[Up/Down] Group B Preview/Group A recap (S5)

Match results from Live Report Thread by Shellshock1122.
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It was inevitable that the strongest Code S in history would then be followed by the strongest Up/Down groups in history. Last night’s games were a test of skill and endurance as the 6 players fought to the death to make it to next season’s Code S.

TSL_HyuN finally breaks through to Code S

Everyone in the group was incredibly close in skill, but there was one player who stood up above the rest. The King of Fight Club, Hyun, showed his true strength in the GSL and overcame whatever barrier had stopped him from getting into Code S for the last few seasons.

Almost all of Hyun’s games were one-sided beat downs. He would get a lead in the beginning and would never let it go, playing out each situation perfectly. ST_Hack was his first victim of the night. Hyun opened up with some defensive roaches, got to 4 bases and held off all of Hack’s aggression with minimal effort, whether it came in the form of hellions, medivacs, or marines. The game abruptly ended when Hyun bopped Hack as Hack’s army was unsieged and caught off guard. His second victim was MMA, who had his workers massacre by a roach, zergling, and baneling bust. MMA tried to fight it out with good marine medivac micro, but the advantage for HyuN was far too much to overcome, and he was wiped out by HyuN's army when he tried to move out. Against the recently teamless BBoongBBoong, Hyun just took a risk on economy and tech in the early game. B4 wasn’t able to capitalize on his opponent's defensive hole, and was rolled over by Hyun’s superior roach, hydra, infestor composition.

EG.JYP.RC: Not the Protoss we needed, but the Protoss we wanted.

In the best game of the night, JYP put on a display of a very original style of PvZ on Antiga against Hyun. The game started with a 10 pool against forge first. The game normalized from there, at which point JYP turned on the heat and went for a phoenix DT strategy. In one of the most tense moments of the match, JYP had to use his phoenixes to deny Hyun’s overseer and changeling from scouting his dt shrine and trick them by chronoboosting a blink upgrade on the twilight.

Once the danger passed, he quickly canceled the blink upgrade and started his offense. JYP warped in 4 DTs in Hyun’s main. There was a frantic exchange as JYP tried to snipe overseers, spores while attacking his opponent's third, and Hyun tried to fight off all of JYP’s attacks. It was an exciting sequence, but at the end of the harassment, JYP was far ahead in economy, but far behind in army. This lead to a counter-offensive from HyuN that JYP barely held off. This still left JYP with a crippled army and Hyun going up to infestor broodlord. JYP realized he was behind and threw a hail mary with his last blink stalker colossus army. He walked around Hyun’s army in the center, killed Hyun’s 4th in the center and then blinked into the main. HyuN let his army fall rapidly out of position as he attempted to deal with the attack, but JYP was unable to take advantage of the momentary lapse. HyuN then cleaned up JYP's army, securing his promotion to Code S.

That game also sealed the fate for JYP as that loss made him 2 - 3 in the group. It is a strange twist of fate that JYPvT has become more reliable than JYPvZ as JYP was able to beat MMA and FnaticRC aLive. Against Alive he used late-game multi-tasking and superior engagements to win a game he should have lost. Against MMA he used a clever 2 base 7 gate chargelot attack to bust MMA. His other PvZ of the night was against B4, where he lost after messing up on an immortal-sentry all-in on Ohana.

aLive fights through hell to allow Hack to advance in second place.

The other 5 players in this group were all fighting tooth and nail to try to get the second Code S spot. The end result was Hack achieving a 3 - 2 record and every other player tied in third with 2 - 3, putting him in second place. However, as is often the case in Up/Downs, Hack needed some help from an already eliminated aLive in the final match of the night to advance for sure.

Hack took an early loss to HyuN, but came back by beating Alive with a nice denial of Alive’s early game harassment with a medivac hellion marine drop. Hack would take the game with superior engagements throughout the game which ended with Hack having a large enough supply lead to break Alive through the center. Hack then outplayed JYP with a 3 rax into cc opener. This allowed Hack to kill JYP’s natural and then he furthered his advantage with a drop and canceling JYP’s third. This left JYP in no position to defend against Hack’s bio medivac ball and Hack took the game. Hack’s last two games were quite one-sided as he defended against MMA’s 1-1-1 all-in with a bunker and siege tanks. On the other hand, he lost to BBoongBBoong’s lings which left him with a final score of 3-2, and tentatively putting him in second place. However, the previous loss had put B4 at 2 - 2 with one game left to play against aLive. Given the head-to-head tie-breaker rule in the Up/Downs, a win for BBoongBBoong against aLive would mean he would tie Hack at 3 - 2, but advance to Code S based on the head-to-head rule.

Pride of a Terran

Alive’s hopes of moving onto Code S had already been dashed by MMA. After going 0 - 2 in his first few matches, he had to win beat MMA to have the tiniest chance at survival. This was not meant to be as MMA outplayed him in a TvT on Ohana. MMA went for mech and was able to minimize the harassment Alive tried to do with his bio tank force. MMA moved out and Alive tried to initiate a desperate base trade scenario, but MMA had too much supply so he was able to clean up the trade and keep pushing. This left Alive with a score of 0 - 3 and no chance at all of advancing.

With nothing left to fight for but his pride, Alive continued to play his best in his last 2 games of the night. First he beat Hyun in a TvZ. Hyun did a roach baneling bust that Alive masterfully deflected with hellions, banshee and a tank. At the same time, Alive did crippling damage with a cloaked banshee. Alive followed up with blue flame hellion harassment and a strong mech composition. By the time Alive moved out with his army, he had more thors than Hyun had roaches. With the writing on the wall, Alive won his first game.

