EPTGSTL Finals
STARTALE v Incredible Miracle
Game 1: ST_Troumen
v IMJunwi 
+ Show Spoiler +
Shakuras Plateau, cross positions
Junwi hatches first. Troumen puts on some bunker pressure, but quickly backs off. Troumen builds a command center after his first barracks, then gets two more barracks and a factory for tanks. Junwi takes his third at the vertical natural and gets a baneling nest. Troumen continues making barracks. Junwi gets his lair. Troumen pushes out across the map with marine tank right as combat shields finish. It works very well as Junwi still only has speedlings and slow banelings. Troumen easily takes down Junwi's natural and sets up camp with siege tanks. Without a medivac and with stim, Troumen's marines eventually fall, leaving the tanks unprotected. Junwi tries to intercept the reinforcements with speedlings, but has to gg once the second wave of marines makes it to the tank line.
It seems like Junwi played just a little bit too greedily this game. If either his lair tech or his army production had started just a little bit earlier, he might have been able to defend. IM sends out YongHwa
ST 1-0 IM
Junwi hatches first. Troumen puts on some bunker pressure, but quickly backs off. Troumen builds a command center after his first barracks, then gets two more barracks and a factory for tanks. Junwi takes his third at the vertical natural and gets a baneling nest. Troumen continues making barracks. Junwi gets his lair. Troumen pushes out across the map with marine tank right as combat shields finish. It works very well as Junwi still only has speedlings and slow banelings. Troumen easily takes down Junwi's natural and sets up camp with siege tanks. Without a medivac and with stim, Troumen's marines eventually fall, leaving the tanks unprotected. Junwi tries to intercept the reinforcements with speedlings, but has to gg once the second wave of marines makes it to the tank line.
It seems like Junwi played just a little bit too greedily this game. If either his lair tech or his army production had started just a little bit earlier, he might have been able to defend. IM sends out YongHwa
ST 1-0 IM
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ST_Troumen v IMYongHwa 
Crevasse
Troumen expands after his first barracks. YongHwa expands after finishing his first sentry. Troumen gets a factory for tanks, then two more barracks. YongHwa gets his robo, two more gateways, and a robotics bay. Troumen starts medivac production while continuing to make marines out of five barracks. After some initial skirmishes, Troumen makes the mistake of walking just within range of some out-of-vision, ranged colossi and sieges up. The colossi wreck his entire army, and prompt him to start making a marauder/viking/tank to deal with them. YongHwa uses his army advantage to expand and tech to dark temple/zealot legs. Three DTs wreck Troumen's economy; killing about twenty scvs altogether. YongHwa keeps up the dark templar harass with a warp prism. The economy disparity takes its toll, eventually putting Troumen down by sixty supply despite him taking a third as well. Troumen tries one last attack and gg's when it falls.
YongHwa still looking good. Troumen made essentially one mistake, and the game snowballed from there. ST employs some biological warfare and sends out Virus to kill YongHwa.
IM 1-1 ST
v IMYongHwa Crevasse
Troumen expands after his first barracks. YongHwa expands after finishing his first sentry. Troumen gets a factory for tanks, then two more barracks. YongHwa gets his robo, two more gateways, and a robotics bay. Troumen starts medivac production while continuing to make marines out of five barracks. After some initial skirmishes, Troumen makes the mistake of walking just within range of some out-of-vision, ranged colossi and sieges up. The colossi wreck his entire army, and prompt him to start making a marauder/viking/tank to deal with them. YongHwa uses his army advantage to expand and tech to dark temple/zealot legs. Three DTs wreck Troumen's economy; killing about twenty scvs altogether. YongHwa keeps up the dark templar harass with a warp prism. The economy disparity takes its toll, eventually putting Troumen down by sixty supply despite him taking a third as well. Troumen tries one last attack and gg's when it falls.
YongHwa still looking good. Troumen made essentially one mistake, and the game snowballed from there. ST employs some biological warfare and sends out Virus to kill YongHwa.
IM 1-1 ST
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IMYongHwa v ST_Virus
Scrap Station
Virus expands after his first barracks, then builds two more (Txx). YongHwa gets two gateways then a stargate, then expands. Virus starts medivac production while building up his bio ball. YongHwa brings his gateway count to four while continuing void ray production. At five void rays, YongHwa pushes through the middle rocks. Virus is completely unprepared, and his army falls fairly quickly. Once YongHwa's void rays get charged up in Virus's base, Virus gg's.
If YongHwa ever wants a cooler-sounding handle, it should be ColossusAnd/OrVoidRayKing.
IM 2-1 ST
v ST_Virus Scrap Station
Virus expands after his first barracks, then builds two more (Txx). YongHwa gets two gateways then a stargate, then expands. Virus starts medivac production while building up his bio ball. YongHwa brings his gateway count to four while continuing void ray production. At five void rays, YongHwa pushes through the middle rocks. Virus is completely unprepared, and his army falls fairly quickly. Once YongHwa's void rays get charged up in Virus's base, Virus gg's.
If YongHwa ever wants a cooler-sounding handle, it should be ColossusAnd/OrVoidRayKing.
IM 2-1 ST
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IMYongHwa v ST_July
Metalopolis, cross positions
July gets his pool first, then zergling speed after his expansion. YongHwa rushes for dark templar. July gets a roach warren, his lair, and morphs an overseer just in time! YongHwa's first three DTs run right into the overseer and a pack of zerglings. The DTs don't make it. YongHwa expands. July expands to his third, builds an in-base hatchery, and gets a spire. YongHwa spots the third and kills it mid-morph with two dark templar that lose their lives in the attempt. July retaliates with eight mutalisks that kill a lot of probes in YongHwa's main. YongHwa is on five warp gates at this point; he pulls all his probes off of gas and pushes all-in with a big gateway army. YongHwa shows some very nice unit control and force fields, but July has too many units for him to overcome. YongHwa gg's, becoming the first player to win exactly two games all tournament.
July ties it up with a clutch overseer. IM sends out Losira for a ZvZ on Crossfire.
ST 2-2 ST
v ST_July Metalopolis, cross positions
July gets his pool first, then zergling speed after his expansion. YongHwa rushes for dark templar. July gets a roach warren, his lair, and morphs an overseer just in time! YongHwa's first three DTs run right into the overseer and a pack of zerglings. The DTs don't make it. YongHwa expands. July expands to his third, builds an in-base hatchery, and gets a spire. YongHwa spots the third and kills it mid-morph with two dark templar that lose their lives in the attempt. July retaliates with eight mutalisks that kill a lot of probes in YongHwa's main. YongHwa is on five warp gates at this point; he pulls all his probes off of gas and pushes all-in with a big gateway army. YongHwa shows some very nice unit control and force fields, but July has too many units for him to overcome. YongHwa gg's, becoming the first player to win exactly two games all tournament.
July ties it up with a clutch overseer. IM sends out Losira for a ZvZ on Crossfire.
ST 2-2 ST
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ST_July v IMLosira
Crossfire
Losira hatches first. July gets speed first. Losira gets a roach warren. July gets banelings. July loses a lot of zerglings in his first attack; he expands, but is way down in drones. July tries to baneling bust Losira's roach column, followed by a zergling bum-rush, but it fails again. Losira counter-attacks with a hoard of roaches, wins.
July really has to work on his ZvZ. Banelings just don't work against roaches. July pretends to go back into the booth, but IM finally sends out Bomber to play in his first GSL game.
IM 3-2 ST
v IMLosira Crossfire
Losira hatches first. July gets speed first. Losira gets a roach warren. July gets banelings. July loses a lot of zerglings in his first attack; he expands, but is way down in drones. July tries to baneling bust Losira's roach column, followed by a zergling bum-rush, but it fails again. Losira counter-attacks with a hoard of roaches, wins.
July really has to work on his ZvZ. Banelings just don't work against roaches. July pretends to go back into the booth, but IM finally sends out Bomber to play in his first GSL game.
IM 3-2 ST
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IMLosira v ST_Bomber
Lost Temple, close positions
Bomber tries to one-barracks expand, but Losira gets his first drone into the base and scouts it. Losira had gone pool first, so he makes a round of zerglings that get into Bombers base, kill a bunch of marines, and see everything. Losira expands and starts a baneling nest. Bomber builds two more barracks, starts stim, and gets his factory. Losira positions for a baneling bust. They all get into Bomber's base! Bomber's first siege tank comes out just in time to absorb most of the baneling acid! But Losira keeps streaming x-lings into Bomber's base, killing a lot of scvs. Bomber manages to start a supply depot at his ramp, which completes a wall off. But Losira /dances all his zerglings instead of attacking! The wall-off finishes! A tank sieges! Stim finishes! The attack is repelled! Losira might be put on tilt a little bit as he makes a second baneling nest! Bomber moves out with a strong tank/marine force. Losira waits until baneling nest #2 finishes to start baneling speed. Bomber is able to kill Losira's expansion! Bomber makes his marines /dance! Baneling speed finally finishes for Losira, allowing him to clean up Bomber's push. But Bomber, meanwhile, has finally gotten his second orbital command down to his natural. The game stabilizes as Bomber uses his units to check for hidden expansions.
Losira gets his spire and re-expands to his natural. Bomber stays on marine/tank, starting his shields and +1 attack upgrades. Bomber starts his second marine/tank push across the map. When he gets to Losira's natural, instead of killing it, he drops a manner mule and makes his marine /dance AGAIN while they're being hit by a queen. As Bomber continues /dancing in Losira's natural, Losira is calmly destroying Bomber's scvs with mutalisks! But Bomber finally lets his marines kill Losira's natural's hatchery. Bomber gets some missile turrets up in his bases. Losira tries to baneling/muta Bomber's army to death, but Bomber has too many tanks and marines, and comes away victorious.
Bomber immediately starts to run over to IM's side of the arena for a ceremony, but is called back by the ST coach to high five his team first. Then he AND Ace, who hasn't even played yet, go over to the IM bench and do a kind of awkward dancing double-ceremony. As much as I love trashtalk and drama, Bomber might have overdone it there. The first counter-dance was funny, but the rest just seemed childish and petty. IM decides to send the big boys out to take care of Bomber. Mvp comes in from the back of the audience to take his seat in the booth.
ST 3-3 IM
v ST_Bomber Lost Temple, close positions
Bomber tries to one-barracks expand, but Losira gets his first drone into the base and scouts it. Losira had gone pool first, so he makes a round of zerglings that get into Bombers base, kill a bunch of marines, and see everything. Losira expands and starts a baneling nest. Bomber builds two more barracks, starts stim, and gets his factory. Losira positions for a baneling bust. They all get into Bomber's base! Bomber's first siege tank comes out just in time to absorb most of the baneling acid! But Losira keeps streaming x-lings into Bomber's base, killing a lot of scvs. Bomber manages to start a supply depot at his ramp, which completes a wall off. But Losira /dances all his zerglings instead of attacking! The wall-off finishes! A tank sieges! Stim finishes! The attack is repelled! Losira might be put on tilt a little bit as he makes a second baneling nest! Bomber moves out with a strong tank/marine force. Losira waits until baneling nest #2 finishes to start baneling speed. Bomber is able to kill Losira's expansion! Bomber makes his marines /dance! Baneling speed finally finishes for Losira, allowing him to clean up Bomber's push. But Bomber, meanwhile, has finally gotten his second orbital command down to his natural. The game stabilizes as Bomber uses his units to check for hidden expansions.
