Photos by: Zemotion, Fomos.kr, Gamezone.com, Wellplayed.org
Day two of MLG Providence ended with the games from the WB Round 4 of the championship bracket. Every single game had a previous history behind it, spicing up the tournament and giving it a vengeful fragrance.
In the lower part of the champ bracket, Naniwa and NesTea met to resettle their conflict from Friday. In the MLG Global Invitational grand final, Naniwa walked out with a 2-1 victory so it was as much a matter of survival as a matter of pride for NesTea to bring this one home.
On Caverns, NesTea opened with a 2-base roach pressure and threw Naniwa in a state of panic. The Swede had to through down some emergency photon cannons just to stay alive, giving NesTea the tranquility to power up drones like a madman. Once he was safe, however, Naniwa walked out to punch the zerg with a gateway timing attack. NesTea, who was meanwhile teching to mutalisks, chose to initiate a base trade instead of facing Naniwa directly but the protoss army was clearing everything with unfathomable speed, confidently marching towards the 1-0.
Game two on Altar elevated the oddity level sky high... again. NesTea and Naniwa engaged in an almost identical mimicry of their final game from Friday: NesTea opened with an early pool and pulled off drones to force a cancel on the nexus first, Naniwa reacted by cannon blocking zerg's natural and NesTea spent some precious mining time clearing out his expansion. It was not until the double stargate transition that Naniwa strayed from yesterday's build. Nani started applying pressure with both phoenixes and void rays, sniping NesTea's queen and hydra den but had to leave off the attack so he can defend against zerg's roach counter.
Naniwa lived but among the ruckus he had lost his cyber core and had no warp gate tech to adequately stop NesTea's unending stream of units. The defense by the Swede was most valiant but in the end he had to GG out.
The third game ended in an analogical to the first way. Naniwa opened with a small cannon rush getting his nexus behind this but in the end all came down to another base trade as the roach army of NesTea and the colossus/immortal death ball of Nani engaged in a deadly race. Due to his much higher DPS, Naniwa extorted a gg out of NesTea, defeating him twice in two days.
Right after this amazing series, HerO and HuK stepped in the booth but the Korean could not quite get his revenge from their previous meeting in Orlando. HuK showed amazing in both games, making Hero's stalker rush on Caverns and double proxy gateway on Dual Sight look like a child's game.
It is absolutely unnecessary to talk in large about the next match as every eSports fan knows its story. MC vs Idra has been one of the biggest rivalry on the StarCraft scene, the two having met multiple times at various tournament venues. Thus far, Idra's record is in the negative and this series made it even more so. On Caverns, Idra attempted a queer 2-base burrow infestor rush attempting to crush MC's wall-off with infested terrans and indeed he managed to flood the protoss with speedlings. But that all did not matter not one bit as MC was meanwhile chewing at Idra's main with his warp prism sentry drop and Greg soon experienced the discomfort of surrendering the first map.
Game two saw MC living through Idra's baneling opening and making a transition to warp prism/stargate play, a build that HerO had used to punish Ret earlier that day. Although Idra scouted the voids on their way to his base, he couldn't find the time to set his defenses straight and lost the game after a minute of struggle.
The fourth match in the WR 4 was between MMA and DongRaeGu, who first met in the losers bracket of Anaheim. In July, MMA shook DRG's reputation as a ZvT mastermind so it was time for the MVP zerg to strike back.
In just a few minutes, DongRaeGu declared with his play that there will be no mercy for SlayerS' ace. In two consecutive games, DongRaeGu's exerted uncontested domination, earned the victory with the acid spit of his 2-base roach rushes. DongRaeGu would be the only non-protoss in the winners bracket semi finals.
| MLG Providence champ bracket matches | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| WB Semi Finals | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Huk | vs |  Naniwa | ||||||||||||||||||||||
  DongRaeGu | vs | MC | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Losers bracket round 3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Rain | vs | MarineKing | ||||||||||||||||||||||
 Illusion | vs | HayPro | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Boxer | vs | Artist | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Losira | vs | Puma | ||||||||||||||||||||||
The final day of MLG Providence will resume shortly at 16:00 CET. Who will stand on top of everyone else after the end of championship Sunday? Stay tuned to the action and to our coverage stream to find out.
