MLG Providence

Hey TL,

Second london barcraft blog re-post - Again love to hear feedback

Welcome ladies and gents to my second London barcraft post. Once again feedback is much appreciated here or in person at the next event!

Unfortunately due to the inconvenience of real life the only matches I managed to catch from the first two days was TLO against Spanishiwa. Despite being an excellent series (and a brilliant climax to game three) it was not enough to satisfy my Starcraft hunger.

Turning up at the Assembly House on Sunday afternoon, Florian and Adam were getting the wired internet and the projector set up and I want to thank them, along with all the other organisers, for getting such a great event set up!

Alright enough with the preliminaries, onto the main course:

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The way the tournament played out

When I sat down to start writing this I was thinking about doing an overall re-cap, however MLG simply is too big a tournament, so in the end I went with my top 5 storylines for the event (in no particular order):

Naniwa
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tournament record = 11-8 (10-4 before the finals)

Coming into this MLG, Naniwa hadn’t had the best results. His last two appearances at the GSL in code A finished with him going 0-4, twice coming up against the middle tier Zerg Lucky. The last game between them especially was a very tough loss for Naniwa, attempting a one gate expand into stargate play he was simply overrun in the early game by lings after he missed a force field on his ramp and didn’t GG.

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More GG more skill?

That was Naniwa’s last televised game and he hasn’t been on a good run ever since heading to Korea. Comparing his results, and the way he was absolutely dominating, around the time of his MLG Dallas victory and his TSL3 finals appearance, to the results he had been putting up recently. There was simply no comparison.

That was before Providence, before Naniwa started showing us a glimpse of Protoss perfection, with precise force fields and clutch storms he STOMPED his way through the Providence weekend. Starting off the weekend was the MLG Global Invitational. With a line-up also containing Nestea, MVP and Idra, many (including me!) would have placed Naniwa as the worst player there. Instead Nani came out and beat both the Koreans to take that mini tournament in style.

Lets just take a moment to go over Naniwa’s hit list from the event:

MVP

NESTEA

NESTEA

HUK

DONG RAE GU

Nani beat arguably the best player of each race in the game. Hats off to Naniwa that was totally insane.
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Incredibly impressive run

Naniwa was a well deserved finalist and the only player to beat him in a best of series was the baby faced monster from FXO. Which leads me very nicely into…

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Leenock [image loading]

The Leenocktopus is coming

tournament record = 39-5 (89% win rate)

FXOLeenock, Lee Dong-Nyung, baby faced assassin. However you know the 16 year old from South Korea everyone can appreciate exactly how much he DOMINATED the MLG weekend. Apparently the Korean translator at the event, Hwanie, picked him from the very first day. How right he was.

Leenock went 12-0 through the ridiculously stacked open bracket, notably beating players such as Drewbie, FXOz (who recently made it to the GSL code S semi finals), Gatored (who beat Axslav and Ganzi in earlier rounds) and vileState. And he did this without dropping a single map.

In the championship bracket Leenock managed to beat players with a combined 4 GSL championships (MMA and MVP x3) and 5 MLG championships (Idra, Huk x2, MMA and MVP).
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In the whole tournament he only dropped one best of three to DongRaeGu, who he then promptly smashed 4-1, overhauling the extended series deficit, when they had their re-match later in the tournament. There is no doubt in my mind that the best Starcraft of the tournament was played by this Korean wonder kid. He showed an ability to cope with all situations that were thrown at him. There was an inevitability about the way he won his games, be it by his relentless macro style or when he noticed the July second and immediately turned on the aggression. He dominated games from start to finish, as well as taking some insane games from what should have been unsalvageable positions (Boxer or MVP on dual sight anyone?).

Special mention must also go to how he played out the finals against Naniwa. He studied Naniwa’s greedy openings that he had used against NesTea so effectively, and exploited their early game weaknesses with numerous roach rushes. Naniwa, who had shown foolproof play up to that stage, simply couldn’t cope with this Zerg who displayed a deadly knowledge of just how to pick apart his style, couldn’t adapt, and lost.

