Kwanro spawned at 11 in blue while Flash got purple at 5, cross positions which favour Flash's macro style and makes the crucial late game expansions of Kwanro more vulnerable. Kwanro opened 12 hatch - 11 pool - 13 hatch while drone scouting on 12 and Flash countered with a standard depot rax, the rax blocking his choke against cheese as marines spawn below rax, inside the wall at 5. Upon seeing Kwanro's FE Flash countered with his own fast cc and flew his rax to a less disruptive location.

Kwanro continued to power his economy rather than attempt any kind of early tech, getting a late gas and late lair with just 4 lings hunting the scout scv. Flash was content to play the macro war, his own expansion up and running. The moment Flash's scout scv died Kwanro made his move, throwing down an early evo for the +1 carapace rush that would eventually transition into extremely fast 5 armour ultralisks. This particular build has become very popular recently with repeated appearances on large macro maps such as this one (it's called "crazy zerg" by Korean players when zerg goes from mutas straight to ultras). Meanwhile Flash added a second rax and slowly teched up without skipping an scv, instead of rushing for +1 attack as there was no fast muta threat from Kwanro. Flash was content to use the time Kwanro gave him to build up an unstoppable force.

Kwanro added a hydralisk den with lair, heading to lurkers to buy time before hive while a trio of sunkens went down to block Flash's first aggressive move. Flash confirmed Kwanro's lack of mutalisk tech with scan, and it allowed him to move his mnm around the map safely, whereas normally a mnm group that has map control might still be vulnerable to muta snipes. Flash had no intention of attacking, and only pushed out to force sunken production. Without mutas to contest map control, Flash had no reason to back off and set up a loose contain.

5 lurkers arrived to push Flash back, but without mutalisks to give the push momentum, Kwanro only covered a small amount of ground each burrow (while eating a lot of lead in return). Even when speedlings arrived to fill the role of the absent mutalisks Kwanro was still unable to rout Flash's army, blunting its nose in battles but never wiping it out as it retreated out of lurker range. Although Kwanro regained map control and had a 3rd base coming at 9 o'clock, he was by no means secure. Flash on 110 supply to his 60 and now had a trio of tanks augmenting his army. The arrival of the first vessel signaled the push, forcing the lurker contain to disperse and give up the ground it had fought so hard to take.

Kwanro bought time by threatening a counterattack, his army looping around Flash's while Flash moved towards 9. Although Flash moved back briefly he judged Kwanro's force to be a feint and ignored it correctly, swinging back to attack 9 again. Kwanro seemed very reluctant to nydus his third base, perhaps not expecting Flash's vessel push to arrive this early, which I think was a huge mistake. The tanks broke the sunkens at 9 and just before it fell Kwanro made his move, hitting the Terran ball with everything he had. Unfortunately he was forced to hit it mostly from one direction, as the vast majority of his army had been at his natural to the north. Flash's M&M moved up meet Kwanro's lurkers and zerglings, leaving the tanks safely blasting the lurkers from behind, and then he used some nice marine micro and a good defensive matrix win the battle comfortably.

Perhaps this victory was inevitable as Flash had been left to his own devices for ten minutes and had macroed up a considerable army with very few losses. Credit has to be handed to Flash for letting Kwanro dictate the pace and still beat him, but all things considered Kwanro would have done considerably better if he hadn't attacked a ball of mnm with tank support down a fairly narrow avenue with lurkers and cracklings. The outcome of that fight was determined before it started and could have been avoided, either with a nydus to give a flank or by simply allowing the base to die instead of throwing away his army in a suicide defense.

With the massacre concluded, Flash's army returned to attacking Kwanro's base at 9. Kwanro's reinforcements were able to stop the first push eventually, but Flash's reinforcements came to finish the job. As 2 gas ultralisks clearly werne't going to cut it, Kwanro was forced to attempt a hidden expansion at the 1 main.

Kwanro finally got 4 well-upgraded ultralisks and was able to destroy Flash's army that had been pushing against his natural, but Flash had already deployed a small force to destroy 1 while he took another base for himself at 3. Saving his vessels from his defeated push Flash backed up to his half of the map, happy on 3 bases with another vast army built up against the 2 base Kwanro. The vessel cloud was put to good use hunting 3-2 upgraded ultralisks which were the only part of Kwanro's army with any real muscle.

