Hyvaa spawned in purple at 8 while Leta got orange at 4 on Great Barrier Reef. Strange times happened as Hyvaa 4 pooled and Leta scouted on 5 supply. Really weird and kinda should be an instant Terran win with scouting that early. However Leta scouted the wrong way and then delayed his scouting when he scouted Hyvaa's base, instead messing around hiding the scv and blocking a fake expansion attempt with an ebay. Somehow, despite scouting on 5 supply on a 2 player map Leta failed to scout a 4 pool until the lings were leaving Hyvaa's base. That meant that there were zerglings attacking his wall before his barracks was even complete and despite pulling almost all his scvs to repair his wall broke and his one marine died.
GG

I honestly don't know how a progamer can blind counter like this (5 scout!?!? Who does that!?) and then mess it up so badly. Leta, hang your head in shame.

Hyvaa got purple again, this time at 11, while Leta got white at 5 on Fighting Spirit. Cross positions here favour the Terran in my opinion because it makes the crucial late game bases for zerg more vulnerable to pushes. Leta opened depot rax rax and Hyvaa responded by scouting fast across the map and going 12 hat 13 hat 12 pool. I really do not like this build against a scouted 2 rax because a bunker rush or some kind of scv marine push can always kill the third hatchery. However Hyvaa correctly gambled that the 2 rax was a defensive play designed to avoid another 4 minute loss like the first game and, by blocking the scout scv with a drone on the ramp, kept his late pool hidden. By the time Leta discovered Hyvaa's opening gambit he had already committed himself to a defensive expansion build which was economically behind Hyvaa's ambition.

Leta continued to pump marines out of his 2 rax and the moment his academy was complete added 2 medics and rushed out with stim still researching. He left 2 firebats to guard his main but Hyvaa saw his army venturing out with zerglings and had already prepared for this eventuality by creeping up to his natural bridge and placing a sunken there with another one morphing. A third sunken at the central entrance to his 3rd at 12 sealed the wall. With speedling researched and a lot of production available from his three hatcheries Hyvaa was able to overwhelm and destroy the mnm easily, although he did carelessly lose 5 drones at 12 when he let 2 marines and medics slip by.

By this point though Hyvaa's build was going smoothly. A quick evo researching carapace for a late game ultralisk play and a spire to contain the Terran until then. This build is quite similar to the abusive 3hat openings JaeDong used against FlaSh in the last MSL finals, not quite so original now but still very effective. Leta sent another army out towards 12 and had his natural immediately counterattacked by speedlings coming in from 6. Although he immediately walled his ramp with scvs and cleaned it up this cost him a lot of mining time and inconvenience. Hyvaa's defences were sufficient to disuade Leta from trying anything, forcing him to return to his 2 base as mutalisks took to the skies and consolidated Hyvaa's map control.

Hyvaa's mutalisk harass was extremely punishing, the economic damage keeping Leta on just 4 rax although constant zergling production in turn suppressed Hyvaa's economy to just his original 3 hat. Realising he would eventually mine out Leta pushed out with 3 tanks and a lot of mnm towards 12. Hyvaa had guardians ready to block it but Leta had scanned the greater spire and had wraiths ready to deal with them. A crackling counterattack at Leta's natural failed but did take some of Leta's units with it.

Microwars began at 12 with a struggle between guardians, slow overlords and scourge and mnm with cloaked wraith escorts. Although the wraiths got the better of the deal, sniping the overlords and wiping out all the guardians the guardians were able to do a lot of damage to the mnm and tanks of Leta as well as buying time. By the time Leta could resume his push there were ultralisks prepared to block it and Hyvaa was establishing a new expansion at the main at 1.

Leta used mass wraiths to try and apply pressure on Hyvaa's gas as Hyvaa had 4 running extractors but a fairly low drone saturation of minerals, relying on gas units to inflict damage. However the new expansion at 1 meant this tactic would not be enough long term and Leta was forced to attempt a drop to deal with it. Hyvaa understood the situation as clearly as Leta did and when the wraiths started to clear a route to drop 1 dozens more scourge arrived, anticipating the dropship. The dropship went down and Leta was left with just his first 2 bases, no map control and an inferior army, although he did still have a number of wraiths which would continue to be very annoying.

