Kal spawned at 11 in green while Flash got 5 in blue on Fighting Spirit. Both players opened normally, scouting late and using safe standard builds. Instead of scouting quickly, Kal placed a probe at his ramp to prevent any scouting SCVs from passing, later replacing it with a zealot in order to hide his fast robotics facility before dragoon range build. Both players took their expansion early, Flash using a screen of mines while Kal rushed to expand with only an observer, without reavers or dragoon range. Despite playing completely blind, Kal's expansion was fast enough to keep up with Flash.

Kal scouted carefully with observers while getting more gateways and zealot speed. Flash made a third CC in his main and tried to float it to 6 under tank cover from the low ground near his natural, but Kal was fully aware of this due to his observers. Kal moved to delay the 6:00 expansion attempt, and got good value from his first six dragoons by killing two tanks, a vulture, and several marines. But the situation became very messy when fresh dragoons and transferring SCVs arrived on either side. Kal's move and fire micro was very poor, with his dragoons getting mired between the SCVs while they wasted shots damaging, but not killing the SCVs. In a micromanagement disaster, almost an entire control group of dragoons ended up dying to four tanks which weren't all that well placed. As a consolation, Kal was at least able to expand to 9:00 during his attack and even up the base count.

Kal expanded again, this time at 12:00, while remaining on just four gateways despite the fact that Flash was adding factories and armories to power into the late game. As the 12:00 expansion completed, Kal belatedly began his late game preparations by getting dual forge, arbiter tech and a lot more gateways. However Kal's army composition remained weak, as he had only dragoons and arbiters without any speedlots or ht in shuttles to supplement them.

As Flash camped in his quarter of the map Kal continued to expand, trying to get a significant resource advantage before Flash moved out. Kal took 1 and cannoned 7, giving himself another main base which would be hard to push. At the same time he started upgrading air-attack and started down the road to carriers. At this point Kal had four bases with another coming, map control, several arbiters and a significantly larger army. Each passing second brought him a greater economic advantage, higher energy arbiters, and eventually carriers. Flash on three bases was a perfectly acceptable state of affairs for Kal who would soon have twice as many bases, and he had absolutely no reason to attack or show any sign of aggression. However Kal decided to try a hallucinate recall at 6:00 anyway, a tactic Flash is very competent at defending against. In an almost foregone conclusion, Flash's minefield devastated the recalled units, making Kal's attack a waste of a lot of units and a perfectly good high-energy arbiter. The 6:00 expansion was mining again within seconds, while sudden loss of protoss units gave Flash a timing window.

While Kal may not have been fully aware of his advantage, Flash knew what his situation was precisely. Realizing that Kal would replenish his army extremely quickly, Flash pushed out during this small window. Kal rewarded Flash for this aggressive move by smashing his temporarily depleted army against the Terran ball. Kal was utterly defeated, losing several groups of units before realizing his folly and retreating. This set up Flash to slow push across the bottom of the map towards 7 and the narrow route to 9. Kal responded to this new threat with an even bigger recall at 6:00, where Flash had neglected to place mines again after the previously failed recall. Despite Flash immediately dispatching units to defend, Kal was able to destroy the command center at the price of over a control group of units.

As before, this momentary loss of units gave Flash a short window where he had a big numerical advantage on the ground. Flash pursued the opportunity aggressively, moving to consolidate the bottom left corner of the map and expanded to the 7 natural. Repeating his previous mistake, Kal attempted a large scale engagement with the Terran army right after losing a lot of units, and predictably his attack went poorly. He threw away yet more units, giving Flash solid control of the bottom left corner of the map. Kal tried a recall directly on top of Flash's tanks at the bottom left but it ended up being yet another senseless loss of units for Kal. With the bottom left bridge secure, Flash was free to lay siege to 9 from the low ground, where his army was safe and unflankable. As Kal lost control of 9 he expanded to 3:00 and the 1:00 natural, but his constant unit losses were starting to take its toll.

An arbiter was intercepted at 7 and rather than be EMPed alone, decided to use its last energy to recall dragoons under a combination of EMP shockwave and tank fire. Kal continued his poor recalls, this time summoning his units on top of the main terran force in the middle of the map. His main army was nowhere close to the recalled units, and it ended up being an isolated slaughter. Finally, Kal had wasted units faster than his economy could support, and he found himself severely lacking in ground forces. Flash struck out towards the top right where Kal had a quartet of expansions. Kal decided it was time to bring his carriers into the game, but instead of using them to save practically all of his mining bases, he attacked Flash's one base at 7. The result was that a group of tanks Flash had leftover from the midgame killed off four protoss mining bases, while mass carriers went to fight huge amount of 3-2 goliaths.

While Kal was briefly in denial about his situation, eventually he GG'd.

An absolutely awful game by Kal. His early observers gave him perfect knowledge of Flash's plans, so he made the correct move by aggressively expanded and teching. However his late game strategy was really, really bad. There was absolutely no need for those recalls. When Flash bottles himself up in a corner the correct play is to take expansions, make a lot of stargates and see that he stays in that corner. Arbiter energy and a big army can keep Flash busy until the money and the stargates kick in but Kal repeatedly threw away energy and units. It's inexplicable decision making and terrible BW in general. Decent play by Flash but Kal shouldn't have lost it.

