Despite the 2-Fac trend on Destination, Iris opted for a 1-fac expand. Kal did no significant damage with his reaver and settled in for a macro game. When Iris slowpushed to the center, Kal didn't have legspeed until after all his probes are dead at his third, even though the slowpush could be seen coming a mile away.

Kal proceeded to lose all his probes before getting legspeed:

After this happened, Kal inexplicably attack moved into a stantionary, well-mined tank line.

Even the Club Day logo in the top right knew not to attack, turning into a bright red STOP sign to warn Kal.

Next:
1. Iris kills an expo
2. Kal attack moves into a stationary T army
3. Players trade armies

Repeat these three steps three times and Kal runs out of expansions to lose and armies to trade.

Iris thought to himself before the third and deciding game:

Okay this guy sucks. He can't stand up to me in a long macro game. He can't harass well, he made several bad attacks with bad unit composition and inferior positioning. Since I'm the better late game player, I should play safe and standard. That sounds easy enough. Easy win. Easy. Hmmm. Maybe a little TOO easy...

It's a two fac rush!

Kal easily repelled the rush with 1-gate range reaver (the safest possible P opening). Iris has turrets and mines around his base that stops the reaver harass, but his nat expo is late. Despite this, Iris' first push looked strong, until this happened:

Iris apparently forgot scanners and is forced to retreat all the way back to his natural. However, Kal refused to win, promptly suiciding two shuttles loaded with DTs and reavers into turrets in Iris' main.

Iris' second attempt at a push (this time with scanners) is considerably weaker relative to Kal's army size. In addition, Iris did not mine properly, so Kal's zealots and DTs ran right up to the tank cluster.

Kal cleaned up after Iris' final desperate push:

Kal advanced despite his best efforts to hand the games to Iris. I'm pessimistic about CJ's Proleague chances after seeing Iris play so terribly. What an ugly set of games.

Type-b opened overpool into 1-hatch lair while Yarnc went 12-hatch. As a result, type-b's spire was halfway done before Yarnc even started his.

Many dead drones later, Yarnc gg'd.

This time, Yarnc opened overpool into 1 hatch lair while type-b 12 pooled and placed his second hatch at his expo. After some skirmishes early, Yarnc pulled off the always deadly hide-your-lings-then-run-them-in maneuver:

This delayed mining at type-b's main just enough for Yarnc to gain a decisive air advantage.

Yarnc went to town on type-b's drones, did some slick anti-scourge micro, and advanced to the quarterfinals.

Jaedong opened overpool speed, and spent an eternity trying to kill the first scouting probe to hide that he was going 1-hatch lurker. Really? You have the best ZvP with the best defiler control and the best large scale late game multitask, and ONE HATCH LURKER is the build you decided upon?? Mind boggling.

After scouting the pool-gas, Free built three cannons in addition to a gateway-forge-probe block, but the runby never came. Free scouted lurkers attempting a temple break and threw up cannons everywhere. Jaedong looked dead, just like he did against Stork during the ee-han-timing Katrina game. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

After watching game two I had no doubt Jaedong was going to win game three. However, I did not know that between games two and three, Jaedong contracted a case of Savior-itis, a disease that makes a Zerg player drop everything and rush hive. By turtling hard and playing passively, Jaedong succeeded in getting to hive, but allowed Free to take five gas. Jaedong amassed a very scary looking army:

A long time ago, I watched this nature documentary where the host was talking about how elephants were the kings of Africa because they have no natural predators. They just roamed around freely with no fear. It was one of the basic "rules" of the animal kingdom: elephants = autowin.

Usually, a control group of fully upgraded ultralisks are like elephants. They have no natural predators, so they can just run around the map attack-moving into anything they want. This was a basic "rule" of ZvP, if the Z got enough ultras, the P was dead.

Normal ZvP under the Elephant Rule
TurtleZerg: I attack you with 12 elephants.
AverageProtoss: I have no counter for elephants, good game sir.
TurtleZerg: Elephants are AWESOME.

