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So it's that time of year again. The time of year when July puffs up, decides he's tired of losing to young ragamuffins and lets the world know that he's pretty sure he's still the "God of War." Last week, July patiently explained this fact to the relatively youthful and doe-eyed sKyHigh. Flash and Shuttle also gave good performances, with game 1 being particularly competitive right until one of them said "GG." In case you missed them, here are your results:
Results
Quarterfinals - Day 1
sKyHigh vs July
Game 1
+ Show Spoiler +Game 2
+ Show Spoiler +Game 3
+ Show Spoiler +
Flash vs Shuttle
Game 1
+ Show Spoiler +Game 2
+ Show Spoiler +Game 3
+ Show Spoiler +
Quarterfinals - Day 1
sKyHigh vs July
Game 1
+ Show Spoiler +
sKyHigh took his natural with a wall and teched for Valkyrie/MnM. July drone scouted and opened with 12 hatch, taking his gas before pool and following up with a 2 hatch muta opening. sKyHigh's Valkyrie prevented July from doing any damage with his muta and after sKyHigh built up a couple control groups of MnM and a some tanks, he contained July. Because July's hydralisk den placement was toward the front of his natural, sKyHigh was able to attack it with his tank range, this prompted a desperate and flankless attack from July. After the break out attempt failed, sKyHigh is able to end the game.
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While July opened with a 9 pool speedling build, sKyHigh placed a barracks first in his natural, and attempted a bunkerrush. July pulled 5 drones to stop the rush, and was successful, losing only 1 drone in the process. July teched to two-hatch muta (with a few hydra to prevent vulture harass) while sKyHigh followed with two-port wraith. July's mutas effectively minimized the damage sKyHigh could do with wraith, so sKyHigh produced some dropships in order to place MnM and tanks to abuse Outsider's topography and damage July. July had teched drop as well, however, and was able to clean up each drop attempt fairly quickly. Still on one-base play, sKyHigh was eventually defeated when July dropped his main with mass hydra/lurk while preventing any expansion attempt by the CJ Terran.
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sKyHigh walled in and teched toward mech while July drone scouted and opened with 12 pool speedling. Seeing an opportunity to slow July down some, sKyHigh half-built an engineering bay at July's natural. Using two drones to force a cancel, July placed his hatchery a little late. Careful to show sKyHigh's SCV only 4 zergling, July sends a dozen zerglings to sKyHigh's natural. July then used his overlord to spot sKyHigh's ramp and when he saw the barracks lift for the first vulture, July attacked, catching the vulture on its ramp with the barracks already back on the ground. With nowhere to run, the vulture dies. July backed off and teched to two hatch lurker while sKyHigh turtled, only briefly breaking the turtle to send out a second vulture which died nearly as quickly as the first one. With four lurkers, July marches up sKyHigh's ramp and forces his way into his base. Without detection, sKyHigh does his best to defend by getting a late scanner, but it takes so long to remove the spread lurkers that July gains an insurmountable advantage, which he patiently sat on until sKyHigh finally tried to move out. July crushed the attempt and sKyHigh finally concedes. In an anti-climatic game for a good series, July advances.
Flash vs Shuttle
Game 1
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In the suggested game of the week, Shuttle opened with a proxy gateway zealot rush which fizzled when Flash built a depot at his choke to block reinforcements. Despite the early set back, Shuttle quickly took a massive economic lead by overexpanding. At points during this match, Flash's population was over 80 supply below Shuttle's. Through heavy turtling, and with precise, razor-like strikes, Flash is able to deflate Shuttle's economy in the very late game and simply outlast Shuttle's fury.
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In game 2 Shuttle opted for reaver harass, which Flash was fully prepared to deal with. In stark contrast to game 1, Flash shut down Shuttle's harass, macro'd up and pushed out-- simply rolling over his protoss opponent. Flash advances.
+ Show Spoiler +
Game unnecessary.
The first game of the night features what are GOM's weakest Quarterfinalists. Iris is an aging veteran who has left his prime behind, but he still clings to relevance with an aggressive style that often allows him to set the tempo for his games. Iris was 9-5 in the 2008-2009 Shinhan Bank Proleague until mid-May where he began a five game losing streak. Despite this recent string of losses, Iris is not in a slump, but merely playing exceptional vT players (firebathero, Flash, Leta, BeSt) while being past his prime. Although Iris has been losing proleague games, he's continued to show respectable results in both GOM and the Avalon MSL.
Here's some news that should make Iris fans happy: his quarterfinals opponent is Tempest, a wholly mediocre KT MagicNs protoss whom I'm convinced only made it this far because of a series of lucky draws (GuemChi, Hul[Shield], and a slumping ZerO-- whose loss to Tempest seems to have lit a fire under him). Tempest is 5-10 in proleague and his most recent PvT was an embarassing 0-2 loss to Casy in the OSL Preliminaries.
Though Iris and Tempest met back in January on Neo Harmony, and Tempest took the game with an aggressive DT rush into fast arbiters build, I don't expect Tempest to take this series. Iris is still in good enough shape to be the favorite here.
Next up: Zerg's reigning King, Jaedong versus its upstart Prince, EffOrt. I'm salivating just thinking about this series! If you're the type to speculate on how Jaedong/EffOrt's OSL group will turn out, this is definitely a series to watch. Jaedong's 80% ZvZ and 3-1 history vs EffOrt makes him the smart-money to liquibet, but don't count EffOrt out of GOM just yet. EffOrt may be 1-3 vs Jaedong, but he's 18-6 vs all other zergs-- the man knows how to ZvZ-- which means if Jaedong has an off-day he could easily find himself out of the tournament. Much more likely than that, though, Jaedong will not have an off-day and on the way toward eliminating EffOrt, we'll be priviledged to see quite possibly the most skilled ZvZ series that progaming has to offer. Thanks GOM!
See you in the Live Report Thread!