Photo by: SK Gaming

With Katowice over, fans eyes move from Europe to South Korea where the new season of the Code S kicks off. And it does so with a blast, a loud one!

The highly acclaimed, award winning ST_Life opened the season as champion does best:

Kill the men, kidnap the children, violate the women and all the adjoining activities characteristic of a good raiding. He did not do it with showmanship, flamboyance or excessive grandeur, though, just the eviscerating brutality of someone very, very skilled in this kind of job. Both Symbol and Creator tasted early game aggression and were ultimately so outclassed that Life's 4-0 came as the most natural thing in the world. After the two series were over, there was no more room for wondering if Life had lost his mojo coming into the 2013.

By the power of facing ByuL (who only recently put on the colors of IM after a long succession of flickering resutls) in the losers match and dancing a three-game tango with Creator, Symbol was the second player to make it through. It was an appropriate closing to a group with so much power in it, as Symbol and Creator engaged in a monstrous, seemingly unending PvZ which saw the protoss claw at Symbol viciously while the zerg tried his best to hold to his defenses before Creator finally giving up.

Code S Ro32, Group A
Life4-0To Code S Ro16
Symbol4-3To Code S Ro16
 Creator3-4To Code A Ro32
ByuL0-4To Code A Ro48
Creator 2-0 ByuL
Life 2-0 Symbol
Life 2-0 Creator
Symbol 2-0 ByuL
Symbol 2-1 Creator
In almost a complete contrast to Tuesday's level of entertainment, MC came today to win the day with skytoss!

It was Curious who had to endure the protoss air army, something so rare in the days when two base timing attacks and archon toilets rule PvZ. MC's late-game vZ came almost as a herald for the upcoming metagame change that is set to arrive with HotS, loudly shouting that there are other ways to approach the match-up and other zergs better come prepared next time.

While zergs were falling to MC's skytoss and timing attacks, several other stories developed at the same time. Fresh from a fruitful 2012, Leenock marched in expecting an easy graduation from the group but faced Baby's ferocious resistance that made the zerg play an extorting base race game that the zerg barely won. One thing led to another and the Leenocktopus was standing in the final match for the day against possibly the worst possible opponent: Curious and his 72% ZvZ win rate.

Regardless, community's favoritism was still with Leenock who was sitting on the back of two GSL top eights in the last season, apparently not giving two damns about most of the competition in Korea. Still, he had to give the damns now as Curious took a sweeper to the match-up and conquered Leenock 2-0, sending him to Code A, happily delivering the first upset of the season.

Code S Ro32, Group B
MC4-0To Code S Ro16
Curious4-3To Code S Ro16
 Leenock2-4To Code A Ro32
Baby1-4To Code A Ro48
Leenock 2-0 Baby
MC 2-0 Curious
MC 2-0 Leenock
Curious 2-1 Baby
Curious 2-0 Leenock