Gumiho spawned as Terran and was scouted quickly, never a good thing for a random player. A probe watched as he build two barracks, so Squirtle knew to get two gateways up to quickly pump stalkers, declining to get a quick second gas in the interest of staying alive against a possible early marine push, I assume. After Gumiho made 5 marines, he pushed out with his force and expanded safely at the same time, getting his command center up and running before Squirtle even started his nexus. When his natural finished, Gumiho had an enormous econ advantage but was way behind in tech; he didn't have anything except marines. All he had to do was to weather any 2-base gateway unit pushes and he'd have a huge advantage going into the mid-late game.

In one of the stupidest move that I have ever seen a Terran player make, Gumiho pushed out with a huge clump of marines and a single tank, exposing his force to Squirtle's hidden mass sentries. The only explanation that I have for this is that Gumiho simply assumed that Squirtle would rush for Colossus tech to counter the mass marines, when in fact Squirtle did not even have a robotics facility.

With the Terran army conveniently in the middle of the map, the following happened:



Note the stalkers in the back, off-screen. Gumiho lost his entire army, and proceeded to lose 17 SCVs in a (successful) defense of his natural. All of a sudden, the econ, army, and tech advantage belonged to Squirtle.

Squirtle immediately teched to DTs and sneaked 3 into Gumiho's natural and main, due to zero detection and a depot that was inexplicably left sunken. Fortunately for Gumiho, his force of marines and tanks were already in perfect position to initiate a powerful counter-attack. Squirtle picked a bad time to engage said force, running his zealots in 10 seconds before charge was finished. Gumiho easily won the battle and forced Squirtle to move the probes at his main to his third; at the same time, Gumiho cleaned up the DTs in his base. However, he used enough scans doing so that Squirtle was able to use a single DT to send the force sieging his main packing. Gumiho needed to wait until he could build a raven before he could push again.

At this point, Squirtle once again had the econ, tech, and army advantage. However, in the tradition of the game so far, he took unnecessary risks and initiated a base trade, leaving DTs behind in his exposed main to defend even though he should have assumed that Gumiho would get a Raven. The DTs were easily dispatched by Gumiho's newly-Raven-augmented force, and the base trade commenced. When the smoke cleared, Squirtle had a running base and production facilities, and Gumiho barely had either of those, but things might have turned out differently if Gumiho had been smarter about targeting pylons and warpgates. 1-0 Startale.

After watching game 1, I knew for a fact that there was no way that Squirtle would last long against the excellent players on fOu. Little did I know that in the following matches fOu would display a complete lack of preparation and general competence.

Crossfire SE is a map with an extremely long rush distance and a ramp into the main, meaning that a 2 rax marauder attack might not be the best strategy. Yet not only did scfOu try this build, he tried pushing up the ramp twice, once after the build had been scouted.



After both ramp romps failed, Squirtle put down a dark shrine immediately. With the DT tech, he killed a bunch o' SCVs, delayed scfOu's nat (allowing his own nat nexus to get up first), and forced a bunch of turrets and scans. At one point, the worker count was 45 probes to 24 SCVs. With such a large income disparity, Squirtle simply built up an army for 3 minutes and then a-moved. Terrible micro in the final attack couldn't stop him from taking the game. 2-0 Startale.

Very strange openings from both players: Squirtle went 4 gate into expansion in response to scouting TheBest's 2 rax, and TheBest went 2 rax into expansion )in response to the nexus). Then Squirtle went 2 stargate phoenix and colossus with thermal lance, all at once, stretching his gas supplies to the limit, while TheBest simply went MMM. Just completely wild play by Squirtle. TheBest knew a weak army when he saw it and tried moving up to Squirtle's natural to exploit the fact that Squirtle was light on gateway units, but had to back away when Squirtle correctly positioned just enough Colossi and sentries to be scary. Instead of stimming and a-moving, TheBest loaded up two dropships and flew into Squirtle's main, forcing Squirtle to split up his army and opening up an opportunity at the Protoss natural. While engaging on two fronts, TheBest managed to kill all of Squirtle's expensive tech units, but overstayed his welcome and lost most of his bio units to reinforcements. TheBest tried reinforcing his own army and kept engaging Colossus/sentry armies, which didn't work out well.



Things equalized and both players took their third bases. TheBest build up a large viking army while Squirtle got bunches of phoenixes. Inexplicably, TheBest declined to get enough marines to effectively support his vikings; none of his barracks had reactors. Instead, he built a thor, which took down exactly zero phoenixes as his army of vikings, marauders, and medivacs died horribly to the Protoss army of phoenixes, zealots, and Colossi despite a complete lack of micro by Squirtle as he a-moved. Either the Protoss composition is completely imbalanced or TheBest had no idea how to engage it. With the baffling lack of game knowledge shown by fOu in this clan match, I'll assume the second possibility to be true. 3-0 Startale.

Squirtle built up 5 void rays and attacked, seemingly taking Nuclear completely by surprise and destroying his natural command center. After that, Squirtle set up an effective contain and smashed Nuclear's pure marine force as it stimmed down the ramp into a waiting blob of forcefields and void rays. This game comes most highly recommended out of the four played by Squirtle since it was by far the most cleanly executed by both players. 4-0 Startale.

