ASL Ro24 night two began with a showdown between former CJ Entus teammates and A-teamers EffOrt and SnOw. As the ace of the team and a top Zerg both then and now, EffOrt is the clear favorite here.

EffOrt spawns in teal at the upper left position, while SnOw gets yellow at the bottom right. EffOrt opts for a overpool into double expand while SnOw opens with forge FE.

SnOw manages to dance his scouting probe around in EffOrt’s base just long enough to see the lair start morphing, at which point EffOrt hatches a second pair of lings to help chase out the probe. Content with the information he has gathered, he opts to escape with the probe before the lings can bring it down.


What SnOw does not realize, however, is that he has just been fatally deceived.


Six well-micro’d lings ensure that SnOw is completely in the dark about the incoming bust until his first corsair meets the speed hydras barely a full screen north of his natural. With no defenses ready, SnOw ggs as EffOrt tears down his front.


A short, uneventful game to start the evening. It’s hard to criticize SnOw for the quick loss. EffOrt hid his cheese well, and SnOw took a calculated risk by not playing more conservatively during the short but critical blind window before his first corsair was out. With everybody wondering how Zergs are going to handle Camelot, it is perhaps revealing that EffOrt chose to make the game short.


Next was Protoss dragon Free’s turn to take on Zerg at Camelot, starting as red Protoss in the upper left. Squaring off against him as yellow Zerg in the bottom right would be none other than Shine in his debut performance of the post-KeSPA era.

Once again, we get a very standard opening. Shine opens overpool into a straightforward 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra build, while Free forge FEs into a neo Bisu build. With his first handful of zealots ready, Free moves out just ahead of speed finishing to apply some pressure.

Finding Shine’s third only lightly defended, Free makes a huge blunder and commits his precious early zealot force to an attack on Shine’s mineral line. I can only assume that Free was expecting Shine to drone for one more round of larva, and so he thought that he had a few more seconds to be disruptive and get out safely.

As Free tries to back out, zerglings and hydras stream in, trapping him in the Zerg base. Free loses his entire zealot squad without inflicting hardly any damage in return.


Shine immediately recognizes the opportunity and marches straight for the Protoss natural, arriving before Free’s line of emergency cannons finish warping in. For the second time tonight, mass hydras easily break through an unprepared Protoss natural and end the game early.


Despite Shine’s reputation as a cheeser, there was nothing all-in about this hydra bust. Free cost himself the game by throwing away zealots when Protoss can least afford to do so. Shine, on the other hand, did well to strike as quickly as he did. A few seconds more, and the cannons would have been ready, giving Free a shot at survival.


The two Zergs of the group meet in the winner’s match. EffOrt opens 9 pool in the bottom left as the purple Zerg. Shine goes with the less conventional 9 hatch as the orange Zerg in the upper right.

EffOrt finds Shine quickly as he techs straight to lair, and slips a ling through Shine’s ranks to scout the main. Now aware of the all-in headed his way, EffOrt puts down a couple sunkens and sets up an arc of zerglings at the top of his ramp. EffOrt puts on a great defense and holds off double the zerglings with only a single drone loss.


Shortly after the attack, EffOrt gets his first mutalisks out. Shine, who has yet to even start morphing his lair, boldly chooses to put down a third hatchery at his natural. In the meantime, he uses his larva advantage to stall for time, keeping EffOrt busy chasing his zerglings around the map while Shine puts up spores to defend.

EffOrt leverages his mutalisk advantage to get another hatchery and eventually takes his natural, while Shine leverages his economic advantage to tech to lair and eventually gets his spire. The two Zergs continue to inflict significant damage on each other, but EffOrt gets the better of Shine overall.


As a result, by the time they both stabilize on three hatch with spire tech, EffOrt has the stronger mutalisk count and faster +1 carapace. Shine’s spores keep EffOrt from killing him outright, but his air superiority enables him to take a third while denying Shine.

Feeling the game slip away, Shine starts teching for hive while trying again for a third base. EffOrt scouts both, and flies across the map to shut down Shine’s attempt at a third. Shine tries to counterattack at EffOrt’s natural, but is chased off by a fresh batch of scourge while EffOrt muscles through Shine’s natural with his own mutalisks.


EffOrt was in top shape this match, excelling at pretty much every aspect of the game. Despite being outplayed the whole game, Shine also impressed. With close spawn positions, things may have played out more favorably for him.


Our two Protoss players play for survival in the loser’s match after both going down to hydra busts. SnOw gets blue in the bottom right while Free starts as brown in the upper left.

SnOw puts himself at an early advantage by taking his natural and adding gateways before robo, while Free plays it safe and gets robo plus observatory and support bay before his own nexus + gateways.

Free moves out first and engages SnOw at his natural. I really do not like this choice for Free. Free is a reaver up, but SnOw already has a group of dragoons stationed on the high ground west of his natural, meaning he is well positioned to flank any push into his natural. Free saw this with his observer, but decides to go for it anyway.

Sure enough, as Free moves in, SnOw surrounds him with dragoons from three different directions, quickly eliminating both of Free’s reavers while scoring tons of damage with his own.


SnOw adds a bunch of gateways, and then moves across the map. I will berate him more for this later, but here we see SnOw’s fatal flaw as a player: his over-eagerness to end the game upon gaining a big advantage. Rather than settling for a contain while waiting for his freshly added gateways to kick in, SnOw goes straight for the kill.