Kwanro was desperate to buy time to recover, expanding first to 1, then 9, then 7, hoping that Flash would give him time to get back in the game with reckless expansions if he just messed around with crackling runbys for long enough. However Flash blocked all these with ease while expanding again to 6 while macroing flawlessly. Although Kwanro's plan of constant decoys to buy time was working to some extent, he couldn't do anything about Flash's eventual unstoppable push towards 9. All three of Kwanro's new expansions were simultaneously attacked by small groups of Flash's troops, and with nothing left to do, Kwanro GGed.

Overall, a nice game in which Flash won with absolutely no flair or style, but played perfectly. He's a craftsman, not a performer, he just does his job and does it extremely well. Kwanro's lurkerling midgame simply couldn't get a grip on Flash's greased up marines which slipped away from the lurker spines, giving up the exact amount of ground they had to and no more. When the first vessel arrived Flash just had too much stuff. A decent game by the Zerg but Flash demonstrated why he's the man to beat this OSL.

Stork got red at 12 while Baby got white at 8 on Great Barrier Reef. The players opened with pylon gate and depot rax on standard timings, scouting late to maximise the speed of their builds. Stork went for a 13 core 14 pylon 15 zealot rather than the dragoon + dragoon range on core completion and then got dragoon range immediately. Baby did not wall-in, so Stork used his single zealot to scout Baby's base and managed to salvage much of its value by killing two marines before going down.

Kwark's conjecture
What was Stork trying to do in this situation? Let's go through his options.
Core Pylon Dragoon + Range: Economically optimal if you don't want any early zealots. This build maximises economy first, then dragoon production with range asap.
Core Pylon Zealot Dragoon: You can squeeze out a zealot while the core completes which means the zealot is effectively a bonus unit, completed in spare gateway time. If you then pump dragoons as normal you'll always be a zealot ahead. The extra minerals for it come by delaying range which can be completed later at no cost to army size. Good if you want to stick on 1 gateway for some reason but want a bigger army (FE variants?).
Core Pylon Zealot Range: This is what Stork did and it confused me at first. He got range asap without maximising his dragoon count like the first build or maximising his army like the second. I thought it was a bit dubious until I realised he'd scouted very late, earning a few extra minerals by delaying it, and then scouted primarily with the zealot. A probe scout often cannot get a good idea of the number of scvs on gas because it is driven out by marines too early. A zealot has the hp to force its way in and get more info and more importantly info at a later stage than the probe scout. If it can kill any marines thats a bonus, but the scouting is what it's mainly for.

Stork's army was effectively one dragoon smaller for the trade, as he'd paid for his early zealot with a briefly idle gateway later. But his zealot did see that 3 scvs stayed on gas. The knowledge of Baby's strategy made it a very good trade for Stork, as he was able to respond accordingly. It should be noted thought that if Baby had walled then Stork would have been behind as the zealot would be worthless as soon as vultures got out. Evidently Stork felt Baby was unlikely to wall, or planned some kind of early pressure if he did.

Stork rushed to robo while Baby FEed with mines and a single tank without siege to add some firepower. Despite the mines, stork harassed the natural effectively with four ranged dragoons, disrupting Baby and doing a fair amount of damage to a barracks and a tank while he got observers and his own expansion done. His first observer reached Baby around the time Baby's siege finished which prevented any further attempts to harass Baby's natural. However Stork was not very far behind economically and could see everything Baby was doing.

Baby had rushed to a starport and was taking his 10 o'clock backdoor mineral only with just 2 factories. Stork countered by taking his own backdoor mineral natural, and matched Baby's dropship use with shuttle play.

Baby's first dropship left his base while being seen by an observer, and only a slight misclick with dragoons and extremely fast reactions by Baby allowed it to escape back to Baby's main with half its health remaining. Baby's strategy to take 3 bases off of a few high ground tanks combined with fast drop play had been met solidly by Stork who placed observers everywhere to punish the turretless Terran.

The expansion attempt at 10 was delayed by a shuttle-reaver which ended up playing microwars against a dropship and 2 tanks (Baby did a very nice micro trick, picking up an scv as a scarab approached) but the tanks were able to stop the harass. While Stork took a hidden island expansion at the 6 o'clock gas base, Baby was very active, mining up the middle of the map and shutting down the 1 expansion with a dropship full of tanks. Fortunately for Baby, Stork's shuttle was still at 10 o'clock, fruitlessly trying to cause more damage to the expansion. Using his dropship to ferry vultures from the center of the map, Baby was able to fortify his harassment behind the 1 o'clock minerals and it held against a disgusting number of dragoons and a reaver. Stork managed to save the nexus just in time but had taken heavy losses and the nexus was down to red hp.