Losira gets his spire and re-expands to his natural. Bomber stays on marine/tank, starting his shields and +1 attack upgrades. Bomber starts his second marine/tank push across the map. When he gets to Losira's natural, instead of killing it, he drops a manner mule and makes his marine /dance AGAIN while they're being hit by a queen. As Bomber continues /dancing in Losira's natural, Losira is calmly destroying Bomber's scvs with mutalisks! But Bomber finally lets his marines kill Losira's natural's hatchery. Bomber gets some missile turrets up in his bases. Losira tries to baneling/muta Bomber's army to death, but Bomber has too many tanks and marines, and comes away victorious.
Bomber immediately starts to run over to IM's side of the arena for a ceremony, but is called back by the ST coach to high five his team first. Then he AND Ace, who hasn't even played yet, go over to the IM bench and do a kind of awkward dancing double-ceremony. As much as I love trashtalk and drama, Bomber might have overdone it there. The first counter-dance was funny, but the rest just seemed childish and petty. IM decides to send the big boys out to take care of Bomber. Mvp comes in from the back of the audience to take his seat in the booth.
ST 3-3 IM
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ST_Bomber IMMvp
Tal'Darim Altar, close positions, Mvp clock-wise.
Bomber opens by teching to a blue-flame hellion drop. Mvp techs to both siege tanks and banshees after doing some early damage with a hellion and a couple marines. Bomber's first drop is repelled, as is Mvp's first banshee. Both players get ravens and transition into marine/tank/viking. Mvp expands to his natural. Bomber expands to his low-yield expansion, and then to his own natural. Some hellion/auto-turret harassment leaves Bomber with ten more scvs than his opponent. Mvp chases Bomber's low-yield orbital away and starts pressuring Bomber's natural from that position. But this lets Bomber just counter-attack, since his army is actually closer to Mvp's base than Mvp's army is! Bomber's attack forces Mvp's scvs to join the fray, and a lot of them fall in combat. Bomber's push is eventually destroyed, but he ends up twenty supply and ten workers in the lead.
Bomber catches a small force of Mvp's in the open field and destroys it. Bomber immediately attacks Mvp's natural with some elevator action that leaves Mvp fifty supply behind and on slowly dwindling resources. Bomber takes his third at the counter-clockwise natural. Mvp spots it. Bomber runs a infantry force into a siege line stationed above Mvp's ramp! Mvp starts dropping all around the map. Mvp surrounds some of Bomber's infantry. Mvp closes the food gap to 20! Mvp kills Bomber's third! Bomber again runs his infantry into a tank line! Bomber's entire army falls! Mvp attacks Bomber's natural with a much bigger army in a much better position! Bomber gg's!
Wow. Mvp is amazing. The key to that game, I think, was Mvp's tank count. After the first elevator tactics up the natural cliff worked, I think Bomber got a little bit too eager to repeat it, and kept blindly running infantry into the range of tanks that Mvp stationed there afterward. Mvp puts an end to BM war and gracefully celebrates his victory with his own team. ST huddles the entire team for a pep cheer, then sends out Squirtle to hopefully extend the match to a ninth game.
IM 4-3 ST
IMMvp Tal'Darim Altar, close positions, Mvp clock-wise.
Bomber opens by teching to a blue-flame hellion drop. Mvp techs to both siege tanks and banshees after doing some early damage with a hellion and a couple marines. Bomber's first drop is repelled, as is Mvp's first banshee. Both players get ravens and transition into marine/tank/viking. Mvp expands to his natural. Bomber expands to his low-yield expansion, and then to his own natural. Some hellion/auto-turret harassment leaves Bomber with ten more scvs than his opponent. Mvp chases Bomber's low-yield orbital away and starts pressuring Bomber's natural from that position. But this lets Bomber just counter-attack, since his army is actually closer to Mvp's base than Mvp's army is! Bomber's attack forces Mvp's scvs to join the fray, and a lot of them fall in combat. Bomber's push is eventually destroyed, but he ends up twenty supply and ten workers in the lead.
Bomber catches a small force of Mvp's in the open field and destroys it. Bomber immediately attacks Mvp's natural with some elevator action that leaves Mvp fifty supply behind and on slowly dwindling resources. Bomber takes his third at the counter-clockwise natural. Mvp spots it. Bomber runs a infantry force into a siege line stationed above Mvp's ramp! Mvp starts dropping all around the map. Mvp surrounds some of Bomber's infantry. Mvp closes the food gap to 20! Mvp kills Bomber's third! Bomber again runs his infantry into a tank line! Bomber's entire army falls! Mvp attacks Bomber's natural with a much bigger army in a much better position! Bomber gg's!
Wow. Mvp is amazing. The key to that game, I think, was Mvp's tank count. After the first elevator tactics up the natural cliff worked, I think Bomber got a little bit too eager to repeat it, and kept blindly running infantry into the range of tanks that Mvp stationed there afterward. Mvp puts an end to BM war and gracefully celebrates his victory with his own team. ST huddles the entire team for a pep cheer, then sends out Squirtle to hopefully extend the match to a ninth game.
IM 4-3 ST
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IM_Mvp v ST_GgoBoogie(Squirtle)
Terminus RE – Cross positions
Squirtle lays down a 16-nexus. Mvp expands after his first barracks. And then again! Squirtle still hasn't seen even the second command center, much less the third; he gets four total warp gates, researches hallucination, and techs to dark templar. Squirtle uses a hallucinated phoenix to gain vision to warp DTs into Mvp's base. The dark templar do a lot of damage, costing many scans and killing a good number of units and workers. Most importantly, though, Squirtle kills an engineering bay before +1 weapons finish, and Mvp does not seem to notice at all, as he doesn't replace it for many minutes. Squirtle expands to his third, researches charge, blink, and gets all the way up to +2/+2 before Mvp's second engineering bay even finishes.
As Squirtle takes his fourth, Mvp snipes his templar archives before psionic storms finishes. Mvp, realizing that Squirtle has no robo units at all, starts switching over to mech production, getting blue flames for his hellions and many more tanks. Mvp double-expands to his fourth and the natural fourth just counter-clockwise from him. Squirtle expands to his counterclockwise main. Mvp starting building five command centers at once. Squirtle gets a fleet beacon... and a mothership! Drops from Mvp kill off some tech structures and Squirtle's fifth base. Squirtle kills Mvp's fifth and takes the clockwise main. +3/+3/+1 is finished for Squirtle. +3 vehicle weapons is on the way for Mvp. Mvp kills Squirtle's fourth. But the mothership comes out and Squirtle rolls through Mvp's army! Squirtle kills Mvp's fifth again. And then his fourth with a huge vortex from the mothership, which then falls to vikings! Squirtle misses a perfect chance for a vortex-storm. His army falls down to equal with Mvp's and he has to back off. When the dust settles, Mvp has three bases to Squirtle five, only one of which is mining. But Mvp re-expands to his fourth, and uses his giant orbital count to float around and saturate bases with mules.
At this point, Mvp is making essentially only mech, with a huge tank and thor count. Squirtle, on the other hand, is still sticking to zealot/stalker/templar/mothership. Both players quickly re-max. Another epic vortex from another mothership changes the tide of a huge battle in the middle! But a lot of tanks survive and one-shot all the units as they come out of it. Squirtle starts constant immortal production. The players keep trading bases with each other, but Squirtle stays ahead in economy. Squirtle corners Mvp's tanks with immortal/zealot and takes out all of Mvp's remaining mining bases but one, which is itself almost dry. Mvp, starved for resources, makes a huge hellion army. Squirtle keeps expanding and making immortals. Mvp's last base is a planetary, but even with every single one of Mvp's scvs repairing, Squirtle's immortals essentially one-shot it. Mvp rains a mule hailstone on Squirtle's army as a sign of concession, and types out 'gg'.
There isn't really much more to add. People will remember this game for years. The cap to this amazing match will be Squirtle v Nestea on Xel'Naga Caverns.
ST 4-4 IM
v ST_GgoBoogie(Squirtle) Terminus RE – Cross positions
Squirtle lays down a 16-nexus. Mvp expands after his first barracks. And then again! Squirtle still hasn't seen even the second command center, much less the third; he gets four total warp gates, researches hallucination, and techs to dark templar. Squirtle uses a hallucinated phoenix to gain vision to warp DTs into Mvp's base. The dark templar do a lot of damage, costing many scans and killing a good number of units and workers. Most importantly, though, Squirtle kills an engineering bay before +1 weapons finish, and Mvp does not seem to notice at all, as he doesn't replace it for many minutes. Squirtle expands to his third, researches charge, blink, and gets all the way up to +2/+2 before Mvp's second engineering bay even finishes.
As Squirtle takes his fourth, Mvp snipes his templar archives before psionic storms finishes. Mvp, realizing that Squirtle has no robo units at all, starts switching over to mech production, getting blue flames for his hellions and many more tanks. Mvp double-expands to his fourth and the natural fourth just counter-clockwise from him. Squirtle expands to his counterclockwise main. Mvp starting building five command centers at once. Squirtle gets a fleet beacon... and a mothership! Drops from Mvp kill off some tech structures and Squirtle's fifth base. Squirtle kills Mvp's fifth and takes the clockwise main. +3/+3/+1 is finished for Squirtle. +3 vehicle weapons is on the way for Mvp. Mvp kills Squirtle's fourth. But the mothership comes out and Squirtle rolls through Mvp's army! Squirtle kills Mvp's fifth again. And then his fourth with a huge vortex from the mothership, which then falls to vikings! Squirtle misses a perfect chance for a vortex-storm. His army falls down to equal with Mvp's and he has to back off. When the dust settles, Mvp has three bases to Squirtle five, only one of which is mining. But Mvp re-expands to his fourth, and uses his giant orbital count to float around and saturate bases with mules.
At this point, Mvp is making essentially only mech, with a huge tank and thor count. Squirtle, on the other hand, is still sticking to zealot/stalker/templar/mothership. Both players quickly re-max. Another epic vortex from another mothership changes the tide of a huge battle in the middle! But a lot of tanks survive and one-shot all the units as they come out of it. Squirtle starts constant immortal production. The players keep trading bases with each other, but Squirtle stays ahead in economy. Squirtle corners Mvp's tanks with immortal/zealot and takes out all of Mvp's remaining mining bases but one, which is itself almost dry. Mvp, starved for resources, makes a huge hellion army. Squirtle keeps expanding and making immortals. Mvp's last base is a planetary, but even with every single one of Mvp's scvs repairing, Squirtle's immortals essentially one-shot it. Mvp rains a mule hailstone on Squirtle's army as a sign of concession, and types out 'gg'.
There isn't really much more to add. People will remember this game for years. The cap to this amazing match will be Squirtle v Nestea on Xel'Naga Caverns.
ST 4-4 IM
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ST_GgoBoogie (Squirtle) v IMNesTea
Xel'Naga Caverns
Squirtle rushes for a void ray. Nestea gets speed first, then expands and gets a roach warren. Squirtle's fist void ray kills a couple overlords, but Nestea gets spore crawlers and queens to defend. Squirtle expands. Nestea techs to lair and hydralisks. Squirtle gets his robotics facility. Squirtle moves against Neatea's main, killing two queens and a lot of drones with a fully-charged void ray. Nestea defends, and immediately counter-attacks with hydralisks before the robotics bay finishes! Nestea's hydras are ripping up Squirtle's natural. Squirtle smells blood starts rallying speedlings and hydralisks into Squirtle's bases. Squirtle's first colossus never even makes it onto the map. Squirtle gg's.
It was probably too much to hope to beat two former-champions in a row, but Squirtle came very close with that first attack. A somewhat anti-climatic game to an amazing finals, but it is hard to care after the treat that these two teams gave us.
Incredible Micracle beats STARTALE 5-4 in the most awesomest series of games yet in StarCraft2.
v IMNesTea Xel'Naga Caverns
Squirtle rushes for a void ray. Nestea gets speed first, then expands and gets a roach warren. Squirtle's fist void ray kills a couple overlords, but Nestea gets spore crawlers and queens to defend. Squirtle expands. Nestea techs to lair and hydralisks. Squirtle gets his robotics facility. Squirtle moves against Neatea's main, killing two queens and a lot of drones with a fully-charged void ray. Nestea defends, and immediately counter-attacks with hydralisks before the robotics bay finishes! Nestea's hydras are ripping up Squirtle's natural. Squirtle smells blood starts rallying speedlings and hydralisks into Squirtle's bases. Squirtle's first colossus never even makes it onto the map. Squirtle gg's.
It was probably too much to hope to beat two former-champions in a row, but Squirtle came very close with that first attack. A somewhat anti-climatic game to an amazing finals, but it is hard to care after the treat that these two teams gave us.
Incredible Micracle beats STARTALE 5-4 in the most awesomest series of games yet in StarCraft2.
EDIT: Past recaps added.
RO4:
+ Show Spoiler +
Just a note: at the time I watched these, I really hadn't played the GSTL maps very much. They seemed pretty straightforward, except Tal'Darim Altar, which I really didn't feel comfortable talking about since it's so complex. So any games on that map here have just a one-line summary. Sorry :-(
STARTALE v Team SCV Life
+ Show Spoiler +
Game 1: ST_Ace
v TSL_Clide + Show Spoiler +
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
Clide builds a command center after putting a reactor on his first barracks. Ace expands after his third gateway. After scouting the expansion, Clide cancels siege mode research at his factory and instead starts looking into infernal pre-igniters for his hellions. Ace gets his robotics facility, then techs to dark templar. Clide drops blue-flame hellions in Ace's main and his natural, killing about fifteen probes in all. But Ace responds with DTs going alternately into Clide two bases. They are warping in via an observer and a pylon at Clide's interior third. Even though he has a raven, Clide can't be everywhere at once, and Ace ends up ten probes ahead.
Ace stays on gateway units, upgrading charge and blink. Clide moves out and brings his raven along, allowing more dark templar to warp into his base and start having their ways with various add-on and units not covered by missile turrets. Clide gets to Ace's front door after some good point defense drones force Ace's units to retreat. But after taking out the raven, Ace cleans up the rest of Clide's bio ball with yet more dark templar. Ace expands to his vertical third and gets a templar archives. Clide takes out Ace's third nexus with a two-medivac drop. Ace retakes his third; Clide takes his for the first time. Clide gets a ghost academy. Clide forces a cancel on a building fourth nexus and takes his own fourth base- both a the respective vertical mains.
The two armies start to feel each other out in the middle of the map. Ace manages to get up his fourth and warps in a robotics facility, transitioning to colossus/templar. Ace gets the better of the first major engagement with good storms and feedbacks, but overextends while chasing Clide's units and has to retreat after losing too much. Clide keeps up the drop pressure, forcing cancels on a few more nexuses. Ace breaks through the rocks separating the two mains and double-expands to both the shared hallway expansion and his far interior expansion. Ace keeps the pressure up as he tears down most of the rocks on the map and harasses Clide's main and fourth simultaneously. He does good damage, but more importantly it prevents Clide from attacking his two extra bases that are starting to get saturated with probes. The two armies meet again in the middle of the map. Clide wins the battle when an emp falls right in the middle of a group of templar, but only a few marauders are left over. Ace's pressure starts wearing down Clide's worker count, which starts to show as Clide's army looks smaller and smaller. Off of a weaker economy, Clide's bio can't compete with colossus/templar, and he gg's once his final source of minerals falls.
Definitely the best game of the team league so far. Both players showed great strategy and control. Clide had great, effective drops; Ace's dark templar usage was phenomenal. The storm/feedback/emp wars were very tense and tight. Ace's multitasking might have been a little bit better than Clide's, but I suppose it helps when you can just warp units wherever you need them on the map. Once Ace had the double tech of colossus and high templar, though, Clide was doomed unless could do something different, which he didn't. It's also great to see so many abilities researched by Ace, who got every single ability in the twilight council branch. After consulting for a bit, TSL sends out Rain. I really have to question the strategy we've seen so much this league of sending out the same race against someone who is obviously very good at a matchup.
ST 1-0 TSL
Clide builds a command center after putting a reactor on his first barracks. Ace expands after his third gateway. After scouting the expansion, Clide cancels siege mode research at his factory and instead starts looking into infernal pre-igniters for his hellions. Ace gets his robotics facility, then techs to dark templar. Clide drops blue-flame hellions in Ace's main and his natural, killing about fifteen probes in all. But Ace responds with DTs going alternately into Clide two bases. They are warping in via an observer and a pylon at Clide's interior third. Even though he has a raven, Clide can't be everywhere at once, and Ace ends up ten probes ahead.
Ace stays on gateway units, upgrading charge and blink. Clide moves out and brings his raven along, allowing more dark templar to warp into his base and start having their ways with various add-on and units not covered by missile turrets. Clide gets to Ace's front door after some good point defense drones force Ace's units to retreat. But after taking out the raven, Ace cleans up the rest of Clide's bio ball with yet more dark templar. Ace expands to his vertical third and gets a templar archives. Clide takes out Ace's third nexus with a two-medivac drop. Ace retakes his third; Clide takes his for the first time. Clide gets a ghost academy. Clide forces a cancel on a building fourth nexus and takes his own fourth base- both a the respective vertical mains.
The two armies start to feel each other out in the middle of the map. Ace manages to get up his fourth and warps in a robotics facility, transitioning to colossus/templar. Ace gets the better of the first major engagement with good storms and feedbacks, but overextends while chasing Clide's units and has to retreat after losing too much. Clide keeps up the drop pressure, forcing cancels on a few more nexuses. Ace breaks through the rocks separating the two mains and double-expands to both the shared hallway expansion and his far interior expansion. Ace keeps the pressure up as he tears down most of the rocks on the map and harasses Clide's main and fourth simultaneously. He does good damage, but more importantly it prevents Clide from attacking his two extra bases that are starting to get saturated with probes. The two armies meet again in the middle of the map. Clide wins the battle when an emp falls right in the middle of a group of templar, but only a few marauders are left over. Ace's pressure starts wearing down Clide's worker count, which starts to show as Clide's army looks smaller and smaller. Off of a weaker economy, Clide's bio can't compete with colossus/templar, and he gg's once his final source of minerals falls.
Definitely the best game of the team league so far. Both players showed great strategy and control. Clide had great, effective drops; Ace's dark templar usage was phenomenal. The storm/feedback/emp wars were very tense and tight. Ace's multitasking might have been a little bit better than Clide's, but I suppose it helps when you can just warp units wherever you need them on the map. Once Ace had the double tech of colossus and high templar, though, Clide was doomed unless could do something different, which he didn't. It's also great to see so many abilities researched by Ace, who got every single ability in the twilight council branch. After consulting for a bit, TSL sends out Rain. I really have to question the strategy we've seen so much this league of sending out the same race against someone who is obviously very good at a matchup.
ST 1-0 TSL
+ Show Spoiler +
ST_Ace v TSL_Rain
Metalopolis, close positions
Rain two-barracks (TR). Ace techs to robo, add a gateway, gets his robotics bay, and adds on two more gateways. Ace easily fends off Rain's first push with a forcefield. Rain techs up to starport for medivacs. Ace gets thermal lance. Rain attacks just before Ace's second colossus and thermal lance finish. Rain makes headway, but once Ace's second colossus comes out, he chases Rain all the way back to his base, and soon after marches up his ramp and kills him.
Oh Rain. TSL send out another terran against Ace. Also, in his interview, the TSL coach said that they had practiced the new maps a lot, and that if they played on them TSL would win 100%. THEN PICK THEM! Maybe he doesn't know that he gets to choose?
ST 2-0 TSL
v TSL_Rain Metalopolis, close positions
Rain two-barracks (TR). Ace techs to robo, add a gateway, gets his robotics bay, and adds on two more gateways. Ace easily fends off Rain's first push with a forcefield. Rain techs up to starport for medivacs. Ace gets thermal lance. Rain attacks just before Ace's second colossus and thermal lance finish. Rain makes headway, but once Ace's second colossus comes out, he chases Rain all the way back to his base, and soon after marches up his ramp and kills him.
Oh Rain. TSL send out another terran against Ace. Also, in his interview, the TSL coach said that they had practiced the new maps a lot, and that if they played on them TSL would win 100%. THEN PICK THEM! Maybe he doesn't know that he gets to choose?
ST 2-0 TSL
+ Show Spoiler +
ST_Ace v TSL_Alive
Lost Temple, close positions
Alive gets quick concussive shells and expands. Ace expands after three gateways. Ace adds on two more barracks and techs to starport for medivacs. Alive builds up to six warp gates. Alive knows a huge gateway army is coming, and sets up a small force behind the bushes in the middle of the map below Ace's main. But Ace sees it... and destroys it with almost no losses! Ace, now with a much superior army, is able to bust through Alive's bunkers, and Alive gg's.
Another 3-kill by a Code A player. Ace celebrates by going over to the TSL bench and calling out one of their players. TSL responds by sending out their first non-terran and choosing the first non-Blizzard map.
ST 3-0 TSL
v TSL_Alive Lost Temple, close positions
Alive gets quick concussive shells and expands. Ace expands after three gateways. Ace adds on two more barracks and techs to starport for medivacs. Alive builds up to six warp gates. Alive knows a huge gateway army is coming, and sets up a small force behind the bushes in the middle of the map below Ace's main. But Ace sees it... and destroys it with almost no losses! Ace, now with a much superior army, is able to bust through Alive's bunkers, and Alive gg's.
Another 3-kill by a Code A player. Ace celebrates by going over to the TSL bench and calling out one of their players. TSL responds by sending out their first non-terran and choosing the first non-Blizzard map.
ST 3-0 TSL
+ Show Spoiler +
ST_Ace v TSL_Killer (SangHo)
Crossfire
Both players tech to robo. Ace gets an earlier robotics bay. Killer starts his robotics bay only after Ace's first colossus has come out. Killer expands, but is unable to mine from it as Ace sets up outside his natural. In the first engagement, some mismicro by Ace loses him a colossus. Ace expands while putting weak pressure on killer. Killer slowly, gently pushes Ace back across the map. Killer ends up with five colossi to Ace's three, maybe due to Killer's early nexus allowing him to chronoboost more. The colossus advantage means Killer wins the battle and the game.
I really wish I had that replay so I could see how solid Ace's colossus production was and where his resources were going. ST sends out... July! A zerg! On Scrap station!
TSL 1-3 ST
v TSL_Killer (SangHo) Crossfire
Both players tech to robo. Ace gets an earlier robotics bay. Killer starts his robotics bay only after Ace's first colossus has come out. Killer expands, but is unable to mine from it as Ace sets up outside his natural. In the first engagement, some mismicro by Ace loses him a colossus. Ace expands while putting weak pressure on killer. Killer slowly, gently pushes Ace back across the map. Killer ends up with five colossi to Ace's three, maybe due to Killer's early nexus allowing him to chronoboost more. The colossus advantage means Killer wins the battle and the game.
I really wish I had that replay so I could see how solid Ace's colossus production was and where his resources were going. ST sends out... July! A zerg! On Scrap station!
TSL 1-3 ST
+ Show Spoiler +
TSL_Killer v ST_July
Scrap Station
Killer puts down a 15-nexus, then a forge. July gets speed first, then expands. July gets four zerglings through Killer's botched wall-in! July's zerglings wreck havoc in Killer's natural, allowing July to drone up and tech to spire. By the time the zerglings die, July is up by fifteen drones and is well into his tech. Killer warps in a stargate. July gets an in-base third, takes his gold, and gets a hydralisk den. July gets six preemptive corruptors and a roach warren. Killer adds on another robotics facility and starts pumping out double immortals. July starts massing roach/hydra. Killer pushes through the middle rocks with a strong stalker/sentry/immortal army. But it gets pushed back by a huge concave. When July maxes out, Killer has just 110 supply. July takes his third as a fourth base and a baneling nest. July baneling drops Killer's army and techs to hive. Killer attacks once he gets near max. His first army wins with some stalkers left over, but July just builds FIFTY roaches at once, and wins.
July kind of seemed to be toying with Killer here. The was essentially over from the time July got those zerglings in. StarTale was absolutely dominant today. Ace is yet another CodeAer to watch out for next tournament. It is really shaping up to be a great season.
MVP: ST_Ace
STARTALE beats Team SCV Life 4-1
v ST_July Scrap Station
Killer puts down a 15-nexus, then a forge. July gets speed first, then expands. July gets four zerglings through Killer's botched wall-in! July's zerglings wreck havoc in Killer's natural, allowing July to drone up and tech to spire. By the time the zerglings die, July is up by fifteen drones and is well into his tech. Killer warps in a stargate. July gets an in-base third, takes his gold, and gets a hydralisk den. July gets six preemptive corruptors and a roach warren. Killer adds on another robotics facility and starts pumping out double immortals. July starts massing roach/hydra. Killer pushes through the middle rocks with a strong stalker/sentry/immortal army. But it gets pushed back by a huge concave. When July maxes out, Killer has just 110 supply. July takes his third as a fourth base and a baneling nest. July baneling drops Killer's army and techs to hive. Killer attacks once he gets near max. His first army wins with some stalkers left over, but July just builds FIFTY roaches at once, and wins.
July kind of seemed to be toying with Killer here. The was essentially over from the time July got those zerglings in. StarTale was absolutely dominant today. Ace is yet another CodeAer to watch out for next tournament. It is really shaping up to be a great season.
MVP: ST_Ace
STARTALE beats Team SCV Life 4-1
+ Show Spoiler +
TSL got Aced.
+ Show Spoiler +
You can TALE who the STARS of this match were. (I'm from NC. It works.)
Incredible Miracle v ZeNEX
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Game 1: IMLosira v ZeNEXByun
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v ZeNEXByun + Show Spoiler +
Shakuras Plateau- close positions
Losira get early zergling speed. Byun opens with a reaper and an expansion. Losira gets speedlings into Byun's base, sees no threat, triple expands before making anything else, then techs up to lair. Byun starts going for two-factory tanks with a couple thors mixed in. At 10:00 Losira has 72 drones to Byun's 73 supply altogether. Byun builds four more barracks, all with reactors. Byun tries to expand into the shared trench right around when Losira hits max. Losira throws about sixty banelings and a few dozen roaches at it. He takes out all of Byun's mech. It's a very inefficient attack, but it kills all the tanks and thors, and it was no more inefficient than his macro is better than Byun's. It happens over and over again, and Byun repeatedly loses his entire army as he desperately tries to secure that middle base. He finally manages to get a planetary fortress completed, but Losira just right clicks on it with banelings, and Byun gg's.
The scene looks very familiar as another newly-qualified Code A player convincingly beats a Code S player. I really liked Losria's plan of triple expanding so early after getting speed and scouting a passive terran. I'm not sure how he would have reacted had things started to go wrong, but he seemed to have an absolute stranglehold on Byun. I'm starting to think that it might be cool for there to be a special Top16 v Bottom16 set of UpAndDown matches every so often to make sure that everyone gets a chance at them that deserve it. ZeNEX sends out Kyrix, setting up the first ZvZ of the team league.
IM 1-0 ZeNEX
Losira get early zergling speed. Byun opens with a reaper and an expansion. Losira gets speedlings into Byun's base, sees no threat, triple expands before making anything else, then techs up to lair. Byun starts going for two-factory tanks with a couple thors mixed in. At 10:00 Losira has 72 drones to Byun's 73 supply altogether. Byun builds four more barracks, all with reactors. Byun tries to expand into the shared trench right around when Losira hits max. Losira throws about sixty banelings and a few dozen roaches at it. He takes out all of Byun's mech. It's a very inefficient attack, but it kills all the tanks and thors, and it was no more inefficient than his macro is better than Byun's. It happens over and over again, and Byun repeatedly loses his entire army as he desperately tries to secure that middle base. He finally manages to get a planetary fortress completed, but Losira just right clicks on it with banelings, and Byun gg's.
The scene looks very familiar as another newly-qualified Code A player convincingly beats a Code S player. I really liked Losria's plan of triple expanding so early after getting speed and scouting a passive terran. I'm not sure how he would have reacted had things started to go wrong, but he seemed to have an absolute stranglehold on Byun. I'm starting to think that it might be cool for there to be a special Top16 v Bottom16 set of UpAndDown matches every so often to make sure that everyone gets a chance at them that deserve it. ZeNEX sends out Kyrix, setting up the first ZvZ of the team league.
IM 1-0 ZeNEX
+ Show Spoiler +
IMLosira v ZeNEXKyrix
Metalopolis, cross positions
Kyrix gets early zergling speed, then expands. Losira hatches first followed by roaches. Kyrix spots the roaches and gets a baneling nest. Losira gets his own zergling speed. Kyrix makes a ton of zerglings, some banelings, and busts the ramp after his banelings hit home.
I guess we should be happy for a ZvZ at all. A good one was probably too much to hope for. Mvp fakes everyone out by standing up, but IM sends out a new face in YongHwa.
ZeNEX 1-1 IM
v ZeNEXKyrix Metalopolis, cross positions
Kyrix gets early zergling speed, then expands. Losira hatches first followed by roaches. Kyrix spots the roaches and gets a baneling nest. Losira gets his own zergling speed. Kyrix makes a ton of zerglings, some banelings, and busts the ramp after his banelings hit home.
I guess we should be happy for a ZvZ at all. A good one was probably too much to hope for. Mvp fakes everyone out by standing up, but IM sends out a new face in YongHwa.
ZeNEX 1-1 IM
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eNEXKyrix v IMYongHwa
Crevasse- cross positions
Kyrix hatches first. YongHwa forge-expands. Kyrix takes a third and starts zergling speed. YongHwa gets a stargate for a void ray. Kyrix techs to lair, then a hydralisk den. YongHwa gets his robo, followed by a robotics bay. Kyrix easily fends the first void ray. YongHwa gets a second stargate, and a few more gateways, and a twlight council. With this huge investment into infrastructure off two bases, at the 12:00 mark YongHwa is fifty food behind Kyrix. Kyrix take his minibase as his forth. YongHwa takes his third as he builds up a big zealot/void ray/colossus army. Kyrix is building up his roach/hydra/infestor swarm. By the time Kyrix attacks, YongHwa has about five colossi and ten void rays, which, along with zealot meat, rips though Kyrix's units with few losses. It's too late for Kyrix: YongHwa has an indestructible ball of death that starts rolling across the map and over Kyrix.
That game felt like a USM tug-of-war map between two total noobs. But it was awesome. There is no reason not to play like YongHwa did if a) you can survive and b) can attack at a reasonable time. ZeNEX sends out Nuke/On to tie the match back up.
IM 2-1 ZeNEX
v IMYongHwa Crevasse- cross positions
Kyrix hatches first. YongHwa forge-expands. Kyrix takes a third and starts zergling speed. YongHwa gets a stargate for a void ray. Kyrix techs to lair, then a hydralisk den. YongHwa gets his robo, followed by a robotics bay. Kyrix easily fends the first void ray. YongHwa gets a second stargate, and a few more gateways, and a twlight council. With this huge investment into infrastructure off two bases, at the 12:00 mark YongHwa is fifty food behind Kyrix. Kyrix take his minibase as his forth. YongHwa takes his third as he builds up a big zealot/void ray/colossus army. Kyrix is building up his roach/hydra/infestor swarm. By the time Kyrix attacks, YongHwa has about five colossi and ten void rays, which, along with zealot meat, rips though Kyrix's units with few losses. It's too late for Kyrix: YongHwa has an indestructible ball of death that starts rolling across the map and over Kyrix.
That game felt like a USM tug-of-war map between two total noobs. But it was awesome. There is no reason not to play like YongHwa did if a) you can survive and b) can attack at a reasonable time. ZeNEX sends out Nuke/On to tie the match back up.
IM 2-1 ZeNEX
+ Show Spoiler +
IMYongHwa v ZeNEXNuke (ON)
Tal'Darim Altar, Nuke clockwise
YongHwa wins with really strong upgrades.
IM 3-1 ZeNEX
v ZeNEXNuke (ON) Tal'Darim Altar, Nuke clockwise
YongHwa wins with really strong upgrades.
IM 3-1 ZeNEX
+ Show Spoiler +
IMYongHwa v ZeNEXFFMon (Puzzle)
Lost Temple, close-by-air positions
Puzzle rushes for blink off three warp gates. YongHwa gets three warp gates and a robo. When YongHwa see blink stalkers at his door, he cancels his robotics bay, warps in a twilight council for blink, and keeps making immortals. After being repelled by good force fields, Puzzle gets a robo of his own and a dark shrine. YongHwa uses blink to surround and destroy Puzzle's army. Soon after, YongHwa attacks in for the win.
IM advances after another 4-1. This league has really been about the teams showcasing their new talent, which they have a lot of.
MVP: YongHwa- who is so nervous in his interview that he just kind of shuts down and stops talking.
Incredible Miracle beats ZeNEX 4-1
v ZeNEXFFMon (Puzzle) Lost Temple, close-by-air positions
Puzzle rushes for blink off three warp gates. YongHwa gets three warp gates and a robo. When YongHwa see blink stalkers at his door, he cancels his robotics bay, warps in a twilight council for blink, and keeps making immortals. After being repelled by good force fields, Puzzle gets a robo of his own and a dark shrine. YongHwa uses blink to surround and destroy Puzzle's army. Soon after, YongHwa attacks in for the win.
IM advances after another 4-1. This league has really been about the teams showcasing their new talent, which they have a lot of.
MVP: YongHwa- who is so nervous in his interview that he just kind of shuts down and stops talking.
Incredible Miracle beats ZeNEX 4-1
+ Show Spoiler +
This was not that incredible.
+ Show Spoiler +
Nor was it a miracle.
RO8:
+ Show Spoiler +
So none of these game were that good, and it would be a huge pain to format it all. Nonetheless, somebody somewhere might find use for it. So I'm just going to copy/paste the entire document. So no editing, no formating, no spoiling, just a big chunk. Again- no recaps from Tal'Darim altar. Warning: huge block of text-
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Super big:
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StarTale vs fOu
Match 1: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v GuMihofOu R
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
After a quick regame and a pause, the game finally gets underway with Gumiho rolling terran. Gumiho two-barracks expands. Squirtle two-gate expands. Gumiho techs to starport for marine/tank/medivac. Squirtle adds on three more gateways while getting a lot of sentries. Gumiho's first marine/tank force gets sandwiched between sentries and stalkers, is completely wiped out. Squirtle uses his advantage to attack Gumiho's natural. Gumiho is forced to pull scvs and loses a bunch of them, but a sieged tank in his main eventually repels the attack.
Squirtle techs up to dark templar as Gumiho sieges up just beyond his back door rocks and starts raining shells into his base. Three dark templar walk into Squirtle's base before the attack comes. They do a lot of damage, stripping at least twenty scvs from Gumiho's economy. After dealing with the DTs, Gumiho finally breaks down the rock and attacks into the back of Squirtle's base just before charge finishes. But dark templar appear at both the front line and Gumiho's front door, forcing him to retreat as he gets a raven for detection. Squirtle expands to his vertical third. A bunch of strange base-trady engagements follow, but ultimately the damage done to Gumiho's economy manifests itself as Gumiho's army falls further and further behind in strength, eventually forcing him to gg without a final, deciding battle.
This seemed like a fairly typical Code A game. One thing to note is that Gumiho never got stim, nor did he get combat shields despite relying on marines well into the mid-game. Either he's gained a unique perspective on the cost/benefit analysis from playing random and seeing things from all different sides, or he just forgot because this is just one of six match-ups he has to know. After conferring for a bit, the fOu team sends out the terran sC as their next player, and chooses Crossfire as the next map.
StarTale 1 – 0 For Our Utopia
Game 2: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v sCfOu T
Crossfire
Essy gets a fast two barracks with shells and stim. Squirtle techs to dark templar and handily deals with Essy's first units. The protoss expands behind his templar, which kill nine scvs. Essy gets an engineering bay for turrets, brings his barracks count up to three(TTR), and builds another command center. Squirtle gets a total of seven gateways. Squirtle macros for a bit, and then attacks. Despite some incredibly poor micro, Squirtle is able to steamroll through Essy's army by virtue of his far superior economy.
Well, it didn't take very long for a CodeA>CodeS victory then. It's hard to emphasize, though, how bad of a mistake it was for Squirtle to have almost every single zealot stuck behind the lines of that last battle. Even after retreating to let reinforcements catch up, the only zealots that did any damage were the ones that just happened to be near the sides of the front. Essy's team sends out TheBest and picks TalDarim Altar to try to take a game off of Squirtle.
StarTale 2-0 ForOurUtopia
Game 3: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v TheBestfOu T
Tal'Darim Altar- close-positions, Squirtle clock
TheBest gets two barracks (TR) and a reaper to scout. Squirtle four-gates into a nexus. TheBest expands and builds up to five barracks. Squirtle techs to colossus, and then two stargates for phoenix. TheBest techs to starport for medivacs. TheBest starts applying fairly constant pressure to Squirtle's front. Squirtle defends, but not without some serious mismanagement. 16:00
And Fou sends out... Nuclear? The map is Metalopolis for the days fourth TvP
Game 4: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v NuClearfOu T
Metalopolis- close positions
Nuclear gets a barracks with a quick reactor, then expands. Squirtle immediately techs to stargate for a voidray. Nuclear transitiions to six barracks(TTRRxx) before flying his extra orbital down to his expansion. Squirtle's poor void ray control means his first void ray does not do anything at all. By the time Nuclear finally floats his orbital down, Squirtle has built up to five void rays, enabling him to easily take out the expansion. Squirtle tries to keep pressuring with his units, but eventually his attacks peters out, and Squirtle settles for containing his opponents at his ramp.
After a while of containing his opponent, Squirtle finally expands. From there, Squirtle is quite content to continually forcefield Nuclear's ramp as he macros off of two bases, keeping up void ray production. Nuclear tries to stim down the ramp a couple times, even sending his scvs AFTER his infantry once. But there is nothing Nuclear can do, and once he has zero supple, he finally gg's.
Strangely enough, the first GTSL team match is an all-kill by a Code A player against two Code S players and two Code B players. Squirtle's PvT is obsiously pretty solid, but his unit-management seemed pretty off, a fact that he recognizes in his interview. The fact that he mentions it makes me think that it might have been nerves that hurt him. Squirtle, I think, has a good chance to make it to Code S, but I wouldn't expect any more all-kills, as the remaining teams will all have very competent players.
Fou's strategy seemed odd, sending mediocre terran after mediocre terran to their deaths.
MVP: ST_Squirtle
Prime v Team SCV Life
Game 1: HongUnPrime.WE P v TSL_Trickster (Kisu) P
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
HongUn goes Gate/Core/Robo/Gate/Gate. Kisu four gates. HongUn gets colossus-tech. Kisu gets his own robo, followed by a robotics bay. Kisu expands to his natural. HongUn starts breaking through the backdoor rocks. Kisu spots it. HongUn's attack gets through Kisu's backdoor with thermal lance just before Kisu's thermal lance finishes. They have pretty equal forces. Their zealots neutralize. The stalkers neutralize, leaving three colossi for HongUn against two colossi and a lone immortal of Kisu. Despite some solid, tense micro on HongUn's part, the immortal turns the tide and forces HongUn back to his base. HongUn makes another attack, but, being one base behind, he quickly has to retreat again. Kisu follows quickly thereafter, and wins the game.
HongUn's colossus micro seemed very good, but Kisu handled his rush perfectly. It's hard to see how, considering that his build seemed almost strictly behind his opponent's for a lot of the game, but Kisu held the attack with the absolute perfect amount of units to put him ahead a base. Prime sends out freshly CodeS'ed Polt to play on Lost Temple
TSL 1-0 Prime
Game 2: TSL_Trickster (Kisu) P v PoltPrime.WE T
Lost Temple, close-by-air positions
Polt goes for a reactored barracks, then expands. Kisu expands after his first gateway. Polt adds on two barracks (TRR), followed by shields/stim. Kisu get three more gateways. Then two more. Kisu catches a few of Polt's units in the middle of the map before shields and stim finish. They die. This slight lead allows Kisu to attack Polt's natural. He forces a lift on the orbital command, and kills all of Polt's army and a lot of his scvs, ending up twenty-five workers ahead. Kisu smells blood and keep attacking. But he is sending in zealots and stalker only in groups of four, which do terribly against stimmed marine/marauder. Kisu wastes a lot of units, allowing Polt's army to grow fairly large. So large, in fact, that Polt is able to counter-attack and force Kisu to pull his workers. Kisu continues to throw zealot/stalker against marine/marauder with stim. Suddenly, Kisu is down by forty food, and is forced to gg.
Kisu manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He seemed to get a little bit of tunnel vision there. He was so ahead, but instead of securing his lead, he went for the throat. Props to Polt, though, for doing what it took to stay in the game. TSL chooses alive to make Polt play a TvT on metalopolis.
Prime 1-1 TSL
Game 3: PoltPrime.WE T v TSL_Alive T
Metalopolis, cross positions
Alive expands behind marine/tank. Alive gets a very fast raven, then expands. Polt moves out first, but Alive has the early vikings, and manages to siege up on a cliff out of Alive's vision, killing a couple tanks and hitting a lot of marines. Alive goes on the offensive. His air advantage lets him creep forward towards Polt's natural. After some clever auto-turrets, Alive is up in every unit count, letting him siege up outside Polt's natural, ending the game.
Polt got handled pretty easily this game. Alive's build looked very clean. He seemed to know exactly where he wanted his build to go. Prime sends out the first zerg of the league to fight alive on Tal'Darim Altar.
TSL 2-1
Game 4: TSL_Alive T v CheckPrime.WE Z
Tal'Darim Altar
:-(
Alive wins. Check sends out MarineKing on Scrap Station.
TSL 3-1
Game 5: TSL_Alive T v MarineKingPrime.WE T
Scrap Station
Both players expand after their first barracks. MarineKing follows up with four more barracks with no add-ons. Alive techs up to starport for marine/tank/medivac. MarineKing attacks through the middle rocks and into Alive's expansion with his first marine force, but Alive hs spotted it and long since floated the orbital command to safety. Meanwhile, the detour has allowed Alive to get up some bunkers at the top of his ramp, so when MarineKing attacks up, he loses everything without doing quite enough damage. Alive equalizes the scvs counts with a drop into MarineKing's main.
MarineKing takes the gold as he techs to starport himself. Alive gets blue flames for his hellions as he techs to heavy mechanical play. A hellion drop does a lot of damage to MarineKing's scv count, Alive is still down by a gold base. Alive rolls across the middle of the map with a battalion of tanks and sieges right in the middle of MarineKing's main, prompting MarineKing to run around and take out Alive's natural. It looks like we might see another MarineKing base-race, but Alive gets enough out in his main to hold it off. Meanwhile, Alive's tanks have destroyed MarineKing's main and natural. MarineKing has floated off all his barracks to his gold, giving him SIXTEEN barracks off just a single gold base to Alive's full production capacity off of an almost mine-out main. Alive slowly inches into MarineKing's new base with siege tanks. MarineKing tries another counter-attack as he starts taking Alive's third. There is nothing for him to do against Alive's massive army though. Nonetheless, he doesn't gg until he has exactly 0 supply, and looks pretty upset as his losing streak is extended to five games.
This was really the day of the Code A players as they went 5-0 against Code S players.
MVP: TSL_Alive
DAY 2:
OldGenerationStarcrafters v Incredible Miracle
Game 1: oGsEnsnare T v IMSeed P
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
Ensnare expands after his first barracks. Seed four-gates off one gas. Ensnare doesn't pull his scvs in time, allowinf Seed into the natural. Seed then runs past the bunkers guarding the main right into Ensnare's mineral line. Ensnare gg's.
A good first showing by Seed. OGS sends out Top.
