Battle Report: At every turn...

GSL Open Season 1: Grand Finals
Fruitdealer vs HopeTorture

Preface:

The first GSL Open Season was hallmarked by the story of Fruitdealer, who overcame the difficulties that zerg players at the time had been having to make it to the finals. There he fought against HopeTorture, formerly InToTheRainbow, in a climactic best of seven to determine the first GSL champion of Starcraft 2. This series of battle reports will look back on the first true championship finals of Starcraft 2.

Previous Reports:
Set One: Delta Quadrant

Divided; will Rainbow's forces fall or will they stand against the zerg?

Set Two: Lost Temple

Fruitdealer spawns at the nine o'clock position, with Rainbow at the 6 o'clock. It's close spawns by air, but rush distance by ground are fairly long. It looks like the optimum spawns for Rainbow's heavy drop-focused style, but Fruitdealer's mutalisks will also benefit from the close proximity.

Fruitdealer continues his streak of bold plays - he opens hatch first before scouting his opponent's location. Lost Temple is renowned for Terran tank drops on the ledge at the natural, and Artosis rightly notes that going hatch first and skipping ling speed can get mutas out quickly enough to deal with such a drop. But Rainbow has an array of early pressure builds in his pocket, so Fruitdealer needs to be cautious.

Fruitdealer's gambit; he's prepared for mid-game aggression, but he's weak to super-early rushes.

Fruitdealer's overlord skims across the base of Rainbow, but he doesn't see anything. He moves on, thinking that his rival is elsewhere on the map. Panicking, Fruitdealer sends out a drone to search for the terran menace. Meanwhile, Rainbow is building his factory, preparing for the infamous tank-drop style that Lost temple TvZ is so well known for.

A marine enters Fruitdealer's base and dread sets in for the zerg. He hasn't seen Rainbow at cross positions, so he's anticipating a rush from close spawns. He drops a spine crawler and pumps out zerglings. But it's just feigned pressure and the marine quickly backs up. The zerglings pop out, and with nothing to kill, they sprint across to Rainbow's main base.

The MacGuyver wall-in. Rainbow blocks the zergling advance!

As the lings get close, Rainbow's open ramp poses a major weakness. In the space of seconds, he drops a starport and lands his barracks, creating a tech lab to finish a wall-in seconds before the zerglings arrive. With plenty of larva wasted and Rainbow dominating the game, the korean terran is firmly ahead.

Fruitdealer throws down a lair, and it's at his natural expansion. The extra life will help defend the hatchery from tanks on the ledge, but if it does go down, he's even worse off. Two spines pit-mark the creep beside it as Rainbow produces a medivac and a tank.

Fruitdealer prepares his defences; all or nothing.

The dropship moves out with a tank and 2 scvs, but the timing isn't perfect and Rainbow could have already been at Fruitdealer's base. Now, the zerg is waiting for him, and the spire is already morphing in. As the tank lands and enters siege mode, the scvs start building turrets in preparation for mutalisks.

But while Rainbow is concerned by the threat from above, he misses a threat from below. Fruitdealer's spines burrow in at the cusp of the cliff, and the tank doesn't have enough DPS to take them both out before they root.

Time is running out for the tank; it needs to back up or be poked to death.

Rainbow un-sieges the tank, lifts it with the medivac to dodge an incoming spine and drops it out of range of the crawler. His scv immediately starts repairing the tank as it unleashes fire on the spine crawlers which are now defenceless. They also uproot and pull back. The tank is safe now, but it can't kill Fruitdealer's hatchery.

Rainbow attempts to pull back with the medivac and it gets intercepted by queens. Barely alive, it jets back to his base to gather reinforcements.

Four hit points save the medivac, but Fruitdealer has tasted blood; he won't stop now.

Fruitdealer has bought enough time, and five mutalisks spawn. But they don't go for the ledge, they fly in to Rainbow's main base. He doesn't have turrets up yet, and is short on marines, so the mutalisks begin to wreak havoc.