Baby went for another drop, this time in Stork's main, but it was shut down fairly easily by the dragoons arriving as they were produced. The dropship was killed but another one was alreadyh on its way to finish off the nexus at 1 o'clock. At this point, Baby thought he was ahead on bases having failed to scout Stork's hidden expansion at 6. It was the only thing keeping Stork in the game, while Baby's vultures continued to trade profitably in the centre of the map. Hoping to exploit these secretive resources, Stork went for hidden carrier tech while Baby took the mineral outside his base.

Baby built a massive army and eventually learned of the carrier tech, but was still unaware of the base paying for it. When Baby pushed up into Stork's natural, Stork realised he couldn't win in a straight fight. Stork's army looped round the south of the map to counterattack Baby's new mineral only, hoping to trade mining bases and come out ahead later with his hidden exp.

Stork came out slightly ahead in that trade, not actually winning but losing far less than Baby. Stork still had 2 and 6 heavily saturated and a new expansion at 3 about to finish. His counterattack army had achieved its goal of destroying the mineral natural and retreated largely intact, while Baby's main army fled from the carriers after razing Stork's mostly mined out natural. Although Baby was expanding to 7 and was still slightly ahead in supply, Stork was definitely back in the game. Carriers went to harass 10 and destroyed it while Baby's counterattacked and destroyed 3 in turn. Stork's ground troops attempted to engage Baby's army as it moved around the center of the map, but pair of defensive matrixes on the front two tanks forced Stork to retreat.

Stork chose to attack Baby's resources instead, but was thwarted twice. his ground troops were forced to retreat from some well placed tanks at the gas expansion at 7, while a massive amount of repairing SCVs prevented Stork's 5 carriers from destroying Baby's natural command center. Despite being reduced to double digit HP the mass scvs repairing held on for long enough for goliaths to intervene. When the goliaths moved away Stork tried again and again, getting the CC to double digit hp but unable to get the kill in time.

Stork's smaller ground force engaged's Baby's army as it was on the move, getting some effective storms down and fought efficiently before retreating from the inevitable tank volley. When Baby consolidated his army for another attack on Stork's natural, Stork again counterattacked by killing the mineral only below Baby's main cliff with his ground troops while the carriers finally destroyed Baby's natural. Through a great series of counter attacks, Stork had whittled Baby down to just one mining base while his own hidden expansion was still going strong. When Stork attacked Baby's only last mining at 7 Baby was forced to abandon his attack to save it. At last, Baby worked out where all the money was coming from and dropped, 6 but by this point defense had long since been established.

Although Stork had made it an equal resource game, 6 was nearly mined out and Baby had control of the ground. Stork was forced to attempt an at the 4 o'clock natural, but behind the minerals. It was not an ideal island expansion like 6 had been and like 11 would be, but it had the advantage of a lot of probes at 6:00 nearby to transfer there. Baby meanwhile flew his main command centre, one of only two he had left, out to the mineral only below his cliff, taking it for the third time. He also scouted the expansion attempt at the 4 natural and blocked it with a single tank.

Unfortunately, Stork now found himself committed to a battle for control of the centre of the map. He had air control and comparable resources but 6 would be mined out soon and there were no more easy islands to take. Every good expansion now required map control to take, and by taking 5, Stork had committed himself to holding that corner of the map against Baby's superior ground force. Baby set up a good position and Stork suicided his ground army into it for very few kills. Although the carriers were able to shut down and kill the 7 expansion from the far side of the mineral line Stork had no ground army left and his main was destroyed.

GG

Baby's early and midgame was very strong. His build took the initiative, fluidly combining aggressive expansions with dropship play and vulture map control. Stork was able to keep up with it until the combination of tanking and vulture elevators at 3 made Stork fight a losing battle of attrition there. The hidden expansion did a lot to mitigate this but Baby's massive ground army couldn't be challenged head-on all game. Still I think if Stork had played the end differently he still could have won. He had assets and Baby was vulnerable.

