The final hour of the ITL Grand Prix is almost upon us. Vying for first place will be HuK, the Canadian Protoss player against Machine, the American Zerg. Battling it out for third prize will be a Terran mirror between the Canadian Drewbie and the American ThisIsJimmy. Matchup analysis is below the jump.

You can watch the games live here starting at 6:00pm EST Sunday, the 15th of August.

Third Place Match:

Game 1: iCCup Vahalla

Game 2: Metalopolis

Game 3: Lost Temple

Finals:

Game 1: iCCup Vahalla

Game 2: iCCup Fighting Spirit

Game 3: Lost Temple

Game 4: Metalopolis

Game 5: Steppes of War

Well here we are at the final matchup between HuK and Machine. With the recent Terran dominance, we have a unique final matchup of the other two races facing off in a best-of-five. Game one will be on iCCup Vahalla, which looks to favor HuK’s aggression. Although a 4-player map, the relatively close positions from a base to any other make a 2-gate rush from HuK quite hard to stop, and HuK loves to 2-gate Zerg players. Machine is a macro fiend who is not afraid to use roaches and spine crawlers liberally in order to defend an early expansion from pressure, but always squeezes out as many drones as possible while still having a big enough army to defend early aggression. The expansions in this map are not too hard to defend, and remind me a bit of those on Metalopolis. This game will likely feature land-based attacks, as the flight distances aren’t much shorter than the ground distances between any two points.

Read the rest of the breakdown here...

Drewbie and ThisIsJimmy will duke it out for third place and the highest placement for a Terran player in the ITL Grand Prix. Drewbie is widely regarded as one of the top players in the world right now, and nearly always has a strong showing. ThisIsJimmy already beat a strong Terran in LzGaMeR earlier in this tournament quite handily, and seems to have a very solid, aggressive strategy in mirror matches. Drewbie may be the favorite, but this should be an exciting series and I’m excited to watch these two great players play. Terran mirror matches are not always the most entertaining games, but this matchup is one you don’t want to miss.

Game one will be on iCCup Vahalla, a remake of the Brood War map that we haven’t seen yet. The air distances are not much shorter than the ground distances, so we may see a little more ground action than we’re used to in Terran mirrors. ThisIsJimmy favors early pressure to to take down his Terran opponents that get a little too greedy on economy building, and with the fairly close ground distances even cross-map, I think we will see some early exciting action. I don’t think the unfamiliarity with this map will stop either player from their natural aggressive play, so I think early harassing and pushing and some tight micro battles may decide this one before 15 minutes are done.

Read the rest of the breakdown here...

Make sure and tune in tonight starting at 6PM EST to catch these amazing games only on iCCup TV!!!