Stork spawned in red at 7 while Hwasin got white at 5 on Eye of the Storm. Stork did a standard opening, gate gas core with a pylon in the choke to keep out pesky SCVs when walled with a zealot. Hwasin went barracks-command center before gas, Idra style. It's a very good build on macro maps like Eye of the Storm where the Protoss likes to 13 nex. Things went very poorly for Stork considering his opponent's build, as his probe scouted Hwasin's position last while his zealot waited idly for an SCV that never came. The openings couldn't have gone better for Hwasin, and despite Stork's fairly fast dragoon range he wouldn't be able to break a repaired bunker.

After three dragoons and range Stork took his own expansion but it was much later than Hwasin's whose supply count was already overtaking Stork at this early point in the game. Stork's only advantage was that Hwasin was playing completely blind and was forced to prepare defenses against DTs, reavers and every other possibility. As his three ranged dragoons besieged the bunker Stork slipped a zealot into Hwasin's main, which actually managed to sneak in an scv and marine kill. Unfortunately for Stork, Hwasin's scouting scv that had been hiding all along emerged to get a good look at Stork's base during the attack.

Back at Hwasin's base, his building sim city was causing unexpected problems. Hwasin's barracks was placed to prevent potential runbys, but also stopped his freshly produced marines from making it to his bunker. The marine Hwasin had sent to kill the aforementioned zealot had ended up dying, leaving the bunker undermanned. Stork attempted to take advantage of the situation with a dragoon break, but Hwasin was still able to defend. As tanks arrived Stork backed his dragoons up and went into the macro game while producing mass dragoons off two bases.

Hwasin planned to play a slow, defensive macro game, making a third CC in his natural to float to the 3:00 base. However, in his eagerness to mass pure tanks against Stork's large dragoon force, Hwasin had failed to lay any mines at his front, and his most forward detection was a turret at the choke to his main. That meant a single dark templar delayed the 3:00 expansion and also forced Hwasin to put down a bunch of turrets while his tanks fell back to his natural. In the meanwhile, Stork took a base for himself at 9:00.

After removing the DT, Hwasin tried to move his tanks forward to retake their previous position. But before he could even siege them, Stork swooped in for a dragoon break. Unlike Kal before him, Stork microed his dragoons extremely well, killing most of Hwasin's tanks and retreated before siege mode would cause him heavy losses. Although Stork lost the better part of his army as well, his high gateway count meant he could easily replace his low tech losses. Hwasin replied by sending out some vultures to harass, and despite being seen by Stork, he carefully lured the dragoons into the natural, feinted the wrong way, and opened a clear path for the vultures to run into Stork's main. Stork's dragoons ended up being trapped outside his own main by the mines, while six vultures got into the mineral line. Hwasin could have been able to do more damage if he had payed more attention to microing his vultures, but he still killed most the probes in Stork's natural, completely shut down mining there, and killed a few probes in the main alongside seven! dragoons which just ran straight into mines at the natural.

The silver lining for stork during this disaster was that Hwasin was so absorbed in his vulture micro that he had forgotten to maynard transfer scvs to his base at 3 for an immediate economic advantage. This left the two players around even on supply at the hundred mark. Stork started to build arbiters, while Hwasin took the standard counter-measures with mines and turrets in his main. To again contrast Stork with Kal, Stork knew Hwasin was well prepared and didn't attempt any futile recalls. Knowing his advantage was at best marginal Stork played defensively to hold onto that advantage, taking a fourth at 11 to try and stay one base ahead while massing cheap gateway units with arbiter support. He continued to poke around for a recall opportunity but again, unlike Kal, he sent an observer beforehand to check for mines. Upon seeing that 9 was covered with mines, Stork averted disaster by turning back one of his arbiters.

Hwasin displayed an incredible sense of timing by scanning probes heading up to the new expansion at 11 and immediately pouncing on them with vultures. He prepared to follow-up with a big push with his main army, but Stork's observers were nearby and saw that the terran force was becoming dangerously clumped up as they prepared to move out. Having wasted no energy on recalls Stork was able to immediately seize the opportunity by stasising nearly half of Hwasin's out-of-position army. Stork's own army was just able to break through the half-frozen Terran line with the aid of a constant stream of new units from his gateways. When the tanks came out of stasis, enough Protoss units were already there to clean them up. Although the battle was far from one-sided Hwasin was replenishing his army far more slowly than the cheap gateway units. During the melee, a few zealots got into the mineral line at 3 to compound Hwasin's misery. Stork continued to press the attack with a stream of reinforcements, and Hwasin was forced to GG after his defenses broke down.

This game was won by Stork's macro, scouting and an attack at just the right timing. Hwasin had a perfect build order advantage with his very fast expansion, and Stork was unable to delay it significantly given his starting build. The massacre of his probes and the dragoons that ran into mines to save them should have set him back even further. But by skipping high templars, reavers, shuttles etc and concentrating on perfect macro of the most cost efficient units Stork was able to stay in the game. Then all it took was one careless move by Hwasin for Stork to throttle the game. An excellent example of macro PvT at its best.

