GSL 2011 Mar. CodeS RO32 Groups C,D

Crossfire

      Polt gets a barracks, expands, then adds on two more. Jinro techs to cloaked banshees. But Polt gets a fast engineering bay for a turret in his mineral line, which finishes in plenty of time to negate the banshees. Jinro transitions into marine/tank and expands. Polt techs to medivacs, then attacks with about twenty stimable with stim before Jinro's stim has finished. But Jinro's single sieged tank with marine support is enough to drive them back and inflict many casualties. Polt builds a third command center and continues to mass up a sizable marine/marauder bioball. When Jinro sees the third command center land at Polt's gold he immediately moves out, slowly pushing towards the newly taken high-yield expansion. Jinro gets there and sieges up within range of the newly finished planetary fortress as he starts an expansion of his own. Polt tries for a flank on Jinro's forces, but Jinro's massive army of sieged tanks absolutely destroys Polt's infantry, which was attacking from lower ground. From there it's only a matter of time before Polt's expansion dies, Jinro's third starts mining, and Polt gg's.

Polt so far not proving his worthiness to be in Code S. That was about as one-sided as a mid-length TvT gets.

Jinro wins

Jinro 1-0
Rainbow 0-0
Check 0-0
Polt 0-1
Bracket: + Show Spoiler +

Tal'Darim Altar, cross positions

      Check hatches first. Rainbow gets a quick reaper and double bunkers outside of Check's natural hatchery. Rainbow sends a second reaper down after Check's first attempt to break the bunkers fails. Rainbow expands as Check gets roaches to help deal with the bunkers. Check finally gets rid of the terran infestation and spots Rainbow's expansion. Check takes his canyon expansion and techs to lair. Rainbow adds on a lot of barracks with reactors and gets medivacs, seemingly content to stay on biological units for now. Interestingly, though, he does get an armory and +1 vehicle weapons despite not yet having any vehicles. Check gets a baneling nest and spire. Rainbow builds a third command center and starts tank/thor production. Check takes the counter-clockwise cliff expansion and starts building up a flock of mutas. Check's first mutalisks do some pretty good damage to Rainbow's mineral line and outlying units, but Rainbow has a sensor tower and enough turrets to stay fairly safe. Check takes his cliff expansion, putting him up five bases to three. Both players are keeping up with upgrades as Check gets an infestation pit and hive.
The armies engage at about 18:00. Check gets off some good fungal growths, allowing banelings and mutalisks to clean up the rest of the terran units. The armies neutralize, but Check unnecessarily loses all of his infestors and mutalisks due to pretty poor micro on his part. Check techs to ultralisks and immediately gets chitinous plating. Rainbow tries to keep pushing with a few smallish forces of tanks and marine, which get handily destroyed. Rainbow takes a fourth base at the counter-clockwise cliff. Check catches another medium-sized army unsieged in the middle of the map, then goes on to destroy Rainbow's fourth. As more and more ultralisks hit the field, Check is able to start taking the entire map and just rally units into Rainbow's base for the win.

One great thing about Check's play this game was how smoothly his strategy seemed to play out. For instance, by the time the first ultralisks hit the field, +3 melee was just finishing up and +3 carapace was about half-way done. Check always had just big enough of an army and just the right composition to be safe. It definitely helped that Rainbow seemed fine throwing units away in the middle of the map, though.

Check wins.

Jinro 1-0
Check 1-0
Rainbow 0-1
Polt 0-1
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

LiquidJinro v ST_RainBOw

Shakuras Plateau, close positions

      Rainbow one-barracks-expands. Jinro gets cloaked banshees. Jinro's first two banshees get almost twenty kills between them. Jinro expands. By the time Jinro's banshees peter out, he is up by twenty supply and is ahead on scvs. Both players start going for marine/tank. Jinro pushes through the gully connecting the bases, but turns back when a raven pops out for Rainbow, giving him permanent detection of Jinro's banshees, which were all that were giving him vision of the Rainbow's forces. Rainbow takes a third at the vertical natural. Jinro pushes through the gully again, but it meets the same fate as Rainbow still has air dominance. Jinro finally takes his third.
      Both players use drops and pushes to pressure the other's expansions with marine/tank/medivac. Rainbow's multitasking seems a little bit better as his drops keep doing a little more damage than Jinro's. Rainbow's supply lead keeps growing and growing until Jinro swings back down to Rainbow's main through the connecting gully. Jinro manages to siege up at the top of Rainbow's back door ramp, in range of the mineral line. But when Rainbow tries to break it, he sends all the marines into Jinro's tank line, and all his tanks away into his natural! And while he's trying to clean up that mess, he losses three medivacs full of marines at Jinro's third! All of a sudden Rainbow is down forty supply!
      Both players take their fourth bases at the vertical mains. Rainbow tries to get up a fifth base at the vertical interior base, but Jinro kills it with a drop. Jinro takes the shared gully expansion and uses banshees to finally completely break through Rainbow's tanks and into his main, where he starts wrecking his production facilities. Rainbow's entire main falls. Then his natural. Rainbow retreats into the positions cross-map from Jinro and vertical from his now-destroyed bases. Rainbow stays in the game for a while afterward, but Jinro slowly pushes his way into Rainbow's remaining bases and dooms him to the up-and-down matches.

