In the fourth quarter final match of IEM Sao Paulo last night, Empire's Violet completed the semi finals line-up after clinching a 3-2 win against DeMuslim. Today, the Korean faces Ret, for whom this will be the fifth ZvZ in a row this tournament.
Violet had a strong burst in the first two games, opening the series on Terminus with a roach/baneling bust, which destroyed Demuslim in a one-sided fashion. The terran played more solidly on Dual Sight and even taunting Violet with a "3-0?" after the zerg lost a substantial amount of muta's to Demuslim ever-growing thor force. To punish him for those words, Violet issued a multitude of thor assassinations with small squads of roaches, eventually pushing the game into a base race. Demuslim had the larger army but Violet held the advantage of having hatcheries scattered all over the map, allowing him to ultimately restore his economy and stomp Demuslim who was barely mining at that time.
Demuslim's return began on Antiga Shipyard after yet another base trade was soon under way. Violet took a slightly later third but he followed it up with a huge round of drones, putting the total count to above 90! It was just after this power up that Demuslim moved out with a strong marine/tank army giving the start to the aforementioned base trade. Violet, however, was in a major disadvantage as the only units he had in the terran's base were his mutas and their DPS was just not enough to win the race.
The fourth game was peculiar in all sorts of ways. DeMuslim opened with a proxy 2-rax only to find that Violet had not gone for hatch first but instead had a fast gas and a pool up. Demuslim fell back but Violet would rather play bizarrely, throwing down a roach warren only to cancel it just before completion in order to get his speed up, which was already too late. On top of that, Violet went ninja while taking his natural, expanding to the 3 o'clock instead of the usual (for him) 5. Minutes later, Violet would regret cancelling that warren as all but a few of his drones died in preigniter flames to win the game.
Tal'Darim Altar saw an appropriate finish of the series as Demuslim went for a reaper bunker rush, actually destroying Violet's natural. While the caster duo was discussing how the Brit had this game won, Violet just marched all his speedlings (not a small squad by any means) down the map, broke Demuslim's wall-off and forced a GG!
After this exciting day of quarter final matches, February 11th shall see the completion of IEM Sao Paulo. At 17;00 CET it's semi-finals time with Supernova vs Real and Violet vs Ret. Don't miss out.
