CSL Weekly Digest #8

Happy Turkey Hangover Day! Hope all you crazy Americans had a great Thanksgiving like I did and remain thankful for the craziness that esports provides us day in and day out. It's back to CSL business however with the holiday over and the crew back from MLG Providence. We have some coverage from MLG, one video of which you can check out in this week's interview (see hazelynut's most recent post for the rest). We also have a Waterloo Barcraft writeup in the Other News section and some excellent highlights and battle report coverage as well.

by: Justin Telmo

(P) ChineseWife vs. (Z) NeVeRBeeN - MLG Antiga Shipyard

Heading into the last week of the regular season we go into a heated battle between Aleph Division's undefeated New York University and middle-of-the-pack University of Central Florida. Looking nearly unstoppable going into this match, NYU boasted a strong lineup. NYU decided to send their best foot forward by sending out ChineseWife, one of the highest-ranking players for NYU. Central Florida responds aptly by sending out one of their most experienced players in NeVeRBeeN, who sat at 4-3 in the league before this match. On paper this looks like a match that could have been played on the ladder, both players relatively close to each other in terms of number of points in their division.

Today we're looking at a PvZ on MLG Antiga Shipyard, where the map has some noticeable changes including but not limited to Neutral Supply Depots located on the bottom of each starting ramp, put there to prevent any cheesy bunker or cannon rushes. An easily-accessible natural combined a medium rush distance might encourage zerg to go for Hatch first on this map, however we've seen both pool-first and hatch-first builds work greatly on this map.

The game starts off with NeVeRBeeN spawning as the Red Zerg in the top left position, and ChineseWife spawning as the Green Protoss in the lower right position. ChineseWife gets the earlier scouting on NeVeRBeeN with his first probe scout, anticipating a hatch-first build by attempting to pylon-block the natural. NeVeRBeeN responds by throwing up a 16 pool, likely to follow up with a hatchery as soon as that pylon is either canceled or destroyed. Meanwhile in
ChineseWife's base, a Forge is thrown down at the natural's wider ramp, indicating a Forge Fast Expand which is extremely popular in PvZ in general.

ChineseWife finds a much easier time expanding than NeVeRBeeN, handily building his nexus with little to no Zergling resistance. The first pack of Zerglings that NeVeRBeeN decides to send around the map happen to catch a wayward probe, but not before ChineseWife scouts the Zerg's relatively later expansion almost-done. At this point it looks like ChineseWife is getting farther and farther, completing the wall-off with a Cybernetics Core and Pylon.

Metabolic Boost hits for the Zerglings around 7 minutes but it looks like it is not destined to break down ChineseWife's robust wall anytime soon, despite the even-looking supply it seems ChineseWife is beginning to pull comfortably ahead. To get around the tight wall at ChineseWife's natural, NeVeRBeeN
decides to smartly go for Speedling drops inside ChineseWife's main, something not seen very frequently in general. Surprisingly the drop-by does tons of damage, unpowering three of ChineseWife's gateways and even taking out a Nexus and both of the base's Assimilators. Trapped inside his natural, ChineseWife desperately tries to save as many Probes as possible. Some handy Sentry forcefield and Zealot micro do manage to fend off the attack eventually, not without some very hefty losses for Protoss, which is exactly what NeVeRBeeN needed.

NeVeRBeeN attempts to finish the job by sending another huge drop into ChineseWife's base, only to have it unfortunately picked off by an all-inning ChineseWife as NeVeRBeeN attempts to simultaneously expand to his third. A lot of nearly-full Overlords are picked off by Stalkers and Sentries without unloading the Speedlings inside, causing very hefty army losses for NeVeRBeeN. Confident to push forward, ChineseWife moves almost all the way across the map with another warp-in and engages NeVeRBeeN's army outside of NeVeRBeeN's natural. With only a handful of Hydralisks and Zerglings, NeVeRBeeN's army crumbles to ChineseWife's all-in and GG's out.

Editor's Note: Check out this match and the others in the set here.

by: Peter Zhang/CSL Staff @ Providence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYywB9o4zUQ

What happened to RPI in the past week? Gensulitor gives us his thoughts at MLG Providence! Be sure to catch up with the rest of the CSL's MLG coverage videos at the http://www.youtube.com/user/cstarleague"]Official CSL Youtube page!

by: Luke Pensiero

CSL Week 9 – Highlights: Binghamton vs. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Seems like we made it, the first half of the season is just about over. That doesn’t mean you go and take a break from StarCraft now. That means you come and check out the other matches that you missed this weekend in the CSL. This week we’ll take a look at the match-up between Binghamton and RPI.