HongUn and Trickster spawned at horizontal positions on Shakuras, meaning that Colossus attacks were especially deadly for whoever got them more quickly. Trickster 4 gated, but it was a very odd 4-gate: he didn't cut probes, he didn't get warp gate tech especially quickly, and he didn't seem particularly worried about being scouted (HongUn got a probe into his base without too much difficulty). Perhaps it was an anti-4gate 4 gate build: hypothetically, if HongUn went for an all-in, the 4 gate could allow Trickster to defend and have a better economy.

HongUn, however, went for a one-base robo build with four relatively late gates. After getting an observer, he went straight for colossus tech, and since Trickster wasn't doing a super-fast 4 gate, he couldn't punish HongUn for rushing to a high tech. What he could do, though, was expand, throw up a robo ASAP, and pray that HongUn's colossus attack didn't destroy everything.

HongUn went through the rock path, bashing down his opponent's rocks with ease. He was ahead in Colossi at all times, but, somehow, he couldn't win the battle. I re-watched what happened three times and it still didn't make any sense to me. HongUn had more Colossi, got lots of free shots off at the enemy before the battle started, and still wasn't able to break through to Trickster's base. I think what happened was a combination of Trickster's guardian shield, a single immortal which got good hits off on both stalkers and immortals, and just good micro in general by Trickster.



As Trickster had an extra expansion, once HongUn's attack failed, the game was pretty much over. TSL 1-0 Prime

I don't want to recap this game. Simply put, what Trickster did in this game was an example of why he's one of the most underachieving players in SC2. Read on if you want to see how the Prime team was gifted their only victory in their GSTL experience.

Polt went for a pretty sloppy build order, building up about 300 gas and not using it, instead deciding to go 1 rax cc and immediately build two more rax. Trickster expanded quickly in turn. He played the opening perfectly, displaying a tight build order, a knowledge of when he could expand, and awareness of the different 1-base strategies Terran was likely to employ on Lost Temple (he had stalkers deployed at likely drop points). Then, when Polt moved out RIGHT BEFORE stim and combat shield finished, Trickster smashed half of his marine/marauder force to bits.

By all accounts, the game was over. Trickster was the better player, and he had a commanding lead. All signs pointed to the set moving into a long macro game, where Trickster would ride his advantage to victory. But instead of taking the safe route, Trickster made two more gates (for a total of six) and just started spamming gateway units next to Polt's natural, in an effort to kill him right away. As Tester lost more and more battles, he warped in more and more units. I counted the units lost in each battle to give you all a sense of the tragedy of this game.

First battle: Polt loses all of the SCVs at his natural and all of his MnM. Trickster loses all of his army but that's OK since he now has a massive economic advantage.

Second battle: Trickster loses a zealot and sentry for nothing.

Third battle: Trickster loses 2 stalkers, 2 sentries, and 6 zealots for 5 marauders and 4 marines.

Fourth battle: Trickster loses 3 zealots 2 stalkers for 2 marauders and 2 marines.

Fifth battle: Trickster loses 7 zealots, 2 stalkers, and 1 sentry for 3 marauders and 3 marines.



Polt went on to attack the natural and win, and I went on to cry myself to sleep. TSL 1-1 Prime.

After spawning in cross positions on Metalopolis, the builds of Polt and Alive diverged when Polt went cc after fac and Alive progressed up the tech tree to starport, aiming for a midgame force with a marine/tank backbone and raven/viking support. Alive started his expansion somewhat later than Polt, and once he did, Polt for some reason attacked instead of setting up a defensive position to protect his economic advantage. Additionally, he attacked in such a way that allowed Alive to use the high ground to destroy Polt's marines and half of his tank force.

After Alive sent Polt's force packing, he mounted an attack of his own. With a full-energy raven and complete control of the air, Alive skillfully picked apart Polt's defense, auto-turreting tanks, dropping marines on tanks, attacking both the main and natural at once, and basically showing that he was extremely comfortable using all of the tools in the Terran arsenal.



Polt fell apart rather quickly. TSL 2-1 Prime.

I watched this game a few days before recapping it, and I think I blocked it out of my memory, for various reasons. Read on as, together, we can relive some of my most painful memories.

Check 15 hatched and Alive went 1 rax cc, as might be expected on a map the size of four Steppes (of War). Check got supply blocked early and didn't jump out to as fast of an economic lead as he could have. Additionally, he made about 20 zerglings at once right before getting his lair, which didn't help him too much either in the econ department but which might have been necessary for survival against certain Terran all-ins. When Alive saw the lings, he built up an army of 7 blue flame hellions and started poking, but Check skillfully blocked off his natural using spine crawlers, putting his WC3 experience to good use. After getting to mutas and ending the Hellion threat, Check expanded and made 11 drones at once, securing the economic advantage for the midgame.

While Check was building up an economy, Alive was building up an army of Thors and marines -- but, cleverly, Check only built a token force of mutalisks, switching quickly to a large roach force to essentially hard counter Alive's composition. With the econ advantage (dampened somewhat by some good hellion drops by Alive) and the correct unit choice, it seemed like Check might move into zerg macro beast mode and take the game with ease.

Unfortunately, in Check's case, it seems like the "zerg beast macro mode" switch is permanently set to off. He is not a player known for his economy management.