Personally I think Stork shouldn't have tried to take 5 as it gave him nothing but commitments he couldn't keep and Baby was always going to charge him the full price for it. He still had a good minute of mining left in both 6 and 2, and mining the island side of 3 was would have been easier to defend than 5. Baby couldn't defend 7 against carriers without his full goliath army, because the mineral line was perfect for carrier vs goliath micro. That would have forced Baby to give up map control and hand Stork 3 by default. If Baby abandoned 7 to stop Stork taking a new expansion elsewhere, then Stork could have long distance mined 7:00 from his 6:00 nexus. Whereas if Baby knuckled down to hold just 2 bases then Stork would get stronger by the minute.

That said, I'm an observer and can see the assets and commitments of each player, Stork still did a good job to get back as well as he did. A very tense game and well played by both players.
Baby deserves a lot of credit for an excellently executed build and for winning despite a hidden expansion. Stork gets credit for making it so interesting with his almost comeback, even if he could only do so because of a hidden expansion.

Calm got blue at 1 while Pure got white at 7. Pure went for a standard FE while Calm checked for proxy wallin and then overpooled without gas. Pure went forge nex as it was the most efficient against Calm's build and managed to use his scouting probe to block Calm's hatchery a total of 6 times, perhaps a record in progaming. Certainly Pure's nexus was considerably earlier than Calm's hatchery.

Pure was able to exploit his fast nexus for psi, skipping a pylon and using the minerals to get a faster gateway and therefore core without hurting probe production. While all these factors are relatively small individually, they added up to a very fast stargate and it was clear Pure wanted to make good use of his fast tech when he built a fast second gas.

Sending a second scouting probe the moment his first died Pure maintained good awareness of everything on the map, the only blind spot being the lair at 4 which he 'knew' about. Calm went for 3 hat, spire, 5 hat while Pure teched to +1 air, pumped corsairs and got a robo with support bay. He used his corsairs aggressively but not carelessly, keeping all of his early corsairs safe from scourge. Calm added a hydralisk den but still planned to fight corsairs with mutalisks, not understanding the implications of a critical mass of corsairs. Despite having a complete net of zerglings scouting for the reaversair play, Calm was unable to stop Pure's two shuttle drop on 5. His scourge approached the +1 sairs before the mutalisks arrived, from one direction and in a loosely packed formation. This led to the scourge being easily killed off while killing barely any corsairs, leaving the mutalisks helpless. The drop did heavy damage, destroying the lair and a hatchery at 5, and many drones.

While this had been going on Pure had switched from 1 gateway, 1 stargate, 1 robo to 5 gateway production. Calm had finally gotten some control over the sair-reaver situation with burrow and sunkens colonies, but they were no help against the horde of +1 speedlots that charged into his natural. Without a ground force and his mutalisks still helpless against the massed sairs, Calm GG'd as Pure took out his main and natural.

A very nice game by Pure, surprisingly good. However the one thing to take out of this game, when you're watching it and want to work out just where all that stuff came from, are the initial builds. Pure pushed his to the limit, squeezing out an earlier nex, an earlier gateway etc and it all boils down to a fast second gas and more corsairs. Don't take stupid risks with your builds PvZ but when you know what the Zerg is doing and what their timings are, always push it. That way you can get a bunch of stuff early and kill the Zerg with it.

fOrGG spawned in blue at 11 while Effort got orange at 7 on Fighting Spirit. Effort's overlord scouted the correct way, looking for a forward 8 rax as he went for a 12 scout 12 hat. Meanwhile fOrGG went depot rax refinery which was a very critical move. The reason fOrGG is in this OSL is because he kept going 1 rax cc 5 rax and winning the game before adding a factory. His massive mnm allins pretty had been defining him as a player as of late, so going 1 marine into 14 fact 18 was a major curve ball. Effort would obviously have picked up on fOrGG's recent playing patterns and practiced accordingly. Expecting this, fOrGG took it one step further and probably devoted all his practice time to this surprise build.

With a fast expansion not coming from fOrGG, Effort began to suspect some kind of tech build and made a fast sunken with a blocking drone at his choke while getting a relatively quick hydralisk den. He also teched towards lair and added a 3rd hatch, an all round macro build capable of adapting to whatever was thrown at it with a lot of hydralisks. It would have been especially effective against a speed-vulture runby but I doubt Effort could begin to imagine what fOrGG had coming.

The first rushed factory immediately added a machine shop and started a tank and siege mode while the second pumped a vulture. Armed with just one tank, one vulture and two marines fOrGG rushed at Effort whose drone heavy macro play with a sunken had played right into his hands. For once speedlings would have been the perfect counter to mech as fOrGG was devoting half his factory time to tanks and had no vulture speed.

