Introducing...
PianO and his bitches
vs
a village hero
on
Neo Electric Circuit
PianO and his bitches
vs
a village hero
on
Neo Electric Circuit
And that picture is Circuit Breaker, I'll fix that when I get home. Anyway, while I love both players, I could agree that this doesn't sound like the most exciting match-up one could come up with in the Afreeca scene.
PianO is a TvZ multitask/micro beast and so far his results in SoSPA games (17-3 in TvZ, 66,67% altogether) suggest that some of his boasting of keeping up with JD in practice might just be true.
hero, on the other hand, is a renowned ZvP expert (82-30), who tries hard to stay above the 50% winrate in the other two match-ups and fails consistently. But a true hero doesn't ever stop trying, right?
But first, in a rather BM move, hero decides not to use one of his drones... or gas.
OK, just a friendly poke from the smoker, as his coughs add a rough flavor the Terran theme.
PianO goes with rax CC into +1 5 rax, whereas hero does a 3 hatch muta build, taking the mineral-only as his 3rd and adding a macro hatch and researching burrow right after spire.
Yep, we've got his FPV too.
With a ninja mineral-only base at 5시(ssi), double evo chambers for carapace and melee, a queen's nest and 5 sunkens, there is little agression hero's looking to do with his 9 mutas. He ends up throwing away four for a single turret and a scout of PianO's base.
On top of that, he starts an expo at 1시 main and there is little doubt that there are no lurkers to be seen here. Instead, a double defiler den - for double fun, more specifically, plague and consume - welcome to crazy Crazy Zerg. He replenishes his muta group, adds 3 more sunkens and waits for PianO to move out.
PianO scans and arrives to 1시, but with a wisely positioned zergling at the choke, hero sees it coming and cancels the hatchery, suffering no damage. PianO has no idea of the ninja mineral-only, which puts him in a dire spot.
hero uses his muta group and a couple of lings to dispatch of the separated MNM group, and his +1 upgrades are seconds away from being done as PianO's marine train nears the sunken line (see minimap).
hero's timing is impeccable - as soon as PianO's tanks siege up, dark swarm is thrown down and the marine cluster gets plagued, both tanks fall immediately. Not quite a pleasant sight for a Terran eye:
What's worse, hero parks his leftover mutas in the path of reinforcements where they bump into four fearless firebats late to the party. At this time, however, PianO channels his inner NaDa and gets himself a nice defiler snipe on the retreat:
He scans the 5시 main and sees a base morphing. Knowing well what he's up against (mostly ground and under swarm), he produces a round of firebats and sends them wandering around the map, while taking his main army to the 5시 base to find it virtually defenceless.
But hero's nydus network delivers soon enough...
Could you imagine a bigger blow to your game and your moral than this? I can and have experienced a couple. Anyway, hero saves the hatchery and instantly begins morphing it into lair to give it some additional hp.
But the game is far from over. PianO's reinforcements get again plagued upon their arrival but hero only has a handful of units and doesn't throw down the perfect swarms which costs him the base. With the mineral-only still standging though, he retakes it soon enough and another batch of marines is deflected with ultra-ling.
At the same time, PianO starts developing plans of his own. With some 10 barracks, 2 starports and 2 ebays always busy upgrading, he's also constructing his 4th CC and loading up two dropships.
The dropships make it into hero's main, unload a handful of rines on the highground and part their ways.
The 3-way split catches hero off his guard and does some damage before it gets cleaned up. But more importantly, two more ground bio groups are dispatched in the meantime.
Just as hero cleans it up, PianO arrives to see 1시 defenceless yet again...
Only to get plagued and swarmed and denied, yet again...
...but hero has no answer to the other group that arrived at 12시.
Just as hero sees that there's no hope for his 12시 base, his macroing gets interrupted by another drop.
Take a moment to appreciate the state of chaos hero finds himself in. He has idle drones everywhere, zerglings idle in the weirdest location, an undefended base that's about to fall, another two dropships to deal with, upgrades to start in evo chambers that might potentially fall in any second, sunkens to replace and of course general macro and micro to attend to. He's still desperate to increase his gas income, with minerals climbing over 2k, and most bases have random firebats waiting to do some drone roasting. His usually great scouting is barely happening at all, there's an overlord here and there but that's it. He's in the dark, and he's afraid. And he should.
hero has been hungry for a third gas for a while now and PianO invested most of his resources and time into denying just that, but finally hero's gas at the 5시 main is starting to kick in. However, seconds after he cleans up the drop, it is back.
That's way too late, friend. - This carelessness costs him his two evo chambers.
And at the same time, another dropship finds its way to the mineral-only. This gives PianO enough map presence to comfortably claim the gas base at 6시. But PianO isn't happy with mere map presence. He rescues the bio group that earlier denied hero's 12시 with one of his dropships, only to send it to its death as hero spots the drop in his main and gets rid of it in time.
After seeing the game for the first time, I considered counting the total amount of drops, but now I'm reconsidering...
Another two drops make it safely to hero's bases. He has no map presence whatsoever and is just waiting for whatever PianO throws his way.
The average perceived number of dropships on the map at any point in the game.
Scourge gets one of the ships, but 3시 is done for. But hero has other matter to attend to anyway:
And he deals with it just like that...
...forgetting about PianO's favorite move and paying the prize in drones.
Part II