Nevertheless, he had a lot of drones and a lot of units. What he should have done was to build more mutas in order to be able to nullify Terran harass quickly (while still maintaining a mainly roach composition), and to spread out overlords in order to spot that harass. Unfortunately, Check was largely blind regarding medivacs and hellions speeding across the map, so when he expanded, he had a very difficult time protecting his drones.

Additionally, Check got about 5 infestors as he took his fourth base, but didn't get off many fungals with them. He found it extremely difficult to attack the Terran army, which in the late-midgame had a few siege tanks mixed in.

On a map with massive flanking opportunities, Check did not attempt to do anything but attack head on with all of his units. An inspection of his hotkeys showed that he had all of his non-infestor units on one hotkey.

A combination of these factors meant that a climactic battle at the 20 minute mark ended in Alive's favor. From then on, Alive seemed to be everywhere, attacking with strike groups of marines, hellions, and medivacs. Likewise, Check seemed to fall apart, the limits of his multitasking skill having been reached.



The rest of the game was notable for Alive's planetary fortress wall in the middle of the map, which frustrated Check even further. As the game dragged on, Check looked more and more sloppy, pumping nothing but roaches against Alive's tanks, marauders, and planetary fortresses. A late broodlord switch attempted to turn the tide, but it wasn't enough. Check showed, once again, that he simply can't hang with the big boys. TSL 3-1 Prime.

In an unsurprising turn of events, MKP opened with 1 rax cc into 4 rax no gas, using his marines to break down the rocks in the middle of Scrap Station. Meanwhile, Alive likewise expanded and got siege tanks with siege mode and a starport. The early game became a race to see whether MKP could make it to Alive's base with his masses of marines before Alive had enough tech to defend. As it turned out, he wasn't quite in time: Alice had two bunkers and a medivac out by the time MKP arrived, which turned out to be enough to stop the waves of marines from doing critical damage.

Immediately after stopping the attack, Alive countered with a drop that killed four SCVs, and the rout was on. Blue flame hellions, tanks, and slow, steady play made things hell for MKP's marine-heavy style. After minutes of abuse and harass, Alive pushed MKP's main. Perhaps not surprisingly, MKP initiated a base trade, but with his production facilities under siege and with a smaller army, he couldn't pull through.



The game ended with MKP making a final stand at his gold base, his 10 rax being slowly whittled away. TSL 4-1 Prime.

Shared corridor positions.

Ensnare opens fast expand, adding barracks after putting down his CC. Seed opens 4-gate off 1 gas, but his proxy pylon gets scouted. Seed moves in, and his first six stalkers blow right through the bunker because Ensnare was too slow to pull SCVs. Ensnare hastily tries to erect bunkers at the top of his ramp, but Seed just runs right by them and Ensnare has to GG. Horrible game.

Close air positions

Seed opens 2-gate robo while TOP opens fast factory for blue flame hellions. Seed's obs is out in time to spot the drop and TOP can't find any clear space to unload. TOP transitions into barracks and raven, while Seed adds two more gates for 4 total, and also gets a stargate for 1 phoenix and void rays. TOP finally expands, while Seed just continues to mass units. Seed finally moves out, and TOP sneaks two blue flame hellions in the back, scoring tons of probe kills.

Seed moves into TOP's natural with a huge zealot stalker sentry immortal void ray army, blowing right through TOP's army of hellions and marauders. TOP only has two vikings and a raven for air defense, and is unable to deal with the void rays. TOP turns his natural CC into a planetary but it's too late -- Seed runs his remaining army into TOP's main and forces the GG. Very unique and quirky build from Seed, TOP had no idea it was coming.

Close positions

Hyperdub opens fast 1-rax CC, adding more barracks after. Seed opens fast double gas for sentries and hallucinate. Seed takes a fast secret expansion at another main, while simultaneously hallucinating an immortal that he happily parades in front of Hyperdub's army. Seed then expands again to his natural. Hyperdub, sensing something is amiss, moves out with MMM and kills Seed's natural. Thinking he's ahead, Hyperdub pulls back, but Seed is actually on two fully saturated bases. Seed just retakes his natural and techs to DT. His DT harass does plenty of damage, and while Hyperdub cleans them up, Seed is busy building 9 warpgates and teching to zealot charge.

Hyperdub moves out with MMM, ghosts, and a raven, but Seed just counters into Hyperdub's main, using many sentries back at Seed's main to keep Hyperdubs army out. Hyperdub is forced to float and run all his SCVs, and by the time Hyperdub finally gets up Seed's ramp, Seed brings his forces back and just has too many charge zealots for Hyperdub's army. Extremely inspired, creative play from Seed without even using the staple PvT units like immortals, colossus, and templar.

Seed proxies 2 gates outside MC's ramp. MC sends an early scout and finds nothing in Seed's main. MC sends out another probe, finds the 2 proxy gates, and adds a forge. Seed forces MC's first cannon to cancel, but MC does a good job walling off one of his cannons with his own buildings. Seed trades several zealots for probes while MC's cannons warp in, but MC is able to secure his main. The probe counts are very low for both players, but MC is able to get the upper hand by getting a few more stalkers and warpgate faster, and eventually overpowers Seed's forces. Seed GGs when his proxy gates are overrun.

Excellent defense by MC, he looked in trouble for most of the early game.

