Even seasoned veterans are bound to fall some day. This was proven as up/down group C was played out and the very promising terran hope MaruPrime crushed more or less everyone to become the youngest Code S participant.
To Code S we go: Maru
VS TheSTC on Belshir Beach
It's always a splendid view when you see so much potential in such a young person. Though Maru might not be the new Flash (at least he hasn't yet showed us that he, in fact, is anywhere close to that level), we saw that the youngest GSL participant has grown some canine fangs.
Agaist TheSTC, Maru opened with a small bunker rush that transitioned into a proxy hellion/banshee rush, with the production facilities being just south of TheSTC's main. Maru soon forced a lift on the natural, bringing the two economies to an equilibrium, but the hard-bitten in many battles TheSTC had it all planned. Making use of Maru's recurring hesitation, TheSTC fought through his opponent's larger tank count with patience, better vision and a banshee, which essentially nullified Maru's only advantage.
VS sC on Crossfire
With small chokes at every five metres and highgrounds all over the place, Crossfire is always a premise for deep TvT chess games, even more than on other maps. Half of the game was centered around the high ground in front of sC's natural as Maru followed his raven opening with a 2-base occupation. Having the faster reinforcement speed, however, sC soon got the supply upper hand and stimmed up to chase away the enemy forces.
What did not go well for him was the fact that his economy was dying. Although Maru was on two bases as well, he did not have to suffer a 5 minute long siege and sC had not third CC on the way. He chose the only viable option - float his main to his third but instead of a juicy mineral line he landed amidsts a marine drop by Maru, which destroyed sC's only hope of steady economy.
Checkmate.
VS BumbleBee on Antiga Shipyard
Maru has been very aggressive up to this point in the up and down matches and there were no indications of him slowing down against Bumblebee as well. The young terran opened with a strong medivac aggression that did not seem to do too much damage from the start but grew exponentially more dangerous as Bumblebee started losing queens, spine crawlers and drones.
After the early game hassle was over, the game flowed into the very standard TvZ gorge with the usual marine/tank/medivac against baneling/infestor/broodlord antics. In the only big fight that occurred, Bumblebee was very careless with his gas-heavy units and spent a lot of banelings in clearing up the tank count of Maru, only to find himself without any support for his brood lords once the marines stimmed forward. The game was lost at the barrel of the gauss rifle.
VS Alicia on Dual Sight
Going for a 1-base stargate has ended into Alicia's favor many a time in his PvTs so he figure "Why the hell not do it again?"
Simple. Because Alicia is more or less Inca in terms of openings - but with a stargate instead of dark templars - it's very easy for any player to counter him, even without proper scouting. Thus, Maru teched to stim a little bit faster and got an early viking out to completely shut down the inevitable void ray rush of Alicia. A marine/tank follow-up was the end of this very short and one-sided game as Alicia was never given the chance to engage under a beneficial for him angle.
VS JYP on Cloud Kingdom
BitByBiiiiiiiiiiiiit!
With just one victory separating him from his Code S spot, Maru opened standard with 1-rax into orbital (duh!) but sneaked around two SCVs to build dual proxy barracks close to JYP's main. The protoss, who was at that time going for a 1-gate expand, spotted the SCV pull a bit(bybit) too late and straight on died after his only force field wore off.
To Code S we go: TheSTC
VS sC on Daybreak
In his second game, TheSTC took to the sky, opening with a couple of medivac drops that ate into sC's SCV supply. His advantage would not stand for too long, though, as sC made use of the timing window before TheSTC's later siege tech would kick in and pressured his opponent with a marine/tank attack by ground.
But as we mentioned before, TheSTC is a terran veteran and he had just won a TvT series by playing from the defensive so this wasn't exactly a novelty for him that day. Patiently waiting for siege tech to complete, TheSTC walked out to clean the army of sC (despite losing a lot of SCVs of his own) and followed that with a doom-drop that served a very appropriate to its name purpose.
VS Alicia on Cloud Kingdom
Back in the old GSL days, Alicia was one of the rising stars of protoss, who gained no small norotiety by killing terrans with extremely precisioned technical all-in rushes. His style was exactly duplicated on Cloud Kingdom as he went against TheSTC.
Seeing the terran going for an early CC, Alicia skipped his expansion altogether, went up to three gates and threw down a proxy stargate south of STC's natural. In addition, he deployed sentries all over the perimeter to stop scouts from going out and put down several proxy pylons so he can reinforce at any position.
Waiting for three void rays seemed to be a bit too long of a delay but in the end it paid off - with all of them charged upon the rocks, Alicia just flew in and one-shotted anything of STC with such speed that I could barely take a nice screen shot. With no stim in time, TheSTC was very much dead.
VS JYP on Entombed Valley
There is no arguing that the best TvPs are the ones that don't end in the early game. This is why one should be grateful that STC's plan to crush JYP with a marauder drop and a frontal bio attack was not brought to fruition thanks to JYP's robo tech which got him an immortal and colossus just in time.
The rest of the game was just a long string of examples of how good protoss upgrades actually are, why you should dodge storms, and why zealot/archon tanking is tougher than a Mass Effect reaper.
VS BumbleBee on Metropolis
STC's next game was a complete oppposite to the former. Bumblebee opened with a 2-base roach/baneling bust but could only burn down the front wall and no economy damage was dealt whatsoever. TheSTC kindly responded with a devastating two-banshee attack that turned into a gg from BumbleBee once hellions and marines arrived to their aid.
TIEBREAKER VS Alicia on Dual Sight
With the group going for a long time and entering an actual tiebreaker, it was only natural for players to make mistakes. Few of those were made by Alicia in his match against TheSTC as he botched his 5-gate attack after failing to kill even one bunker and, later, was completely out of position when TheSTC stormed his third nexus.
Losing his base was not the last of Alicia's worries, however, as TheSTC was nimble with the EMPs and rendered his templars useless, allowing him to hold-position his bio army and shoot the protoss units dead.
TIEBREAKER VS sC on Antiga Shipyard
Both players ticked each other in the early stages of the game with TheSTC opening with a preigniter drop and sC responding with a bio drop of his own. Although none of them were particularly useful to their commanders, sC seemed to have suffered greater losses - he'd lost one and a half medivacs worth of bio while the only casualties of TheSTC were two hellions.
Whether this small advantage was essential to TheSTCs follow-up is arguable, as the two-base mech timing attack of the oGs terran had the perfect composition anyway - a lot of hellions to melt the marines and tank marauder fire, just enough tanks to deal the damage necessary for the victory, and even a raven for some extra utility. TheSTC was now Code S at the expense of Alicia and sC.
Final standings
| 2012 Season 2 Up/Down matches group C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  MaruPrime | 4-1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| oGs_TheSTC | 5-2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| MVP_sC | 3-3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 SlayerS_Alicia | 3-3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| EG.JYP | 2-3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 BumbleBee | 0-5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Alicia > JYP TheSTC > Maru Alicia > BumbleBee TheSTC > sC JYP > BumbleBee Maru > sC Alicia > TheSTC Maru > BumbleBee JYP > TheSTC sC > Alicia TheSTC > BumbleBee sC > JYP Maru > Alicia sC > BumbleBee Maru > JYP TIEBREAKERS TheSTC > sC TheSTC > Alicia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
