ("Bak Jung-seok") - Avant Garde II
HOT (@7) won in this much-anticipated clash with the returning champ Reach (@1). But that wasn't the real surprise. The surprise was how much Reach didn't put up a fight in the process. Bak showed signs of some of the brilliance he displayed last Starleague, with good goon micro and unit combos. But overall he seemed lethargic and indifferent. He went through the motions of the match, and, to be sure, Bak at 50% is still 100% better than 99% of toss players on the planet, but the sense of urgency and determination just wasn't there. He even typed out with his main still untouched. Very uncharacteristic of him. HOT was HOT and did a good job of luker/hydra dropping on Bak's hill natural (the key to the win), but I can't help feel Reach should have done more. Even his famed mudang storms were missing. Hmmm. An omen of things to come perhaps? Hope not. Otherwise, we'll have another balance controversy on our hands...
