There it is, the Code S quartet for this last 2012 season. In a day of KeSPA against KeSPA and zerg against zerg, two more players packed their luggage for Las Vegas.
The quarter finals of Season 5 came and went swiftly, pointing beyond all doubt who are the better players. The series were not close, the games – with few exception – were not back-and-forth and so those who won did it without suffering too big an opposition.
While this was very true for yesterday’s games, it is even more so for today’s. Only seven sets in total were played to complete the final four and most of them ended early, further advocating the domination of the winners.
In the all-KeSPA quarter final, Soulkey’s execution by Bogus was brutal, and merciless.
Similarly to how a cat plays with a mouse, Bogus gave Soulkey the momentary pleasure of living for more than ten minutes in game one by not killing him with hellions and banshee and allowing him to get some mutas, roaches, banes and even brood lords. Zerg’s enjoyment of life however was fleeting though it was not until Bogus stimmed and cleaned two of his bases that he fully realized that.
Tired or bored or just not wanting to risk late-game ZvT, Bogus switched to super aggression mode and brought home the next two games in a prompt fashion. Three blue flame raids in a row put the drone casualties at near forty on Antiga and a double rax bunker rush continued to harvester holocaust, putting the score at a final 3-0 for the terran.
This victory, convincing as it was, must surely be to Bogus’ supporters as the STX terran seems to be getting stronger with every passing round. His next match is against online cup king HyuN and the upside is exactly that – there are probably more replays of HyuN in databases around the internet that there are of any other player alive. Furthermore, while HyuN hasn’t lost a ZvT in international tournaments since July, his well-being in Korean ones has certainly not been flourishing. The chances of KeSPA for a first ever GSL final are looking great.
| Bogus 3-0 Soukey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Bogus | > |  Soulkey | @ Cloud Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Bogus | > | Soulkey | @ Antiga Shipyard | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Bogus | > | Soulkey | @ Entombed valley | |||||||||||||||||||||
A comparable manhandling was dealt to Leenock by Sniper who landed a 3-1 against the MLG champion.
So far in his career, Sniper had seen nothing but harsh rejection by Code S as two consecutive seasons he finished on the bottom half of the Ro32 to take the first train back to Code A. At first, this season did not forebode anything different. Poor Sniper had names like MarineKing, sOs, Seed, Polt, Bogus and Parting thrown at him but there he stood – a quarter finalist and one Leenock bashing away from a top four.
On the other side of the ring there was Leenock himself, the winner of the all-zerg Ro16 group and the clear favorite for this one so seeing him outplayed every step of the way was not exactly according to plan. He lost game one after being caught in the middle of ultralisk tech, suffered a massive fungal and a roach ramming that took game three and flew his mutalisks into chain fungals in game four to be eliminated from Season 5 for good. Even the only game he could take off Sniper – set two on Cloud Kingdom – would’ve gone to MVP’s zerg’s favor after his 9-pool went down the dumpsters but baneling all-in barely saved him before Sniper’s spire tech could complete.
Sniper’s victory, as wild a thing as it was, meant more than the death of a tournament favorite, however. It completed a semi-final line-up with players that have never progressed that far in their careers, which begs the question is this a change of generations in Korea or just a disturbance that will go away in 2013.
Quite the nice cliffhanger at the end of the year, wouldn’t you agree?
| Sniper 3-1 Leenock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sniper | > | Leenock | @ Abyssal City | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sniper | < | Leenock | @ Cloud Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sniper | > | Leenock | @ Antiga Shipyard | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sniper | > | Leenock | @ Daybreak | |||||||||||||||||||||
