News Submission from Metalcore. Topic: Hairy Smash Recap - A casters perspective
Hairy Smash Recap - A casters perspective By Metalcore
The Hairy Smash - A Casters Recap
Last Sunday, SEA held a massive tournament which was the Hairy Smash grand finals, the culmination of the Hairy Bash tournament circuit from 2014 with a massive $2000 AUD prize pool put up by HairyMuppet. 9 players qualified from the previous Hairy Bash tournaments and the rest of the bracket being made up by the highest ranking players by the OSC point rankings. The brackets were stacked with some of the best players in SEA and a few scary koreans to add some spice to things
The stakes were high and was the stage was set for players to start of their 2015 OSC run with a bang!
The first match casted was none other than the Australian Terran Hope Iaguz going up against the protoss player sWs. A TvP to kick the day of showing a rare match up in the SEA scene which is renown for its ZvZ and lack of Terran in general. However never fear for Iaguz is here and he showed his stuff with exemplary Terran play as he took down sWs in a rather convincing fashion without dropping a map. Fun fact, this match actually started before the tournament was supposed to start cos these guys were so keen to get into it!
Since the first round was held up by so many walkovers, we followed the journey of Iaguz on his quest to start 2015 with the Hairy Smash title. His next opponent would be Crimson, the New Zealand Zerg player. one of the strongest players from New Zealand and a strong competitor in the OSC scene but going up against Iaguz would be a challenging match for him indeed. Iaguz showed his stuff and took out Crimson without dropping a map as Iaguz's TvZ was just to strong for Crimson and Iaguz sent another hopeful down to the lower bracket.
In round 3 we deviate from Iaguz's journey to watch another of SEA's powerhouse players try and work their way to the finals. We had none other than the NOTORIOUS PIG. arguably the best zerg in Australia. His opponent though is no slouch, the Korean Terran renegade Spear, one of the few players in the Hairy Smash with a bounty on him for anyone who can beat him in a series. These 2 players have vsed each other before in OSC tournaments and the matches often end up being close and this series would not disappoint. The final result was a 2:1 in favour of Pig however and Pig would earn the bounty of $35 for defeating him in a series.
With Pig adavancing onto the next round he would be facing one of the most notorious players in the OSC scene, the Korean Protoss Arthur who is the highest ranking Protoss in the OSC scene. Going into this match, Pig had the momentum of going through tough opponents such as Demilove and Spear who are no slouches and seemed to be ready to take on any opponent. However Pig would have the misfortune to get #Protossed by Arthur and drop into the lower bracket with a 2:0 loss as Arthur took out Pig in typical Arthur fashion to allow Arthur to advance on to the winners bracket semi-finals
The upper bracket semi finals is set up for an awesome showdown as we have the Terran Hope, Iaguz going up against Protoss terror Arthur! This series would prove to be Arthurs greatest challenge in the Hairy Smash as Iaguz is a renown Protoss killer (WCS AM anyone? :P). Going into this match Iaguz had still not dropped a single map and Arthur had only dropped a single map in a PvP against Frustration in round 1 so both these players were on form and gunning for the spot in the finals! There is one thing we can learn from this series however. Arthurs win rate on 2 base, 100%, but if he takes that third base Iaguz knows how to break him down and take the win in a macro game. Iaguz would loose this series to arthur 2:1 and Arthur would advance on to the finals to await his final opponent.
With the first finalist of the double elimination Hairy Smash decided, we dropped to the lower bracket to see which hopeful would be able to fight their way back to take the final spot in the finals. This match is one hell of a way to start it of with two players who are considered to be some of the best in the OSC scene with the fearsome Zerg player, King Kong going up against the powerhouse Terran Spear. This was a close series which ended in 2:1 and very solid play was displayed by both players. Being a TvZ series with Spear playing, the proxy 2 rax was bound to happen and Spear did not disappoint in bringing it to the series but King Kong was able to shut down spears attempt to be cheesy. Spear however was able to overwhelm King Kong in Game 3 and destroy King Kong in order to advance on one round closer to the finals.
Even the smallest donations help keep sc2sea running! All donations go towards helping our site run including our monthly server hosting fees and sc2sea sponsored community tournaments we host. Find out more here.