The round of eight has concluded and the semi finals have been laid out before us.
Will we see a new Protoss champion?
The semi-finalists is a who’s who of Protoss players, PartinG, HerO and Squirtle, along with the legend himself MVP.
The road to the finals seems to be claimed already by PartinG, the PvT machine and the winner of HerO vs Squirtle giving us the first PvP finals in the history of the GSL and a new Protoss President is en-route.
The round of eight was, in one word, lackluster. Nobody could mount resistance as these four players advanced through in convincing fashion.
PartinG, Squirtle and HerO picked apart Oz, TaeJa and SuperNoVa with solid play as the challengers tried to put up a fight with some entertainingly strange games, but still falling to the victors’ solid playstyles.
Oz went for a Nexus first on Atlantis Spaceship and a weird gas first DT rush on Daybreak and left the path to the RO4 open for PartinG taking an easy 3-0.
SuperNoVa tried a funky Thor Banshee rush in the final game vs HerO on Atlantis Spaceship, after failed attempts at standard games, that once again was closed down by HerO after he blasted his way into his first GSL semi finals — in his first Code S appearance no less — past his old team mate for another 3-0.
Squritle once again displayed his PvT dominance — that brought him to everyone attention at IPL4 — by taking down everyone’s favourite rising star TaeJa. The greatest game of the past two days on Entombed Valley hosted one of the most enjoyable base races I’ve seen in a long time, with TaeJa reestablishing his base all around the map with supply depots, barracks and his CC in three different locations.
The man of the moment NaNiwa fell short to the most dominant man in the history of StarCraft 2, MVP. A series that caused many fans to rage as MVP “cheesed” on two separate maps to take the victory 3-1.
The MVP NaNiWa series reminded me why I am in love with StarCraft and why others should take note.
His builds hit the meta game right where it hurt, being overly aggressive like the days of the Beta, showing how StarCraft 2 is a continuously evolving thing that won’t sit around and stagnate into a set pattern.
It’s the eSport that provides so much more, you can have the one hour long games that provide thrilling displays of skill, or these five minute displays of meta gaming brilliance.