Just for good measure Leenock went back to Korea and destroyed Alive in the round of 8 in the GSL code S by 3-0. Leenock may look like a cute little teddy bear but he has the heart of a champion and the soul of a cold blooded nerd killer

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Haypro
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tournament record = 9-7

Haypro has taken a lot of stick for being the odd man out in the prestigious team liquid roster. Big results simply haven’t come often enough for some to justify being on one of Starcraft’s most popular pro-teams. Whilst always taking a few games off the best players, Hayder was seen as being on of Starcrafts 1-2 men in a best of three, perhaps lacking the killer instinct to knock off the top players in the game.

Haypro was seeded into the championship bracket and his first game was against eventual champ Leenock. He was beaten 2-0 and landed down in the losers half of the bracket. First game on championship Sunday he was able to avenge his team mate Sheth by taking out Illusion. No big deal right as he was now up against Select. Known for having some of the best TvZ in North America. No way Haypro would win.

Wrong, suddenly things were starting to look up for the man known as Banjo. But still, next up was Kiwikaki, himself known for having some of the best PvZ in North America, surely lightning couldn’t strike twice?

Wrong, Haypro again showed some excellent play to take down the unconventional Protoss. Finally able to gain some momentum in a major tournament, it was just sad that he was now up against the ZvZ king himself in Nestea, so as nice as his run was, there was simply no way for him to beat the Kore…..

WRONG! Holy crap what the hell is going on??

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I pity the fool who thinks he can beat Haypro

Next up in Haypro’s path was the Terran machine MVP. Surely, Suuuuurely he couldn’t defeat arguably the best player on the planet? Well in the end no (much to the disappointment of the Haypro table in the back of the Assembly house!) Though at one stage in the deciding match on Metalopolis, Haypro was at 180 supply against MVP’s 110 after crushing MVPs mech push. Unfortunately the team liquid pro didn’t realise his army advantage, and allowed the terran to macro back up a fully upgraded mech army while being on an equal number of bases.

Truly a breakthrough performance for Haypro and here’s hoping that this run continues!

Assembly house

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tournament record = over 250-0 happy nerds over two days

I couldn’t possibly do a top 5 of MLG Providence without including some mad love for the Assembly House and some of the moments of the day!

First of all I want to say a massive thank you to John the manager of the pub, seriously, next time you go to the Assembly House have a chat with this guy. Not only is he pushing with the owners to get us better facilities and projecting equipment but he’s also getting us into the bigger main bar area and keeping the pub open till the early hours so we can catch the finals of MLG. In addition to this he also went on a late night curry run to make sure that the nerds who stayed for the finals had food in the early morning hours!

Legend.

Next up were the many awesome prizes given away constantly throughout the day. Swag included Dignitas signed shirts, Twitch TV bar mats, free drinks from the bar and any many more. Big props for Adam Varney and all the others involved in getting us free prizes. Keep it up! Rumour also had it that a mystery prize was given out, truly a one of a kind, to one lucky Barcrafter who will never forget November 20th

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Got to say thank you as well to the fellow Terrans who were at my table, the day would not have been the same without our discussing mass hellion cheese. Also fellow terran Mark correctly predicted Leenock for the championship – GG my friend.

Finally got to brag a little about my GG button performance, 4-1 is the new standard to beat now ladies and gents – game on!

To finish up I wanted to talk through my favourite game of the tournament:

Boxer v Leenock – game one – Dual Site

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The game started with Boxer spawning bottom left and Leenock top right on Dual site.
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Traditionally a tough map to fast expand on owing to the very open natural, this also lends itself it early hellion play in the match up. However Boxer decided to avoid straight up play in favour of early aggression, with a proxy 2 barracks aggression against Leenocks early hatchery.

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Boxer y u no play straight up?