MC opens 3-warpgate DT, while Mvp opens fast expand. Mvp finds and kills MC's proxy pylon, and he's forced to make another. Mvp seems to sense DTs, as he gets an engineering bay and second orbital before lifting to his natural. MC warps in 3 DTs, but Mvp has a turret and bunker to defend. MC loses one DT and morphs the remaining two into an archon, and then just attacks with his entire force. Mvp however has stim and easily defends.

MC adds more warpgates but instead of attacking takes his natural. Mvp pushes out with a large MM ball, but some nice forcefields allow MC to hold with an inferior number of sentry zealot once Mvp's stimpack runs out. MC rushes to storm, but Mvp has double his supply count (150 to 80) and the next attack ends it.

Mvp drops several mules while attacking to rub it in, and IM takes the victory over oGs. MC was significantly behind after the DTs did no damage and couldn't claw his way back into the game.

      Destination opens with a double barracks expand while BoxeR techs quickly, relying on hellions for defense. Destination's early marine marauder push claims a decent number of BoxeR's scvs, and allows him to get his expansion up safely. BoxeR attempts to counter with a blue flame hellion drop, but Destination is on top of it, and shuts it down. BoxeR next tries cloaked banshees, which Destination kills off with slightly more difficulty. Comfortable at home, Destination bum rushes Boxer's natural with marauders, and tears everything apart before BoxeR agonizingly stabilizes. Both players noodle around with drops for a while, while Destination expands again and consolidates his lead. He tries a tremendous drop on BoxeR's massive tank defense, which doesn't work out, although it does a fair bit of damage. BoxeR tries to push out and gets a hard marauder slap for his trouble. He tries to expand and gets the same treatment.
      More expanding and more noodling around follows, with the decisive moment coming as Destination frolicks around Boxer's tank defense and tornadoes through the emperor's main. BoxeR sorta counter-attacks, and kills a base, but whatever. GG from Caesar. Somewhere in the Prime house, MarineKing wipes away a single tear.

      Apparently the SlayerS coach isn't yet convinced that Destination can play good TvT, so he sends Ryung. Destination switches his tactics up (Somewhere in the Prime house, MarineKing wipes away a second tear.) from the first game and techs quickly, making a quick marine tank push that doesn't do any damage but scares Ryung a bit. Ryung replies with some cloaked banshee harass which Destination shrugs off with vikings. Ryung pushes out with sieged tanks and puts up a position at his watchtower, but Destination just rolls right into it with a slightly larger army and wins. Ryung gets an expansion up before Destination, but it doesn't really matter, because the ZeNEX terran has air control and the contain. He abuses this by doing aerial maneuvers over Ryung's base with vikings and dropping the mineral line, which tickles a bit. Ryung eventually gets a better air army and tries to push out, but Destination stomps the attack with his tank line. Ryung next tries to drop Destinations main and natural to some effect, but Destination doesn't pull much back to defend and (hey hey!) Ryung still can't get two feet out of his base without being squashed, so the cute stuff really doesn't work out too well, and Ryung eventually has to pull all his scvs and try to break the front. It goes poorly. GG.

      SlayerS sends Alicia out next, which is a neat chance to see a recently promoted player. The protoss opens with three gateways, but the bite is taken out of any early pressure as Destination snipes a stalker at midfield, scouts the gateway count, and scalps another stalker and a sentry. Both players take their naturals and Alicia pushes out with a sentry/stalker combination. As this occurs, Destination
1) Scouts the attack with an scv.
2) Moves forward ahead of the attack to pick off Alicia's proxy pylon-minded probe.
3) Pulls back, reinforces, and then engages to his advantage.
      That's just smart. What isn't smart is Alicia's attack a minute later into four prepared bunkers and a standing marine/marauder army. To make things worse, the protoss dithers in front of the terran natural, allowing Destination to get a bunch of free zealot shots. After being repelled, both armies dance around the map middle, with Destination beautifully outflanking Alicia and forcing him out of the map center. Alicia withdraws to his natural ramp, but gets impatient really quickly (might've been because he had no tech!) and attacks into a perfectly prepared terran concave, which kills him. Destination drops two manner mules and Alicia obliges him with a GG.

On the verge of being all-killed by the most imbalanced PvT map of all time, SlayerS sends Jjob, (aka Dream.t)1988) who is new Code-A material, as discovered by TorcH, and probably their second best player. Destination doesn't hesitate to set the tone of the match, proxying two gateways outside his opponent's base in literally the most ingenious position ever, which clearly should've be visible, but somehow wasn't. He gets a good start, attacking as Jjob frantically tries to construct a bunker and killing a bunch of scvs. But once Jjob gets his bunker up, instead of playing the game out, Destination pulls half of his scvs and attacks for no apparent reason, which fails laughably. Having pulled defeat from the jaws of being decently ahead, Destination really has nothing else to do as Jjob gets up to three barracks and an orbital command.
      Old habits die hard, and Destination again attacks with a substantial scv contingent, which again fails. He gg's immediately. Three isn't bad, but it ain't four.