It seemed like as Jaedong's guardians and drops kept failing, he convinced himself that if he only massed enough elephants, he'd be able to just ride them to victory. No matter how long it took or how much time he gave Free, the elephants would win. However, because Jaedong's first attacking units were guardians in the 14th minute of the game, it allowed Free to throw the normal rules of ZvP out the window.

Normal ZvP rules out the window
Jaedong: I attack you with 12 elephants.
Free: I build a time machine.
Jaedong: What?
Free: I travel back in time.
Jaedong: ??
Free: I counter with 40 tyrannosaurs.

What did we learn from this game? Tyrannosaurs have no natural predators.

+ Show Spoiler [True Lesson] +

A mark of a true "S-class" player is that they succeed when attempting seemingly stupid strategies that wouldn't work for anyone else. Bisu's elevator on Medusa logically should not have succeeded against Hwasin's 3 rax 1 fac build, but Bisu made it work with immaculate shuttle-reaver control.

Bisu got "surgical" with his reavers:

The reaction shots of Hwasin's face were priceless. He couldn't believe this was happening. Believe it, insurance guy. Bisu is back, and Mordor Samsung should be scared.

After a standard opening, Memory won the first fight rather convincingly, preserving his tank count and taking a third in the process.

Memory had a huge group of tanks, and seemed to be slightly in the lead. As he gathered his army to move out, Jangbi countered into his third, and Memory panicked. Instead of patiently retaking his third with a proper spread, he clustered his tanks in an attempt to quickly kill the P army. The battle ended in disaster, and Memory lost a large chunk of his tank count to a group of zealots:

The push threat was gone, and Jangbi was free to take bases and make carriers.

The CJ practice time really showed in Iris' and Memory's macro, but it seemed like they ignored proper push mechanics completely. You guys are supposed to be better than SKT1 at mech! Get it together.

We can skip the mundane early part of this game. Both players fast expanded. FireBatHero made many units. Tempest made many units. FBH tried to do some dropship harass, and it was deflected with minimal damage.

FBH then moved out when Tempest had this army:

A smart Protoss would trade armies and take advantage of the better resupply rate of gateway units. Instead, Tempest danced around the map and slowly bled away his strength relative to FBH's growing push. It was painful to watch.

As FBH rolled over his bases with a giant ball of metal, Tempest could only muster a weak counter that was easily snuffed out.

WHO

IS

CUTE

NOW?

Brilliant and daring all-in move by Nada with perfect timing and execution. Aside from confirming that my Frozean curse worked, this game also showed why Nada is still very dangerous. Can you imagine if he won this MSL? The chances are very low that he goes through Free, Bisu/FBH and Stork, but his fans can dream on (at least for another week).

P.S. - The answer to the question is "not Frozean".

Stork was clearly focusing on the OSL Semis against Best, as evidenced by his near-loss in GOM. ForGG warned that Stork had better come prepared. Stork did not come prepared, but who needs preparation to when you've got the always reliable 14-nexus build in your arsenal.

Stork opened 14-nex, defended a bunker rush and almost broke fOrGG's natural:

Four minutes later, fOrGG rolled out with a huge army and crushed Stork.

I'm done trying to explain fOrGG's macro, so I'll just leave it at that.

The final game of the MSL Ro16 was standard but quite intense. ForGG showed his trademark macro:

However, Stork came out on top by engaging at the right time, just as fOrGG was sieging and before any mines were laid:

Stork traded two rounds of zealots for many tanks, and retreated with his dragoon force largely intact. Arbiters, stasis, and reinforcements off five bases would follow:

ForGG ran out of macro miracles and a visibly tired Stork advanced to the Round of 8.

Player / Matchup / Last 10 / Last 3 Months / Head-to-Head
Stork / PvP / 7-3 / 12-4 / 1-3
Kal / PvP / 5-5 / 2-3 / 3-1

Player / Matchup / Last 10 / Last 3 Months / Head-to-Head
JangBi / PvZ / 9-1 / 6-1 / 5-1
YellOw[ArnC] / ZvP / 5-5 / 3-5 / 1-5