The sieged tank hitting his sunken must have been a terrible surprise to Effort who was completely ill-equipped to deal with anything like this. Effort built sunkens in the back to buy time and switched his 3 hatcheries to producing pure hydralisks, but with scvs repairing and the massive damage of tanks he couldn't break the defensive position at his natural. He was able to kill the first three tanks but each time he lost more hydralisks than it was worth. Against small numbers of unupgraded hydralisks, the vultures were considerable threats as well, especially when microed as a Terran is trained to do. Once mines were added the contain inside Effort's natural was unbreakable and Effort GGed.

Effort was blind and therefore took a defensive all round approach, falling back to his natural and concentrated on broad counter techs and unit production. Hydralisk den, lair and 3 hatcheries with a sunken armed him to deal with every threat, from 2 port wraith to vult runbys. What fOrGG was doing however relied on exactly that. fOrGG's army could never take any territory from another army, it was entirely defensive and that was the beauty of it. fOrGG just went right up to Effort's natural and created a defensive position, what he did couldn't have worked unless Effort used the exact defensive strategy he wanted. It was a glorious bit of metagaming. fOrGG's trap was to let Effort know he was being trapped but not tell him how.

Kal got orange at 12 while hyvaa spawned at 3 in purple. Kal FEed as you'd expect and hyvaa's overlord scouted straight towards him. hyvaa went for 12 hat but was delayed significantly by a probe and then a pylon. He immediately sent another drone towards the nat at 9 but it arrived there a good 20 seconds after the original expansion attempt. By pooling the moment he realised he'd be delayed hyvaa mitigated the situation but his build was still inefficient. 6 lings chased off the first scout probe but Kal sent it back on a detour while sending out a new one which got into hyvaa's base easily and saw 3 hatcheries (hyvaa took his nat eventually) and a fairly late gas.

Kal's play was pretty standard, FE into stargate with a second gas although the second gas wasn't rushed. Rather than 3 hat spire - 5 hat den hyvaa opted to den as his lair was about to complete, unknown to Kal whose scout probe had died. The early hydra stopped the from corsairs doing much damage and hyvaa went for early hydra range and overlord speed with a dozen slow zerglings. The hydralisks attacked Kal's natural gateway while the fast overlords did very little. hyvaa's attempt to break the natural was very noncommital and Kal blocked it with ease, zealots and cannons more than enough for the few hydras.

While this was going on Kal's had massed five corsairs with +1 and massacred hyvaa's overlords, despite the presence of hydralisks and overlord speed. hyvaa tried to add hatcheries and adapt into a heavier macro build but Kal was ahead because he hadn't been at all slowed by the early game shenanigans. Worried about a hydra break Kal added a robo behind the cannons at his natural for a reaver, and once he was safe he added a second robo to transition into reaversair. The corsairs continued to hunt down overlords as Kal constantly looked for openings.

Kal took his back mineral only at 2 and began his harassment by sending his sairs and two shuttles behind the minerals at the 9:00 expansion. However it nearly ended before it began as a scourge intercept decimated the corsair fleet while well placed hydralisks forced the shuttles to look for another spot. Refusing to be discouraged Kal dropped three reavers on the high ground above the ramp at 9 and took potshots at the natural below the ramp. He killed a few hydralisks before a trio of mutalisks arrived to pick off he defenseless reavers. Kal immediately lifted a pair of reavers into two shuttles, one a decoy and one full, and started simultaneous reaver harass despite the fact that he had no air support or knowledge of the zerg positions.

I have to emphasise how risky this is, a shuttle with a reaver is a huge investment in resources and building time and flying it blind towards the enemy base without any air support can, and usually does, go horribly wrong. The decoy drew hyvaa towards his main while the reaver filled shuttle hit the natural, arriving just as the hydralisks were about to leave. The hydralisks killed off the shuttle and the reavers, though they lost some of their number.

hyvaa retaliated by dropping two lurkers at 3 and killing the cannons guarding 2 with mutalisks so the lurkers could shut the base down. At this point Kal was behind, his reaversair opening having failed and being on two mining bases to four. However Kal mustered everything he had, two shuttles, three reavers, a group of slow zealots and some newly massed +1 corsairs and attacked. While the shuttles went straight for hyvaa's tech buildings, hyvaa's +1 armor mutalisks were taken by surprise by the newly created corsair fleet. With the corsairs defending his drop and three reavers and two zealots attacking hyvaa lost his pool and den very quickly. The slowzealots were even able to kill hyvaa's mineral only below his main cliff before hydralisk reinforcements arrived, whereupon they fled.

