The it goes, the biggest GSL tournament since the all days, hitting our monitors with the hundreds of thousands of prize money and 64 of the best players in Korea. To raise the excitation even higher, GSL Super opened with several of the most accomplished Terrans.

Day 1 - The Terran Invasion

Mvp vs Creator

The Xel'Naga Caverns set started relatively passively and soon both players were going for their mid game tech - Creator chose Colossi and Mvp, logically, went for bio + Vikings. To counter the counter, Creator attempted a brave tech switch from Colossi to High Templars but by sitting on just two bases he could not actually produce enough core Gateway units to protect his higher tech. Seeing this weekness, MVP quickly moved forward to punish it and got a 1-0 lead.

Creator played a much more solid and standard game on Crevasse and was soon ahead of MVP in regards to upgrades and army count. However, MVP's unbreakable defence did not allow the Protoss to actually make use of those and soon the Terran was doing constant drops and harassments to even out the playing fields. With 4 mining bases, the IM player looked better than ever. That is until he moved a bit carelessly and lost a huge chunk his army to do massive Protoss ball, which immediately pushed forward to snipe the planetary and ruin the economy of MVP. Despite the constant counter pressure from MVP and the unending drops and EMPs, Creator succeeded in staying alive and after winning a huge battle at his fifth the score was tied.

Mvp opened the Tal'Darim Altar match by going for a Bunker/Tank contain in attempt to crush his opponent early. And he would've succeeded in doing so if he hadn't forgot to actually fill his bunkers with marine. Thus, after minutes of struggling on the back of crippled economy, Creator broke the contain a looked around for holes in MVP's play that would allow him to get back in the game. Such opportunity presented itself as MVP executed the most sloppy of drops and lost 2 medvacs instantly. The former GSL champion was not playing his best today. And of course, just as I though that, he proved me wrong by exploding with constant (and now well executed) bio drops that kept Creator's base count low. Now I have to applaud the Protoss hero here by staying for such a long time in the game and actually fighting on equal ground with MVP, but he just could not hold any more at the end and after MVP launched a nuke on his final mining base, Creator gathered all his units around for even more explosions! What a perfect way to end a 48 minute game!



Ganzi vs ButterflyEffect

Quick TvTs, nothing I enjoy more. Ganzi opened the first set on Crossfire with a Hellion/Marine push to open up space for his proxy Banshees. Usually such pushes just do a nice little harass and go back but this time Ganzi actually killed almost all SCVs of Butterfly and was thus up 1-0, much to mine and probably his surprise.

The game on Xel'naga Caverns was no more intense than the first. Both Butterfly's cloak Banshees were denied without doing any damage and knowing that they are the units that sucked all the gas that Butterfly could mine, Ganzi just did a Tank/Marine timing attack and sealed the deal.



Check vs Supernova

The games of Check and Supernova were... bad. And short. I mean what is shorter than failing a six-pool on Crevasse and than having horrible control and army timing against the marine/tank push on Terminus. Yes, Check, I am not even going to dignify your games with a screenshot.

MMA vs Lyn

Now those two terrand had to deliver some good games. And fortunately they did! Starting on Xel'Naga Caverns both players opened up with the standard Tank/Marine and soon MMA was doing the first step towards fighting as he pushed through the centre. The forces of Lyn met him there and the former orc player took a huge chance by not sieging his tanks, hoping to out-dps the army of MMA. Unfortunately, he could barely not and lost the majority of his army. MMA took this advantage and quickly saturated his third while setting a nice contain at Lyn's base. The FOX player tried to do one final resistance and rushed a counter attack but with that also being fended off, he GGed out.

On Terminus Lyn took the calculated risk of going for very quick CC and MMA tried to counter that with the Hellion/Marine push with Banshee follow-up that Ganzi had used earlier against ButterflyEffect. And that did quite well, putting MMA on equal grounds SCV-wise with Lyn, which was impressive considering that Lyn went for quick CC. However, MMA got ahead of himself and launched an uncalculated attack and his Marine/Tank army was eaten alive by Lyn's stimmed bio. From that point on, the game took a 180-degree turn and Lyn executed some brilliant multi-pronged drops to win the second set.

Lyn got a really good start on Xel'Naga Fortress and although his Banshee harass could not do huge amounts of damage, his earlier siege tech gave him the opportunity to set a contain at MMA's natural and deny mining for a long time. He almost got the chance to end the game by barely failing to snipe the Siege Tech of MMA currently in research. With the completion of that, however, MMA finally pushed Lyn back and started his advance and once again the two armies met at the center. And once again Lyn made the same decision to engage unsieged despite having an army advantage. MMA's siege tanks laid waste to the opposing army and the advancing reinforcements sealed the deal for the SlayerS terran.



GSL Super Ro64 Group A Day 1
Mvp2:1 Creator
Ganzi2:0 ButterflyEffect
Check0:2 Supernova
MMA2:1 Lyn