MaNa's road to Code S

Up & Down games are always exciting due to the fact that we as a scene get to know who is going to play in Code S. Today we have another foreigner playing with the best on earth. We present a short recap of MaNa's games below.

MaNa vs Keen @ Ohana

His first game against Keen on Ohana was a big confidence test, and he passed it with an A. First move in this game was done by Keen with his strong Marines / Marauders / Medivac push, but MaNa's force fields and zealot / stalker army managed to defend Pole's base. Next move was on MaNa who tried to take down Keen's third base, but with no success.

Korean terran did a dangerous drop of death with 6 full medivacs flying into MaNa's main. Although Polish protoss lost a big chunk of his production facilities, he was able to snipe all of the medivacs on their way back home. Shortly after it was Komincz's turn to attack; he crushed his opponent's army, and rebuilt his lost base thanks to his banked-up gas and minerals.

Keen pulled his MC-move with snipes coming from ghosts-drops, but it didn't work. He then pushed MaNa's 4th, but lost his army in the process. Soon after Protoss attack Terran's third, took it down, killed Keen's army leftovers and secured his first win.

MaNa vs HyuN @ Antiga Shipyard

Komincz's second game was much more intense with many semi-basetrades involved. The game started with Hyun's 3 base opening against MaNa's Forge expand, but Polish protoss tried to do a 2 base immortal push after pretending to take a third. He pushed out with his stalker/immortal/sentry army, but in the mean time zerg playe has rushed into Pole's base. At the end both players were left only with their main bases. Soon after Hyun decided to go for the roach / ling drop play. MaNa was able to hold that off, but lost a handful of gateways. Second zerg drop was much more successful taking down the whole main base of protoss.

It looked like Polish protoss might lose the game, but after a huge battle in the middle of the map, and a bad drop positioning by the Korean player, MaNa was able to defeat zerg's army. HyuN tried to make a run by at MaNa's third, but was unsuccessful due to great stalker position between the cannons by protoss. Seconds later it was over. Pole take his second victory.

MaNa vs Bomber @ Metropolis

Polish protoss who often struggles in PvT match-up against the best TvP player in the world - Bomber; this wasn't easy. Komincz started with a regular opening, but Terran took a hidden 3rd that was unscouted throught the whole game, and that was pretty much the end of this game. MaNa did his best, but got overwhelmed by the amount of Bomber's units; Korean terran took Pole's 3rd very fast, and started to drop his army in Protoss's main base - MaNa had to GG out.

However, because HyuN and Bomber won their last games MaNa at this point advanced to Code S from the second place in his group. This is a big day not only for Polish scene, but foreigners in general. Not only we have another non-Korean in Code S, but MaNa is the second one after HuK to take a spot in the world's biggest Starcraft 2 league after qualifying through Up & Down.

Unfortunately, Marcus "Thorzain" Eklöf is not going to play his Up & Down games, due to personal reasons and complete focus on WCS Europe.