As hyvaa used all his hydralisks to save his main from reavers the slowzealots reunited with a few of their friends and attacked the natural at 9. Hyvaa started morphing some lurker eggs to defend but it was too late, as archons were able to destroy them before they hatched. hyvaa's army was still overwhelmingly strong but it was a single block being pulled from 4 to 9 and back without new hydralisks appearing at either. Reavers and corsairs reinforcing the attack couldn't give Kal the momentum to break 9 but a few zealots had spent the entire duration of the battle in the mineral line tearing up drones. Meanwhile Kal had dropped another reaver in hyvaa's main as he drew the main zerg force to 9, wiping out his drones in the main. Despite having had an overwhelming army hyvaa couldn't cope with the multitasking of Kal's arsonist style, lighting fires everywhere on the map. AT this point, hyvaa had almost 1000 minerals built up because of losing his tech.

Even though the lurkers had killed Kal's third at 2 and he was mining out his main and natural, Kal just kept pressing the attack at 9. While hyvaa's attention and resources were pinned there, Kal had a speedshuttle with a reaver bouncing between 4 and 5, eventually racking up 48 kills.
Something had to break and as hyvaa concentrated his forces to secure his main and natural his base at 9 fell. Content that the damage was done Kal expanded to his mineral only to wait his opponent out. hyvaa understood the situation as clearly as Kal did though and GGed out.

hyvaa's play this game was competent when Kal's play was standard. His build was a bit weird but he transitioned well and it didn't delay him. Despite Kal's good corsairs usage hyvaa kept up with it, refusing to allow Kal to camp on 3 bases and use reaversair, instead contesting air control with +1 armour mutalisks and shutting down Kal's back expansion with lurkers. This was all good. But Kal's next attack was so unusual it threw hyvaa and despite retaining advantages he never caught up with Kal again. Unknown to hyvaa Kal had built two stargates, so despite getting his corsair fleet massacred he was able to pump out a new one from scratch. hyvaa's investment in mutalisks, which was a good move initially, cost him dearly when he had no scourge to protect them from the surprise corsairs. The mutalisks were a great idea because they gave him the ability to harass 2:00 and contain any ground army but hyvaa didn't even consider that Kal might be pumping out another big corsair fleet. hyvaa relied on the mutalisks to protect against drops and found himself in the worst possible situation, simultaneously losing his mutalisks and his hydra tech.

hyvaa shouldn't be criticised for losing this because he played a very nice early to mid game. Kal made a very decisive offensive move in the midst of a rapidly worsening situation and everything ended up going his way. One good move triggered a domino effect and Kal had the multitasking skills to exploit that to the max.

Movie spawned in yellow at 7 and Hwasin got orange at 1. Movie continued his string of unusual but clever PvT openings with a proxy gate at 3 and although Hwasin immediately scouted for it and sent five scvs to kill the gateway Movie was prepared for this eventuality and stole Hwasin's gas leaving him behind for the mining time. Hwasin was forced to FE and Movie teched to robo while sending a zealot out to harass the building cc.

Hwasin scouted around Movie's base but the robo was hidden so Hwasin only knew he was against some kind of proxy/hidden tech which forced him into an extremely defensive posture. Movie teched to reaver quickly and killed three scvs sent to discover the prxoy he was faking. The fourth scout scv saw Movie still hadn't expanded and scouted the support bay in Movie's main but Movie was ready to attack by this point.

Movie hit Hwasin's natural with four dragoons, one zealot and one reaver, losing everything but his shuttle, but also killed seven scvs, one tank, two marines and two bunkers. The attack would have been a minor success if Movie had managed to save his reaver, but a moment of sloppy shuttle micro saw the reaver getting destroyed by tanks. Things were still relatively even as Movie double expanded to his natural and mineral natural, while Hwasin attempted to take his own mineral natural by starting a CC to float down later. Movie saw that he wasn't as far ahead in macro terms as he'd like to be in a normal game. Knowing Hwasin was taking a third, Movie skipped straight into the late game, taking his the 11:00 expansion and adding a forge and archives for higher tech.

