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The penultimate group of the WCS EU premier league sees the elimination of Grubby and Krass in favor of the French ace and Na`Vi Danish Protoss. The last Ro32 group is to be played tomorrow.
Another Na`Vi at the top
If Strelok could do it, why couldn't BabyKnight too? For Na`Vi and their new StarCraft 2 roster, this was the biggest question for the night as they aimed to rocket another player of theirs into the next round.
Babyknight took the early lead in the Protoss mirror against, winning the air control with more phoenixes than Grubby due to an earlier stargate. The additional damage from lift off was enough to break the main and take game one. Grubby responded with a blink stalker contain in the next game, to secure a faster expansion.
Babyknight got a decent amount of probe kills with this phoenix but some well timed dts resulted in his army getting forcefield in the main, losing his natural and forcing the GG. Long and hard did Stephano and BabyKnight battle in the first set of the winners match as Akilon Wastes trembled under the macro ferocity of the Protoss and the Zerg. The French ace of Evil Geniuses chose a swarm host/infestor centric composition but while rich on free units and free damage, this army had one critical disadvantage – it was not mobile enough. Thus, every time Stephano moved south to siege an enemy base, BabyKnight reacted by hitting his fifth and destroying it times and times again.
Eventually, Stephano found himself starving as no mining bases were left to support his army, an army that BabyKnight slowly chipped away into nothingness. Although not as intrigue-inducing as his performance in game one, BabyKnight’s strategy in the second set was just as effective. Spearheading through Stephano’s third on the shoulders of a simple 2-base blink push extorted the second and final “Well played” from the Frenchman and Na`Vi Protoss advanced to the Ro16 as Group G winner.
Stephano crawls to second place
Of course, Group G was not a test for Na`Vi only but for one Ilyes "Stephano" Satouri - once (and maybe still) regarded as the strongest player west of South Korea. His first test of the day - the German Terran Krass.
Krass came out swinging in his first set against Stephano with constant harass, starting off with hellbat drops. Stephano took a fast hive to get ultralisks but terran traded blow for blow with his fantastic macro, staying on even bases all game. Excellent harass by mutas in the late game allowed stephano to stifle this and slowly edge out his opponent. Stephano caught the Terran off guard with an early roach attack, inflicting substantial economic damage. After successfully repelling all attempts at drop harass on his three bases without much lost, Stephano put an end to game two with a big roach/hydra attack.
Although playing impressively in the opening series, the loss to BabyKnight described above sent him to playing fan favorite Grubby, who had just trampled Krass over with a maxed out colossus/gateway army to earn himself another match in the group. A long, macro game on Newkirk Precinct opened the match with Stephano once again employing the swarm host composition. Similarly to what BabyKnight did, Grubby maxed out on colossi and gateway units and played the tug of war for almost 50 minutes until the locusts finally overwhelmed him. The two spawned on Daybreak for one final game which saw Grubby failing his immortal attack while mutalisks decimate his entire base. Stephano advanced to the Ro16, while Grubby and Krass were sent down to challenger.
