HongUn vs 
MoonTo be frank, the games between HongUn and Moon were not as good as I hoped for. It all started on Metalopolis with Moon throwing a quick third as soon as he scouted HongUn's fast expo build. But that did not make him more prepared for Hong's blink aggression. The fight began at the 6 o'clock ramp and HongUn slowly but surely pushed towards the third of Moon, having close to perfect blink micro. To hinder his cause, Moon's choices of when and how to engage were also quite bad and when Hong added some Sentries to the mix the game was over.
A quick turn of events occurred on Xel'Naga Caverns. HongUn opened with blink before nexus but Moon was ready for it. When he scouted the protoss army move out, he did a ling run-by forcing a cancel on the nexus and went on to engage the blinkers in the middle. Sloppy micro from HongUn lost him the majority of his army - never a good thing. It is even worse when an adequate Zerg reacts properly to this as Moon did, adding a third expo and a macro hatch to secure his win.
The Dual Sight set is actually the reason I say these games were bad. And by bad I mean boring and one sided. It all began as the set on Metalopolis, with Moon throwing a third (this time at the gold) when the expo build from protoss was scouted. But it was not Blink this time, it was a standard, brutal and unforgiving 5-Gate rush. And Moon was utterly unprepared for it and died in a matter of seconds. That's all...
Revival vs 
EnsnareThis match was actually sick and grew sicker with every minute it went on. The first set on Metalopolis started quite normally, you see, with Ensnare opening reactor hellions into Banshees and getting around 15 kills with the latter. Revival, though, had his third running and probably did not care much about the average damage to his economy and continued to drone up and pump the standard zerg army composition in ZvT, poking with mutalisks whenever possible. Ensnare soon attempted a push towards zerg's third but Revival showed careful and patient defense and completely crushed the bio/tank army of Ensnare. The Terran would eventually kill the expo in question just before the saturation of the fourth kicked in and feeling confident would add a Fusion Core for some BCs. Unfortunately, that might've been too cocky of him as Revival had also brought put the full tech of Zerg and with a powerful force of Brood Lords, Infestors, Mutas and Cracklings, he intercepted the Terran push, crushed tanks and BCs and won the game.
Now, it was that second set on Belshir Beach that made me express my emotions out loud, with unending, high-pitched "DAAAAMN"s and "OHMYGOOOOD"s. Ensnare kicked off with a Maka rax, hidden at his gold and soon Revival found himself against a powerful bunker push that eventually killed his hatchery. Ensnare then smartly pulled back, regrouped and went for double factory build, while Revival retook his natural and started climbing the long road to coming back.
And that happened in a blink of an eye among a pile of green goo, when Revival somehow did a baneling roll-by and killed almost every single SCV on the map. Pinning the terran down to a no-economy position, the only thing he had to do was fend off the final bio/tank push and win the set. And that he failed to do, even though he had the superior army composition. Revival sloppily lost his mutaliks prior to the engagement and just as his opponent, he had no base and barely any economy.
For more that 30 minutes up from this point, the two players engaged in a match that was walking on a razor's edge. Ensnare fortified himself at the gold and rebuilt to whatever extent he could his production facilities, while forcing Revival to keep up Ling/Baneling production and to directly and indirectly punish his economy with small bio/tank drops.
But being too cute with drops is never a good thing and after losing a precious amount of bio, the core of the small remaining terran army was rolled over by lings of Revival and after some more (!) minutes of cat-and-mouse, Revival actually pulled off the victory. Epic, epic 45-minute game indeed.
FruitDealer vs AceAce opened the Belshir Beach set with his trademark fast expo into Stargate, but his Void Rays could not do any damage at all and thus he switched to 7 gates with Colossi in attempt to crush FruitDealer's roach army with ground forces. But that was not all that the former GSL champion had in store and as Ace moved to push Zerg's gold, he was heartily met with plenty of overlords full of banelings. His entire army was obliterated and Ace had to think of something entirely different if he wanted to win. Thus, he transitioned to almost pure blink stalkers with just a pinch of immortals for some extra damage, but FruitDealer was way ahead: he had already added infestors to his army and Ace just could not take a breathe as his forces were methodically slaughtered.
Also, while on the topic of slaughtering, do you know what a 7-Gate blink rush does to an unprepared Zerg on Xel'Naga Caverns? The same thing it does on every other map.
Although Ace showed impressive ferocity in the second set, I thought he would give up the rubber match on Metalopolis in the same manner as in the first set. His 5-gate push was easily defended and it was all downhill for the protoss from that point on. FruitDealer's massive roach army and overlorded banelings were keeping the protoss numbers low until the Brood Lords came out with the intention to finish the game.
Pushing through the bottom corridor, FruitDealer completely missed the protoss blink army that was moving in to attack his fourth. Both players shook hands over a base-trade scenario and there FruitDealer made his first huge mistake. The Zerg's decision to go for the barely mining natural instead of the freshly warped-in third gave Ace enough time to get some Void Rays out, which nullified the Brood Lord tech and forced the Roaches to retreat. FruitDealer tried to reposition his 10+ spines at his only mining base, but Ace smartly zoned out whatever roaches he could, lowering their numbers and making the conquering of the Zerg possible.
Squirtle vs MarineKingSo after all the exciting games it came to the game between MarineKing vs Squirtle. Which was not. MarineKing showed us why he is still one of the best in the world and opened the Metalopolis set with highly aggressive ghost push to counter Squirtle's quick expo. Although the Protoss spread his sentries as much as possible, he still did not have enough to stop the bio force. Squirtle was dead before the 10-minute mark.
MarineKing attempted the same on the second set on Terminus but Squirtle cleverly anticipated that and was safe due to his DT tech. He immediately tried to do a harassment after the rush was defended but it was no problem at all for the three-times finalist and he successfully secured his third. At that point, Squirtle for some reason decided to not put a third of his own and started falling more and more behind supply-wise, reaching a 50 supply deficit by the end of the game. Of course, such disadvantage is not easily neglected and MarineKing advanced to the Ro32 with strong bio push.