With a big mistake from Hwasin, the game changed completely. As Hwasin tried to float his new command center to the 3:00 mineral base, it floated out of the range of most the tanks and Movie saw his chance. His dragoons had been in an excellent position, and they focused fired the CC down while losing only two of their number. Hwasin knew Movie was taking a fourth and if he attempted to retake 3 he'd be impossibly behind in the lategame. Although both players were just preparing to play a long game, Hwasin found himself suddenly removed of that option. Hwasin only choice was to take everything he had and attack immediately.

Although Hwasin was had been playing defensively and preparing for the game, Movie had been doing the same and cutting corners everywhere. Movie was investing in tech and expansions because he thought that Hwasin wanted to take this to the lategame, so he was unprepared to deal with the sudden mid-game push he had forced Hwasin into. Movie reacted decently, throwing down three more gateways and delayed as much as possible with dts and a reaver in a shuttle. However Hwasin trudged his way across the map and took the critical sweet spot by Movie's natural. Movie committed a major error by sending in most of his dragoons against several siege tanks that had been holding the rear, only to have them splattered across the floor, effectively halving his ground force.


An object of true beauty stands the test of time

Despite having more a lot more income Movie couldn't break the push, the terrain of Match Point favouring a Terran with an established defensive position near the natural. His late game tech of ht simply wasn't ready in time and although Movie kept producing big armies with his superior economy Hwasin's army kept rolling along. A slightly bigger army gets a disproportionate victory and Hwasin's was able to defeat several armies, each of which were only just smaller.
Movie did some nice harass back against 3 with his reaver but lost his natural and his mineral only at 9 before finally breaking Hwasin's push. However, Hwasin had already diverted units up to 11 and killed that expansion as well, leaving Movie with just his mined out main. Out of options, Movie tried one last suicidal attack and then GGed.

Now this was a very interesting spot. Movie knew Hwasin had no intention of attacking so cut corners, leaving himself open to an attack that he knew wasn't coming. This is excellent play. Hwasin then messed up by floating his cc further forwards than his tanks which although nearby were not all close enough to defend it. Movie saw the situation, analyzed it perfectly and worked out how to abuse it with dragoon micro and a ballsy snipe. Again, excellent play. However the unique combination played out very badly for Movie. There was no way he could have known Hwasin was going to mess up his late game plan by exposing a cc, Movie was doing absolutely the right thing by countering what Hwasin was trying to do and investing for the late game. But when Hwasin exposes the critical expansion his build is hinging on Movie can't exactly ignore it. It's a very interesting situation. Hwasin got played, he had very little control over anything that happened in that game. I like how Movie played right up to his dragoon suicide (I'm undecided over the cc snipe). Like the first game of the day neither player made any real mistake, the game just developed in a strange way. Movie's first game of the new OSL was certainly no disappointment, despite his loss. His play was good, perhaps better than Hwasin's.

Fantasy spawned in teal at 7 while Zero got purple at 5 on Fighting Spirit. Zero's overlord scouted correctly and he opened 12 hat 11 pool while Fantasy opted for a depot rax and also scouted correctly. Zero's scout drone went up to the main at 1 and stayed there, expanding on 14 supply while Fantasy swiftly took his own expansion with a very fast gas following it. Both players macroed up, Zero with 3 bases and heading to lair while Fantasy rushed mechonic with a fast factory followed with academy. The fast factory was followed immediately by a starport while Zero went for spire as his lair completed, sunkening his natural. The purpose of the starport became apparent as a fast armoury followed, 3 rax mnm with valkryie support, Fantasy going back to his OSL roots with funky mechish TvZ builds. Zero's first mutalisks were repelled with ease by the valk mnm combo but while he bought time playing around with muta he was rushing to hive with late lurkers. His lurkers arrived just in time to stop a push at his base at 1, the mutalisks serving their purpose by feigning aggression until Zero could get lurkers.

When his hive finished, Zero rushed out a defiler mound and Fantasy found himself playing against an extremely fast hive zerg without any vessels after missing all his timing windows chasing muta around the middle of the map. Fantasy's attempts to take a third were shut down by stray lings running around the map and the still present mutalisks with scourge escorts. Fantasy clearly understood his weaknesses and rather than attempt mnm play vs a defiler zerg he opted to transition into five fact pure mech. In his defence he completely shut down Zero's defilers with mech, creating a minefield with tank support in front of the Zerg natural that Zero couldn't hope to break.