That put him at 1 - 3 heading into the final match of the night against BBoongBBoong, where he held both Hack and B4's fates in his hands. If B4 won, he could move onto Code S. If Alive won, Hack would advance instead. Like a true professional, aLive assured Hack he would do his best despite his assured elimination. Not surprisingly, aLive went for one of his most successful signature strategies: a proxy barracks all-in with an SCV train. It worked.


A Light in the Darkness

MMA walked into the GSL tonight wearing his slayers jacket like a prisoner, counting the days until he is released from his contract. The Slayers incident seems to have taken its toll on MMA as even in victory, MMA was a study in concentrated frustration. Despite that and failing to get past these Up/Down groups, MMA fans can still cling to some of hope as MMA still had a solid showing, ending up tied with 3 other players for third place. Considering how much stress he is under right now, he showed a high level of skill, though not up to the level in his prime. His one game against B4 in particular showed vintage MMAvZ. The game started off unorthodox with MMA’s 11/11 rax being scouted. He quickly switched to a double command center, but was punished by B4’s ling aggression. This caused MMA to fall far behind in the game. However, in classic MMA fashion he defended against B4’s muta ling/bling aggression and then pushed back to kill B4 with great positioning, multi-tasking and timing before B4 could get up to his infestor BL army.

Overall Outlook

With this, the prophecy is fulfilled and Hyun has finally moved on from Code A purgatory to Code S, where he will join his TSL brethren Polt and Symbol. While Hack got a bit lucky with how things turned out tonight with Alive winning the game for him, he should feel confident knowing that he still placed ahead of the 4 Code S regulars and he will try to use his lucky break and try to make a run of it in the next GSL.

*Actually Season Five

Editor's note: The breakneck pace of season five continues, with another Up/Down group being played in a desperate rush to finish Code S in almost a month's time. Tonight features the first five-man group of the season, where there will be no room for mistakes lest one be sent home on a painful tie-breaker. With that, I bid you adieu, and leave you with Fionn's preview of Group B.


*Top two advance to Code S.

5. STX_Mini

mini is a KeSPA player, and the big transition to Starcraft 2, he was one of the better young players in the league. Still, after his disastrous performance against Curious in the Ro24 where he predicted it would be an easy victory, he will be starting at the bottom of this list. The other four players in this group have all made Code S before, know how things work in the GSL, and are all good enough to make it back into Code S on a good night. mini was able to surprisingly knock out Naniwa and Flash in the first two stages of Code A, so that isn't to say there isn't a chance he won't come out of nowhere and elephant stomp the group. But with the least amount of experience in the group, and the fact that he left a bad taste my mouth after his games against Curious makes me wary of ranking him higher.

4. LG-IM_YoDa

Yoda is in the same position Happy was in last season. He came into last season's Code S on fire, being called the best player on LG-IM by Mvp and getting into Code S without dropping a single map in his Code A campaign. Happy was becoming the irrelevant third Terran on IM with Yoda becoming a royal road candidate. Then Yoda fell out of Code S right away, Happy made the Ro16 by beating KeSPA's messiah Rain (yes, that happened), and Life went on to actually become the first royal roader with a victory over Mvp. While his stock isn't as high as it was going into the fourth season, Yoda is still a wild card. He had a tough first group last season, he'll have much more experience. The three players above him are all guilty of inconsistency lately, so watch out for the least talked about player in the group.

3. StilL_SlayerS_Genius

It hasn't really been a good 2012 for Genius. He finally made a GSL final, but had to face his frenemy DongRaeGu in the finals and got beat 2 - 4, having to put up with ceremonies performed in his own booth. He followed his loss by taking a leave of absence from MVP, missing a few GSTL games, and eventually leaving the team that he had become famous on. After trying to join a foreign team and getting rejected by Liquid, he finally settled on going to Slayers. Liquid picked up Sea two months later, Slayers has officially announced disbandment, and Genius is stuck having to look for a new team once again. He's still a mid-to-high Code S player if he puts it all together, but that seems to happen a lot less often lately. Seeing his old friend DRG in the same group, trying to overcame a similar predicament might give him added motivation to get some revenge for the first Code S finals of the year.

2. ST_Bomber

Bomber will probably make it out of this group. He'll then probably win his first game or two in Code S before losing four straight and going straight back to Code A. With Bomber continually finding himself in this position, it's hard to find new things to say about him. He's really good, the most inconsistent player in the world, and we're still waiting him to make it back to the quarterfinals after a year and a half away from his last appearance. Bomber didn't get the easiest group last season, having to face DongRaeGu and then Gumiho, but Bomber wasn't supposed to be a player who cared about getting easy or hard groups. He was supposed to be a Code S champion a year ago, but never lived up to his hype and potential. Hey, maybe this will finally be his season? Yeah...maybe.

1. MVP.DongRaeGu

Losing to Roro in the Code A Ro24 isn't that big of a deal. DongRaeGu was primarily preparing for MC in the OSL semifinals, and he had to go up against the strongest KeSPA Zerg in the final round of Code A. He should have been able to win the second map of the series, having a huge drone advantage, but it isn't the end of the world. He's still in the OSL finals against Rain, is in a winnable Up/Down group, and gets to beat up on his former pal Genius for old times sake. Having to juggle practicing for the OSL finals and Up/Downs might be tough, but he should be familiar enough with the players in his group to get through without much trouble. Failing to make it to next season's Code S would be a bad sign entering his final clash with Rain, but unlike Bomber, DRG is usually someone you can bet on to make it through.