StarCraft&BroodWar and Chess Members: SlayerS

The Playoffs are here, finally. After a long and exciting ProLeague season the playoffs are finally here. It kicked off yesterday with OGN Sparkyz versus CJ Entus.

The basic format of the ProLeague matches stay the same in the playoffs. They are simply expanded from best of five to best of seven. That includes two 2v2s. This makes the whole team more important. You cannot have only a few elite players to make it through the playoffs. OGN Sparkyz have the best 2v2 couple in Justin and Flower, although they have seriously cooled down in the latter parts of this season. CJ on the other hand have relied much more on their 1v1 games.

OGN Sparkyz ended forth, the last qualifying spot, and are facing CJ Entus who placed third. The winner here will go on to face MBCGame HERO and then Lecaf Oz to decide the winner of this season. Then the winner there will face off with Samsung Khan, winner of season one, to decide the winner of the Shinhan 2007 ProLeague.

DarkElf, sAviOr and Much

ProLeague: CJ Entus vs OGN Sparkyz

DarkElf

Hogil

Katrina

VOD

IriS

go.go

Blue Storm

VOD

OriOn

XellOs

Flower

Justin

Seongangil

VOD

Much

Luxury

Python

VOD

Savior

cHalRengE

Baekmagoji

VOD

Mania

besga

ZeuS

Hwangsanbul

VOD

sAviOr

YellOw[ArnC]

Un'Goro Crater

VOD

Make sure to read joohyunee's translation of how the MBC players reacted to the match over at teamliquid. Also check out diggity commenting on the first game

here.

Blizzard has released some nice details about the new Siege Tank on the Official StarCraft II site along with some great images and short videos. Dubbed the Crucio Siege Tank it will be key to any Terran players arsenal, just as before.

Going from the description on the site it obviously builds from the factory (just as before) and supports two different firing modules with twin 90mm cannons in assault mode, and a 120mm shock canon in siege mode, which is of course what it is famous for! It's specified role is armored support and mobile artillery, which is exactly where it was in the original StarCraft.

Going in depth of the description of this newly done siege tank is that there is a bigger emphasis on the assault mode being much more viable for combat. As an upgraded version of the old siege tank this is to be expect and it sounds like it may be able to go on the offensive a bit easier with little to no additional units supporting it as was needed in the original StarCraft. Here's the details:

The Crucio has been designed for increased survivability with an enlarged, reinforced turret and hull. The new turret layout also features an upgraded assault-mode armament package so that the Crucio can fend for itself more successfully in an open battlefield. Force deployment costs for the Crucio have increased over the older Arclite, but the increased versatility of the powerful new siege tank more than compensates for the additional expense.

In the first video you can see that the new siege tank easily takes on a force of six marines and a medic without any trouble. With the higher ground advantage still playing a big role it is obvious that positioning will once again be key to the units success. Looks like the siege tank will be just as awesome as before!