OSL Writer Application Battle Report: JD vs Snow

Jaedong < La Mancha > Snow

Down 2-1 against Hite Entus, Oz sends Jaedong to square off against Snow for the first time since their epic bo5 series in the quarterfinals of the MSL. Jaedong spawns as the green Zerg at the 7 o’clock position on ~~Luna~~ La Mancha while Snow takes control of the white Protoss encampment at the 2 o’clock.

Jaedong sends his first overlord to the 10 o'clock position and overpool expands. Snow scouts the 5 o'clock first and puts down a blind forge before nexus. Snow’s probe reaches Jaedong’s ramp in time to slightly delay Jaedong’s drone from taking the natural. Snow puts down his nexus next, and Jaedong forces two cannons before gate by hatching six lings and sending them straight to Snow’s base before coming back to kill the scouting probe.

Jaedong continues with a very textbook 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra, taking his third at the 9 o’clock expansion. Snow sends a lone zealot to occupy Jaedong’s lings in the middle of the map while checking on Jaedong’s bases and spire timing with another probe scout. Snow begins his stargate just as Jaedong’s spire starts morphing, and then adds a citadel and templar archives while starting a fast plus one air attack.

Jaedong scouts Snow with his first two scourge and then sends a drone out to take his fourth base at the 10 o’clock natural while Snow starts adding gateways. Snow sends out a dark templar to scout ahead while building up his ground force. Jaedong chases down the dark templar with his first group of hydralisks as soon as overlord speed finishes. Snow stops corsair production as his plus one air finishes and moves out with about six sairs to hunt for scouting overlords in the middle of the map.

Shortly after, Snow’s plus one attack finishes and he pushes down the left side of the map with a small army of a control group of speedlots, a dragoon, and three templar with storm. Snow pushes into the open space between Jaedong’s third and natural. In the face of superior hydralisk numbers with lurker support Snow avoids engaging while getting off some nice storms.

Squishy hydras

Snow engages again, getting a decent exchange as he slips a dark templar into Jaedong’s fourth, which wreaks havoc in the absence of any spores or overlords. Jaedong rushes an overlord to his fourth base only to have it promptly killed by Snow’s roving corsair fleet. The dt gets 9 drone kills before Jaedong manages to kill it without detection using lurker splash.

Cool trick, but the dt still died with 9 kills

Feeling comfortable with the amount of damage he has done, Snow takes his third at the 12 o’clock during the dt harass and sends a shuttle carrying a high templar, dark templar, and a zealot down to Jaedong’s natural. Let’s see how it goes.

First the high templar…

…then the dark templar.

The Tyrant cleans everything up with hydras, catching the shuttle before it can escape with the high templar inside. (Note that Snow could have saved the shuttle by retreating it out of the natural towards the 6 o’clock position after he went back for the high templar. In this case the normally good instinct to keep his shuttle with the corsairs cost him.) Between this drop and the dark templar in his fourth, Jaedong has lost over 20 drones and has little time to act before Snow’s finished third kicks in. Jaedong moves a sizeable lurker ling force toward Snow’s front where some bad positioning costs him five lurkers to storms.

A bad day for Zerg

Snow’s army is still fairly small, however, and even with these lurkers out of the picture, Snow’s forces are completely occupied in holding off the attack. Jaedong abuses this fact by streaming zerglings into Snow’s undefended third. Snow’s battered army manages to cleans up at his front, but not fast enough to save his expansion.

An even worse day for Protoss

Now Snow is the one in a precarious position. Jaedong is still on four bases and has had some time to recover his drone count, plus he has an army advantage and hive tech. Snow on the other hand, is back down to two bases with a smallish army and a handful of corsairs with a speed shuttle and reaver. That speed shuttle and reaver need to work some real magic if Snow has any intention of staying in this game.

Snow has shown us some top notch harass against Jaedong before and he delivers magnificently with this drop, bouncing from the fourth to the third and back again, and even swinging down to the main while dodging around Jaedong’s pursuing hydralisks.

To be fair 6 of those kills came from defending at his natural

Without ever getting more than three drones with one scarab, Snow manages to slaughter another 18 drones while stopping mining for varying lengths of time at three of Jaedong’s four bases and even escapes with the shuttle at 7 hp. To top it all off, Snow’s new third at the 3 o'clock is moments from completion. Having had so much fun with the first drop, Snow brashly sends his shuttle and corsairs back for another round of drone hunting without switching out for a fresh shuttle or waiting for the shields to recharge on the first. The shuttle passes briefly within range of a couple of hydralisks and it goes down to just two shots.

REVENGE!!