ZeNEX's #2 is Zotac Cup bonjwa Puzzle, playing under the name "FFMon" for no apparent reason. He one gate-expand-robos (like the baller that he is) and Jjob opens with two barracks but doesn't see the nexus, and bunkers his ramp. Eventually he gets the gist and moves out while dropping his own expansion. Puzzle realizes he's in a spot of bother and pulls probes to delay until an immortal, which saves the nexus at the cost of said probes. Meanwhile, Jjob has his own command center up, and flirts with an attack for some time before breaking the ice. Puzzle refuses to give Jjob his number, but is pretty loose with his forcefields, and Jjob gets the picture and backs off for the moment.
      Like a bad cold, however, Jjob comes right back, dropping into Puzzle's main and sniping the robo bay, then hitting on the main and natural at the same time and basically trading armies. Puzzle tries to make a move on the gold expansion, but engages Jjob at an awkward angle and is forced to pull out and retreat to his natural. Jjob positions himself at his own gold, and prepares for Puzzle, who doesn't have what it takes, and calls GG.

ZeNEX ups the ante with the newly promoted Code S player Byun. The keyboard is so happy to see him that it immediately stops working, and the game is paused for a couple minutes. After the unpause, Jjob techs to starport for drops while Byun one-rax expands, then adds two extra barracks. Jjob's marine drop is pretty fruitful, although his attempt to bring hellions through the front doesn't get a lot done. Byun takes his expansion while Jjob follows up with a completely useless banshee and a double expansion (one hidden at the opposite main). Understandably, Byun is not expecting this and plays passively while teching up to tanks, which allows Jjob to get a solid defense in place and build a lead in the tank count. Byun tries a massive drop in Jjob's main, which seems like a great idea until everything dies and Byun retreats two medivacs lighter than before. Jjob doesn't waste time afterwards, getting missile turrets up around his base and pushing out. Byun does a neat job forcing a draw on the first push, but Jjob has many more tanks and an equal number of barracks, which grants him a slow push that Byun cannot stop. GG.

Deciding that there's no such thing as too much TvT, ZeNEX ends with ON, who hasn't done squat in the GSLs but is probably some closet gosu or something. The game is on Terminus RE, which is looking like the most decent of the new maps. (But having only been played for star-studded Ace matches, it's not easy to tell.) Jjob again opts to tech before expanding, while ON mirrors a general ZeNEX preference for bio, opening with three barracks before also expanding. Jjob makes two critical errors in the early going, blundering away a hellion to three marines, then flying a banshee into an ambitious marine expedition for ON. These losses clear the way for ON to dance right past a bunker and into his opponent's main, where he savages about half of Jjob's scvs. His follow up is a drop which isn't so hot, but does keep Jjob pinned in his base and allows ON to consolidate his heavy economic advantage. Jjob eventually has enough scvs to make taking his natural worth it, but he does so as ON takes his third. ON thinks about elevatoring his army into the terran base, but smartly pulls back and attacks the front instead, taking out a building third command center, and the natural orbital. Jjob makes a valiant end of himself with a double drop at ON's main and third while ON makes a silly attack into the natural, but it's all too little, too late. A lot of nothing happens for a while, and then ON just attacks again (but better) and wins, although Jjob takes forever to acknowledge it. GG FOUR THREE ZEEE

NEX.

Clide 1 rax fast expands, Ace opting for a sentry heavy 3 gate expand. Clide’s scv notices the expansion and abruptly cancels his siege mode upgrade in favor of the blue flame hellion upgrade. Ace also manages scout the command center as it floated to the natural. A robo and a twilight council come up for Ace, a couple observers and a dark shrine quickly following. Clide’s blue flame hellion drop hit an unprotected main, the first two hellions racking up 13 kills in a single shot, the second two harassing the natural lightly before getting cleaned up. At the same time however Ace used a pylon and observer to warp in dark templar into the main. A raven eventually put an end to the harass, but not before ACE had managed to regain a worker lead.
As the drops concluded Clide had added added on barracks, committing to MMM + a raven, Ace’s charge had just finished and blink started, attempting to rely simply on gateway units. With incredible forcefields and blink the bio ball was only able to force a temporary retreat, additional DT warp ins pinned Clide back while Ace’s reinforcements were able to clean up the terran push. Clide returns to drops, a couple medivacs of bio managed to snipe Ace’s newly finished third. High Templar joined the fray but Ace was not in a position to push with his new advantage, instead attempting to double expand as Clide established a third. A single medivac with marauders forced a cancel on the 4th while ghosts began. With continued drop harassment Clide was able to get his 4th up while denying Ace’s, a couple strong EMPs prevented the protoss from moving out, but Ace had begun another tech switch to colossi.
As the colossi swung the army composition back in Ace’s favor he became more aggressive, using a small gateway force to pressure the back pathway between mains while simultaneously double expanding. The next wave of production was more than enough to handle the pressure, but Ace was not letting up sending another attack force down the other back path between 4ths, but met by a planetary fortress only a few SCVs were lost before the push was cleaned up. Hoping the pressure had created a momentary weakness Ace pushed through the middle, but poor spreading of his high templar allowed for a single perfect EMP to remove all their energy before a single storm went down. The small gateway army and few remaining colossi was not enough, marauders completely wiping out the protoss army, but not before a major micro mistake cost Clide all of his ghosts. Without an answer for newly warped in high templar Clide could not push his advantage, instead forced to respond to Ace’s attacks down the two back lanes as a new protoss ball began to accumulate. The constant harass had kept Clide too busy to ever match Ace’s 5th and 6th base , and up two bases the constant gateway pressure eventually proved too much for Clide’s MMM to handle. ST 1 : TSL 0

