GSL 2011 Mar. CodeS RO32 Group E

Bracket:

Shakuras Plateau, cross positions

      Nestea goes for early zergling speed and expands. San forge expands. Nestea takes a third at the vertical natural while droning up, then gets a lair. San seems to be going for a six-gate with +1 weapons. Nestea gets his roach warren and +1 ranged weapons. San pushes against Nestea's third with a sizable gateway army made up mostly stalkers. During a tense battle, San manages to kill Nestea's third, then retreats and gets a robotics facility. Nestea retakes his third and gets his spire. Even after doing so much damage, San is still thirty or so supply behind his opponent.
      Nestea sends his roach army to engage outside of San's natural, but San's stalkers, now with blink, get the better of them. San gets his templar archives and take his interior third. Nestea takes his the vertical main as his forth base as his grows his mutalisk army. San gets his dark shrine. The two players harass each other's mineral lines- Nestea using mutalisks and San using dark templar. Nestea has almost thirty mutalisks at this point, and is about fifty food ahead of San. San takes his vertical natural, putting him on equal bases with Nestea. Nestea techs to hive. The armies again clash outside San's fourth, equalizing the food counts. Nestea makes many banelings as he morphs a greater spire and starts to make infestors. San calls in a mothership! Nestea takes his gully expansion and his interior third. San does a good job of countering rolling banelings with well-placed storms. Nestea loses his gully expansion as San takes his vertical main. A dozen brood lords hit the field for Nestea, which end up killing San's fourth. But a perfect vortex from the mothership combined with some archons make short work of them soon after.
      Nestea starts making ultralisks, prompting San to warp a lot of archons. During all of this, dark templar have been wrecking bases left and right. At 36:00, both players have taken their sides of the map with neither gully base being secured. Nestea is making mostly ultralisks; San is making a lot of immortals and archons as he harasses Nestea's bases with a warp prism and dark templar. The next major battle sees two vortices eat a lot of Nestea's ultralisks, which all die to immortals and archons! Nestea is suddenly behind by fifty food! San has dark templar everywhere, ripping up ultralisks, drones and hatcheries. Nestea's resource are slowly drying up as he cannot secure any more bases. When San's units push into Nestea's main and threaten the hive, Nestea gg's!

Wow. San coming out of nowhere with an amazing PvZ, and suddenly yet another champion is put into danger of relegation. Nestea loses his first game against a protoss to the person his specifically picked to play against. It was crazy how good Nestea's macro was, but San didn't seem to mind being behind in army for so much of the game, and just chose his unit compositions and engagements well enough to win him the game.

San wins

San 1-0
Boxer 0-0
Ensnare 0-0
Nestea 0-1
Bracket: + Show Spoiler +

Tal'Darim altar, Ensnare clockwise.

      Boxer expands after his barracks. Ensnare techs to a blue-flame hellion drop. Boxer starts to get cloaked banshees. And when Ensnare's drop comes, Boxer just doesn't have enough to defend! The hellions kill everything! Boxer's banshee doesn't do enough, and the game is essentially over. Boxer picks up his base and floats away for a bit, but eventually gg's.

That was fairly straightforward. A crazy pair of initial matches to start this group.

Ensnare wins

San 1-0
Ensnare 1-0
Boxer 0-1
Nestea 0-1
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

SanZenith v SlayerSBoxeR

Xel'Naga Caverns

      Boxer gets a barracks, a reaper, and another barracks (TR). San expands after his second gateway. Boxer builds a second command center and two more barracks. San techs to colossus. Boxer starts getting medivacs. San builds two star gates for phoenix. Boxer's infantry upgrades finish, and he gets ghosts. The armies dance around each other for a while. Boxer is staying on biological units. San is massing phoenix/colossus. When the final battle comes, Boxer doesn't have enough vikings to take down the colossi, which end up massacring all of his infantry. San takes a third, but it doesn't much matter as the game is over when San's colossi make it to Boxer's natural and start lasering probes.

And San “I Don't Take StarCraft Seriously” Zenith is the first to make it through this group! This was a huge upset as he beat two of the strongest players in the Korean scene today. Boxer 0-2s into the Up-And-Down matches, as in both games his army just wasn't strong enough to hold.