Hyvaa tried to finish it with a large ultraling attack with dark swarm but despite doing some damage a large group of tanks on the cliff proved sufficient to bring the ultralisks down with splash damage alone. Leta then expanded to 6, using wraith harass as his sole gesture towards map control and harass, and walled it in with depots and tanks. Further attempts to attack 6 were shut down with early irradiates on defilers and a nice scv under a floating ebay wall on the ramp which messed a lot with ultralisk AI. However Leta's main and natural were mined out while Hyvaa was up to 5 working bases (although 2 were near mined) and had a new base coming at 7.

The 7 expansion was shut down with a suicide drop and wraith harass which was somehow still proving effective but Leta lost the contents of the dropship and another dropship at 3 where it was scourged on the way to 1.

Knowing he had to try and end it before the economic difference got any worse than it already was Leta pushed out with everything he had which included an awful lot of tanks and vessels which he had been building up all game for this one situation. Unfortunately for him Hyvaa again understood the situation just as clearly as he did and the moment Leta's army hit the middle of the map Hyvaa dropped his main, pulling him back and out of position, setting his main on fire and engaging his army much more effectively than he would otherwise be able to do. Leta continued to struggle to survive, his mass tanks charging a terrible price as Hyvaa slowly wore them down but through constantly changing his angle and method of attack Hyvaa was able to break Leta with attrition, killing 6 and forcing a GG.

A very nice game from Hyvaa. An interesting build with an extremely economic opening in the 3 hatch but a macro followup with a low drone count and speedling heavy play throughout. Nice transitions, solid control and excellent strategic foresight. You've got to hand it to Hyvaa here, he simply controlled this game. A good example of when a player has a build prepared and has practiced the ways it can play out so he can immediately react optimally to all the predictable ways his opponent can counter. Hyvaa forced Leta to conform with Hyvaa's game plan and that game plan ended in Hyvaa's victory.

Pusan spawned in green at 8 while Hyvaa got red at 12 on Great Barrier Reef. The camera spent a load of early game time showing us all the posters in the audience so there would be no way of knowing Hyvaa went 7 pool if it wasn't for the mineral counting station. Pusan opted for a normal FE build and scouted correctly after pylon but critically did not scout all of Hyvaa's base. His probe reached the near side of the mineral line and immediately started harassing drones while Hyvaa had placed the pool right at the far edge of the creep out of Pusan's vision. By the time Pusan realised something was up he had no probe at his natural waiting to build a forge and there wasn't all that much he could do. He made cannons asap and narrowed the choke with a gateway but the cannons were only 80% done when the lings reached them. Grabbing all his probes and drilling them to Hyvaa's base so they intercepted at the gateway choke would have perhaps worked but it would have been a close thing. Still, he didn't and his cannons died. GG.

Pusan messed up and Hyvaa took an easy win. Pusan made two pretty bad mistakes. Firstly, always scout for the pool because zergs can be sneaky. Secondly, have a second probe ready to forge as your scout probe reaches a main base. Sure, you waste a tiny bit of mining time if they're not pooling or just not there but it makes all the difference vs early pools and it creates a lot of options for cannon rushing if you're into that. It's quite simply something you should do, it doesn't cost you much and it will win you games.

Pusan spawned in blue at 11 on Fighting Spirit while Hyvaa got teal at 1. Hyvaa went overpool while Pusan went for a forge with a late double scout and pumped probes up to 15 with a cannon after scouting the pool. He followed quickly with a nexus and then walled in with a gateway, a pylon and probes without adding a second cannon. Hyvaa went for lair quickly while taking a third at 4 and killing Pusan's scout probe.

Hyvaa did a standard 3 hat spire opening, pumping drones as the spire built rather than saving any larva, while Pusan massed corsairs, losing his first one to scourge. Hyvaa added two more hatcheries and walled in with sunkens in support, playing extremely safe against Pusan's two base and pumping more and more drones. A solid wallin, two sunkens, a spore, scourge and a lot of lings proved more than enough to dissuade Pusan's speedlot rush and a network of burrowlings meant Hyvaa was always aware of exactly what Pusan was doing and when he expanded.

After his aggression proved completely futile Pusan attempted to expand to 9 but a burrowling on the nexus site blocked him and allowed lings and muta to kill the probe. Hyvaa then simply switched to pure scourge off 5 hatcheries and 3 gas to supplement his muta which were able to surprise Pusan and wipe out his flock of 6 corsairs easily, overwhelming his main. Pusan's counterattack killed absolutely nothing and Pusan GGed.

This was one of the strongest, most all round solid games, I've seen in a while. Pusan isn't great but tjos was pure domination. Hyvaa maintained excellent awareness of what was going on through good scouting, an early overlord suicide (not enough people do this, what's 100 minerals compared to seeing the Protoss tech + gateway count) and burrowlings (delay expansions a lot, maphack vs the protoss army). His defences were solid throughout, there was no dangerous timing or rush that could have beaten him. I just cannot emphasise enough how strong this game was.

BaBy spawned in orange at 12 while hero got white at 9 on Great Barrier Reef. Baby scouted correctly early while hero tried to overpool expand. Baby's fast scv scout was able to block the expansion several times, delaying it and leaving hero a stockpile of over 300 minerals for a minute which in turn cost him larva down the line. hero responded with gas and a lair but his lair was no earlier than it would otherwise have been because he had 450 minerals by the time he built it.
Meanwhile Baby walled himself in with a single marine behind allowing him to rush double port wraiths cheaply. The very delayed hatchery at the natural meant that Baby's vulture could harass hero despite hero making a sunken as early as he possibly could, simply because the creep was too late.

Baby began to mass wraiths while hero massed muta and teched to overlord speed. Muta and wraith battled over Baby's base. Baby began to supplement his army with mnm and was eventually able to push out and approach the sunkens at hero's base. They played microwars with wraiths and mutas sniping each other and hero got the upper hand, killing the mnm and forcingthe wraiths to retreat. On the retreat the cloaked wraiths extracted a heavy price in mutalisks though, leaving them roughly even and allowing Baby to start an expansion at his natural.

hero finally took a third base at the gas expansion at 7 but had an extremely low drone saturation. He then tried to harass Baby's main again but Baby's wraith micro was good and pushed him out with some nice snipes. Another clash at Baby's natural saw hero's mutalisk flock decimated and despite inflicting a lot of damage to Baby's army hero still lost map control. Baby's army pushed into the natural of hero and hero counterattacked at Baby's natural.

Baby killed all the drones at hero's natural and left his mnm killing hero's main while his wraiths killed the drones at the nearby third. hero brought his mutalisks back to defend as turrets sprang up all over Baby's base and although hero won the micro battle he was left with only one drone mining and no minerals. Baby secured his main mineral line and although the mutalisks were sniping buildings on the outside of his base and his natural wasn't mining he was able to pump more wraiths. The wraiths killed hero's drone and hero GGed.

A nice game. A good example of a two port wraith build actually beating 2 hatch muta. The mnm switch was timely and both players microed well. It was just one bad engagement that cost hero map control.

hero spawned at 1 in blue while Baby got yellow at 11 on Fighting Spirit. Baby went depot rax while hero went 12 hat 11 pool and drone scouted towards Baby. hero went 3 hat gas and Baby FEed with a second rax and gas on the way. hero got a lair with his first 100 gas and continued pumping drones off of three hat while Baby added an academy in a completely standard build, both players opting to power their economy rather than attempt anything interesting.

Things changed when Baby's scout scv died as hero immediately placed a hydralisk den, finishing early enough to sync up with the lair completion. Baby began to push out with a few mnm and a firebat but hero had sunkens and zergling speed done in time to shut him down. A counterattack did little damage due to Baby's immediate micro but Baby's aggression went unrewarded.

Both players remained on two bases, a small group of mnm threatening expansions hero had yet to take while hero pumped lurkers and speedlings. Baby played extremely safe though, aware that on two base each he had the upper hand and bunkering up his natural. hero expanded to 3 and placed lurkers on the ramp to defend it while starting to crawl lurkers across the bridge towards Baby's natural. However a tank forced him to back off.

In a marked contrast to all the other recent ZvT we've seen hero did not rush towards 3 hat hive and cracklings, instead going to five hatch on lair and just three bases. I want to emphasise how cool this is because as clever as the 3 hat low eco production heavy ling heavy into fast carapace muta control ultra guardian rush build is (and don't get me wrong, it's damn sexy) it's gotten a little stale. It's refreshing to see a zerg just play an economy build ZvT, making a load of drones, a load of hatcheries and playing lurkling.

Baby's first vessel completed and he pushed out with a load of mnm and two tanks although by rushing towards vessel he was still only on 3 rax (with more coming) and had not yet reached anywhere near the maximum production potential of two bases when money isn't spent elsewhere (8 rax, 2 port). That makes a nice timing push against hive builds but although hero was heading for hive this was no rush and he had 12 lurkers morphing at his natural. An excellent scourge snipe with speedlings to draw fire took out Baby's first vessel and delayed his push. Although Baby did push up to hero's bridges his army was flanked and completely smashed in a one sided massacre. hero's defiler mound was only 3/4 done when Baby hit but in return for that later timing hero had gained massive amounts of unit production capacity and let it show as his cracklings and lurkers cut through Baby's army.

Baby was forced back to his natural as defilers arrived to supplement hero's already dominant army which was drawing even in supply with Baby. With 5 defilers and dark swarm hero could simply push into Baby's natural with lurkers under swarm and there was little Baby could do about it. GG

An absolutely beautiful game if you, like me, get off on seeing the swarm do what it does best. I like clever builds as much as the next man but when a massive army of lurkling pincers marines and the zerglings tear them apart I just feel warm inside. This game was a throwback to a glorious earlier era where zergs relied on the pure numbers and fury of the swarm rather than any real finesse. Loved it.

hero got orange at 11 while Baby got yellow at 1 on Eye of the Storm. Baby opened depot rax while hero opted for 12 pool gas which is usually a lair rush and on Eye of the Storm, scout denial and 2 hat lurk breaks. hero followed it up with a quick expansion and fast lair as you'd expect but Baby double scouted and got a scv in fast enough to see the lair before lings blocked him out. Baby fast expanded himself and hero added a quick den for the lurk rush (I promise I hadn't seen the games before I wrote this, it's just FireFist did the EXACT same thing last week).

After dealing with the scout scv hero started to pump out lurkling and Baby went for 2 rax academy and added comsats and two bunkers at his front. However unlike PianO last week Baby did not rely upon his comsats for detection which is fortunate because 2 scans simply isn't enough. Baby placed turrets far back enough to stop any kind of lurk break without first dealing with the bunkers and pulled 7 scvs to repair the bunker and keep the lurkers at bay. At the same time he researched marine range, upping his bunkers to equal range to the lurkers so a scan forced them back.

The lurk rush works because the lurkers can move up to the bunkers and burrow, killing any scvs that try and repair while the terran is forced to exhaust scans to stop them. As more lurkers arrive the terran runs out of scans and cannot hold his front. Upon realising his mistake he tries to make turrets but they cannot complete under lurker fire. Turrets at the front don't work to detect because they usually can be sniped at the maximum range of lurkers. By placing a bunker at the front with a turret directly behind it and mass repairing it he blocked this, lurkers couldn't threaten the repairing scvs without moving into the detection range of turrets which undermines the whole point of the build.

hero rushed to hive with a defiler mound to try and convert his position directly outside Baby's base with lurkers into an easy win with just two well placed swarms while Baby added two starports. hero moved in with the swarms but his micro was less than perfect, throwing away a few lurkers although he still broke into the natural and forced the command centre to lift. Baby countered with a dropship but cracklings cleaned it up. They played microwars in Baby's natural with defilers being thrown away as the swarms advanced ever closer, moving up into Baby's main.

Siege tanks, wraiths and firebats wore away at the push as Baby had far more production but lacked the tech he needed to efficiently counter swarm. Baby used his spare marines to do another drop in hero's main, this time taking out the pool and forcing the drones to evacuate. Although much of Baby's main was on fire he created new lines of defence around his mineral line and tanks and wraiths slowly wore the lurkers down. The dropped marines pushed into hero's natural and hero was forced to GG.

Baby blocked hero's original build nicely, albeit it was rather predictable given it was the exact same one seen the week before. hero's followup was good given his limited options but his micro, although good, could have been better. Baby would have been better off with dual fact and spider mines rather than dual port but he still used the units he had decently. Some nice micro from both sides and the final scrappy battle was interesting.

Baby spawned at 4 in red while JaeDong got purple at 8. JD showed us another 12 pool gas opening which given we've seen it recently and seen Baby beat it was perhaps unwise. Even a randomly improvised build done by JD would perhaps be better than something Baby had already proven himself competent at dealing with. Baby scouted incorrectly while opening depot rax but still scouted enough to see a 2 hatch gas heavy build which was enough of a clue to let him play safe.

Baby took his expansion early and bunkered it, cutting scvs and blocking with depots to play safe. JD didn't even bother mining his natural, instead going pure speedlings and lurkers for a maximum strength rush. Amusingly enough one of JD's first 3 lurkers got trapped behind terrain which it could enter as a small hydralisk but couldn't leave as a lurker. That meant JD's rush was weaker than it should have been and it almost broke into Baby's natural.