A real nail-biter to send the David-Brent-facial-haired Jinro into the next round. It started looking a little dicey there for a bit, but Jinro pulled it out with that attack on Rainbow's main. Also, Rainbow would be well off learning how to better defend against early banshees.

Jinro wins, advances
Rainbow will go to the up-and-down matches.

Jinro 2-0
Check 1-0
Polt 0-1
Rainbow 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

CheckPrime.WE v PoltPrime.WE

Tal'Darim Altar, close positions, Polt clockwise

      Check hatches first, then gets roaches before speed. Polt goes for marine/tank/cloaked banshee. Check gets his lair and a baneling nest. Check scouts Polt's tech and gets some spore crawlers as his lair hasn't finished yet. Rainbow's main force gets taken out easily by roach/ling, but Check does not have enough anti-air to deal with the banshees, which continue to do massive damage. Check gets his spire. The banshees barely take out Check's natural hatchery! Check even had two spore crawlers there just out of range. Check quickly rebuilds his hatchery and starts making mutalisks. Check takes his canyon expansion. Polt takes his natural. The game turns into a fairly normal one as Check starts building up muta/ling and Polt builds a strong army of marine/tank with a couple banshees still mixed in.
      Polt manages to siege up below Check's natural. Check waits until baneling speed and +2 melee finish before attacking the hostile force. But it's too late, and Check's hatchery falls again! Check cleans up the Polt's units, but the damage has already been done. Check counter attacks, killing some reinforcements with xlings. Check takes the counter-clockwise cliff expansion. Rainbow takes his canyon base, giving him a 3-2 base advantage. Rainbow pushes against Check's third, and just barely doesn't take it out, leaving it with just four hit points. Check takes the counter-clockwise natural. Rainbow pushes Polt's canyon expansion and kills the hatchery that he just left barely alive. Check gg's when his canyon expansion falls.

Check's unit control is just so sloppy sometimes. He could have won that game in about four different ways, but just kept losing stuff for no reason. He really needs to clean up his micro if he wants to get far in the GSL. Hopefully that loss didn't shake him up too much and he can calm down his nerves for the last match of the group.

Jinro 2-0
Polt 1-1
Check 1-1
Rainbow 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

PoltPrime.WE v CheckPrime.WE

Crevasse, close positions, Check clockwise

      Check does the same opening as last game, getting hatch/pool/warren/speed. Polt expands after putting a reactor on his factory for hellions. Check gets his lair and baneling nest. Rainbow adds on three barracks (TTRR). Check gets speed for his roaches, a spire, and takes his third. Polt moves out with marine/marauder/tank against Check's third just as it finishes and before baneling speed has finished. Check barely holds, but wipes out Polt's entire army with his reinforcements. Mutalisks start coming out for check, allowing him to tie up Polt's army in his base while his own third takes hold. Polt starts making marine/tank/medivac. Polt again pushes Check's third, but again Check manages to kill his army, with much more left over this time. Polt has nothing left, and Check manages to push into his natural with zerglings and banelings. He kills most of Polt's workers and units. Check plays it safe and takes a fourth, but after a little bit of macro is able to crush through Polt's bases.

A much better showing from Check this game. Again, his builds always looks very deliberate and well-thought out. It's mostly his unit control that gets him behind.

Check wins, advances
Polt will play in the up-and-down matches.

Final seeding:
1 LiquidJinro 2-0
2 CheckPrime.WE 2-1
3 PoltPrime.WE 1-2
4 ST_RainBOw 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

Not needed.

Final seeding:
1 LiquidJinro 2-0
2 CheckPrime.WE 2-1
3 PoltPrime.WE 1-2
4 ST_RainBOw 0-2

Shakuras Plateau, close positions

      Both players expand after their first barracks. Nada then gets tanks and a banshee. TheBest gets two factories for thor/hellion and he starts pre-igniting his race cars of fiery death. Nada starts building tanks out of two factories of his own. Nada pushes through the connecting gully with tanks and marines and sieges up within range of TheBest's mineral line. He kills a lot of scvs and manages to hold the position for quite a while before TheBest manages to break it with thors. Nada takes his interior third. TheBest has switched over to tank production now, and pushes through the gully, sieging up over Nada's third and forcing a lift. Nada takes the vertical main and starts floating his third's orbital command over to the vertical natural.
      TheBest doesn't seem to know what to do with his big tank/thor/hellion army as he just wanders the map with them. Nada starts making tank/marauder. TheBest takes his vertical natural and his interior third, putting the two players on equal economic footing. TheBest manages to siege up beneath Nada's cliff within range of Nada's factories, killing two of them. He then, though, tries to break Nada's main tank line, and loses his entire army. At this point Nada is up 200 food to 100, so he starts attacking on almost every front. Nada sieges in TheBest's main, attacks TheBest's vertical expansion, and slowly vice-grips TheBest to death as he pumps banshees out of three starports. TheBest sends the rest of his tanks into Nada's main, but gg's when the banshee fleet shows up.

