EPTGame 1, Alive did an interesting all-in. Nestea had the game won when his overlord flew from the natural cliff to the natural area and saw nothing. However he made drones instead of zerglings.
He holds Alive's allin while losing his natural. Then he did a big zergling, baneling, mutalisk counter attack that I feel was the last nail in the coffin. As a result of losing his standing army, he could never secure a third base for more than a minute, and the cumulative mules of Alive allowed him to match Nestea's economy (which was stunted on 1-1.5 bases at a time since the all-in.)
Game 2, Nestea's style was boring. There was no cleverness to his play, no baneling mines, nothing particularly interesting about it. He had a very hard time holding down a 4th base, meaning that he had 70 drones on 2.5 bases up until the very end and as a result he got pretty poor near the end. He revolved around being mechanically stronger than his opponent. Stating his macro will be better than Alive's and he threw wave after wave after wave of banelings at his opponent.
A problem found in both game 1 and 2, is that banelings have no staying power. An incredibly obvious statement is that they are literally suicide bombers. But I don't think people will quite realize the implications. After each engagement, Nestea did not come ahead a single time. He traded ground armies. In game 1, the engagements after the all-in had both of the ground armies destroyed each time. Nestea was left with mutalisks, and Alive would come a minute later with his next wave. To which Nestea would again trade armies, leaving nothing but mutas, and Alive would keep coming at him. Nestea would run out of money because during these engagements he was losing his 3rd base, each time.
In game 2, if Alive would defend better with his tanks (see moment where he loses all tanks to the banelings, losing his staying power.) He could receive each suicide wave, which has no staying power and if he maintained the good drop play that denied the 4th over and over he would dry Nestea's bank.
Game 3, Alive opens 2 rax. Nestea holds and is slightly ahead of Alive. Nestea goes for a roach baneling counter attack without scouting for a sieged tank. He lost.
Games 1-3 In general, Alive did not particularly impress me. His marine micro vs banelings was not all that great, and he lost a lot of medics and tanks to mutalisks. His macro was standard. It was not Bomber-at-Orlando-esque.
Nestea kept using armies with no staying power. To pull it off he needs to add baneling mines, runbys, overlord speed, burrowing zerglings at bases, overlord creeping the bases. Adding to his inability to stay alive after battles, he could not buy enough time to remake units for the next wave by a lack of solid creep spread. If he had infestors and creep spread, engagements would go much better for him. He could fungal the marines and tie them down for the banelings to actually connect properly. And his upgrades were more moderately paced.
No shockers, but it is, what I think, a good example of why TvZ is moving away from heavy Mutalisk commitments,
Game 4, reaper expand. Then nothing much. Alive does a blue flame and marine attack that kills a significant amount of zerglings but no drones. Nestea gets the infestation pit, but delays infestors for a faster hive. He does not commit to heavy mutalisk numbers and upgrades. He tries to go for another suicide mission against Alives third which fails. Alive has some pretty good marine drop harass. After the suicide attack, Nestea would have lost if he continued his style of games 1-3. But he got a solid fungal on marines and destroyed them all with banelings. After this he gets broodlords which die because he did not protect them with infestors. (Which were accompanying the lings towards Alives third again, remember how he lost game 1?)
With the broodlords down, Alive goes for the throat. Banelings again hit tanks instead of marines, and remember how I keep repeating staying power? He has none, he has no way to beat the marine medivac army with just lings, the infestors are out of position, he has no broodlords, and no time to make banelings.
Nestea really needed to consolidate his army at the end of this game, and he had it in the bag. Also I noticed he did not expand very aggressively. His play was overly conservative, without committing hard to any of upgrades, lings, mutalisks, infestors, broodlords. He did them all at once and had a poor showing for each role. I think he finished the game with only 2-2 lings.
I think that Nestea lost this series rather than Alive winning it. With the lack of army cohesion, creep spread (part of the next item on the list), and STAYING POWER, he couldn't win.
He could not get the right units at the right place, he could not delay long enough after an engagement with a lack of creep spread (because his units all just suicided) and was punished hard for it.