JaeDong tried one last push but Baby's defences had simply grown too strong and he couldn't hope to break them so he GGed.
A poor choice of build in my opinion simply because Baby has proven himself decent at facing it. It worked nicely in older games because the scans which tell the difference between a 2 hatch muta build and a 2 hatch lurker allin are the scans a Terran can ill afford to waste against a 2 hatch lurker allin. Recently 2 hat lurker has become a victim of its own success, it has become sufficiently likely to justify taking an increased risk against muta for a decreased risk against lurker.

JD got white at 7 on Fighting Spirit while Baby got yellow at 11. JD sent his overlord out in the correct direction and opened 12 hat 11 scout drone 13 pool 13 hat, delaying the scout scv and killing it with drone micro. JD's build wasn't very risky, it was just exploiting the situation to squeeze out a few more drones. Meanwhile Baby FEed and used a few marines to force JD to unwall and get a scout scv in although doing so cost him 3 rines and a scv for two easily replaced drones.

JD made a lot of speedlings to try and hit Baby's first mnm aggression at a weird timing while teching to spire, it almost worked but immediate micro and a firebat saved Baby's force. A speedling runby claimed 2 scvs and the mutas swiftly following claimed another 5 in their first strafing run without loss. JD then tried to move in for a kill at the barracks, killing marines, turrets and scvs while speedlings ran past the bunker at the natural to support them. For a few seconds JD overran Baby's main, killing marines as they were produced, but his mutalisks had simply taken too much damage. It was a very cool clutch decision, turning some spare zerglings and mutalisk harass into a potentially gamewinning play, but in this instance he misjudged it. It was extremely close but Baby regained control of his base and JD had missed opportunities to powerdrone and tech.

JD teched to lurkers and powerdroned but hadn't begun teching towards hive, instead playing defensively and trying to buy time until the drones kicked in while expanding to the main at 5. Baby went for a drop and although JD had overlords in place to see it his units were out of position and Baby got mnm behind JD's main mineral line by the time mutaling arrived. Baby microed competently and extracted a very heavy price for his marines.

Baby pushed out with mnm, tanks and vessels, his army dancing with JD's lurkerling in the centre of the map. However by the time his army made it to the bridges JD's defilers had consume and Baby's push was blocked. Baby diverted his army to 5 and set up 4 tanks on the low ground to splash damage the high ground. Then his mnm engaged the base, immediately getting shut down by cracklings, swarm and two lurkers. The mnm dodged out of the swarm while tanks blasted the lings from the low ground.
The mnm significantly disrupted mining at 5 while JD's advancing army in the middle got blocked. Three surviving marines rejoined the four tanks at 5 and continued to slaughter units, despite swarm. Baby expanded to 12 and JD counterexpanded to 6 but although JD eventually stabilised the situation at 5 doing so cost him all the units he was producing and therefore gave Baby's new arrivals map control. Baby was at liberty to kill 6, kill JD's new natural expansion at 4.

Baby's attempted drop in JD's main went badly but on 3 bases apiece and Baby's army marauding around the centre of the map containing expansions there wasn't so much JD could really do. There was simply too much pressure on JD's gas as irradiate proved cheap compared to the gas cost of defilers. Baby added an expansion at 1 while pressuring the 4 natural but lurkers under swarm temporarily blocked it. Baby sent two vessels up the cliff to eraser the 5 mineral line and the moment the swarms expired Baby's army broke in and killed the hatchery.

JD hit Baby's army at 4 with a lot of zerglings and scourge, more than enough to guarantee victory, but with good use of dmatrix Baby minimised his losses and despite losing most of his vessels his mnm survived and were still dangerously close to 5 (which was still undersaturated from erasers). The survivors pushed up to 5 and were able to kill the nydus as well as doing another eraser and despite Baby losing the last 6 vessels from his fleet (he'd had 12 when he broke 4) JD lost control of 5. On two bases vs four he GGed out.
JD's late game play was simply inferior to Baby's this game. The 2 base macro heavy play succeeded in holding JD to 3 bases and JD never got a dramatic victory to turn the tide. This was most likely an outcome of JD's ambitious attempt for an outright win with the early mutaling, all JD's timings were thrown by that and without a big victory to reverse map control he simply couldn't get the economy he needed. Still, I find it very hard to hold it against him simply because the attack was so cool. If anything this game illustrates how thin the line between genius and failure is, especially when judging something as unpredictable as the victor in a scrap between muta and mnm. A solid game by both players, JD losing because of his failure to pull out something spectacular to reverse the flow of the game rather than any real bad play.