Boxer managed to get up his first two bunkers outside Leenocks natural hatchery as there was no overlord to scout for them. With enough marines at the Leenocks front, Boxer lifted his two proxy rax to wall in the front of his base however three lings managed to get inside first and cause some minor disruption before being killed off.

Meanwhile Boxer had killed off the natural Hatchery of the Zerg with no resistance
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GG?

Far ahead at this stage, Boxer begins an in-base Command centre and puts up a bunker at his front. Leenock ignores the bunkers in his natural and runs by a good number of speedlings in order to baneling bust Boxers front.
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Whilst he did get inside, some very nice target firing on the remaining banelings meant little meaningful damage was done. However, Leenock did macro up another big round of lings and finally broke the bunkers at his front to re-take his natural..

Boxer moves out with a small force of about 12 marines and with so few Zerg forces left simply waltzed into Leenocks main and started murdering drones and queens, by the time he was cleaned up, Boxer had killed 12 drones and a queen.

In the meantime Boxer had taken his natural and had siege tanks out to defend. Both players took time to macro up and Boxer pushed out for a timing with three siege tanks while taking his third. This was the chance Leenock needed to even up the game; and with a large zergling attack and some excellent baneling hits cleaned up the push with ease.

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Nice army.....Shame if anything were to happen to it

With Boxers main army destroyed but with a third in place. Leenock proceeded to double expand and get up his spire tech.
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Boxer began to poke at Leenock with some drop harass and caused a cancel on the 3 o clock expansion but lost two full medivacs for little damage done as the hatch was cancelled. Boxer, still with a big supply lead, produced two thors and started pushing up towards Leenocks third base. Unfortunately for him, as soon as he left his base Leenock counter attacked his third, forcing a lift and eventually destroying the orbital.

Boxer decided not to protect his third. Instead pushing Leenocks third and taking it out while setting up a beautiful siege tank position near the western xelnaga tower. Unfortunately for Boxer this was the turning point in the match as he didn’t scout Leenock re-making the 3 o clock expansion. Boxer had sacrificed his third for Leenocks, thinking they were both on two bases, thus he didn’t attack, however Leenock was getting ahead of the Terran on bases while building a large flock of mutas.

Leenock then proceeded to harass Boxers main base, crucially picking off the 3-3 bio upgrades as they were nearing completion as Boxers forces were split up defended the re-built third and denying Leenocks 12 o clock expansion.
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With the mutas harassing his main, Boxer pushed toward the Zerg natural
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However he had only about half his forces in the push, and when Leenocks mutas returned from the main, he proceeded to crush the push setting himself up in a supply lead for the first time in the game.
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STILL having not scouted the Zerg 3 o clock base Boxer played very passively while Leenock took his fourth base and went back to harassing with mutas, picking off a number of stray siege tanks and medivacs. After letting the Zerg get up to four bases Boxer finally began to push towards the 3 o clock base, however Leenock smartly countered into the Terran third rather than engage Boxers forces directly
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With the destruction of the Zerg 3 o clock and the Terran third. Boxer now had no mining while Leenock had the 12 o clock still running. Boxer began to drop the Zerg main to take out his tech but Leenock had a little surprise waiting at his last mining expansion
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With the Terran no longer mining Boxer was essentially all in. He did take out all of the Zerg main but Leenock stamped him out like a bug.

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Banelings meet Marines

Boxer, with his never surrender attitude attempted to take the game with his remaining marines however Leenock now had infestors out to seal the deal.

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GG!

This game epitomised how well Leenock was playing all tournament, he simply refused to lose despite his early game disadvantages (take note Idra). Demonstrating the mindset it takes to be a champion in Starcraft 2. Also got to mention Florian calling GG for Boxer in the early stages…Why did you forsake youre Zerg brethren?!?

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The result

Thanks to everyone who reads this, I wont be able to make Dreamhack this weekend myself, but hope that everyone who goes has a fantastic time and hope that the new set-up at the Assembly House is as awesome as it sounds.

GG

Rob (aka Furtle)

MLG Providence

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming