Source: Thisisgame.com
The inaugural season of GomTV's Heart of the Swarm team league reached it's RO4 stage today. The remaining four teams, all hopeful of securing a place in tomorrow's Final, faced off to determine who would rise to the occasion and who would fall by the wayside.
Previous season's champions FXOpen met GSTL newcomers AZUBU this morning in their semi-final showdown. Meanwhile, hot off of their win over Axiom-Acer yesterday, LG-IM hoped to keep their momentum going against NewStarHoSeo.
FXOpen had the odds stacked against them going into this match-up after being cursed by Artosis' prediction that they would win the season. However rookie zerg JKS didn't seem to have got the memo in game 1 as he crushed SuperNova's 2 Base attack after killing 4 widow mines with the destructible rocks, going on to overwhelm his opponent with a pure roach counter-attack.
Championship hopes ran dry for the young zerg and his team however when AZUBU released viOlet in game 2 for his first GSTL match since his time on MVP in 2011. viOlet tore through all opposition from FXO, defeating Tear, TheBest and Leenock as he completed the first All-Kill the GSTL has senn in the Heart of the Swarm.
| GSTL HoTS Pre-Season Ro4 Match 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AZUBU 4:1 FXOpen | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  SuperNova | Howling Peak |  JKS | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| viOlet | Whirlwind | JKS | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| viOlet | Akilon Flats |  Tear | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| viOlet | Icarus | TheBest | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| viOlet | Silver Sands | Leenock | ||||||||||||||||||||||
MC, on loan from SK-Gaming to represent LG-IM, was hoping to defeat 'Team Jjakji' single-handedly. The clean-sweep attempt started off strong as MC walked over his first two opponents in one-sided games against Madbull and Tible. The Suicide Toss fell in his best-match up when Tassadar rose to the occasion for his team, overwhelming MC with superior Phoenix control.
Tassadar struggled to gain momentum in the next game however, with a shaky start in which he lazily lost his early oracles to Byul. The protoss attempted to turtle on his three bases until he had a strong enough death ball to engage his opponent and it looked as if he was beginning to gain some footing, after coming out ahead in a couple of engagements. Unfortunately he found his voidrays and his colossi separated in the subsequent battle and finally caved to the overwhelming zerg army. Jjakji hoped to replicate his success from last week but Byul gave the terran no breathing space with relentless aggression from the get-go from constant ling run-bys, punishing any attempt by the terran to move out or secure a third base. Jjakji's scrappy play allowed him to hold on until the bitter end but it was not enough to fend off the broodlords and he was forced to GG.
| GSTL HoTS Pre-Season Ro4 Match 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LG-IM 4:1 NSH | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MadBull | Atlas | MC | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tible | Whirlwind | MC | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tassadar | Akilon Flats | MC | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tassadar | Silver Sands | ByuL | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| jjakji | Howling Peak | Byul | ||||||||||||||||||||||