Nada doing what Nada does. Thor/tank seemed like a really cool strategy, though, and TheBest played very well. He just let Nada get too far ahead economically, and it cost him the game.

Nada wins

Nada 1-0
HongUn 0-0
Top 0-0
TheBest 0-1
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +Of course, the brack showing Nada winning has the url "se1xu"

Xel'Naga Caverns

      op expands behind a fast concussive shell, then adds on two more barracks (TTR). HongUn expands after his first gateway and transitions into six-gate. After some tense micro and standard bunker-nullifying force fields, HongUn breaks Top's defenses, forces a lift on Top's natural, and wins the game.

In the interview, HongUn said he would just four-gate his way through the group. He lied.

HongUn wins.

Nada 1-0
HongUn 1-0
Top 0-1
TheBest 0-1
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

oGsNaDa v oGsTOP

Crossfire

      Both players tech to starport, Top for banshee/raven, and Nada for cloaked banshees. Nada cancels cloak research before the raven even comes out, and expands. Top expands. Both players land their second command centers at roughly the same time. Both players go for marine/tank, Nada off two factories and Top off only one. Both players take their corner thirds, and then lose them. Nada keeps getting the better of skirmishes in the middle of the map. Eventually Nada has chipped away so much that he controls the entire map. He takes two more expansions, and Top is soon forced to leave the game.

Nada was just a few levels above Top this game. Top, the winner of Code A last season joins Mvp in the up-and-down matches, and becomes the first Code A promotee to face relegation. Nada advances to the RO16 after sharing hair styling tips with the Korean interviewer.

Nada wins, advances
Top will play in the up-and-down matches.

Nada 2-0
HongUn 1-0
TheBest 0-1
Top 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

HongUnPrime.WE v TheBestfOu

Shakuras Plateau, cross positions

      TheBest expands after his first barracks. HongUn expands after his gateway. TheBest gets three barracks total (TTR). HongUn gets get robo and five gateways. TheBest techs to starport and puts a reactor on it for medivacs. TheBest moves out with a marine/marauder bio ball with two each of medivacs and vikings. TheBest loses a lot of his army, but takes out a colossus. HongUn takes the vertical natural and gets zealot charge. TheBest attacks just after charge finishes for HongUn. HongUn somehow keeps all of his colossus alive with double-digit hit points while killing all of TheBest's vikings with stalkers and using zealot/sentry to hold off the infantry. From there it is a pretty straightforward matter of just reinforcing and marching into TheBest's base with a mini death ball for the win.

HongUn makes it to the next round, and gives us our first transitive group of this GSL. It's strange how often HongUn keeps his zealots behind his stalkers, yet also manages to keep his colossi alive for so long. HongUn is a piece of work.

HongUn wins, advances
TheBest will fight in the up-and-down matches.

Nada 2-0
HongUn 2-0
TheBest 0-2
Top 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

oGsTOP v TheBestfOu

Crossfire

      Top rushes for cloaked banshees. TheBest proxies a factory and starport for a super quick-hitting blue-flame hellion drop. But he lifts off the factory before blue flames finish! The hellions don't end up killing very much. TheBest switches his proxy add-ons and transitions to proxied cloak banshees. TheBest sees a raven come out from TheBest but doesn't cancel cloak. Both players expand, but with everything going as wrong as possible for TheBest, it isn't that hard for Top to just attack and win, even throwing in a manner mule in celebration.

TheBest seemed completely on tilt that game, and pays for it with an extra game to stay in Code A. Also, it seemed pretty silly for Top to drop manner mule on the -other- player also not advancing out of the first round.

Top wins, will have two chances to fight back into Code S.

Nada 2-0
HongUn 2-0
Top 1-2
TheBest 0-3
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

oGsNaDa v HongUnPrime.WE

Xel'Naga Caverns

      Nada expands after concussive shells, then builds up to four barracks. HongUn techs to a quick stargate for a few quick phoenix, then expands. HongUn builds a few more gateways, a fleet beacon, then builds... a mothership! Nada attacks, but HongUn holds with some good force fields. HongUn laughs when the mothership finally comes out, and sends it toward the terran base, perhaps for a recall. But an attack by Nada forces the mothership back home. HongUn again barely holds. Nada keeps making bio out of many barracks, but this time adds some vikings in to deal with the mothership. In the next battle, HongUn lays down TWO vortices, then uses force fields when the units come out to spread Nada's army very thin. HongUn holds, but his mothership falls. HongUn makes another mothership, but now HongUn doesn't have enough meaty units to deal with Nada's next push. HongUn gg's.

I don't think HongUn was taking this game very seriously, but it was pretty fun to watch.

Nada wins, gets top seed

Final seeding:
1. oGsNaDa 3-0
2. HongUnPrime.WE 2-1
3. oGsTOP 1-2
4. TheBestfOu 0-3

Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +