After yesterdays spectacular games, the second day of round of 16 action had just as much excitement in store for us! Should you have missed out on any of the games, check out the day two summary and the respective VODs!

Maru vs. Patience

Maru may just be the most hyped up player in the scene at the moment with fans all over the world in awe of his aggressive play style. Nonetheless, Patience felt confident ahead of the series, calling out a 3-0 in his favor. Who managed to advance to the quarterfinals?

GAME ONE
Maru’s Terran is known for relentless early aggression and he was on a mission for the first series of the day. A devastating hellion drop set the tone early on, catching Patience completely off guard and severely disrupting his mining process, from which points on he would never be able to recover. The following onslaught of marines was just too much for Patience to handle and Maru managed to take game one in quick fashion!

GAME TWO
Game two had more of the same aggression on the menu for Maru, who launched a terrific marine and marauder rush at eight minutes, doing huge amounts of damage to Patience’s stalkers and structures. The Protoss did manage to counter with some mothership harass on Maru’s workers, but he would not be able to hold his ramp against the Terran, who ignored the force fields with a stellar medivac drop, taking game two and putting himself in a commanding position for the series!

GAME THREE
When it came down to the wire, Patience did manage to show signs of life, getting good helion trades in Maru’s base, taking down four probes. Vanni Research Station also allowed him to safely stick to two secure bases for easier defence against Maru while managing to foray into the Terran’s base from time to time. But Maru’s play remained absolutely flawless throughout the entire series and he showed no signs of weakness, made no mistakes and his signature early harass yet again won him the game, sweeping the series 3-0. Strong play by Maru all around!

BByong vs. Solar

Looking ahead at this series, the casters and commentators in Katowice expected some drawn out games between these two, but the Koreans had other plans.

GAME ONE
Unexpectedly for BByong, Solar opted for a roach nydus network strategy, which went completely unnoticed by the Terran. With only one or two banshees up at a time, BByong did not have a sizeable force to defend against the constant waves being churned out by the nydus network, which left the brunt of the defense to a single bunker. It took Solar five minutes to take down the last line of BByong’s defense, thanks to the Terran consistently repairing his bunker, but he lost more than 60 SCVs in the process. After an admirable defense, Solar did prevail in game one and took a 1-0 lead in the series.

GAME TWO
Solar, looking to utilize the momentum, managed to sneak a bunch of Zerglings into BByong’s base at the start of game two, killing off three SCVs. But the Terran’s simple counter attack with four hellions proved fatal for the Zerg, who could not put a stop the hellions which took out a staggering 30 drones due to the queens being out of position without creep. The economic blow was too huge to handle for Solar, who immediately bowed out of game two, handing BByong his first win of the day.

GAME THREE
Hellbats were the name of the game for BByong, who utilized his perfectly timed hellbat and marine push to take out Solar’s second base. The Zerg, left with only zerglings and queens to defend, had no answer to BByong’s rush and game three was already decided before the ten minute mark. BByong turns the series around, 1-2 for the Terran.

GAME FOUR
BByong tried more of the same in game four, invading with a large host of hellbats, but this time Solar managed to hold on to his base, thanks to amazing baneling timing. Nonetheless, BByong’s harass on the Zerg’s drones continued with loads of hellions, while his own base was secure against Solar’s attempted mutalisk counter, thanks to setting up widow mines and vikings. After taking down Solar’s third hatchery again and again, the Zerg’s roach and hydra numbers meant nothing as BByong calmly pressed his advantage, eventually knocking Solar out of the tournament

herO vs. Cure

The Intel Extreme Masters monster known as herO was looking forward to his first ever (according to him) performance in Katowice. Facing him, Cure, the open qualifier player that played 24 straight hours of StarCraft II in order to get to Katowice. Check out who got to the quarterfinals in the end!

GAME ONE
herO got to show off his skills right away in game one, taking down Cure’s reaper after just one drone kill, giving him a fairly uncontested start. Known for playing towards counter attacks, herO then proceeded to infiltrate Cure’s production with two dark templars, which ran amok in the Terran base while his blink stalkers destroyed a number of drone on the other side of Cure’s base. But the Terran did not roll over quietly, pressuring herO’s mineral line with medivac drops in hopes to balance out the game. Unfortunately for him, herO excelled at adapting in game today and while his base took some damage, he managed to squash the entirety of Cure’s forces and rolled out the game ending counter attack, taking game one for himself.