The mutalisks snipe a handful of SCVs, but this is only the beginning...

Fruitdealer continues to execute his flawless style; he takes the 3 o'clock base, on Rainbow's side of the map and completely out of sight. His mutalisks come home and finish off the tank on the ledge, leaving Rainbow's turret spinning quietly on its own.

Once again, Fruitdealer takes the map while Rainbow is trapped in his base.

Rainbow has managed to scare of the Mutalisks with a thor, and finally pushes out to take his natural expansion with a small force. It's largely mechanical, with tanks and thors forming the back-bone, but he has some bio mixed in to supplement his one-factory mech-style.

Rainbow's immobile but powerful army secures his expansion. He's safe... for now.

At this point, Fruitdealer is already up a base on Rainbow as he populates his hidden base at the 3 o'clock. This isn't enough for the zerg, so he takes the last main base at the 12 o'clock, giving him 4 bases to Rainbow's 2.

"Are we allowed to take bases that aren't mains? I never knew." - Fruitdealer

A thor defends a mutalisk invasion in Rainbow's base. He's stabilised now and has managed to create a shell that Fruitdealer can't quite shatter. Meanwhile, Fruitdealer has the map. The Korean zerg uses his freedom to begin a massive push in to upgrades. Not only is he getting attack and armour upgrades, he's teching in to roaches, banelings, overlord drops and almost every speed upgrade imaginable. Rainbow dares to send out a drop.

Bad move.

Rainbow drops for a moment in his opponent's base, but immediately has to scoop as he is chased out by mutalisks which devour his dropship. On the other side of the map, he has a viking attacking an overlord. It lands a volley before it's obliterated by the muta cloud.

The mech-ball strikes.

Rainbow takes the moment he has to move out with his mechanical army, sieging up at the watch-tower and creating a strong staging point in the middle of the map. Fruitdealer's 3 o'clock is now seriously at risk, but can Rainbow find it?

Fruitdealer doesn't give us time to find out, as he swings an overlord in to Rainbow's natural and drops banelings, crushing a small pocket of scvs. Rainbow's slow army is now out of position to defend his main, and Fruitdealer sees this. He gathers his forces in to overlords and heads for the main of his terran rival...

Hell rains down on Rainbow's head.

Rainbow has little to no response, grabbing units to defend as they spawn and retreating to ~~Helm's deep~~ the natural expansion with his scvs. Roaches ravage his main base as he holds steadfast with his mech ball at the front. If things couldn't get worse for Rainbow, a drop heading to the North gets taken out by mutalisks before it even crosses the centre of the map. Fruitdealer is everywhere.

That's right; he's everywhere!

Roaches burst in from all sides and hammer the tank line. The numbers have been thinned as Rainbow tries to defend on all fronts, but he's losing everywhere. The Roach ling force eviscerates the mech army and swings in to Rainbow's natural expansion. It gets gutted immediately.

A medivac gets through Fruitdealer's net and immediately wishes it hadn't.

Fruitdealer has infestors out now and when Rainbow manages to get a pair of medivacs through Fruitdealer's fingers, a force of zerglings, banelings and roaches takes out the marines before they can really cause any mayhem.

Nothing stands in the way of the swarm!

Back at the ranch, Fruitdealer morphs in 40 banelings and loads them in to overlords. As he pushes up the ramp, he carpet bombs Rainbow's army with them. There's nothing left for Rainbow, and he desperately loads units in to medivacs to get them out. In a fitting end to the set, Fruitdealer's mutalisks catch the medivacs and finish off Rainbow's army. Rainbow GGs.

Fruitdealer 2-0 Rainbow

Fruitdealer takes yet another game, going up 2 to 0 in the finals. Rainbow's attempts to attack on every front were shut down by Fruitdealer's excellent defensive play, and when the korean zerg turned it round on the offensive, Rainbow was unable to keep up, showing Fruitdealer's superb multi-tasking and ingenuity. Having beaten 2 of the hardest maps in the pool, Fruitdealer moves ahead confidently in to game 3.

To be continued...

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