Pony Express Issue 88: Aug. 10 - Aug. 17, 2009

Bisu. Iris. Just 2 months ago everyone would've awarded the bo5 series to bisu without batting an eyelid, with iris having been in an eternal slump since GGplay beat him in daum OSL, and bisu playing in peak form. But in the past 2 months, iris' play has shown signs of previous brilliance, even culminating in a 3-0 win over on-fire teammate, effort. With byzantium 3 as the battleground, a (according to TLPD) balanced map, this game will hopefully be pretty good.

So the game starts with bisu spawning in the bottom right position, and iris in the top right. Nothing exceptional happens in the early game except that bisu only scouts after starting his core, hinting at a possible aggressive 2 gate ranged goon build, which he does, in fact, go for, 2nd gate warping in before his 2nd pylon (10/15?). Unfortunately for bisu, a slight lapse in control allows iris to get his scout into his main, and he responds by starting a bunker at his nat immediately.




Probably picking up a couple of tips from Nal_rA's games, bisu proxies a robotics facility right smack in the middle of the map. I'm guessing he's going reavers to do some kind of nat bust, since the proxy is in the middle of the map instead of at 12, but he might just be trying to proxy in some less common location to prevent it from being scouted, although his dragoons should be able to easily prevent SCVs from leaving the base. True enough, iris sends an SCV to 12 and it dies before reaching the centre of the map.



Making the first aggressive move of the game, bisu sends his goons to iris' choke where they find his bunker, and immediately begin pummelling it from afar, range having completed a while ago. Iris quickly loses the bunker, and with a bit of micro from bisu, all his marines die as well, forcing iris to pull SCVs to fight. Luckily for him, siege mode and a 2nd tank arrive just in time, and bisu is forced to retreat.





However, bisu has another trick up his sleeve, and with his shuttle just out, he begins elevatoring his dragoons into iris' main. With 5 goons, he runs in, takes out the SCV building a starport before heading towards iris' ramp where he catches the returning tanks, killing 3 of the 4, with the 4th surviving because of the up-ramp advantage. Another 2 goons are dropped in after the initial 5 to clear the way for bisu's reaver, but mismicro led to their deaths before doing significant damage.

As bisu's reaver arrives, things look grim for iris, with just 2 tanks for defense. A newly built wraith quickly spells the end to bisu's shuttle, but bisu successfully kills iris' tanks before his reaver dies to wraith. Piling on the pressure, bisu sends 2 goons to iris' nat where they outrange a defending bunker, and this is eventually supplemented by another goon and a reaver that has crawled its way over. Not wanting to piss away his advantage by getting overly aggressive, bisu decides to retreat ater a new tank from iris reinforces his defence.







Reverting to the elevator trick that worked decently, bisu ferries his 6 or so goons into the irs' main again, This would've probably been game ending, given iris only had 3 tanks, a couple of marines and a wraith to defend against the 6 goons and a reaver. However, bisu screws up, engaging the terran army with a lone reaver and dragoon, while 4 dragoons attack buildings and SCVs in the north of iris' base. Iris cleans up pretty easily now, but in the meantime has lost the rax at his nat to 2 dragoons.






First person views of both players now show that bisu has double expanded and is adding 2 gateways for 4, while iris has a pretty good number of tanks and looks to have retaken control of his main and nat. After the slight lull, bisu once again flies into iris' main with a third reaver, and for the third time, loses the shuttle to iris' wraith before doing significant damage, putting iris ahead now.



A drop of 1tank 2vult by iris now lands in bisu's main, taking out a couple of defending dragoons and some probes before dying to dragoons. Despite the dropship threat, bisu has walled off his third at 6 with pylons, and also starts 2 forges at his nat in preparation for a long game. A slight mistake by iris gets his returning dropship sniped by 4 dragoons at his choke, and the commentators and crowd go strangely crazy.




Iris now with 3 fac, chooses to push out to take his third base, as bisu cannons up his expansions and main, while getting zealot speed and pumping units from 6 gateways. A second drop of 4 vultures in bisu's main does close to no damage thanks to bisu's beautiful base construction that walls off entry to his mineral line. At this moment both players seem to be content with just sitting back and macroing huge armies, with iris making some initially unsuccessful attempts to harass with a dropship full of tanks and some ground vulture support, and bisu taking the bottom left main.




