NASL: Korean hegemony at day one

The Korean crusade began with Puma vs Ret and the TSL players was swift to execute his supremacy, going 2-0 in two very quick sets, bunker rushing ret on Caverns and picking him apart with hellion into tank/marine pressure on Crossfire. By defeating one of the best Zerg in Europe, the NASL open tournament champion proved that he deserves to be among the top 8.

In the second match for the evening, Sheth found Squirtle hard to beat as the Korean got the early lead with tenacious blink stalker play on Caverns and sealed the series by punishing an engagement mistake by Sheth on Crossfire. In the said second game, Sheth played almost a perfect game and managed to down the economy of Squirtle to 14 probes only, but a bad attack into a tight choke put the protoss on equal grounds and Squirtle would eventually win with his cost efficient army.

July and Moon also advanced over their opponents with 2-0 victories. The God of War went through Morrow who was now playing Terran again. The Swede managed to endure up until the late game in both sets but the high tier army of zerg would prove difficult to swallow. Moon, on the other hand, was much less tolerant towards HasuObs, rolling him over with a massive waves of banelings in the first set and mutalisking the protoss to death for the 2-0 win.

The roaches of Sen and Darkforce were the heroes of the night, bringing two foreign victories in the Ro16. Sen won the decisive third set against Zenio with a risky, yet incredibly quick roach pressure that found the Korean defenseless.
Darkforce, on the other hand, had to fight the open tournament runner-up Alive, who came as a replacement for Strelok, the latter not being able to fly to Toronto due to visa issues. Darkforce won the Shattered Temple set as his roaches popped in time to deny the monstrous hellion harass by Alive, keeping him standing and allowing him to live until the late-game where he would stomp the terran forces with all of swarm's fury.

Two TvPs ended the Ro16, as SeleCT defeated White-ra 2-0 by punishing Ukrainian's DT opening in game 1 and beating him down with marauder shells in the second. SeleCT would soon find out who his Ro8 opponent would be and that was none other than the Kratos Protoss MC who prevailed over Boxer with a perfect score. The oGs champion of many SC2 tournaments used a Void Ray and a chargelot/archon army (in the first and second set, respectively) to erase the Emperor out of the NASL play-offs.