We've come to that part of the tournaments where greats meet greats and every game is like a finals. Starting off the match reports is a ZvP that is ought to make most StarCraft 2 enthusiasts sit on the edge of their seat. Ret and Mvp, fighting for a shot at advancing. Game on!

Ret has been relaxed ever since he's touched down here at the Homestory Cup, casting and playing poker, with some games in between. Hell, he even played in an off-race 200$ bet, playing Terran versus MaNa who would be playing Zerg. This is the total other side of the spectrum Mvp has been focusing, concentrating and practicing, to no avail though. Mvp has been particularly shaky throughout the tournaments, dropping maps left and right or even worse, losing to those who are perhaps rightfully considered to be far the lesser of himself. With Ret as his first real challenge Mvp will have to show better composure than he has before.

The first map saw some early marine pressure by Mvp, after he went 2rax expansion into four barracks production. Initially it looked like Mvp was able to pick off a good amount of units, including several queens, but after Mvp scouted banelings rolling around on Ret's creep he lost a good amount of units and decided to back off. Resorting to some sort of turtling after losing most of his army, Ret grabbed his chance and took several expansions. He also teched to Muta's in order to harass Mvp's bases, which were all walled off or well defended.

The muta's turned into Mvp's nightmare as he didn't prepare for them properly. While trying to get up some sort of defenses to deal with the mutalisks Ret streamed in zerglings and banelings at Mvp's front. The macro for Ret payed off as he was able to flood the Terran with his sea of lings, meaning Mvp was now looking at a grave disadvantage.

The second game on Cloud Kingdom Mvp resorted to one of his favorite builds: marine and hellion early pressure into mass Thor and tank production. All the while Ret was preparing for an impeding attack, sort of like in game 1, and was able to fend it off even better than game 1 by using a brilliant drone burrow in combination with early infestors fungalling the hellions to trap them. He did the identical move afterwards by expanding heavily, but went for a different army composition: Infestor, Roach and baneling. In a lot of back and forwards fighting Mvp's buffer units were dwindling, leaving his big damage dealers in the Thors and Tanks vulnerable. Ret was able to pick off Mvp's army piece by piece before massing up an attack as the final dagger. Mvp has been defeated and is now also dependent on others to be able to go through, a scenario which is rare in his extensive and rich career.