Snow’s third finishes and Jaedong tries and fails to kill it with another wave of zerglings. Snow now moves out again with a scary army, pushing through the middle of the map to Jaedong’s fourth where he hopes to deliver a game-ending blow. At the same time he starts taking his own fourth at the 5 o’clock nat. The only defense Jaedong has stationed at his fourth are a couple sunkens and three lurkers, plus a spore colony. Snow has this:

There are a couple of archons and a templar on the way.

In my opinion, Snow should have just gone for it here. Jaedong has been scrambling to replenish his drones and doesn’t yet have an army capable of taking Snow’s head on. With his plus three attack finished, Snow could have busted through fairly easily and killed the still-morphing nydus canal, and would then be fighting Jaedong’s reinforcing army on one front. Instead, Snow parks in the easily-flanked open space right outside of Jaedong’s fourth while his reavers start wearing away at Jaedong’s static defenses. Jaedong capitalizes immediately, attacking Snow’s army from the south with zerglings while setting up a lurker contain to the east to cut off reinforcements and Snow’s only line of retreat. Snow finds himself being attacked on all sides, and is finally forced to retreat with the remains of his once-proud army through the site of his ruined 12 o’clock expo.

With his main and natural mined out, Snow is still on two mining bases but in a good position to take a third at the 5 o’clock main. Jaedong is only now beginning to mine out his main, the constant harass having suppressed his mining significantly. Snow fortifies his fourth with cannons and a wall.

The calm before the storm

Hydra lurker ling roll across the map toward Snow’s fourth, clashing with the Protoss army along the way. Snow gets off some good storms, but Jaedong pushes him back with superior upgrades (3-2 hydras and lurkers against a 3-0 Protoss ground army).

Jaedong lays siege on the Protoss fourth with dark swarm and plague, while Snow rallies his forces south of his third and flies another shuttle loaded with a high templar, dark templar, and two zealots into Jaedong’s natural.

I won’t stop with the drops, ‘til I hear the GG pops!

Meanwhile, at Snow’s base…

Snow pops the high templar back into the shuttle and storm drops the fourth, before retreating with the high templar and shuttle fully intact, flying over a small army loading into a flock of overlords. Once again, Snow’s drop has netted double digit drone kills and caused severe disruption. Switching out templar before trying his luck at Jaedong’s new 10 o'clock expo, the shuttle flies headlong into a couple of scourge and goes down.

Suffering heavy drone losses and having failed to break Snow after a long, back and forth battle at the 5 o’clock natural, Jaedong finds his comfortable advantage beginning to slip away. He drops Snow’s now finished fifth, but Snow is ready for him.

Ah, Jaedong, we’ve been expecting you

Jaedong, however, is still formidable on five bases. Additionally, at plus three carapace and missile attacks and researching plus three melee, Jaedong has a big lead on upgrades over Snow, who has mysteriously still not seen fit to start his armor upgrades nearly ten minutes after finishing plus three attack. Jaedong begins setting up another expo at the 12 o’clock position while pressuring Snow at his 2 o’clock natural with a steady stream of hydras, lurkers, and lings with defiler support.

No rest for the weary

Snow storm drops Jaedong’s expo at the 10 o’clock main, casually frying another 14 drones before scourge and lurkers clean up. Jaedong’s relentless stream of units into the open space outside Snow’s natural eventually forces Snow back behind his wall to regroup.

Jaedong ruthlessly presses his positional advantage with another drop on Snow’s 5 o’clock main. This time Snow is not ready for it and has little to defend besides one reaver in the main and three at the nat, which desperately crawl up the ramp to reinforce.

Here Snow makes a fatal misclick and move commands the reavers to their doom.

Inching their way into oblivion

From here, it’s all downhill for Snow. His 5 o’clock main goes down easily while Jaedong takes the 6 o’clock. Snow pokes in to Jaedong’s 12 o’clock a couple of times and is forced to back off. He reaver drops Jaedong’s 10 o’clock but is way too far behind for it to make any difference. Jaedong’s army starts swarming down to Snow’s besieged fourth, crushing the last of his valiant resistance. With his last mining base overrun, Snow taps out.

gg indeed, Snow

Snow harassed like a boss the entire game and Jaedong was forever scrambling to keep up. A few key mistakes were all that cost him the game. His moment’s hesitation before pushing into Jaedong’s fourth was unfortunate and it was all Jaedong needed to claw his way back into the game after losing upwards of forty drones, and no armor upgrades for the entire duration of a thirty minute game is inexcusable. As for the reaver misclick, well, everybody's human and 3 more reavers wouldn’t have necessarily saved him against dark swarmed lurkers anyways. For his part, Jaedong played a very intelligent macro game; punishing all of Snow’s mistakes hard and making all the correct decisions necessary to stay alive each time Snow devastated his economy.

Overall an excellent showing from both players. The next time these two face off will not be a game to miss.

OSL Writer Application Battle Report: JD vs Snow

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