After a disappointing loss to Stephano last night MC has bounced right back to claim victory in the match for third place 4-0 against Ret.

Although he will be frustrated with not reaching the final MC has proved that he is easily still one of the strongest players around at the moment with his surgical dissection of Ret 4-0 in the third place playoff game. Despite constantly being reminded of how close and tense the series was by the crew manning the NASL stream the reality seemed to be far from it with MC looking dominant in nearly every major army engagement that occurred. He walks away deservedly with the $10,000 third prize, leaving Ret in a respectable fourth with $5,000.

The first map, and indeed nearly every one after, opened with safe three hatchery / two nexus openings from both players and in general both players were fairly standoffish in the early games. However on Ohana MC opted to pressure with four Gateways whilst producing a Dark Shrine behind it. Unfortunately for him Ret found it with an overlord and little came of it. Moments later Ret was able to catch MC out of position and killed off many of the sentries and immortals that MC had been massing. Ret followed up with what seemed would be a game winning attack, however, showing off his blink control that was quite frankly on another level MC was able to hold off the attack with ease. From that point onwards MC was in the driving seat and, try as he might, Ret was left in the dust.

The rest of the series followed a similar pattern with MC simply outclassing Ret whenever their armies met. Starting with a damaging air attack on Dual Sight, MC simply expanded and trod water, waiting for the eventual engagement that would come once Ret’s Broodlord army was complete. The engagement came and went and only MC was left standing. Indeed, Daybreak would have been near identical except it lacked the interest of an early air attack and the lack of engagements dragged on for a full twenty five minutes. It certainly wasn’t a game for the history books but MC showed yet again that he is the better player, even when battling Ret in his late game comfort zone.

By the time Bel’Shir Beach came around Ret was three games down and already looked like a broken man. With sloppy errors and uncharacteristic mistakes Ret gave his final stand but when faced with MC’s superb Stalker micro he crumbled. The two base all in sealed the deal for MC and secured him yet another major podium finish.

Now all the remains for the main NASL tournament is the Grand Final which will be starting on their main stream immediately after the WCS Canada final.