The game began rather uneventfully, both players opting for safe economic builds, Upmagic opening with a 1rax CC into 2port build and Luxury going for 3 hatch muta, taking his double gas expo slightly before the completion of his spire. Upon completion of his starports, however, Upmagic deviated from the wraiths that everyone had expected, getting add ons on both his starports. Having priorly started an armory, this could only mean valkyries, and true enough, when Luxury's mutas arrived at his main, 3 valkyries turned them away easily.


Understanding the mobility constrains of a valk/mech build, Luxury proceeded to expand and add new hatcheries, at the same time, teching towards hive, looking to macro up a huge economy before producing units to engage Upmagic's mech army. Unfortunately for Luxury, Upmagic was not planning on passive play, and 2 dropships of goliaths and marines made their way across the map, heading for Luxury's double gas. With roughly 12 or so mutas, it would've been suicide for Luxury to engage the force that included 5 valks, and thus, he wisely decided to give the expansion up, exacting revenge on the returning, empty dropships.

Having bunkered up behind the mineral line of the other expansion, Upmagic had effectively put 2 expos out of commission, taking the wind out of Luxury's freshly completed hive tech sails, and an attempt by Luxury to take out this fortification left him further behind, ending somewhat poorly with the lost of a number of mutas, although the goliaths, which were just in range of the hatchery, were taken out.

This presented an opportune moment for Upmagic - Luxury, having committed to teching, expanding and upgrades, now had few units, a weak economy, and a small tank/goliath army knocking at his front door. Thankfully, Luxury did not panic despite being threatened by the Terran player, and he sent his mutas to take out Upmagic's reinforcements, while building up a large number of hydras - this calm, collected, and strategic reasoning allowed Luxury to catch a couple of Terran units making their way down to join the push, and he dispatched them easily. When Upmagic finally pushed a tank into range of his nat hatchery, Luxury delivered the killing blow, hydras advancing from the front, and mutas coming in from behind to pick off the tanks, and although he lost all his mutas in the process, Luxury took out the push convincingly.


While the battle raged, Luxury had established a number of new expansions and with the conclusion of the battle in his favour, appeared to be in a decent position again. It seemed though, that he had forgotten about the bunker that he had left standing, and the marines within laid waste to a new expansion and some drones. Taking a brief look at expo counts now put Luxury at 4 running, and Upmagic at 2 with another coming up, and besides some minorly successful harass from Upmagic, both players were content with sitting on their expansions and macroing up huge armies.

Upmagic then made the first move after a relative stalemate, driving his huge mech army down to take residence at Luxury's choke. His army out of position to engage Upmagic's, Luxury's only option was to counter, and his hydras made their way to Upmagic's nat, while at the same time, a hydra drop took out Upmagic's expo before continuing into his main. Both players then proceeded to pillage the other's mains, finding little resistance in each, and at the end of it all, Upmagic had lost all his CCs, but had a huge army remaining, and Luxury had 3 running expansions, although 2 were taken out shortly after.



Knowing that Upmagic couldn't possibly have any detection, with no CCs or vessels, Luxury put the pressure on, attacking a freshly reconstructed CC at Upmagic's nat with hydralurk and swarm, forcing upmagic to lift off and return to his quickly depleting main. At Luxury's 9 oclock base, he had upped his hatchery count to 5, and with them, easily droned up his new top left base. Things seemed bleak for Upmagic, with his economy struggling at less than 10 SCVs, and Luxury compounding his advantage by taking the 9 nat. A few moments later, Luxury loaded up his army, dropped it on Upmagic's tanks, and despite major losses on both sides, Upmagic knew the game was over, and threw in the towel.


An innovative opening from Upmagic, reminiscent of Protoss' corsair reaver, with a strong push to follow up, but ultimately, Luxury's intelligent and measured responses were perfect counters to the unconventional strategy, stealing the game from Upmagic's grasp.

The lines have been drawn and the battle has begun for Fantasy Proleague Season 4. Fantasy Proleague has grown again with almost 2000 entries and after the first week it is Dark_Storm that leads the pack.



In the news this week,

• KT Rolster and Hiya were the must have picks of the week with their owners dominating the standings along with the 8 point stars of Flash, Calm and Luxury.
  
  
• Stork (who is on more main teams than Flash) as expected earned nothing, while Leta unexpectedly crashed and burned along with Hite.
  
  
• Sea flipped off the team bench into the ace match to ninja nearly 200 anti-teams.
  
  
• Jaedong denied his first chance to play, demolished his next opponent only to be left blue-balled when Killer was sent instead for the ace match, leaving him with a rather unimpressive five points.

To wrap up this week, here are some short interviews with some performers of the week.