San wins, advances
Boxer will go to the Up-And-Down matches

San 2-0
Ensnare 1-0
Nestea 0-1
Boxer 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

oGsEnsnare v IMNestea

Tal'Darim Altar, cross positions

      Nestea pools first. Ensnare expands after his factory and then gets a delayed banshee, but without cloak. Nestea expands, gets a roach warren, takes his canyon expansion, and techs to lair. Ensnare builds six barracks and takes his cliff base. Nestea gets his spire and a baneling nest. Ensnare makes use of some very effective drops to easily keep up with Nestea economically. Nestea finally gets mutalisks out to stop the harassment, allowing him to take a fourth at the counter-clockwise cliff. Ensnare sticks to marine/marauder/medivac; Nestea gets a large flock of mutalisks and a herd of banelings. Nestea takes the counter-clockwise natural, but gives up his fourth with little resistance. Ensnare takes his own and his clockwise canyon expansions. Ensnare kills another of of Nestea's expansions. Nestea loses a lot of banelings on move command in the middle of the map. Ensnare takes a sixth and kills yet another zerg hatchery, putting him up six bases to three- and all of Nestea's bases are dry! Nestea even misclicks his drones when he is forced to long distance mine. Ensnare keeps streaming units out of barracks towards Nestea's base, and Nestea leaves the game.

Nestea seems to be holding back tears in his booth as he realizes that he now has to play Boxer to decide which of them will have a better chance to stay in Group A while San and Ensnare battle for seeding in the next round. Wait... what?

Ensnare wins, advances
Nestea loses, is sent to the Up-And-Down matches.

San 2-0
Ensnare 2-0
Nestea 0-2
Boxer 0-2
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

IMNesTea v SlayerSBoxeR

Shakuras Plateau, close positions

      Nestea pools first and expands. Boxer gets four barracks. Nestea gets his roach warren. Despite seeing a fake refinery and a telegraphed expansion, Nestea somehow has enough resources to make eight roaches in the time it takes Boxer's all-in force to get from the middle of the map to Nestea's natural. Nestea holds easily. Nestea follows up with a lair and a baneling nest. Boxer starts teching to tank/hellion. Nestea takes the vertical natural and his spire. When the two armies collide, Nestea's banelings and roaches easily handle Boxer's marine/tank/hellion, and Boxer gg's.

Nestea wins

San 2-0
Ensnare 2-0
Nestea 1-2
Boxer 0-3
Bracket:+ Show Spoiler +

SanZenith v oGsEnsnare

Shakuras Plateau, close positions

      Both players expand right after their first unit-producing structures. Ensnare gets three barracks total (TTR). San techs to DTs. The two armies skirmish with neither player getting the upper hand. Ensnare gets ghosts. San takes a third at the vertical natural and techs to templar. Ensnare takes a third as well. Both players make exclusively infantry units as they jockey for position on the map. San takes his vertical fourth, and defends it from a two-medivac drop with some spot-on micro. San techs to colossi, which first hit the field at around 20:00. Ensnare builds two nukes at once after getting two ghost academies oh-so-long-ago. San takes both of his interior expansions. Ensnare takes his fourth. San defends one of the nukes, but lets the other land, killing a whole mineral line's worth of probes. San builds four stargates at once, followed by a fleet beacon. The balance starts to tilt in San's favor when he gets a few clutch storms off on Ensnare's army as it tries to take out one of his interior expansions. San, who has been pumping colossi out of three robos, is able to use this advantage to march across the map and set up inside Ensnare's natural, giving him the game and a 3-0 record in a group that nobody thought he could make it out of.

San, whose total playtime in the GSL so far has been about twenty minutes, takes out three very established players in a row to advance to the next round, and he did it with great macro, solid unit control, and good strategy. San could really turn into the Cinderella story of this GSL.

San wins, takes top seed.

Final Standings:
1 SanZenith 3-0
2 oGsEnsnare 2-1
3 IMNesTea 1-2
4 SlayerSBoxeR 0-3
Bracket: + Show Spoiler +

Bracket: + Show Spoiler +
Final Standings:
1 SanZenith 3-0
2 oGsEnsnare 2-1
3 IMNesTea 1-2
4 SlayerSBoxeR 0-3