Weekly Cups (Dec 16-22): Protoss* Sweep

2024 Off-season Community Weekly Cups
Week of December 16-22

by Wax

The competitive calendar remained busy in the lead-up to the holidays, with three weekly cups played alongside a variety of showmatches and miscellaneous events.

Protoss were the big winners in the week of Dec 16-22, claiming two out of three cups—without help from herO or MaxPax at that! Instead, it was Trigger and Classic who seized victory for Aiur in the PiGosaur Cup and Olimoleague. While Clem won WardiTV Mondays, that might also have been a partial victory for Protoss—the French ‘Terran’ actually played Protoss in half his matches.

The week also featured a $400 2v2 event hosted by Steadfast, which attracted the participation of a number of EPT regulars. Trigger and Clem ended up being winners in both 1v1 and 2v2 competitions on the week, as their Protoss/Terran + Protoss team came out on top.

WardiTV Mondays #14 (partial bracket shown)

The week began with Clem putting on a TvP masterclass in WardiTV Mondays—on both sides of the match-up. Indeed, he continued his recent trend of off-racing as Protoss against Terran opponents, and ended up taking out both Bunny and ByuN by 2-0 scorelines.

The final TvP bout against herO ended up being much tougher, going the distance to a fifth game (VOD). However, Clem was able to clutch out the victory in the end, punishing herO’s Stargate-to-Colossus transition with an incisive two-base attack.

*****

PiGosaur Cup #11 (partial bracket shown)

Weekly cups have a tendency of being overly predictable, with the strongest players winning without much incident. However, PiGosaur Cup #11 produced surprises all over the bracket, resulting in the unexpected finals of Creator vs Trigger. Creator took down Dark 2-1 in the semifinals, while Trigger vanquished SHIN and herO to book the unexpected finals card.

Trigger took advantage of the opportunity by playing some good ol’ NA StarCraft in the finals, punishing Creator’s attempts to fast expand with one-base aggression and taking a 3-1 victory (VOD).

*****

Olimoleague #234

The unusual energy of PiGosaur Cup carried over into Friday’s Olimoleague, with underdogs setting fires all over the bracket. Combined with some unusual seeding, this resulted in a finals showdown between the military returnees Classic and Rogue. While it was no BlizzCon 2019, the two players delivered a solidly entertaining five-game series which ended in Classic taking a 3-2 victory (VOD).

*****

Steadfast’s Comrades In Arms (2v2)

While not a regularly hosted event, this 2v2 tournament was worth pointing out as it featured a number of EPT EU/NA regulars and also had the added quirk of both Lambo and Clem continuing the off-racing shenanigans.

The grand finals saw the P/TP team of Trigger-Clem face off against the Z/P duo of Elazer-Lambo, with Clem starting as Protoss but switching to Terran midway through the series. In a result that has no balance implications whatsoever (unless you want it to), Team Clem-Trigger took a 3-1 victory with Clem closing out as Terran in the final two games.