Say whatever you want for the Code A tournament but this time it's as close to perfect as it can get. Four players of three different teams and of all three different races reached the last round before the finale grande. People were excited for every single match: for Sage, the protoss with the ungodly build orders; FXO's Oz and Gumiho both craving a shot at a big title; and Curious, who before the day was past would amaze us not once or twice, before... Well, we'll get to it soon enough.
The series between Gumiho and Curious was nothing short of spectacular. It began on Belshir Beach where, after several run-arounds and engagements with indefinite winners, the game reached a base-trade scenario. On paper, Gumiho had the better army and the better position, having destroyed Curious' main and natural and having settled in front of his last two remaining bases. But Curious showed incredible resilience, rebuilding his tech almost from scratch and holding till Gumiho starved out at which point he banelinged him to death.
The second game on Crossfire was even more explosive and I use the adjective with full purpose. Gumiho opened with reactor hellion into fast academy, using nukes to break the spine crawler wall so that he can do drone damage with his factory units. But once again Curious' will to live was beyond comprehension and survived till Lair tech without dropping too far behind. Same could not be said for Gumiho, whose first and only mistake was getting himself trapped to the wall at the mercy of zerg's banelings (of course, mercy was not given!). Curious needed only one more game to seal the deal and he did it by repeating his triumphant defence on Terminus, turning a game almost gone with a huge tech switch, which I will talk about in detail in the next section.
In the second semi-final, Sage got a quick lead by crushing Oz's 1-gate council with a simple 4-gate but was tied in games on Crossfire by making a foolish mistake. In that same game, Oz opened DT, but Sage scouted the proxy pylon and saw the blur and as his robo was already up there was no threat in dying to Oz. Thus, he marched on with his gateway/robo army, but overstayed his welcome at Oz's base, losing both his immortals and colossus.
The triumph of Oz came with the next two sets, and swiftly to that. On Fortress he opened a with a quicker 3-gate, killing probes and forcing Sage into a counter-attack, which he convincingly defended for the win. On Belshir Beach it was just a matter of repelling a poorly executed double proxy gate.
| Code A October Semi Finals Results | |||
| Curious 3:0 Gumiho | |||
  Curious | > |  Gumiho | @ Belshir Beach |
| Curious | > | Gumiho | @ Crossfire |
| Curious | > | Gumiho | @ Terminus |
| Oz 3:1 Sage | |||
 Oz | < | Sage | @ Daybreak |
| Oz | > | Sage | @ Crossfire |
| Oz] | > | Sage | @ Xel'Naga Fortress |
| Oz | > | Sage | @ Belshir Beach |
If one has to took a set out of all these seven and cherish it till the end of time that would be Curious vs Gumiho on Terminus. Between you and me, I have always favoured defensive zergs and admired the people that were playing it perfectly. Back in the beta it was SEn, an old favourite of mine who impressed me with his ability to hold EVERY kind of cheese, rush or just full frontal attack. Then when GSL picked up, the natural choice was, of course, NesTea who I loved after this game, where NesTea showed that you actually only need one zergling and one spore crawler to hold a 4-gate/stargate all-in.
But with his play on Terminus, Curious is close to topping them. Curious played on the defensive as he could not do much against Gumiho's pure mech and the terran was positioning too smartly to fall like Nada did to NesTea earlier in Code S. Curious stalled the terran to his best until he got brood lords out but the thor count was too strong, and Gumiho was advancing further and further, dangerously close to Curiou's tech. His overlords were also at the mercy of Gumiho's units.
Much like the NesTea vs Choya game from above, the casters sentenced Curious to lose this game. What they failed to spot right away was Curious' monstrous tech switch, as he poured all his resources and all his supply into 24 freakin' mutalisks. The terran must have been frustrated beyond all borders as his tanks fell to the overwhelming flock of mutas, preceded by his third and fourth dying to a lightning-fast counter attack. Gumiho was starving for money and there was when his much expensive mech-centric tech came back to haunt him. The game was turned around, Curious would advance to the finals!
As Code S proceeds the way it does, one should rejoice to the fact that we will see a PvZ final on October 10th. The experience will also be enhanced having in mind who shall compete for the Code S spot!
Curious comes from a looong ZvP win streak (8-and-2 with eight straight victories in his last ten games), accumulated at GSTL and iCCup Korean Weekly. Interestingly enough, so does Oz, who according to TLPD is undefeated in this match-up, not to mention that he did beat Curious in the GSTL, although not at all convincingly.
The hard part when predicting this stems from the fact that none of the player has done anything impressive in individual tournaments. Curious has been on on-again-off-again basis with Code A until he finally made it to here. He is most known for all-killing fOu in this GSTL but that's where it pretty much ends. Oz, on the other hand, hasn't had even as much and his only PvZ in this Code A run was against SUPERSTAR who is by no means at the skill level of Curious.
What I am trying to say is that the water's very murky to see clearly into the future. For all intents and purposes, I would throw my money on Curious, only because he so impressed me in the Ro4, while Oz kind of just sat there while Sage was killing himself (not intending to demean his feat at all, by the way!). It will be close though, maybe even a full 7-set series, but after all on October 10th all shall be decided.