Free by this time has rebuilt enough to defend, and pushes SnOw back. Lots of units go down on both sides, but the exchange definitely favors Free, who eliminates both of SnOw’s aggressively placed reavers without losing either of his own.


After about a minute of rebuilding, Free goes back on the offensive, and tries another assault on SnOw’s natural. The problem is that both Protoss players are pumping units off of eight gateways now, so by the time Free arrives at the cross position with his initial force, he finds himself confronting a significantly more powerful army.

SnOw beats back the attack and chases all the way back to his side of the map. Free tries to make a stand on the high ground east of his natural, but SnOw slaughters his zealot heavy army with some nice scarabs while picking off Free’s reaver and shuttle.

SnOw pushes Free all the way back to his natural, forcing him to cancel his third as SnOw’s third continues to warp in. Free manages to hold on, but takes heavy casualties in the process, thanks largely to some great reaver micro by SnOw.


With his third up and running, SnOw’s advantage deepens, and with a replenished army, he moves back out to attack Free. SnOw sneaks a DT into Free’s mineral line as he defeats the remainder of Free’s forces on the high ground east of Free’s main, and Free concedes defeat.

Overall this was not an exceptional game, but we did get to see some good battle management and reaver micro. What a disappointing night for Free though! Going 0-2 in what should have been a decent group for him, costing himself both games with some very poor decisions. If that weren’t enough, he got solidly outmicro’d by SnOw. Free is going to have a lot of soul searching to do before the next ASL.



In our final match of the night, SnOw takes command of the blue Protoss encampment at the 9 o’clock position, while Shine spawns as the teal Zerg colony at the 5 o’clock.

Once again, Shine overpools into a 3 hatch spire spire build. This being Outsider, an unfavorable map for Protoss FE builds, SnOw goes 1 base corsair into reaver play and expands to his mineral only base in the back.

Rather than mass a hydra army, Shine goes for fast lurkers – not a strong choice against the dragoon reaver composition SnOw is headed for, but effective on Outsider as a tool for both turtling and harassment.

On three bases, Shine gears up for exactly that playstyle, putting down sunkens and placing defensive lurkers. SnOw dodges scourge while scouting and hunting down overlords with his growing corsair fleet, and secures his natural.

What happens next is a critical moment in determining the pace of the rest of the match. SnOw moves out to pressure Shine’s natural. With all of Shine’s hydras morphed into lurkers, SnOw’s +1 corsair fleet sails over the sunkens and lurkers to find a big juicy herd of overlords congregated in the Zerg natural. In a clumsy air fight, Shine throws scourge and a group of newly hatched mutas at the corsairs, but SnOw is at critical mass.


Heavily supply blocked, having just lost a big investment in muta scourge, and having nothing but a few lurkers and sunkens to defend with, there is nothing Shine can do except to throw in the towel.

…or at least that seems to have been SnOw’s thinking. Rather than consolidate his advantage by expanding, reaver harassing, macroing up, or even dealing with a lurker blocking most of his mining at the mineral only, SnOw tries to end the game.

SnOw lays siege on Shine’s natural again and again, wailing away at Shine’s wall with his reavers. More than once, the Protoss come close to breaking the Zerg there, but with some tight defense and clutch snipes, Shine manages to force SnOw back again and again.


As Shine’s forces start to recover, he starts hitting SnOw with a small but steady stream of drop harass. In the meantime SnOw takes the mineral only towards Shine, and then the double gas in the upper left. This is an absolutely critical base for SnOw, who has only had access to two gas the entire game so far.

Before the double gas can start to kick in, Shine drops a small army on top of it. With his own forces out across the map posturing for yet another attempt on Shine’s heavily sunkened natural, SnOw has no hope of defending, and instead barrels into Shine’s third base.

This trade works out very badly for SnOw, as attacks on multiple fronts bring him down to just one mining base at his natural. Meanwhile, Shine has plopped down two hatcheries at mineral bases on the right side of the map, and has been mining from three gas for the entirety of the game.

SnOw again launches an assault on Shine’s natural, and this time Shine’s defenses give way. Shine retreats to his ramp as SnOw razes the hatchery. Unfortunately for the increasingly desperate Protoss, Shine manages to hold him off there with some heroic observer snipes, keeping safe the vital tech structures in the Zerg main. Shine is now mining from two fresh mineral only bases on the right side of the map, and getting ready to take the double gas between them.

Unsurprisingly by this point, SnOw decides his best move is to take what remains of his army and try to kill Shine’s north mineral only, where there are at least nine or ten sunkens waiting for him. SnOw’s attack narrowly fails, and costs him almost his entire army.

FINALLY, SnOw decides it is time to go for some economic harass, and with a flurry of drops, nets a huge number of drone kills.


This is much too late to save him though, as Shine is now up to three mineral only bases and a double gas, against SnOw’s single mineral only that he has re-expanded to. As Shine starts picking off probes with mutalisks and hunting down remnant Protoss forces, SnOw admits defeat.


This was an excitingly good game by Shine. After getting behind early on, Shine defended tenaciously against a very scary Protoss army again and again, and slowly turned the tables on SnOw with a barrage of well-executed harass.

As for SnOw… look, I really do like SnOw. After all, the first battle report I ever wrote for Team Liquid was on one of his games. But his performance this game was highly disappointing. Sometimes converting a lead into a victory requires you to play safe and keep maximizing your advantages, but SnOw didn’t show any patience for that. Much like Free, SnOw fully deserved his loss here. This was a frustrating night for Protoss fans.