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As the preliminary rounds of the GSTL continue, this week brought us our first all-kill of the season from StartaleQ against NS_HoSeo on Friday as well as an exciting match between Incredible Miracle and Team SCV Life. So far, all of the favourites have advanced which will lead to some interesting quarter final matches, but also means that lower bracket teams will eventually have to face off against last season’s finalists and semi-finalists respectively.

Watch our video recap! Produced by Eric Tschanz

Read about all of the action that happened this week:

Day 3 got off to an exciting start when StarTale walked out with their foreign partners in tow. The excitement was palpable (at least for this writer) knowing that we might see SaSe or NaNiwa play in the team league. Those hopes would be dashed, however, by none other than the oft underperforming StarTale_Bomber. As I said last week it’s not often that a team puts one of their best players forward so early in a match, but the strategy does work when you have others to fall back on (July, PartinG or even NaNiwa). Nonetheless Bomber seemed confident against Hoon and opened with a proxy marauder rush.

Bomber's marauders did good damage to Hoon (Photo: GOMTV)

After dealing a heavy initial blow, Bomber was able to macro behind it and take out Hoon for a 1-0 lead. NSHoSeo responded quickly by sending out Seal, a promising Zerg, to hopefully put a quick end to Bomber. Demonstrating his amazing ability to maintain constant pressure, Bomber looked unstoppable save for a few baneling landmines and ultimately overran the Zerg with superior macro. Struggling to provide a response to Bomber, NSHoSeo sent out Sage to challenge one of Bomber's more underdeveloped matchups. Opening with some early pressure using hellions, marauders and a few SCVs, Sage looked to be in a great position after he stuffed Bomber’s attack while taking minimal losses but quickly bungled his advantage by attacking Bomber’s natural. Now back on even footing, it was Bomber's game to lose but he continued to macro steadily and eventually overcome Sage.

Bomber knows how to /dance (Photo: GOMTV)

Following his victory against Sage by walking over to the NSHoSeo bench and calling out Jjakji, Bomber let NSHoSeo know that they would have to bring their best to defeat him. Strangely, they called upon San, a relic from days of GSL past, to pull out a miracle win. Unfortunately, San quickly became another name on Bomber's list of vanquished foes and brought StarTale one game closer to an all-kill.

I throw down my gauntlet, sir (Photo: GOMTV)

Down four matches and facing an all-kill NSHoSeo did the only thing they could do, play Jjakji. The game was on Dual Sight where Bomber reaper expanded while Jjakji favored a more passive one rax expand with the first engagement coming when Bomber decided to boldly engage at Jjkaji’s natural despite a good number of siege tanks defending. The gambit paid off however and put Bomber at a significant lead and with some time he managed to secure the first all-kill of the season.

As a team boasting some of the best players in the world, it’s always a mystery why IM typically does not perform well in the Team League. TSL, however, looked like they were in trouble from the start as Yoda easily dispatched Shine with a standard two barracks (one proxy) build. Yoda would continue his path of destruction against Revival on Cloud Kingdom making some intelligent decisions (sniping the third, retreating) and eventually sealing his win when he managed to trap the eight or so infestors of Revival in the middle of the map. Next up was the darkhorse Cyrano, against whom Yoda would reveal a special strategy. After the engineering bay finished for Yoda the oft unseen neosteel frame upgrade began, leaving the casters scratching their heads in confusion. Yoda then proceeded to amass a large force of marines and tanks to contain his opponent on his two bases.

Standard neosteel upgrade contain (Photo: GOMTV)

The bunkers were a nice touch when Cyrano went to break out of Yoda’s contain, and though they probably didn’t win Yoda the game, it was still an interesting tactic and one reason why watching GSTL can be so exciting. TSL was quickly realizing that they were down 3-0 to one of the lesser players of IM, and decided to play Symbol who showed amazing play by beating Yoda, reading most of his decisions and busting his front with a huge roach/ling attack after getting a perfect surround on Yoda’s army in the middle of the map. IM opted to keep MVP and Nestea on the bench, calling out Seed to deal with the upstart Symbol from TSL. What resulted was a long macro game with each player going up to four bases.

One of many engagements (Photo: GOMTV)

One of the deciding engagements occurred at Symbol's fifth base, where Seed chose to attack with colossi, stalkers and a mothership. Using vortex on the bulk of Symbol’s army, Seed tried to blink underneath the brood lords but ended up in an awful position and lost the majority of his army. When the vortex ran out, ultras and lings were there to clean up the rest of his army and ultimately forced him to tap out. Still in a comfortable position at 3-2 but perhaps not wanting to underestimate Symbol, IM called on MVP to shut down the rest of TSL. A Terran player of MVP’s caliber on Antiga Shipyard should be an auto-win, as Symbol seemed to know, and after a combined hellion run-by and drop attack killed many drones he opted for a strange roach / baneling transition. Researching ventral sacs and pneumatic carapace, it looked Symbol was going to drop MVP’s main, however a seemingly random scan revealed everything and Symbol decided instead to throw his units at MVP’s front, being utterly destroyed and leaving the game.

Maphacks? (Photo: GOMTV)

Much like NSHoSeo before them, TSL had no choice but to call out Super Tournament winner and bio player extraordinaire Polt. Again on Dual Sight, Polt opted for a one barracks expansion while MVP went for cloaked banshees. Dancing his banshees around he managed to do little damage but still cost Polt some scans and a few marines which contributed to MVP’s devastating second attack. Using the banshees for high ground vision, and with nothing but marines to defend MVP’s combined tanks, marines and banshees, Polt crumbled at the attack and lost almost everything. While the game did go on for another five minutes or so, Polt was dead after the first attack and MVP eventually dealt the killing blow. MVP had thus snuffed out any chance for TSL to come back and secured a quarter-final spot for IM.

"Well that was slightly amusing" (Photo: GOMTV)

Thomas Shifrer

Thomas Shifrer is a StarCraft 2 reporter for ESFI World. Follow him on Twitter at @The_Wiz4rd.   » ESFI Profile   » Twitter