Game 1: Both players go mech, which is the standard on Antiga Shipyard, but while Gumiho goes for the normal 3 fact 1 port into third base, Maru goes for a quick double aArmory before adding more factories and a quicker third base. The quick double armory allowed him a lot of options – rush for +1 tank attack and armor, which means that you kill unupgraded enemy tanks in 3 shots instead of 4, and +1 armor negates any +1 attack timing of your opponent. Upon scouting that Gumiho also went mech, though, he instead opted for +1 air armor, which allows your vikings to survive another volley from enemy vikings. Gumiho’s first attack was held by Maru thanks to these quick upgrades, but Hellions sneaking into mineral lines and Vikings landing to pull Maru’s army out of position allowed Gumiho to take an economic lead, which won him the game.

Game 2: On Entombed Valley, Maru goes for the same double armory mech build while Gumiho goes bio. Gumiho allows Maru to push into his fourth and third bases, taking a lot of damage. Instead of trying to abuse the huge open space in the middle, Gumiho focuses too much on drops that don’t do the damage they need to. Gumiho prevents Maru a lot of gas income by taking out outlying refineries, but Maru has already maxed out with upgrades. Multiple opportunities to catch Maru’s unsieged tanks in the middle of the map are wasted, and Gumiho’s late-game air transition has been delayed too much, allowing Maru to finish the game.

Game 3: On Daybreak, both players go for unorthodox builds. Gumiho goes for bio with 3 fairly quick bases and two starports with reactors. I think his plan was to gain air superiority in order to do more damage to Maru with drops, either on top of his tanks or directly in his base. His execution left much to be desired, however, as he loses most of his vikings to turrets and enemy vikings as he tries to do an early drop. His plan also wildly backfires as Maru goes for a completely different build – a 2-base 4 factory push. The extra factory with a reactor pumping hellions obviously allows you to push forward much more easily, but it also makes enemy drops on top of your own army much less effective.

Game 1 was an interesting mech vs mech game where the double armory build was the key point of interest. I hope we see it again in future games to see how it plays out more. Game 2 was fairly uninteresting, with Gumiho making key mistakes in his bio vs mech play on a map that generally favours bio quite a lot, especially with disabled horizontal spawns. Game 3 was also interesting in the choice of builds – Maru going double armory on small maps and 2base 4fact on a big map might have been a bit of metagaming, or it could be that it’s his preferred build on maps where the third is not as accessible. In either case it seemed to work out well as Gumiho’s build was completely neutralized. Had Maru done the same double armory build 3 games in a row, Gumiho’s double starport play probably would’ve worked better, but he couldn’t afford to lose the vikings early on regardless.