IM 1-0 oGs
Game 2: IMSeed P v oGsTOP T
Metalopolis, close-by-air positions
Top goes for a blue flame hellion drop. Seed gets two gateways and a robo. The first drop is squelched after an observer sees it coming. Seed builds two more gatways and a stargate. Top builds up a marine/marauder/hellion army as he expands. Seed starts getting immortals and void rays. Top techs to ghosts. Two hellions get into Seed's mineral line and tear it up. When Seed attacks at around 13:00 he has about a dozen each of stalkers and zealots, two sentries, two immortals, and three void rays against marines, marauders, hellions, and vikings. Seed's army smashes Top's, losing only around twenty food and bringing Top to twelve. Top gg's.
Seed continues to impress with a unique one-base style. Any four of those six building would tax one base's worth of economy to the max, but I guess Seed had a very specific timing and unit composition in mind, and it worked very well for him. From 8:00 to right before he attacked at 13:00, Seed only produced out of his stargate and robotics facility. Tech switching off one-base is a pretty strange-sounding idea, but it worked this game for Seed. OGS sends out a third terran, Hyperdub, to take out this unconventional protoss, meaning that only one of Nada and MC will play this match.
IM 2-0 OGS
Game 3: IMSeed P v oGsHyperdub T
Lost Temple, close positions
Hyperdub expands after his first barracks. Seed sees it and expands to the close-by-air main. Seed researches hallucination right after warp gates finish. Hyper builds up to four barracks (Txxx). Seed hallucinates an immortal, and fakes a bust at Hyperdub's front door. Hyperdub takes the bait and pulls all the scvs at his natural to repair. Seed just backs off and expands to his natural. Hyperdub sees a hallucinted phoenix fly over his base and knows something is up; he gets a ghost academy and techs to starport for medivacs. Seed, meanwhile, has been growing his gateway count and teching to Dark Templar. Hyperdub stims into the middle of the map and catches Seed's army off guard, killing all the sentries and sending the survivors all the way back to Seed's main. Hyper destroys the nexus at Seed's natural and retreats.
The first four dark templar make it into Hyperdub's bases and majorly disrupt his econnomy. Hyperdub calmly minimizes the damage and gets both an engineering bay and a raven. Hyperdub moves out and take Seed's natural. Seed decides just to counter-attack with most of his army! Seed sacs his natural and starts forcefielding his ramp against the huge bio ball trying to get in. Seed has built up to almost ten warpgates by this point, so is building an army in his base as quickly as he can. But Hyperdub gets off an emp right in the middle of Seed's sentries! Hyperdub has had to float all the buildings in both his bases as he muscles into Seed's main. Seed starts to bring his arm home from wrecking Hyperdub's main. Hyperdub kills all of Seed's warpgates but two before Seed's army comes back and decimates his forces. When the dust settles, neither player has much production capacity or economy, but Seed's army is huge, and Hyperdub gg's, putting OGS down three games to none.
Yet another unique build from this impressive up-and-comer. Seed seems to be dictating exactly how these games are playing out. OGS is forced to send out their trump card in MC to try to reverse all-kill ST.
IM 3-0 oGs
Game 4: IMSeed P v oGsMC P
Scrap Station
Seed proxies two gateways on the path to MC's natural. MC responds with a forge after his first gateway. The first set of of zealots equalizes the probe count. MC stabilizes with two cannons and some clever micro. Both players take their gases and get cybernetics cores. MC gets his second gateway. Both players start building stalkers. MC gets warpgate research, but Seed does not. From there MC can just produce more stalkers, and Seed quickly gg's.
A tense game, but MC's micro was just too much for the suprisingly good Seed. IM drops the hammer and sends out Mvp to try to finish the match.
oGs 1-3 IM
Game 5: oGsMC P v IMMvp T
Xel'Naga Caverns
Mvp expands behind a quick concussive shells. MC rushes for DTs. MC's first DT runs into a missile turret at Mvp's natural. The other two DTs warp an archon and MC sends all his units in to try a bust. Everything dies. Mvp responds by building three more warp gates and expanding. MC holds off a strong marine/marauder attack and warps in a templar archives. Mvp techs to medivacs and ghosts. By the time Mvp makes the final attack, he is 70 supply ahead. MC valiantly fends off the first wave, but is left with only ten supply, and gg's after Mvp's mules start stealing his few remaining minerals.
Mvp closes out a huge 4-1 IM win against Mvp. An even bigger story than the team's win, though, was seed's near all-kill of oGs. A lot of his builds were pretty crafty-he only went beyond his first nexus in one of his four game. But if he can combine his creativity and flexibility with solid macro play, he will certainly at least get far in Code A if he manages to qualify.
IM wins 4-1
MVP: IMSeed
Match 4: ZeNEX v SlayerS
Game 1: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_BoxeR T
Shakuras Plateau, cross positions
HyeJun gets two barracks(Tx) and expands. Boxer tech to a pre-ignited hellion drop. HyeJun pushes in with some marines and marauders, revealing his strategy. Boxer keeps poking with the hellions, though, and switches to cloaked banshees. The first banshee kills ten scvs before going down. Boxer transitions to marine/tank/medivac. But HyeJun attacks Boxer's natural with a huge ball of maraudered before Boxer has either stim or siege mode. All the scvs at the natural die, along with most of Boxer's army, leaving him fifty food behind by the time he manages to chase away HyeJun's units with some sweet tank/medivac micro and a banshee.
Boxer finally starts researching shields and stim at the sixteen minute mark., but remains forty food behind. HyeJun stays on bio; Boxer sticks to two-factory marine/tank. Boxer starts to creep back into the game after killing a full medivac and dropping successfully himself. HyeJun expands to his vertical third and loads up a doom drop. The drop dies, but only after taking out all of Boxer's tanks. More of Boxer's units die when some tanks get caught mid-siege by marauders. Boxer expands to his interior third. HyeJun expands to his vertical forth. As Boxer moves out to protect his third, HyeJun's marauders run in, kill his natural's orbital command, then take a chunk out of Boxer's production capacity. From there the game is essentially over, even Boxer stays in for a while exhausting his options.
Yet another Code B player takes out a big name. HyeJun looked very solid in defending against Boxer's cleverness. Slayers has to be pretty disheartened that their big name got knocked out in the first set. The Slayers team sends out Soul next.
ZeNEX 1-0 SlayerS
Game 2: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Soul T
Lost Temple, cross positions
Soul rushes for cloaked banshees. HyeJun opens with marine/tank/medivac. Soul's first banshees do little damage. He expands and starts getting tanks while keeping banshee production up. HyeJun takes out all of Soul's forces in the middle of the map while killing banshee after banshee. HyeJun uses his army advantage to set up a contain outside Soul's natural while expanding himself. A drop in Soul's main allows HyeJun to pick off a raven and some of Soul's vikings. Soul awkwardly tries to break the now-huge siege line outside of his base, but it all dies.
Soul does a good amount of damage with simultaneous drops at HyeJun's main and ledge. But HyeJun's contain doesn't budge. Soul tries to float his main's orbital to the close-by-air main. HyeJun spots it and kills it. Soul tries two more medivacs worth of drops. HyeJun sees them and kills them. Soul goes for one last bust of the tank line, but his forces get splashed to death, as he strangely tried to break the exact middle of the circle- meaning every single one of HyeJun's tanks could hit all of his units. Soul gg's.
More solid play by HyeJun. Soul did not seem up to snuff. The next Slayer to be sent out is the effeminately-named Alicia.
ZeNEX 2-0 SlayerS
Game 3: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Alicia P
Tal'Darim Altar, Alicia clockwise
Alicia battle decisions were terrible.
ZeNEX 3-0 SlayerS
Game 4: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T
Crossfire
HyeJun proxies a barracks in a sweet spot on the closest mesa to Jjob that doesn't get scouted. HyeJun proxies another barracks and pulls a bunch of scvs without getting his orbital. Jjob gets a bunker up! Jjob gets a reaper out and runs to HyeJun's base, but it gets intercepted. Jjob stabilizes with many more scvs than his opponent and an orbital. Jjob builds a second orbital and a couple more barracks. HyeJun makes one last attempt at an all-in with his marines and scvs, but he has less in both categories and gg's.
Team Slayers avoids a 4-0. Zenex sends out FFMon.
SlayerS 1-3 ZeNEX
Game 5: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T v ZeNEXPuzzle (FFMon?) P
Jjob gets two barracks (TR) and expands. Puzzle techs to robo, expands, then warps in two more gateways. Jjob pushes with a very intimidating force, but Puzzle's force field/probe control holds just long enough for an immortal to come out, pushing back the terran army with surprisingly minimal losses. Jjob stays on bio, getting shield/stim/shells. Puzzle techs to colossus. Puzzle gets the best of Jjob's army with some more fancy force fields. JJob techs to starport for medivacs. Jjob kills Puzzle's robotics facility with a drop after only one colossus has come out. Jjob techs to ghosts and switches over to viking production to deal with the colossi that are sure to come out. When the next battle comes, clutch emps and a high viking count leave Jjob up by thirty food, which allows him to safely expand to his gold. The next battle goes similarly for Puzzle's army, and he concedes.
Jjob is looking solid enough to make a reverse all-kill a possibility. The snipe of the robotics facility to buy time for viking-production was a really heads up play there, as Puzzle seemed to be getting the better of him tactically. One thing I liked about this game is that neither player made any big mistake, whereas a lot of these other CodeA/B games are won by whomever screws up less. ZeNEX sends out Byun to prevent a match set.
SlayerS 2-3 ZeNEX
Game 6: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T v ZeNEXByun T
Metalopolis, close-by-air positions
After a quick pause, Byun goes barrack/reactor/expand/2xbarracks. Jjob goes for a marine drop in the back and hellions in the front. It does some damage, but not as much as it could have. Jjob double expands to both the close main and his natural. Byun stays on mostly marine/marauder while Jjob transitions to marine/tank/medivac. Byun takes his third. Jjob macro starts to slip as his minerals top 1000, as does Byun's. Jjob's tank count starts to get climb as he slowly creeps across the map. After many skirmishes, Jjob gets to Byun's natural with eleven tanks and fifty more supply while taking a forth. Byun leaves the game.
Jjob has managed to bring the match down to a hammer set in impressive fashion. In TvT bio vs marine/tank, it is so important to keep their tank numbers down. Otherwise that slow push is so deadly. ZeNEX sends out Nuke for the final showdown of the RO8.
Game 7: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) v ZeNEXNuke (ON)
Terminus RE, cross positions
Nuke one-barracks expands. Jjob goes for a fast uncloaked banshee and expands. Nuke builds two more barracks and send a squad of marines down to his opponent's base. The marines catch the first banshee! Then they waltz past Jjob's bunker and kill many, many scvs, leaving Jjob down 12 scvs to 27. Both players transition to marin/tank/medivac. Nuke expands to his third. Nuke is able to siege up outside Jjob's main. His tanks kills a couple of Jjob's barracks. While Jjob is distracted, Nuke rushes in, snipes Jjob's building third command center and his natural's orbital, then just retreats. Jjob desperately double-expands to his natural and third.
For a little while it looks like Jjob might come back into the game after Nuke suicides a group of units into Jjob's tanks while Jjob gets off two damaging drops to Nuke's main and third. But Nuke's economy is too far ahead of Jjob's, and he is able to eventually bulldoze his way into Jjob's base with sheer numbers after taking a fourth. Jjob stays in the game for quite a while trying to complete the reverse all-kill, but eventually has to leave.
