Photos by: Zemotion, Rakaka.se, Fomos.kr, DailyEsports
The first three quickly leave after realizing they're at loss. The bonjwa chugs some killer cocktails and stays for another round.
Even if no games were played, today's Code A would still be an interesting event, seeing how Flash, Mana, Naniwa and Effort all made their way to the studio: a soup peppered with the fatality of Round 1, meaning it doesn't matter if you're a Code S champion or an up-and-comer.
It's win or go home.
After learning the hard way that Korean terrans are no fun at all, Mana dropped to Code A Ro48 after losing to Taeja and MMA - an act that's far from shameful but one that hurt nonetheless, knowing how just one more loss would shoot him out of the GSL.
He was paired with FXOasd - yet another terran but one who only recently managed to re-qualify for Code A after missing two seasons in a row. It was a match theoretically in Mana's favor and the first game was there to support this - an aggressive storm push fried asd and Mana was up 1-0, looking to close the series. Two mouthfuls of 1/1/1 later, the Polish protoss was packing his suitcase for Code B, not finding the solution to asd's one-base plays and losing the base race the developed in the third game.
Generations met in the second match as the GSL youngster Maru faced a Brood War old-timer and OSL champion Effort. Smelling fresh blood, Effort went on a 2-base attack in game one, only to be outplayed by Maru's superior micro and defensive posture, even building and landing vikings to help with the DPS against the roaches and meticulously picking up and dropping every unit so that it lives the longest.
Effort's crazy aggression did reap results, however, and the CJ zerg took game two after a nydus worm broke into Maru's main and unleashed waves of queens and roaches to tie the score.
A deja vu scenario occurred in the third game as Effort unleashed another early attack this time with banelings and roaches but Maru once again made an art of his defense, pushing back the roaches and splitting perfectly to negate the banes. Terrans took a second victory as Effort ended his GSL run.
With Mana gone, Naniwa remained the only foreigner still alive in the GSL, having to play KeSPA protoss Mini of team STX Soul in a true foreigner vs elephant face-off.
Game one on OHana saw an economic opening by both players into an immortal rush by Naniwa that caught Mini in a bad position, forcing him to pull the probes from his natural (and losing them all) to chase the Swede off his base and even persecute him all the way back to his territory thanks to the higher colossus count and faster thermal lance. There, Naniwa tried to put a valiant defense it was mathematically impossible for him to win: Mini had twice as many colossi, who shot from farther away and were better upgraded. 1-0 for the Korean.
Daybreak was longer but not necessarily more exciting and in the end it was again all about colossus production. Mini started it earlier and had more. Naniwa started it later due to relying more on Immortals, had less and lost. Having to deal with the constant warp prism nuisance from Mini that killed probes, stalkers and forced nexus cancels also was not a particularly pleasant occupation.
The day would end with Flash against Killer, a Young Ho vs Sang Ho face off between one present and one former KeSPA player.
Killer opened with a nexus first into a 2-base colossus contain but broke his teeth into Flash's bunker defense and once vikings scared the protoss army away, Flash easily walked out with a superior army to take the first set.
All was fine and dandy in bonjwa-land as Flash leads 1-0 and opens with a 1-base hellion drop into banshee play hoping to snipe a second victory but a dark shrine from Killer messes up his plans. Completely oblivious to Killer's tech, Flash lost all but about 20 of his SCVs to Killers 40+ probes. As his desperation counter attack fails, Flash had to tap out and try his luck is game three.
On Entombed Valley, Flash went back to his macro roots and expanded explosively, taking five bases by the 15th minute mark while at the same time cautiously engaging Killer's army, only sniping and/or injuring colossi before backing off to safety.
A "when behind" dark shrine came in from Killer but never did the templars do damage comparable to game two. Losing only a handful of SCVs at his fourth before cleaning them up, Flash was still marginally ahead in terms of supply. The "kill his whole army" follow up technique was executed flawlessly, Flash advanced to the Ro32 to face Mini.
GSL Code A Ro48 Day 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  asd | 2-1 |   Mana | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maru | 2-1 |  Effort | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mini | 2-0 |  Naniwa | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Flash | 2-1 | Killer | ||||||||||||||||||||||
