A Code S veteran, two royal roaders and "the best terran in the world": Today's GSL semi-finals had a lot to put on the promo poster.
Although it can be argued whether those were the best Code S semis ever line-up-wise, the hype was certainly not without merit. With one of the youngest zergs to ever play on a stage this high against Liquid's best player and with GSL's monarch versus KeSPA's protoss sensation, something had to go horrendously wrong for this Wednesday to be boring.
There are no men like me. Only me.
Already in one premier grand final after a dramatic 4-3 comeback, Rain was looking like the hottest player in Korea and even in the face of four times GSL winner Mvp he was being praised as the favorite. This belief grew stronger as Mvp’s hellion/banshee opening in game one was deflected with minimal casualties and his main marine/tank army then crushed straight on with Rain’s perfect chargelot/immortal composition.
Down one game, Mvp decided to stick what every terran knows best: play solid, get 1/1 and ghosts, EMP the entirety of the protoss army, win. This match would not only bring the tie but would also set the tone for the remainder of the series with the two players trading set for set and play for play until the final seconds.
In a complete déjà vu from yesterday, Mvp took a page of Last’s book and went bio into an SCV pull. His first attack forced a cancel on the third but the follow up attack hit almost the exact same anti-timing and the SCV train arrived just as storm finished. To balance the scales once again, Mvp had to rely on double drops with headlong aggression and rapid expanding to work around Rain’s double forge.
Cloud Kingdom welcomed the rubber match and a 6-minute Dark Shrine for Rain but every Templar that the protoss sent was spotted and killed on sight, leaving him with one very useless building in his base. Rain had to abandon his initial plan and transition into colossi and third base but Mvp was already working towards a preemptive solution for Rain’s tech, churning out three Vikings at a time. SCVs was pulled once again but this time the move was not as risky – storm was nowhere near completion and the anti-colossi force was already huge enough. Buffering with his workers, Mvp pushed up Rain’s ramp, squeezing a GG out of him and advancing to his fifth Code S Grand Final.
The other royal road
For the past few months, Taeja had forged a name for himself that goes something like “the best terran in the world”, defending this high status quo by simply travelling around the globe and beating people. After two Code S Ro8’s, Liquid’s star terran was for the first time ever a step away from a GSL grand final. He only needed to eliminate that school kid Life.
Although not with the length of Mvp vs Rain, this series would give us no fewer things to write about. Charging into the match completely unimpressed by Taeja’s 70% TvZ win-rate and record history that dates his last BoX TvZ loss somewhere in June, Life would show a different way of playing zerg. Surfing on early-game July-esque baneling aggression that’s never all-inish but a cover for his additional bases, Life was literally everywhere. Taeja’s thirds were under constant pressure (when he got them), his SCVs suffered baneling hit after baneling hit and his bio forces were fungalled and diligently slaughtered times and times again. Life was so efficient with his lair-tech ferocity that the only time he reached hive he did not need it anymore as Taeja was already on the brink of defeat. Many analogies can be drawn to this series, a sadistic tiger playing with a half-dead mouse being among the prettier.
CODE S SEMI FINALS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Mvp | 3-2 |  Rain | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mvp 0-1 Rain @ Whilrwild Mvp 1-1 Rain @ Abyssal City Mvp 1-2 Rain @ Entombed Valley Mvp 2-2 Rain @ Antiga Shipyard Mvp 3-2 Rain @ Cloud Kingdom | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Life | 3-0 | Taeja | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Life 1-0 Taeja @ Entombed Valley Life 2-0 Taeja @ Whirlwind Life 3-0 Taeja @ Abyssal City | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
As he goes into his first ever Code S final only at the age of 14, Life has to think about what he can do to tilt the king of the GSL, IM’s Mvp. To a large extent, Taeja’s defeat lay in him being taken aback by Life’s 24/7 attack mode but Mvp has one week to dissect zerg’s style and engineer a response. On the other hand, during his career Life has showed that he is anything but predictable and IM’s ace will have to take more than a handful of things in consideration.
The grand final is scheduled for Saturday, October 20 and however it ends, GSL’s records will welcome another memorable story.
