I was catching up on some random PL games and came across this insane game from Winner's League on Circuit Breaker at the end of January.
Sea (T) <Circuit Breaker> Action (Z)
This was one hell of a game and embodies a lot of what I love so much about BW. This game is incredibly long, clocking in at at least 35-40min, but holy shit, it is never dull.
Sea opens with a ton of pressure. Action manages to defend the three waves of marine pressure Sea puts on, but loses many drones and is forced to put down something like eight sunks in total to defend. He is incredibly behind.
However, once his mutas pop, he catches Sea with his pants down, more or less. His marine count is low due to all the pressure he'd put on, and Action rips through Sea's turret line. Sea loses the lead he'd had.
Action does a great job defending his bases and Sea loses his early midgame timing (before defilers are out). He tech switches to mech play and goes for tanks and vultures. At this point, Action still has the lead. He has been comfortably on 3-4 bases, is able to continue expanding, and was able to transition into hive tech safely and cleanly.
He begins throwing units into Sea's tank lines with macro supported off of as many as six bases at one point in a fashion that would make July proud. However, Sea manages to hold with excellent mines constantly relaid. His tank lines hold and he's able to hold onto his third and fourth bases with few interruptions.
Action continues raining mass amounts of units on top of Sea's forces. Sea eventually begins to get worn down. Unfortunately, this happens at the same time Action's bases are pretty much mined out.
Sea's competitive upgrades and his persistent and constant mine placement won him this game. Action threw away so many damn units to mines, it was ridiculous. For his part, Action's defense early on was very good, and his muta control bringing him back into the game was even better.
Sea's safe switch into mech is what won him the game. As he managed to defend wave after wave of units from Action, he slowly gained momentum while Action slowly fizzled out. Again, his mine use was clutch - not so much the placement, but his constant re-mining.
If you weren't around before SC2, I definitely recommend watching this game. It is incredible. If otherwise, here's a great game in case you missed it. (:
I saw this game with a few friends and i was thinking "No motherfucking way Sea can win this" and in some way Soulkey threw it away by suiciding so many units into him in small chunks
This one is good but really I think the game I saw that most amazed me was bisu vs flash on hb ridge. It was not to long and it made my jaw drop and eyes explode. This is coming from a terran too.
Oh that and upmagic vs luxury on outsider. I fealt like I was watching boxer.
edit- this game was not very enjoyable to me as a zerg player. The whole game I was like, meh this zerg is gonna probably win but he's being really really sloppy. Then he just slopped his way to defeat using ultras vs mech and poor dropship play.
Korean progamers seem to really like using ultras against mech. I'm not exactly sure why.
Zerg play against Terran mech still hasn't completely matured, in my opinion. Once the Terran actually gets transitioned, it always seems like a losing battle for the Z until the T slips up and lets a droom drop or something by. That critical mass of tanks just melts anything the Z can throw at it.
The only thing really keeping the matchup balanced is the huge window of opportunity Z has before T's gotten their deathball up.
ultralisks drops against tanks are really strong, I think that's why they like it. It also nullifies small numbers of tanks, which makes it harder for terran to abuse harass potential (vultures too).
If zerg could just drop lings against tanks, it would be like PvT, but unfortunately they seem to die before any splash can happen, so I think that's why progamers prefer ultras. Of course mass ling/hydra/muta army are also very effective vs mech, but there's comes a point when Terran is just not letting you flank him properly and you have to utilize your lategame tech.
I don't think late game terran mech ball is that powerful. Flash vs Zero was absolutely late game, and Zero was able to fight that army toe to toe. Jaedong also often destroys that late game mech now. For awhile mech was very scary and hard for Zergs to deal with, but then they figured it out and I think that's why we don't see it nearly as much anymore
On February 19 2011 07:34 Chef wrote: ultralisks drops against tanks are really strong, I think that's why they like it. It also nullifies small numbers of tanks, which makes it harder for terran to abuse harass potential (vultures too).
If zerg could just drop lings against tanks, it would be like PvT, but unfortunately they seem to die before any splash can happen, so I think that's why progamers prefer ultras. Of course mass ling/hydra/muta army are also very effective vs mech, but there's comes a point when Terran is just not letting you flank him properly and you have to utilize your lategame tech.
I don't think late game terran mech ball is that powerful. Flash vs Zero was absolutely late game, and Zero was able to fight that army toe to toe. Jaedong also often destroys that late game mech now. For awhile mech was very scary and hard for Zergs to deal with, but then they figured it out and I think that's why we don't see it nearly as much anymore
How do most pros handle Mech? I do worse against mech than bio ><
I've seen more games where Zs have just slowly been steamrolled in late-game ZvT mech. Buuut I haven't been watching a whole lot of BW lately either.
We've seen that midgame T mech doesn't work so well since the T basically loses any and all map control. It also seems to be a really binary style of play: if the deathball manages to crawl its way across the map, Z usually loses. If Z manages to stop the ball, T usually loses.
Over the past year or so, lots of Ts have been spamming out tanks in the late game to defend outlying expansions, then at a certain point, they'd just roll the tanks out with their MM and vessels and just steamroll expansions to finish the Z off. Mines were also used to great effect to deter backstabs.
EDIT Forgot to make a point in this...
Anyway, could you link me those games, Chef? I'm really curious. Personally, I think going more than a few ultras to soak some hits is dumb, and that hydra/ling/muta is really the best bet against massive tank lines.
On February 18 2011 19:49 sc4k wrote: For me it's sad that BW has been sidelined by sc2 just at the time play was being perfected for bw
this game actually shows how terribly hard zvt was. even at that top level gaining a humongous advantage early on resulted in nothing. the amount of work zergs had to do in order to beat a good terran was beyond reasonable compared to other matchups
also this game is a good reminder of what a fuckfest terran mech was. i hope sc2 will not allow for something like this to happen (throughout late days of beta it all started to feel scarily familiar)
ZvT is an incredibly difficult matchup in both directions. MM control and the ridiculous macro and multitasking you need to maintain a strong SK style is very hard. To be honest, Zergs were incredibly strong for a while if they could get defiler tech out safely and had been consistently pruning vessel numbers. Terrans are getting better at defending expansions in the late game now, so we're seeing a shift.
Action lost this game because he really didn't play it well. He got too confident sitting on his bazillion bases and figured he'd just be able to wear down Sea before he lost momentum.
SC2 seems to be stagnating in Korea, tbh. It's getting bigger everywhere else, but GOM's retarded decision to make everyone PAY to watch any of their games is keeping many people from getting into it. It's drawing in a ton of competition, but not many viewers.
BW is getting smaller as well, but I seriously hope players will get back into it. ):
EPT
what an amazing game.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MdKP4.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zYu2u.jpg)