GAME TWO
In game two herO tried to be cheeky by setting up a very far away third for himself in hopes of hiding it from Cure. But the Terran managed to scout it out before it was finished. This gave herO the option to cancel his nexus, seeing as how the experiment failed, but he chose not to do so. Surely, Cure took immediate action against the out of position base while smashing herO’s colossi in a mid map engagement, effectively ending the game and forcing herO into an early gg call.

GAME THREE
herO was back to his usual self in game three, allowing Cure to put out early aggression while setting up an effective defense. After a successful medivac drop by the Terran in herO’s base, the Protoss decided that if he’s seen it once, he’s seen it all! He went on to bait Cure into further medivac attempts, which were all nearly completely intercepted by his blink stalkers, swinging the army numbers back in herO’s favor. For a while the two players engaged in a standoff on Cure’s ramp, with herO resorting to chip damage by his stalkers, but the Terran eventually pushed him back, lining up a game ending siege on the Intel Extreme Masters veteran. But he underestimated the timing of herO’s psi storm research, which utterly destroyed Cure’s army, resulting in a gg call from the beaten Terran.

GAME FOUR
Game four was probably herO best showing of the day. He went back to his successful dark templar harass while baiting Cure into medivac drops, which didn’t stand a chance against his blink stalkers. With the game well in his hand, he invested into twelve gateways and marched a huge army against Cure, who had no way of prevailing against such an overwhelming force.

Flash vs. Trap

The final matchup of the day was especially hard to predict, since the statistics favored Trap while Flash always has the potential to beat anybody on a good day, as proven by his Intel Extreme Masters Toronto victory.

GAME ONE
Trap managed to catch Flash by surprise in game one, sticking to a single base and rushing into Flash’s base with aggressive blink stalkers and a mothership in tow. The push did a lot a economical damage to Flash but it did cost Trap his mothership in the process. Only a minute later he would repeat the same movement again, with similar results while losing yet another mothership. But it would prove to be worth it though for Trap, as Flash realized that his failing economy would not be able to hold on. Trap 1-0 Flash!

GAME TWO
Flash had to deal with Trap’s oracles in game two, which kept harassing and picking of workers back at the mineral lines. While Trap was laying down the containment on Flash’s base, the Terran managed to patiently sneak four medivacs around Trap’s forces which caught the Protoss completely off guard. Flash not only took down the main nexus with his sneak attack, but he evaded the phoenixes, which were built for this sort of situation. After his sudden attack on Trap’s base he followed up with another beautifully timed triple drop in all bases, equalizing out the series at 1-1.

GAME THREE
Trap’s defense proved sturdy in game three, repelling Flash’s advances over and over again with nice force fields and early investments into colossi. During all this time, Trap managed to keep tabs on Flash’s attempts to set up his third natural and consistently disrupted the Terran setup with a single oracle. But after eventually amassing a big enough army, Flash went all in on a final attack, which quickly backfired on him due to amazing forcefields, well positioned colossi and Trap’s mobile blink stalkers.

GAME FOUR
Trap went back to his single base strategy for game four, trying to end the game as early as possible. But Flash did not falter under the constant oracle harass and front line pressure. The Terran was well aware of the Protoss’ plans and managed to hold out just long enough to sneak a single medivac behind the lines, which completely crushed Trap’s undefended base, taking the series all the way to five games.

GAME FIVE
Game five was essentially a waiting game for Trap to research psi storm tech for his dark templars, as there was no way for him to breach Flash’s well secured base. Fortunately for the Protoss, his six dark templars went unnoticed by Flash and when finally revealed, did incredible game ending damage to the latter’s army. There was no recovering at that point and the Intel Extreme Masters Toronto champion had to bow out of the World Championship after an up and down series. Trap goes on to the quarterfinals to meet FanTaSy!

You can have a look at tomorrow’s bracket below. And be sure to check out the VODs on our Youtube playlist, as soon as they are processed!

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Tune in again tomorrow, starting at 13:00 CET, to watch all the quarterfinal matches, live from Katowice!