Hwasin might not have been the clear favorite in this group, but TheZerg had to be the underdog. Rumble was the one waiting for face the victor of the two.
Rumble, Hwasin, TheZerg. Source: Fomos
Hwasin had a decent last season. He made it to the MSL quarterfinals where he was eliminated by Jaedong and did really well in the ProLeague. This was TheZerg's first time in a StarLeague and Rumble frankly has a bit of a habit of making it to the StarLeagues but not playing well in them.
Hwasin versus TheZerg
The first game on Plasma Hwasin tried a wraith build, but simply fell to decent muta harass and then a combination of hydra lurker. It was perhaps more due to the builds than due to the skills, but Hwasin looked anything but sharp with his micro. In the second game TheZerg opened standard while Hwasin went for a two rax bunker break. Unfortunately for him TheZerg did not opt to get greedy and take his third base too soon. He barely managed to hold off the first m&m group, but he did. Hwasin then pumped out a few tanks and had another go, but TheZerg really did a great job of delaying his advance across the map before finishing him off with a beautiful pincer attack. From there on in it was all about TheZerg. He teched to defilers and pushed into Hwasin's base. An upset, but TheZerg really deserved his win, he was the best player here.
TheZerg verus Rumble
Rumble seemed to go for the quicker spire in this game, but ended up getting both his expansion and his spire later than TheZerg. For ZvZ Plasma is pretty close to a true island map and no one bothered to build lings. After a brief muta battle period TheZerg was victorious. In the second game Rumble went for a second hatchery in base before his spire. TheZerg did not, and never got wise to the fact that Rumble had. From there on it was pretty one sided as TheZerg never managed to catch up economically.
In the third game TheZerg went for a fast exp while Rumble went for a fast spire and in base hatchery. This forced TheZerg to put up two spore colonies, but still put him ahead with his two gas. Rumble shortly after seeing the spores put down his own exp after TheZerg's ling attack on his inbase sunken had failed. After this followed a long macro period where both players took their third gas, but only TheZerg teched to greater spire and defilers mound while Rumble was ahead in air upgrades. This allowed TheZerg to eliminate Rumble's fourth gas while managing to take his own. When Rumble tried to assault that base he was partly caught by a plague and that was really the game.
| Incruit StarLeague group D | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Hwasin | < |  TheZerg |  Plasma | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Hwasin | < | TheZerg |  Return of the king | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rumble | < | TheZerg | Plasma | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rumble | > | TheZerg | Return of the king | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Rumble | < | TheZerg |  Andromeda | |||||||||||||||||||||
| TheZerg advances to the second round | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
TheZerg must have been brimming with confidence after going through that group. He walked over the the second round group board and put his name up there in group C with Flash and Luxury. Flash's best statistical matchup is TvZ and Luxury's ZvZ is second only to Jaedong. Overconfidence might have been the word I was looking for earlier.
| Incruit StarLeague group E Wednesday | ||
 SangHo | vs | JoJoBa |
| Mind | vs | Winner |
