Once upon a time, Reach was the lone Protoss who stood in a field of Zergs and Terrans, battling a brutal onslaught single-handedly and in the process being a ray of hope for all Protoss users. Back then when Terrans were undefeatable, Oov took it one step further with his unique macro style, crushing opponents with impossibly large armies, and leading the macro revolution. Some of us might still remember their encounter in the Ever OSL semis many years back, where Reach managed to defeat Oov at his very own game, but fell, eventually, in the series, despite stealing Oov's gas three times in the final game.

The two players met again, this time on a new battlefield, Match Point. The game started with both players trying to gain an edge via some trickery, Oov starting his rax on the high ground above his third, and Reach proxying a pylon at his mineral only. Thankfully, the pair opted for standard builds, Oov fac CC with a fast ebay, and Reach 1gate expo before adding his robotics.

As we entered the midgame, Oov began some minor, unsuccessful vulture harass as Reach took his mineral only and headed for arbiter tech. The game was then quickly put on track towards macro oriented play when Oov decided to do what he did best, mirroring Reach's expo count by taking his third. To this, Reach responded by taking yet another expansion at the top left for a total of four bases.

Oov now stepped up the harass by adding tank-ferrying dropships to his arsenal. Accompanied by a roving band of vultures on the ground, three dropships headed out to Reach's nat. There, they were ambushed by a group of dragoons, and the entire party was lost for insignificant gain. Another group of 5 tanks sent on a suicide mission at Reach's mineral only, met a similarly swift demise to Reach's arbiter cloaked army, though they had more success, taking down the nexus with them.



With a much larger arbiter supported army now, Reach trooped across the map, hoping to deliver the finishing blow. Stasis went off on most of Oov's units on his high ground, and the game looked over as Reach began pounding on Oov's mineral only. Fortunately for Oov, the narrow and tight terrain at the third, enabled his freshly built tanks to force Reach's army back. The joy from this minor victory, however, soon faded as Reach marched his army to the bottom right, and took out the CC there. Taking the 6 o'clock base along with his mineral only, Reach was now sitting comfortably on five bases against Oov's three.



One would be a fool to underestimate Oov's macro though, and somehow he pulled an army out from nowhere, and headed it to the new 6 o'clock base. Reach engaged in the centre of the map, but his arbiters were out of position, and his army was fragmented. Together with the lack of a flank, and the late arrival of his arbiters and templars, Reach saw his army decimated by Oov's +2 weapons upgraded tanks, although Oov, too, lost a majority of his army. Reinforcements en route, Oov began shelling Reach's nexus, but Reach was not one to give up easily. Regrouping his forces, he hit the Terran position again, but was, once more, forced to retreat.



Oov was in the lead now, having re-established his bottom right base while the action occured. Seeking to push his economic lead he started a CC at 6 as well. Reach's previous attempt at a counter attack had been stopped cold, and a recall at Oov's expansion chanced upon the might of Oov's army, and was savagely obliterated. Another push through the centre met a part of Reach's army in transit to Oov's expo at 6, and despite Reach getting off multiple stasis fields, Oov's tanks were too much for him to deal with.

Nevertheless, Reach had taken the 12 expo, and his army had been rebuilt with a scary mix of goon, templar, zealots and arbiters. As Oov moved north to take out the new Protoss expansion at 12, Reach, not wanting to commit to a large attack in the flank-unfriendly centre of Match Point, ran around the Terran army and hit Oov's only two running expansions, quickly starting nexus there after the command centers fell.

All of a sudden, Oov was the one in a difficult position. Finding himself without an expansion, he floated a CC to 12, and sent his remaining SCVs there to mine. Reach, however, was not going to let that happen, and he recalled a small army in. Although it fell quickly, a couple of storms took down most of Oov's SCVs. A following storm drop, depleted their numbers even further. With two bases running at full tilt, it was simply a matter of throwing units at Oov, before he typed in the GG.



Great macro game from both players, reminiscent of their match on Mercury many years ago. This time, with the help of arbiters, some clever manoeuvering and good decision making, Reach grasped victory from the hands of the Gorilla Terran in a intense game, which brought us all back to the good old days.

The highlight of group B's matches was a game between two legends; Boxer, the emperor whose name is synonymous with progaming itself, and IntoTheRain, the inspiration of generations of Protosses, the player who has been elevated to an immortal status that is perhaps only eclipsed by Nal_rA. Indeed, as noted by IntoTheRain in some friendly banter at the beginning of the game, this was a fight between two veterans, who were there at the birth of progaming, and had seen it evolve to what it is today.

The game began on Fighting Spirit, a relatively new map for this encounter between seasoned combatants, with Boxer landing at bottom right and IntoTheRain warping in at top right. IntoTheRain started things off with a 12nexus, while Boxer walled in his choke with depots and a rax, and started a CC before his factory. Things got tense immediately after Boxer scouted IntoTheRain's warping nexus, a bunker thrown down at once and marines sent on a long walk up the map.

IntoTheRain responded by pulling probes, chasing Boxer's SCV away until the arrival of his marines, which prompted a mini micro battle. Boxer's skillful handling of his marines led to the deaths of multiple probes, and the completeion of a bunker just before before the SCV's fall threw a wrench into IntoTheRain's macro plans by further delaying mining at the expansion. The bunker eventually fell to goons and zealots, but not before lots of damage, in terms of lost mining time, had been done.



Seeking to bring the battle to Boxer, IntoTheRain then sent his army down to Boxer's choke, and there he met a newly completed bunker. Determined to get aggressive, he engaged with the intention of picking off SCVs, but he got the short end of the stick with a loss of two goons in that exchange, setting him further behind. Both players now decided to take a break from the bloodshed and macro up, Boxer adding a starport and a second factory, while IntoTheRain started another expansion, and teched towards arbiters.



The short respite was broken by Boxer, who headed up to the Protoss main with a dropship of two vults and a tank. With four waiting goons, IntoTheRain stopped this incursion easily, even sniping the dropship, much to the delight of the commentators. Boxer was not disheartened, however, and shortly after, flew out with three dropships worth of tanks supported by a team of vultures on the ground. After reducing a small team of dragoons to blue goo, the dropships, once again, found themselves unloading their payloads in IntoTheRain's main, even returning with the vultures to support the tanks.



Naturally, IntoTheRain pulled his army into his main to defend, and while he did eventually take out the Terran units, Boxer had, in the meantime, moved out with another force of vultures and tanks, taking position at IntoTheRain's choke. From behind the safety of a tonne of mines and vultures, four tanks shelled the nexus, and brought it crumbling down. With the IntoTheRain's army holed up inside his main and out of position to defend his third, a couple of tanks were able to make their way over and take it out as well. Things were looking bleak for our Protoss hero, and in the final moments of the game, he uncharacteristically streamed his units piecemeal into the Terran push, losing his army, before typing in the GG.



A very entertaining game, with Boxer punishing IntoTheRain for being greedy and eventually finishing him off with units pumped out of 6 factories in a build that has become "non-standard" in today's TvPs. At the start of the game, Boxer, in the in-game chat, mentioned that he was hoping for a wacky game, and true enough, his dropship play showed us another side of TvP. Sadly, IntoTheRain, who had responded to that comment with "this is a battle between two thirty year olds", played like one, and was handed the loss in a rather one-sided affair.