Jjob is a player to look out for in this next Code A tournament. He didn't manage to pull it off, but he was one game away from all-killing a solid team.
MVP: HyeJun
Hye-Jun calls out Seed, predicting many manner mules.
Stats!
TvZ:1-0
ZvP:0-0
PvT:7-3
SvA: 0-7
AvB: 4-1
BvS: 3-1
4wins 1
3wins 1111
2wins
1win 11111
0wins 1111111111111
Match 1: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v GuMihofOu R
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
After a quick regame and a pause, the game finally gets underway with Gumiho rolling terran. Gumiho two-barracks expands. Squirtle two-gate expands. Gumiho techs to starport for marine/tank/medivac. Squirtle adds on three more gateways while getting a lot of sentries. Gumiho's first marine/tank force gets sandwiched between sentries and stalkers, is completely wiped out. Squirtle uses his advantage to attack Gumiho's natural. Gumiho is forced to pull scvs and loses a bunch of them, but a sieged tank in his main eventually repels the attack.
Squirtle techs up to dark templar as Gumiho sieges up just beyond his back door rocks and starts raining shells into his base. Three dark templar walk into Squirtle's base before the attack comes. They do a lot of damage, stripping at least twenty scvs from Gumiho's economy. After dealing with the DTs, Gumiho finally breaks down the rock and attacks into the back of Squirtle's base just before charge finishes. But dark templar appear at both the front line and Gumiho's front door, forcing him to retreat as he gets a raven for detection. Squirtle expands to his vertical third. A bunch of strange base-trady engagements follow, but ultimately the damage done to Gumiho's economy manifests itself as Gumiho's army falls further and further behind in strength, eventually forcing him to gg without a final, deciding battle.
This seemed like a fairly typical Code A game. One thing to note is that Gumiho never got stim, nor did he get combat shields despite relying on marines well into the mid-game. Either he's gained a unique perspective on the cost/benefit analysis from playing random and seeing things from all different sides, or he just forgot because this is just one of six match-ups he has to know. After conferring for a bit, the fOu team sends out the terran sC as their next player, and chooses Crossfire as the next map.
StarTale 1 – 0 For Our Utopia
Game 2: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v sCfOu T
Crossfire
Essy gets a fast two barracks with shells and stim. Squirtle techs to dark templar and handily deals with Essy's first units. The protoss expands behind his templar, which kill nine scvs. Essy gets an engineering bay for turrets, brings his barracks count up to three(TTR), and builds another command center. Squirtle gets a total of seven gateways. Squirtle macros for a bit, and then attacks. Despite some incredibly poor micro, Squirtle is able to steamroll through Essy's army by virtue of his far superior economy.
Well, it didn't take very long for a CodeA>CodeS victory then. It's hard to emphasize, though, how bad of a mistake it was for Squirtle to have almost every single zealot stuck behind the lines of that last battle. Even after retreating to let reinforcements catch up, the only zealots that did any damage were the ones that just happened to be near the sides of the front. Essy's team sends out TheBest and picks TalDarim Altar to try to take a game off of Squirtle.
StarTale 2-0 ForOurUtopia
Game 3: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v TheBestfOu T
Tal'Darim Altar- close-positions, Squirtle clock
TheBest gets two barracks (TR) and a reaper to scout. Squirtle four-gates into a nexus. TheBest expands and builds up to five barracks. Squirtle techs to colossus, and then two stargates for phoenix. TheBest techs to starport for medivacs. TheBest starts applying fairly constant pressure to Squirtle's front. Squirtle defends, but not without some serious mismanagement. 16:00
And Fou sends out... Nuclear? The map is Metalopolis for the days fourth TvP
Game 4: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v NuClearfOu T
Metalopolis- close positions
Nuclear gets a barracks with a quick reactor, then expands. Squirtle immediately techs to stargate for a voidray. Nuclear transitiions to six barracks(TTRRxx) before flying his extra orbital down to his expansion. Squirtle's poor void ray control means his first void ray does not do anything at all. By the time Nuclear finally floats his orbital down, Squirtle has built up to five void rays, enabling him to easily take out the expansion. Squirtle tries to keep pressuring with his units, but eventually his attacks peters out, and Squirtle settles for containing his opponents at his ramp.
After a while of containing his opponent, Squirtle finally expands. From there, Squirtle is quite content to continually forcefield Nuclear's ramp as he macros off of two bases, keeping up void ray production. Nuclear tries to stim down the ramp a couple times, even sending his scvs AFTER his infantry once. But there is nothing Nuclear can do, and once he has zero supple, he finally gg's.
Strangely enough, the first GTSL team match is an all-kill by a Code A player against two Code S players and two Code B players. Squirtle's PvT is obsiously pretty solid, but his unit-management seemed pretty off, a fact that he recognizes in his interview. The fact that he mentions it makes me think that it might have been nerves that hurt him. Squirtle, I think, has a good chance to make it to Code S, but I wouldn't expect any more all-kills, as the remaining teams will all have very competent players.
Fou's strategy seemed odd, sending mediocre terran after mediocre terran to their deaths.
MVP: ST_Squirtle
Prime v Team SCV Life
Game 1: HongUnPrime.WE P v TSL_Trickster (Kisu) P
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
HongUn goes Gate/Core/Robo/Gate/Gate. Kisu four gates. HongUn gets colossus-tech. Kisu gets his own robo, followed by a robotics bay. Kisu expands to his natural. HongUn starts breaking through the backdoor rocks. Kisu spots it. HongUn's attack gets through Kisu's backdoor with thermal lance just before Kisu's thermal lance finishes. They have pretty equal forces. Their zealots neutralize. The stalkers neutralize, leaving three colossi for HongUn against two colossi and a lone immortal of Kisu. Despite some solid, tense micro on HongUn's part, the immortal turns the tide and forces HongUn back to his base. HongUn makes another attack, but, being one base behind, he quickly has to retreat again. Kisu follows quickly thereafter, and wins the game.
HongUn's colossus micro seemed very good, but Kisu handled his rush perfectly. It's hard to see how, considering that his build seemed almost strictly behind his opponent's for a lot of the game, but Kisu held the attack with the absolute perfect amount of units to put him ahead a base. Prime sends out freshly CodeS'ed Polt to play on Lost Temple
TSL 1-0 Prime
Game 2: TSL_Trickster (Kisu) P v PoltPrime.WE T
Lost Temple, close-by-air positions
Polt goes for a reactored barracks, then expands. Kisu expands after his first gateway. Polt adds on two barracks (TRR), followed by shields/stim. Kisu get three more gateways. Then two more. Kisu catches a few of Polt's units in the middle of the map before shields and stim finish. They die. This slight lead allows Kisu to attack Polt's natural. He forces a lift on the orbital command, and kills all of Polt's army and a lot of his scvs, ending up twenty-five workers ahead. Kisu smells blood and keep attacking. But he is sending in zealots and stalker only in groups of four, which do terribly against stimmed marine/marauder. Kisu wastes a lot of units, allowing Polt's army to grow fairly large. So large, in fact, that Polt is able to counter-attack and force Kisu to pull his workers. Kisu continues to throw zealot/stalker against marine/marauder with stim. Suddenly, Kisu is down by forty food, and is forced to gg.
Kisu manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He seemed to get a little bit of tunnel vision there. He was so ahead, but instead of securing his lead, he went for the throat. Props to Polt, though, for doing what it took to stay in the game. TSL chooses alive to make Polt play a TvT on metalopolis.
Prime 1-1 TSL
Game 3: PoltPrime.WE T v TSL_Alive T
Metalopolis, cross positions
Alive expands behind marine/tank. Alive gets a very fast raven, then expands. Polt moves out first, but Alive has the early vikings, and manages to siege up on a cliff out of Alive's vision, killing a couple tanks and hitting a lot of marines. Alive goes on the offensive. His air advantage lets him creep forward towards Polt's natural. After some clever auto-turrets, Alive is up in every unit count, letting him siege up outside Polt's natural, ending the game.
Polt got handled pretty easily this game. Alive's build looked very clean. He seemed to know exactly where he wanted his build to go. Prime sends out the first zerg of the league to fight alive on Tal'Darim Altar.
TSL 2-1
Game 4: TSL_Alive T v CheckPrime.WE Z
Tal'Darim Altar
:-(
Alive wins. Check sends out MarineKing on Scrap Station.
TSL 3-1
Game 5: TSL_Alive T v MarineKingPrime.WE T
Scrap Station
Both players expand after their first barracks. MarineKing follows up with four more barracks with no add-ons. Alive techs up to starport for marine/tank/medivac. MarineKing attacks through the middle rocks and into Alive's expansion with his first marine force, but Alive hs spotted it and long since floated the orbital command to safety. Meanwhile, the detour has allowed Alive to get up some bunkers at the top of his ramp, so when MarineKing attacks up, he loses everything without doing quite enough damage. Alive equalizes the scvs counts with a drop into MarineKing's main.
MarineKing takes the gold as he techs to starport himself. Alive gets blue flames for his hellions as he techs to heavy mechanical play. A hellion drop does a lot of damage to MarineKing's scv count, Alive is still down by a gold base. Alive rolls across the middle of the map with a battalion of tanks and sieges right in the middle of MarineKing's main, prompting MarineKing to run around and take out Alive's natural. It looks like we might see another MarineKing base-race, but Alive gets enough out in his main to hold it off. Meanwhile, Alive's tanks have destroyed MarineKing's main and natural. MarineKing has floated off all his barracks to his gold, giving him SIXTEEN barracks off just a single gold base to Alive's full production capacity off of an almost mine-out main. Alive slowly inches into MarineKing's new base with siege tanks. MarineKing tries another counter-attack as he starts taking Alive's third. There is nothing for him to do against Alive's massive army though. Nonetheless, he doesn't gg until he has exactly 0 supply, and looks pretty upset as his losing streak is extended to five games.
This was really the day of the Code A players as they went 5-0 against Code S players.
MVP: TSL_Alive
DAY 2:
OldGenerationStarcrafters v Incredible Miracle
Game 1: oGsEnsnare T v IMSeed P
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
Ensnare expands after his first barracks. Seed four-gates off one gas. Ensnare doesn't pull his scvs in time, allowinf Seed into the natural. Seed then runs past the bunkers guarding the main right into Ensnare's mineral line. Ensnare gg's.
A good first showing by Seed. OGS sends out Top.
IM 1-0 oGs
Game 2: IMSeed P v oGsTOP T
Metalopolis, close-by-air positions
Top goes for a blue flame hellion drop. Seed gets two gateways and a robo. The first drop is squelched after an observer sees it coming. Seed builds two more gatways and a stargate. Top builds up a marine/marauder/hellion army as he expands. Seed starts getting immortals and void rays. Top techs to ghosts. Two hellions get into Seed's mineral line and tear it up. When Seed attacks at around 13:00 he has about a dozen each of stalkers and zealots, two sentries, two immortals, and three void rays against marines, marauders, hellions, and vikings. Seed's army smashes Top's, losing only around twenty food and bringing Top to twelve. Top gg's.