In another lapse of attention, bisu misses 2dropship + vultures moving out of iris' territory, despite it flying past his observer. It heads down to the pylon walled 6 base, and vultures plant mines outside of the pylon wall while the tanks fly straight in and take out the defending cannon and some probes before bisu's zealots chase them away. Iris then pretends to fly to the bottom left main, dropping a tank there, and bisu brings his whole army there to defend. The remaining 3 tanks are then redropped on 6, where they take out a bunch of probes before zealots can once again chase them away.






Bisu, sick of playing these silly waiting games decides to attack with a pretty big army into iris' waiting tanks and mines. Some excellent storms blanket a large portion of iris' tanks, but bisu's army fails to break the defense, being forced to retreat to 3 tanks and a handful of mines. In the meantime iris establishes the 3 base, and begins another command centre to float to 12, playing a slow and steady 200/200 3/3 terran game.





With arbiters out and replacing his army from 9 or so gates, bisu now tries to harass iris' mineral line, with moderate success. Iris, similarly, moves out again with 2 dropships of tanks and vultures on the ground, and heads for bisu's newly warped in nat at bottom left. While the drop itself does little probe damage, it forces bisu to send his army through a minefield, losing some zealots before the dropships ferry the tanks to safety.





Bisu's army now busies itself with taking out iris' 12 base, hitting it slightly before a strong defense it set up. Stasis and some mines take out a number of defending units, but with tanks on the cliff over looking the 12 base, and more units coming to defend, it looks like the protoss army would be forced to retreat. However, bisu sends his army straight at the cliff, and with some excellent storms, he takes out more tanks, and retreats to try and finish off the CC at 12.







In the meantime, Iris flies his dropships behind bisu's bottom left nat mineral line and takes out the defending cannons. Bisu, not wanting to pull his army back to defend, instead sends it straight up into iris' min only, where a large number of tanks await, laying waste to the dragoon heavy remnants of bisu's army. However, bisu cleans up the drop at his bottom left base, and warps a nexus in at the top left base as well.





With most of bisu's army dead, iris chooses to move out now with a group of tanks, 2/2 upgrades, and a group or so of vultures. With a mainly zealot/templar army, bisu knows that he will be unable to make it through iris' mines, so he instead flies an aribter into iris' army and recalls. With a significantly smaller army, it looks like defeat is inevitable, but bisu casts some fantastic storms and takes out a large chunk of iris' tanks, and some reinforcements from gateways at the bottom left main put iris' units in the retreat before reinforcements join up.





Having reinforced with more vultures, iris looked to end the game by pushing into bisu's expansions at bottom left. However, another recall by bisu takes out iris' army, and bisu 's growing unit mix of dragoon/templar/zealot/archon/arbiter together with 3 running bases looks strong enough to stop the immediate threat.




We are now treated to a first person view of bisu, where he watches probes at top left get slaughtered by a group of vultures before his cannons warp in. More interesting though, is that bisu's army is in the centre, and he is preparing to attack through a minefield, without any observers.



The hallucinations run in and activate the mines, but unfortunately for bisu, iris' army was not there to drag the mines into, and the returning army from 12 simply came back and took out bisu's army, that had done nothing but take out iris' nat command centre (-1 scan), and some units.





Not wanting to commit his main army to a push, iris flies another drop out to bisu's bottom left base, and with no observer, bisu is unable to stop the attack without significant losses, so instead chooses to sacrifice his remaining mining bases for a final attack on iris' fortification. The hallucination attempt goes badly this time, with a single mine taking out most of the hallucinations before they even reach the terran army. Bisu does eventually break through and gets into iris' main, but new units force him back.






Bisu instead heads for the 12 base, and forces a lift off, but things start looking bleak for bisu as his last probes get sniped off by vultures from iris who still has 3 mining at full tilt. However, a bunch of templar make their way to 3, and storm the shit out of the SCVs there, leaving both players with no running bases. Having saved the SCVs from 12, iris sends those scvs and sieges his army up at 3, while sending another vulture raid that takes out bisu's 3 mining probes at the bottom left nat. Ascertaining that bisu's army was weaker than his, iris unsieges and attacks with his 6 or so tanks with some goliaths, and bisu GGs.