Cure enjoyed his biggest success of his recent hot streak, beating out Maru to take first place in his GSL round-of-8 group. While Maru had no trouble securing the second place spot in the group, his loss added to growing concerns about his TvT. The two Terrans move on to compete in the same-day semifinals & grand finals in the Code S studio, played on Thursday, May 18 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00).
The GSL’s last Protoss hope Classic couldn’t overcome an unlucky group draw against arguably the two best TvP players in the world (Cure and Maru) and was eliminated in third place. However, for his 5th-6th place finish in Code S, he earned a seeded spot at ESL Masters Summer in Sweden. Finally, GuMiho finished in last place, unable to get a map win.
The Code S RO8 will continue Group B on Thursday, May 11 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00), with Bunny, Solar, Dark, and ByuN competing for the final two RO4 spots.
The group began with Maru taking a 2-0 over GuMiho in a one-sided match. GuMiho’s fast Marauder drop build didn’t achieve much of anything in game one, and Maru rode his early advantage to a straightforward win. Game two saw GuMiho set up for a low-ground siege of Maru’s main, only to have Maru somehow sneak his own army across the entire map for a game-ending backdoor attack.
The other opening match also ended in a 2-0, where Cure punished Classic with strong early-game play. Cure played an aggressive Marine drop + Hellion opener in game one, executing a two-prong attack to put the hurt on Classic’s economy. Classic Blink-Stalker counter attack failed to even up the situation, and he was forced to GG out against a superior Terran army. Cure proceeded to go for all-out cheese in game two, proxying every single one of his production buildings for a proxy Hellion-into-armory-Mine-drop-into-Thor-all-in. This unusual strategy worked perfectly, giving Cure a quick victory.
Despite having struggled historically against Maru, Cure played fantastically on the night to take a 2-1 victory in the winners’ match. Maru went with proxy 2-Barracks Reapers to start the series, but was thwarted by Cure’s capable defense. Maru followed up by sacrificing his units to harass Cure’s economy, which seemed to put him in a precarious position against a counterattack. But, as is often the case in TvT, Maru had things under control, and he held off Cure’s low-econ all-in to win the game.
Maru went for proxy Reapers again in game two, but this time Cure had a carefully planned counter. Once his scouting SCV saw the empty main of his opponent, he built a proxy Factory inside the opponent’s main, in addition to the typical Rax-Factory defense at home. Cure held off Maru’s Reapers once more, and then surprised him with hidden Hellions for a quick victory. In the post-match interview, Cure said he had been waiting for over a year to use this counter.
The final game on Altitude started with a quiet build-up, as both players established three bases without much fuss. However, the expansive nature of the map caused the two players to miss each other’s initial move-outs with Marine-Medivac, leading to a hectic semi-basetrade. Maru handled the situation better, destroying Cure’s third base to take a 3-to-2 Orbital advantage.
Cure went all-out on offense to try and turn the game around, and it paid off in spectacular fashion. Having three bases ended up being a disadvantage for Maru against Cure’s multi-directional attacks, as he was too stretched out to properly defend every base. Cure ran Maru ragged with a rapid-fire series of attacks, and the dazzling display of multitasking eventually forced the GG out of Maru.
Down in the losers’ match, Classic took a fairly comfortable 2-0 over GuMiho to temporarily keep himself in the RO4 running. GuMiho couldn’t find a way to pierce Classic’s Phoenix-Colossus opener in either game, and ended up tapping out to a superior Protoss army/economy both times.
Unfortunately for Classic, Maru proved to be far more adept at early-game aggression when they met in the decider match. Game one saw Maru go for a fast 3-Reaper 2-Hellion strike, which killed 9 Probes and set Maru up to win with a 2-base push.
Classic tried to turn the tables on Maru with some fast 2-Gate Adept pressure in game two, but he couldn’t achieve anything against Maru’s safe play. Considering that playing against Maru on even economy is already a hard enough task, it was no surprise that Classic got steamrolled after his disadvantageous start.
Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/611253-code-s-ro8-group-a-results