For the first match, Binghamton put their Terran player, Fruitpunch, up against RPI’s Zerg player, Humanlink. The two spawned in cross-positions on Antiga Shipyards giving Humanlink fast-expand a leg up. This match isn’t about the imbalance of Terran or the skill of each player. Instead, this match is about a promise between two players. Humanlink, at the start of the game, asked Fruitpunch to keep his promise.

I soon found out what that promise was. It was the dreaded Bunker rush. Fruitpunch built a Bunker at Humanlink’s expansion which made him sad and cry out “You promised!” Just like how Jack said he would never let go. While Fruitpunch’s treachery was cleaned up easy, Fruitpunch went on to do something I wish I could do in my TvZ games. Immediately following the fall of the Bunker, Hellions popped out of the Factory which had a reactor add-on. All those Zerglings Humanlink made were now ready for the BBQ.

Humanlink was able to fend off the attack from the Hellions with only minor losses. Yet once again, the timing of Fruitpunch was right on. Soon the slow push of Marines and Tanks was en-route to Humanlink’s base. Humanlink was unable to win a battle in the mid-field giving Fruitpunch the time to set-up. This is the result:

The Mutalisks were nowhere to be found yet. The Terran position seemed unbreakable. In a last ditch effort, Humanlink sent everything in. It was not enough and he had to surrender the GG. The promise was broken and the dreams were shattered.

Fast forward to game 4 (because I can!), we see Binghamton’s Protoss player, Tempy, looking to deliver the killing blow against RPI’s Terran, VPStreet. The map was to be on Shattered Temple with the players spawning in the close-by-air position. It looked like a pretty standard game till VPStreet pulled out the Reaper to go mess stuff up. Tempy responded by using the unit he already built, the Stalker, to clean up the pesky fly.

VPStreet’s production was looking good and had a solid amount of units to put some pressure on. There is one golden rule that Terran should follow when pushing out with Marauders and Marines early on. It is to always make sure you have Concussive Shells. VPStreet realized his tactical error and quickly retreated.

Both players geared up for what seemed like a single decisive battle to decide the game. VPStreet opting for Ghosts and Starport units. Tempy going with the tried and true Robotics Bay with Immortals and Colossus. The game did come down to the single final battle.

VPStreet’s faster expansion and stronger production gave him a larger army. Also EMP is still really really good against Protoss, even with the nerf. Tempy’s army was annilated and VPStreet kept the dreams of RPI alive, giving them the chance to go to the ace match. Check out how the series ends and snag the replays here: http://www.cstarleague.com/league/matches/853.

Guest Article by A.J. Bailey!

Sunday November 20 - The air was electric as StarCraft 2 fans showed up at McMullan's Pub in Waterloo to watch live show matches between the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University CSL teams, and the finals of MLG Providence.

The slated show matches featured Vector (WLU) vs Jaycee (UW) then Magikl (WLU) vs CombatEX (UW). Two excellent PvP matches casted by ratanak (youtube.com/ratanakdefectueux).

The first match saw excellent blink Stalker harass and micro throughout the middle Shakuras Plateau. However, Jaycee was able to take a hidden 3rd expansion, giving him a macro lead, and eventually the game.

The second match was chalk full of light-hearted trash talking and unusual play between the two friends, CombatEX and Magikl. CombatEX opened by placing a manner Nexus in Magikl's main and then proceeding to try and take Magikl's natural as well. CombatEX then transitioned into DT play. Magikl countered this with a hidden Stargate and Fleet Beacon to produce a Mothership. The DT were stopped in their tracks, unable to kill cloaked Probes. CombatEX went on to win the match with Magikl quipping, "4000 games and you still need cheese to win."

MLG was streamed the rest of the night with an estimated 120 people who came out and an average of 85 people at any given point. The event was organized by E-Sports Canada (www.facebook.com/EsportsCanada) with bigger and better events planned for the new year.

Editor's Note: Thank you to A. J. Bailey, Muny Tram, and the rest of the Waterloo crew for this writeup! If your school is organizing or partaking in any local Barcrafts, be sure to send us your recap to cstarleage@gmail.com! See ya next week!

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