A two rax opening for Rain against Ace’s gateway robo gateway, heading for fast colossus as Rain teched to starport and added a third barracks. Rain pushed with a couple medivac before Ace’s second colossus had finished, the bio ball took out most of the gateway army before retreating, but the counter attack with two colossi was too much for Rain to handle. ST 2 : TSL 0

Alive opened 1 rax pressure into FE, Ace falling back on a three gate expand. Alive’s pressure caught a zealot but was ultimately deflected by a stalker on the high ground getting a few shots off before any engagement occurred. Ace pushed out next , his sentry heavy force not able to do much damage but allowing a safe retreat . Ace geared up for a 6 gate timing push, Alive attempted to prepare for it with bunkers at his expansion while keeping half his army behind the LOS breaker near Ace’s main, seemingly for a counter attack as the timing push engaged. A well placed pylon spotted this tactic however, and Ace’s gateway force was able to trap and quickly destroy the bio force, leading to a very one sided bust, Ace easily taking game 3. Ace actually went over to ST’s bench for a taunting celebration. ST 3 : TSL 0

Both players took their second gas indicating their mutual agreement to skip the 4 gate stage. Both players also went for robotics tech, Ace opting to immediately start a robo bay, SangHo delaying his until after an immortal finished. Upon scouting Ace’s faster robo bay SangHo attempted to push up Ace’s ramp, but the slightly delayed immortal was still out in plenty of time to turn back the attack with ease, Ace even showing a pylon at his natural. Anticipating this to mean an expansion SangHo began a nexus of his own, but Ace’s play was simply a fake, attempting to break just as SangHo’s expansion finished. With faster reinforcements and good immortal targeting SangHo managed to barely hold off the push, but Ace was able to deny mining from the natural long enough to get his own natural up. SangHo pushed with 5 colossi, catching Ace with only 3 colossi, and securing TSL’s first win of the day. ST 3 : TSL 1

SangHo opened Nexus first followed by forge, July not beginning a hatchery until after his initial zerglings were out. The zerglings slipped through SangHo’s wall, majorly delaying any mining from the expansion until well after the zerg natural was fully operational. July’s additional four zerglings brought the destructible rocks to half health before a stalker was able to stabilize the protoss position. July quickly took his other three gas and spire, SangHo's first phoenix was met by 6 corruptors as a hatch built at the gold expansion. A hydra den and roach warren opened up the zerg tech, SangHo opted for two robotics and a few additional warpgates in attempt to trap the corruptors and break July with a fast two base push. A stalker immortal sentry army quickly tore down the rocks, but the push collided with a large roach hydra army more than capable of handling the push. SangHo was able to forcefield and retreat, but with the gold operational and a 4th building for July, SangHo was running out of time and options, falling back onto a 2 robo colossus max army single push as a last desperate move. July was maxed, on 4 bases, and bored, and thus decided to baneling drop the protoss army, forcefields keeping the remaining ground army out but the banelings able to significantly weaken the massing protoss force. As Sangho eventually was able to max and move out, July was more than prepared, the initial roach hydra corruptor force able to take out all but a small group of stalkers, but as a tidal wave of roaches rallied to the front SangHo was left with no no army, no third, and no option besides typing out. ST 4 : TSL 1

Byun opens with a reaper into expand with no wall off, LosirA was able to capitalize with a pool first speed opening, running into the main costing SCV mining time as well as scouting the quick factory. Without any threat of attack LosirA droned up and immediately took a third, starting a fast 4th as soon as his third finished. Byun began pushing tanks from two factories. After establishing enough tanks to safely hold his natural Byun transitioned into a few thors while adding 4 reactor barracks. LosirA was fully saturated as Byun tore down the back rocks to begin pushing. Despite a seemingly safe tank crawl, Byun was broken by a large roach baneling force, losing all his tanks and thors. LosirA repeatedly attacked, preventing Byun from ever establishing a significant tank / thor count. Unable to actually kill Byun outright Losira continually traded armies, so comfortable with his position that at one point his zerglings /danced just outside the terran main. Byun eventually was able to establish a planetary at the 6oclock expansion, but Byun’s mutalisks wrecked havoc at the natural and main, allowing a huge baneling force to amass and wipe out the base with a single click, leaving Byun without two minerals to rub together. IM 1 : ZeNEX 0

Kyrix opened speedling before expansion, but in cross positions LosirA’s hatch first build gave him the early advantage. Losira’s roaches prevented any early speedling harass, Kyrix opting for a baneling nest despite seeing the roaches. Kyrix’s banelings caught all of Losira’s zerglings and roaches on the ramp, and the remaining mass speedlings overwhelmed LosirA’s remaining forces for a quick gg. IM 1 : ZeNEX 1

An easy hatch first is matched by YongHwa’s forge first expand, a gateway completing the wall off until the destructible rocks were removed. Behind this wall YongHwa went quick stargate, a stark contrast to Kyrix’s fast third before lair. When YongHwa’s voidray made it to the zerg third Kyrix was well prepared, a couple queens there to chase it off before any damage was done. YongHwa attempted to transition into the make everything build, going for colossus, two starport void ray, and five gateways all off two base. Around 150 food the protoss finally expanded again, well after Kyrix had a 4th, using an interesting corruptor ling hydra army, moving to pressure the new third. The voidray heavy army were able to clean up the corruptors before the colossi could be taken down. Unsure of what to do Kyrix reinforced with more of the same, but as the protoss ball reached max mostly on voidrays with a few colossi, Kyrix did not have the economy to begin to stop it, YongHwa convincingly took an anticlimactic game 3. IM 2 : ZeNEX 1

Nuke opens with light 2 rax pressure which quickly escalated when YongHwa lost his initial stalker in a gateway robo gateway opening. Rather than do devastating economic damage right there however, Nuke waited outside the protoss main to bunker walk his way in, but the delay this caused actually allowed an immortal to finish, YongHwa ultimately holding the delayed pressure with ease. Both players expanded and teched, YongHwa starting opting for colossus tech as Nuke transitioned into mass bio + medivac play. A timely drop caught YongHwa just as he was starting his colossus push, sniping the robotics facility but sentries prevented a second force from wrecking the natural as the colossi ball chased off the drop. Nuke’s continued drop harass spotted YungHwa’s dark templar tech, allowing him to prevent any significant economic damage. Drop play continued to work for Nuke, but YungHwa had no intention of moving out, and although the protoss defense was less than perfect, Nuke was having less and less success with the bio harass as YongHwa took his third and started +3 attack and zealot charge. Behind in tech, supply, and upgrades, Nuke seemed to crack under the pressure, and after a couple miserable attempts to crack the protoss defense YongHwa eventually earned a convincing gg without ever actually assaulting the terran base.
IM 3 : ZeNEX 1

Both players get their second gas, Puzzle opting to go twilight council for blink, YongHwa instead racing to colossi, robo bay before immortal. YongHwa’s observer saw the blink coming and immediately began chronoing out his immortal. A good forcefield kept Puzzle from having any vision up the ramp, the blink threat losing most of its advantage as a second immortal finished for YongHwa, who also had built a twilight council and immediate dark shrine in hopes of catching Puzzle without any detection. Content to simply contain his opponent Puzzle anticipated this move, getting his own robotics facility. Upon scouting this robo with his observer YongHwa canceled his dark shrine and began researching blink, just as Puzzle began a dark shrine of his own. As blink finished YongHwa burst through the contain, his blink stalkers preventing any sort of retreat costing Puzzle most of his army. Without an army or expansion Puzzle did what he could to buy time with dark templar but it was not enough as YongHwa a-moved IM into the finals. IM 4 : ZeNEX 1

Cross positions did not deter Troumen from bunker rushing, but whether this attack was genuine or just to make Junwi pull drones, the damage was negligible. Troumen hunkered down in his two bases and Junwi, as zergs often do, became a bit too comfortable. When the terran rolled out with a massive force of tank marine and siege walked up to Junwi's natural, there was nothing but zerglings and a handful of slow banelings to defend. With tank spread and attention to marine control Troumen easily defended against Junwi's banelings and won the game. It was scary how much this simple siege tank push reminded me of Brood War.

Troumen high-fives his team while a spectrum of lights flash across the studio and gives the camera a finger wag. While Artosis explained exactly and precisely how cool and punishing that timing attack was, YongHwa, all murder face, got his keyboard out and prepared to send Traumen back to his bench.

Crevasse was the map of choice for IM, a long map most welcomed by spectators and players after suffering the terrors of Steppes of War. Both players safely expanded and went through the motions of their build order without a hint of early aggression. YongHwa moved out with his first colossus and Troumen, after killing YongHwa's observer, did the same. Troumen's army looked to annihilate YongHwa but key force fields choked off Troumen's stimmed marines, letting YongHwa's colossus take some pot shots before retreating. Troumen continued to push to YongHwa's base but he overcommitted and was caught, flanked, and overwhelmed. YongHwa expanded, using dark templar and a warp prism to keep Traumen in his base. Troumen, for his part, also tried to harass but at 30 workers to YongHwa's 70 it was clear who had come out ahead. More dark templar were warped in behind the terran's mineral lines, YongHwa content to bleed his opponent to death. Troumen made a last ditch attack then left the game.

On Scrap Station, ST, determined to end YongHwa's run with a terran, sent out Virus. YongHwa used void rays to scout and harass, then crack Virus' defensive line and close out the game eight minutes in. YongHwas was on a roll – it was time for ST to bring out the big guns. The question was, who would the coach send out next? YongHwa was the real deal, that much was certain, so ST sent the God of War himself. Watching July get up from the bench and the crowd cheer him to the booth sent shivers down my spine. This was JulyZerg playing in a StarCraft 2 team league, and he was about to play one of IM's most dangerous protoss.

The game starts, cross positions on Metalopolis and the the camera cut to a shot of MVP. YongHwa techs straight to dark templar and expands while July, lair finished, fully saturates both bases. Tushin, whether by chance or because he felt that something was a bit off, morphed an overseer and left it to hover over his natural right before YongHwa warped in his dark templar. The three dark templar were caught together, surrounded by zerglings, and taken off the map. July's mutalisks popped and with tight control he skirted YongHwa's base, picking off probes. His economy devestated, YongHwa had no recourse but to all-in with five warp gates. A heavy stalker sentry army and walls of force fields threatened to break July's natural but steady reinforcements and unit control whittled down YongHwa's army until there was nothing left. July double fist-pumps and gets ready for a ZvZ versus Losira.

Jets of smoke shoot between the booths as the game loads on Crossfire SE. Losira takes his natural first while July opts for gas before pool. Baneling nest finished, July's determination to get into his opponent's main was unflinching, despite seeing a mass of roaches clogging Losira's ramp. A row of banelings attempted to break the armoured guardians, but only brought a couple down to the red. Losira counter attacked and brought IM up 3-2, two games away from first place.

July slowly packed up his keyboard, in no rush to leave the booth. Losira gave his high-fives and sauntered over to the ST bench to give them a thumbs down Caesar would have been proud of. Ok! This is a series worthy of a finals.

With five games come and gone it was time for Bomber, ST's best terran, to have his turn in the booth. Close positions on Lost Temple looked to favour the terran but a 13 gas 14 pool combined with the decision to not wall off from Bomber led to the loss of a his first two marines and a scout on his expansion build. Rather than completely wall off with a depot Bomber dared to still leave a gap guarded only by marines. Losira, of course, prepared for a baneling bust. The banelings did minimal damage but the zerlgings ended up killing quite a few scvs and Bomber's first tank. As they were retreating the zerglings could have killed off a tech lab right before stim finished but Losira decided a ceremony was in order and danced the zerglings on Bomber's ramp, leaving the tech lab burn down. The investment was not worth it however, as Bomber soon attacked with a marine siege tank push that destroyed Losira's natural and effectively ended the game. Bomber's marines danced next to a pile of dead baneling goop while we get a corner shot of ST cheering on their bench.

Bomber walks over the IM team with Ace who, much to the amusement of the IM players, performs his own marine dance. After that, IM really had no choice but to send MVP and put a stop to ST's ceremonies. Bomber and MVP, the best terran for each team, made for one of the best games of StarCraft 2 to date. Unsurprisingly, it was on one of the new GSL maps, Tal'Darim Altar.

Bomber showed us incredible mechanics and strategy in this game. His TvT that night was so good that he had his team cheering, IM praying, and MVP making Backho-esque sighs. Though he lost, to be able to do so well in arguably the most dynamic match up in the game – against MVP – shows that Bomber is one of the best players in the world. After having his overextended army crushed, MVP managed an epic comeback with some of the most solid defence since HongUn vs. Fruitdealer and Brood War level macro. What ultimately killed Bomber was a huge flank combined with MVP shutting down drops and overly eager infantry. When Bomber's bombardment finally slowed, MVP was left barely alive, but with enough units to K.O. the exhausted Bomber Muhammad Ali style.

MVP left his booth and began to converse with NesTea, his win over Bomber not worthy of a ceremony from a GSL champion. With Artosis hailing the match as “the greatest game ever”, who did ST have left to send out? The God of War had been defeated and MVP had slipped from the clutches of death. Undefeated in the GSTL and 12-3 in PvT in 2011, Squirtle, all-killer of fOu was about to take the stage.

Squirtle opened with a fast expansion, MVP with a double fast expansion. Wary of a terran massing on 3 bases, Squirtle made the first move. With vision from a hallucinated phoenix dark templar were warped in to MVP's main. Dark templar killed a handful of scvs but more importantly, stopped mining in MVP's main for one minute and destroyed the engineering bay right before +1 attack finished. Having scouted and severely damaged MVP's economy Squirtle decided he was safe to start pumping out double upgrades and take his third.

On MVP's side of the map an armory was up and researching, but the engineering bay had not been remade and Squirtle was closing in on +2 +2. A drop from MVP sniped Squirtle's templar archives and two bought upgrades, and another a couple minutes later the twilight council and dark shrine. When MVP moved out on four bases Squirtle wisely sacrificed his fourth base while waiting for his mothership to reach his army. When it got there, Squirtle smashed through MVP, his 3-3 upgrades making all the difference for his gateway unit composition. It looked to be in the bag for Squirtle but MVP managed to scrape together enough units to hold his choke. A couple minutes later it became clear just how unbelieable MVP's macro is. With only a few patches of minerals he was able to re-secure his fourth and produce a fresh army of tanks and vikings. Far larger than the protoss army, it destroyed Squirtle's sixth base, then his army when Squirtle tried to break a deep line of siege tanks. Rather than take bases and turtle MVP tried to keep his momentum going. As soon as he entered Squirtle's side of the map however he was crushed by chargelots, immortals and storms. The army he had miracled up was dead, and so was he.

Squirtle emerged from his booth victorious. July wrapped his arms around teammates while MVP laughed off the loss, knowing who would be sent out next – NesTea, the best zerg player in the world and, as Artosis puts it, IM's most clutch player. Squirtle beat one GSL champion, but could he beat two? Game nine, the final game of this incredible night, tournament, and experience was about to begin.

Squirtle was the obvious player to send versus MVP, but his PvZ is nothing to sneeze at either. The match started on Xel'Naga Caverns and Squirtle went for a fast void ray build, NesTea gas before pool. The first void ray was easily repelled from NesTea's base but when it was joined by a group of gateway units and phoenix later on, NesTea's queens were caught and killed running back to the natural from the middle of the map and NesTea found himself backed into a corner, literally, at his natural. For a couple of seconds that is. Then the hydras popped and cleaned everything up. NesTea did not hesitate from sending a stream of hydralisks straight to Squirtle's base and ending the ninth game of the GSTL finals.