Seed continues to impress with a unique one-base style. Any four of those six building would tax one base's worth of economy to the max, but I guess Seed had a very specific timing and unit composition in mind, and it worked very well for him. From 8:00 to right before he attacked at 13:00, Seed only produced out of his stargate and robotics facility. Tech switching off one-base is a pretty strange-sounding idea, but it worked this game for Seed. OGS sends out a third terran, Hyperdub, to take out this unconventional protoss, meaning that only one of Nada and MC will play this match.
IM 2-0 OGS
Game 3: IMSeed P v oGsHyperdub T
Lost Temple, close positions
Hyperdub expands after his first barracks. Seed sees it and expands to the close-by-air main. Seed researches hallucination right after warp gates finish. Hyper builds up to four barracks (Txxx). Seed hallucinates an immortal, and fakes a bust at Hyperdub's front door. Hyperdub takes the bait and pulls all the scvs at his natural to repair. Seed just backs off and expands to his natural. Hyperdub sees a hallucinted phoenix fly over his base and knows something is up; he gets a ghost academy and techs to starport for medivacs. Seed, meanwhile, has been growing his gateway count and teching to Dark Templar. Hyperdub stims into the middle of the map and catches Seed's army off guard, killing all the sentries and sending the survivors all the way back to Seed's main. Hyper destroys the nexus at Seed's natural and retreats.
The first four dark templar make it into Hyperdub's bases and majorly disrupt his econnomy. Hyperdub calmly minimizes the damage and gets both an engineering bay and a raven. Hyperdub moves out and take Seed's natural. Seed decides just to counter-attack with most of his army! Seed sacs his natural and starts forcefielding his ramp against the huge bio ball trying to get in. Seed has built up to almost ten warpgates by this point, so is building an army in his base as quickly as he can. But Hyperdub gets off an emp right in the middle of Seed's sentries! Hyperdub has had to float all the buildings in both his bases as he muscles into Seed's main. Seed starts to bring his arm home from wrecking Hyperdub's main. Hyperdub kills all of Seed's warpgates but two before Seed's army comes back and decimates his forces. When the dust settles, neither player has much production capacity or economy, but Seed's army is huge, and Hyperdub gg's, putting OGS down three games to none.
Yet another unique build from this impressive up-and-comer. Seed seems to be dictating exactly how these games are playing out. OGS is forced to send out their trump card in MC to try to reverse all-kill ST.
IM 3-0 oGs
Game 4: IMSeed P v oGsMC P
Scrap Station
Seed proxies two gateways on the path to MC's natural. MC responds with a forge after his first gateway. The first set of of zealots equalizes the probe count. MC stabilizes with two cannons and some clever micro. Both players take their gases and get cybernetics cores. MC gets his second gateway. Both players start building stalkers. MC gets warpgate research, but Seed does not. From there MC can just produce more stalkers, and Seed quickly gg's.
A tense game, but MC's micro was just too much for the suprisingly good Seed. IM drops the hammer and sends out Mvp to try to finish the match.
oGs 1-3 IM
Game 5: oGsMC P v IMMvp T
Xel'Naga Caverns
Mvp expands behind a quick concussive shells. MC rushes for DTs. MC's first DT runs into a missile turret at Mvp's natural. The other two DTs warp an archon and MC sends all his units in to try a bust. Everything dies. Mvp responds by building three more warp gates and expanding. MC holds off a strong marine/marauder attack and warps in a templar archives. Mvp techs to medivacs and ghosts. By the time Mvp makes the final attack, he is 70 supply ahead. MC valiantly fends off the first wave, but is left with only ten supply, and gg's after Mvp's mules start stealing his few remaining minerals.
Mvp closes out a huge 4-1 IM win against Mvp. An even bigger story than the team's win, though, was seed's near all-kill of oGs. A lot of his builds were pretty crafty-he only went beyond his first nexus in one of his four game. But if he can combine his creativity and flexibility with solid macro play, he will certainly at least get far in Code A if he manages to qualify.
IM wins 4-1
MVP: IMSeed
Match 4: ZeNEX v SlayerS
Game 1: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_BoxeR T
Shakuras Plateau, cross positions
HyeJun gets two barracks(Tx) and expands. Boxer tech to a pre-ignited hellion drop. HyeJun pushes in with some marines and marauders, revealing his strategy. Boxer keeps poking with the hellions, though, and switches to cloaked banshees. The first banshee kills ten scvs before going down. Boxer transitions to marine/tank/medivac. But HyeJun attacks Boxer's natural with a huge ball of maraudered before Boxer has either stim or siege mode. All the scvs at the natural die, along with most of Boxer's army, leaving him fifty food behind by the time he manages to chase away HyeJun's units with some sweet tank/medivac micro and a banshee.
Boxer finally starts researching shields and stim at the sixteen minute mark., but remains forty food behind. HyeJun stays on bio; Boxer sticks to two-factory marine/tank. Boxer starts to creep back into the game after killing a full medivac and dropping successfully himself. HyeJun expands to his vertical third and loads up a doom drop. The drop dies, but only after taking out all of Boxer's tanks. More of Boxer's units die when some tanks get caught mid-siege by marauders. Boxer expands to his interior third. HyeJun expands to his vertical forth. As Boxer moves out to protect his third, HyeJun's marauders run in, kill his natural's orbital command, then take a chunk out of Boxer's production capacity. From there the game is essentially over, even Boxer stays in for a while exhausting his options.
Yet another Code B player takes out a big name. HyeJun looked very solid in defending against Boxer's cleverness. Slayers has to be pretty disheartened that their big name got knocked out in the first set. The Slayers team sends out Soul next.
ZeNEX 1-0 SlayerS
Game 2: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Soul T
Lost Temple, cross positions
Soul rushes for cloaked banshees. HyeJun opens with marine/tank/medivac. Soul's first banshees do little damage. He expands and starts getting tanks while keeping banshee production up. HyeJun takes out all of Soul's forces in the middle of the map while killing banshee after banshee. HyeJun uses his army advantage to set up a contain outside Soul's natural while expanding himself. A drop in Soul's main allows HyeJun to pick off a raven and some of Soul's vikings. Soul awkwardly tries to break the now-huge siege line outside of his base, but it all dies.
Soul does a good amount of damage with simultaneous drops at HyeJun's main and ledge. But HyeJun's contain doesn't budge. Soul tries to float his main's orbital to the close-by-air main. HyeJun spots it and kills it. Soul tries two more medivacs worth of drops. HyeJun sees them and kills them. Soul goes for one last bust of the tank line, but his forces get splashed to death, as he strangely tried to break the exact middle of the circle- meaning every single one of HyeJun's tanks could hit all of his units. Soul gg's.
More solid play by HyeJun. Soul did not seem up to snuff. The next Slayer to be sent out is the effeminately-named Alicia.
ZeNEX 2-0 SlayerS
Game 3: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Alicia P
Tal'Darim Altar, Alicia clockwise
Alicia battle decisions were terrible.
ZeNEX 3-0 SlayerS
Game 4: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T
Crossfire
HyeJun proxies a barracks in a sweet spot on the closest mesa to Jjob that doesn't get scouted. HyeJun proxies another barracks and pulls a bunch of scvs without getting his orbital. Jjob gets a bunker up! Jjob gets a reaper out and runs to HyeJun's base, but it gets intercepted. Jjob stabilizes with many more scvs than his opponent and an orbital. Jjob builds a second orbital and a couple more barracks. HyeJun makes one last attempt at an all-in with his marines and scvs, but he has less in both categories and gg's.
Team Slayers avoids a 4-0. Zenex sends out FFMon.
SlayerS 1-3 ZeNEX
Game 5: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T v ZeNEXPuzzle (FFMon?) P
Jjob gets two barracks (TR) and expands. Puzzle techs to robo, expands, then warps in two more gateways. Jjob pushes with a very intimidating force, but Puzzle's force field/probe control holds just long enough for an immortal to come out, pushing back the terran army with surprisingly minimal losses. Jjob stays on bio, getting shield/stim/shells. Puzzle techs to colossus. Puzzle gets the best of Jjob's army with some more fancy force fields. JJob techs to starport for medivacs. Jjob kills Puzzle's robotics facility with a drop after only one colossus has come out. Jjob techs to ghosts and switches over to viking production to deal with the colossi that are sure to come out. When the next battle comes, clutch emps and a high viking count leave Jjob up by thirty food, which allows him to safely expand to his gold. The next battle goes similarly for Puzzle's army, and he concedes.
Jjob is looking solid enough to make a reverse all-kill a possibility. The snipe of the robotics facility to buy time for viking-production was a really heads up play there, as Puzzle seemed to be getting the better of him tactically. One thing I liked about this game is that neither player made any big mistake, whereas a lot of these other CodeA/B games are won by whomever screws up less. ZeNEX sends out Byun to prevent a match set.
SlayerS 2-3 ZeNEX
Game 6: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T v ZeNEXByun T
Metalopolis, close-by-air positions
After a quick pause, Byun goes barrack/reactor/expand/2xbarracks. Jjob goes for a marine drop in the back and hellions in the front. It does some damage, but not as much as it could have. Jjob double expands to both the close main and his natural. Byun stays on mostly marine/marauder while Jjob transitions to marine/tank/medivac. Byun takes his third. Jjob macro starts to slip as his minerals top 1000, as does Byun's. Jjob's tank count starts to get climb as he slowly creeps across the map. After many skirmishes, Jjob gets to Byun's natural with eleven tanks and fifty more supply while taking a forth. Byun leaves the game.
Jjob has managed to bring the match down to a hammer set in impressive fashion. In TvT bio vs marine/tank, it is so important to keep their tank numbers down. Otherwise that slow push is so deadly. ZeNEX sends out Nuke for the final showdown of the RO8.
Game 7: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) v ZeNEXNuke (ON)
Terminus RE, cross positions
Nuke one-barracks expands. Jjob goes for a fast uncloaked banshee and expands. Nuke builds two more barracks and send a squad of marines down to his opponent's base. The marines catch the first banshee! Then they waltz past Jjob's bunker and kill many, many scvs, leaving Jjob down 12 scvs to 27. Both players transition to marin/tank/medivac. Nuke expands to his third. Nuke is able to siege up outside Jjob's main. His tanks kills a couple of Jjob's barracks. While Jjob is distracted, Nuke rushes in, snipes Jjob's building third command center and his natural's orbital, then just retreats. Jjob desperately double-expands to his natural and third.
For a little while it looks like Jjob might come back into the game after Nuke suicides a group of units into Jjob's tanks while Jjob gets off two damaging drops to Nuke's main and third. But Nuke's economy is too far ahead of Jjob's, and he is able to eventually bulldoze his way into Jjob's base with sheer numbers after taking a fourth. Jjob stays in the game for quite a while trying to complete the reverse all-kill, but eventually has to leave.
Jjob is a player to look out for in this next Code A tournament. He didn't manage to pull it off, but he was one game away from all-killing a solid team.
MVP: HyeJun
Hye-Jun calls out Seed, predicting many manner mules.
Stats!
TvZ:1-0
ZvP:0-0
PvT:7-3
SvA: 0-7
AvB: 4-1
BvS: 3-1
4wins 1
3wins 1111
2wins
1win 11111
0wins 1111111111111
!
Nice to read the recap though, thanks a lot!