It seems however that all Maginot Lines are destined to be bypassed as Zero delivered a backhanded compliment to Fantasy's contain by never attempting to break it, and instead dropped Fantasy's main base. The valks were conspicuously absent in the middle of the map and when they finally arrived hydralisks, lurkers and defilers were out of their overlords and a plague hit the group of valks. Despite the enduring strength of his push against Zero's natural Fantasy's main was completely torn up by the drop. It's a shocking oversight that a player like Fantasy would create a contain like that and then fail to plug the gap in his defences by leaving valks in the wrong place.

Two more drops, one at 11 and one at 7, were all it took to finalise it. Fantasy's main was still fire from the previous drop and his intended counter to lurkers with swarm, a minefield with a lot of tank fire, is no use against drops in the middle of your base. Unable to do anything about the lurkers they tore out huge chunks of his base and army wherever they hit. GG.

Fantasy had a clear plan going on here. A wall of mines and tanks slowly pushing into Zero on the ground while valks pinned Zero down in the air. Unfortunately for him Zero's opening build refused to play along, faking standard play while actually hive rushing. Fantasy's build was intended to smash and destroy a mutalisk build in the midgame while Zero turned his mutalisks into an annoying mosquito, not at all dangerous but really difficult to smash with a chunky hammer like Fantasy's army. The absence of the valks was just a bad mistake but I think Zero was probably ahead from the builds by that point, getting away with a hive rush like that is really beneficial for Zerg. Still, valks wiping out a drop would have made the game rather more interesting. It's rather anticlimatic for them both to build up and then Fantasy to have his main torn to shreds before the action really takes off.

Shine spawned in orange at 7 while go.go got yellow at 5 on Eye of the Storm. go.go went for a central 8 rax and saw his cheesiness repaid by Shine sending out a very early drone scout and scouting him first, immediately placing a pool and gas. 12 pool is still late enough to get bunker rushed though and go.go placed the bunker at the natural before Shine took his natural. The drone vs marine and building bunker microwars took off and Shine lost 2 drones but successfully pushed the scvs and marines back with a single isolated marine in the bunker.

For a moment, Shine drew inspiration from July vs Nada on r-point (you know the one) and decided to completely ignore the bunker to rush forwards with 4 drones and 5 lings. Then he realised that was a really silly idea when the bunker only had one marine and was unrepairable. The lings turned back around and quickly cut the bunker down as the drones returned to mine. go.go retreated his remaining marines and bunkered his choke while rushing out a factory. Shine's zerglings ran through gogo.'s choke for a little harassment in the main, achieving a fair amount of success before they were all killed.

Shine quickly teched to lair and hydralisk den with a low drone count while go.go went for two fac and rushed out a vulture which was shut down by the early hydralisks. Shine scouted that go.go was on 1 base and meching so teched to spire while go.go tried to run through with a pair of vultures, failing and only killing a single drone. When four more vultures with speed arrived a few seconds later in Shine's natural they did somewhat better, ignoring the sunken and killing far more than their value in drones.

go.go concluded he'd gotten as much done as he was going to manage with vultures and expanded with goliaths and turrets while Shine was rebuilding his economy and adding a third hatchery in his natural. As go.go took his natural Shine expanded to 9, walling the ramp against vultures with his three hydralisks (say what you like about Shine, he sure does get a lot of utility out of very few hydralisks). go.go switched back to marines with 4 rax hidden in his main although Shine's mutalisks had the marines outgraded with their +1 carapace.

Observing that his opponent appeared to be going pure goliath Shine pumped out a group of hydralisks and pressured the front with hydralisks, muta and an overlord for mine sweeping. go.go was forced to show his hand although it was a good one, the sudden appearance of mnm cutting down the hydralisks with ease. go.go followed the victory by surging forwards and all Shine could do was pump yet more hydralisks. The second battle against mnm with mech support went much like the first and Shine GGed out.

In my opinion go.go won this by being as counterintuitive as possible with an extremely prepared build. Shine's responses didn't look at all planned, he dealt with the bunker rush awkwardly and seemed completely surprised by the mnm transition. Although go.go's play wasn't optimal it did more damage to Shine by confusing him and catching him off guard than it did to go.go who had clearly practiced it. A textbook example of the advantages of doing that kind of opening in a game where you can prepare a build. By rushing you immediately take control of the game flow and even if the rush doesn't work you are playing a game you knew would happen in a variant you practiced. Shine was improvising and go.go wasn't. Shine's improvised response was to make a load of hydra and hope, as always, but in professional bw you can't really play it by ear.