Fantasy spawned at 8 in yellow while Calm got green at 12 on Great Barrier Reef. Fantasy went for an 8 rax opening at his natural followed by a depot above his ramp to allow him to lift his rax and wall-in if necessary. It's a build Fantasy has used successfully in the past, not an all-in or a cheese opening, but one that still provides multiple options against a 12 hatch opponent without taking a severe economic hit. Unfortunately for Fantasy, Calm went 12 pool-gas-hatchery with a fast lair which prevented early bunker pressure. Even so, Fantasy used a clever trick to bother Calm by SCV drilling a marine behind the minerals at Calm's natural to delay the mining there. This was clearly planned out as it was the only marine Fantasy trained as he went for a fast gas while walling himself and getting factory tech.

Calm followed his fast lair with a very fast spire, while Fantasy went for a mixture of marines and valkyries. The fast factory was followed by a single vulture and a fast starport. Fantasy tried to micro his vulture into Calm's base, but Calm held his ramp well with a few zerglings before a sunken completed to finish off the vulture.

Eventually Calm's mutalisks hatched and finally rid him of the troublesome marine before flying off to see if they could return the favor. Fantasy's main was safely turreted with a few marines (lacking stim/range/medics) and valkryies to defend. Faced with an overwhelming anti-air defense, Calm immediately switched to lurker tech off two gas without stopping to make drones. With a very late academy and his valykries tied up at home, Fantasy had no idea whether Calm was teching or powering. In a moment of poor concentration from Fantasy, he lost a valykrie to Calm's stacked up mutas and scourge which freed Calm to mutalisk harass Fantasy's completely un-upgraded marine group.

Fantasy lost more marines than he could afford, as an unexpectedly fast zergling-lurker-mutalisk push crushed his ground force when he tried to float a new command center down to his natural. Calm had barely any economy, but it didn't matter as his army was already swarming into Fantasy's main. GG.

A clever build by Fantasy, with smooth transitions and a nice touch with the drilling marine. However, he played blind during a critical period of the game and Calm knew just how to abuse that. Fantasy's play was predictable, assuming his opponent would power and expand, so Calm was able to rush to 2 hat lurkers at the exact timing of Fantasy's expansion. Fantasy didn't execute badly but Calm just played him completely, identifying the build and hard countering it with ease. Fantasy either needs to scout better or use more standard builds.

Effort spawned at 7 in teal while go.go got red at 1 on Match Point. go.go sent out an scv on 7 supply to proxy an 8 rax in the middle of the map while Effort went for a build that I've never seen before: 11 hat, 11 gas, 10 pool. In a move reminiscent of Flash vs Jaedong on Heartbreak Ridge (game starts at around 9:00), Go.go's first two marines were able to snipe an overlord very early. Then with a few scvs, go.go went for a bunker rush. In a spectacular failure, go.go sloppily left an unmicroed marine to die against two drones, and had his rush delayed by drones on the ramp below effort's natural. By the time he reached Effort's natural there were already zerglings out.

Go.go retreated his marines to the middle and attempted to bunker expand with newly produced marines while continuing to pressure with the ones that were already out. In an attack born of pure delusional optimism go.go attacked Effort's natural with six marines that had no medics, range, stim or even full hp. The marines chased blindly after an overlord, only to trap themselves before getting torn to shreds by zerglings, killing just two drones for their trouble. Effort's mass zerglings were then free to counterattack while go.go's rax was still floating. Speed zerglings swarmed into go.go's natural and the game was over. GG.


There's a few fairly basic strategic lessons here. When you have seven marines total and your one barracks is floating around above some cliffs you should value those marines extremely highly. Also, when your opponent has no economy because he lost several of his first drones and hasn't been able to replace them because he's been pumping lings whereas you're about to be on two bases, you should be playing defensively. When both of these things happen at the same time, the one thing you should not do is take all your crucial defensive units and put them somewhere where they are completely exposed, very close by your opponent's overwhelming army. Effort was already semi-all in from the economic situation, and he was going to be forced to attack with his speedlings. Had go.go played defensively to protect his expansion, Effort would have had to attack a well protected position at go.go's natural. By handing Effort his marines on a silver platter, go.go effectively threw the game away.

Kwanro spawned at 1 in yellow while hyvaa got orange at 7 on Fighting Spirit. Both players scouted clockwise. Hyvaa started by going for overlord - gas - pool (both on 9) while Kwanro went for 12 pool, 11 gas, 12 hat, a defensive two base opening. Hyvaa teched to lair immediately upon pool completion and started pumping zerglings, going for standard one base play, while Kwanro delayed his lair to get faster zergling speed while pumping zerglings as well.

With a significantly later lair, Kwanro needed to either attack successfully with zerglings or start making spore colonies to defend against mutalisks. Neither player had an opportunity to really scout the other, but Hyvaa sensed the potential danger from two hatch speedlings and perched his zerglings at the top of his ramp.

hyvaa's mutalisks spawned first but Kwanro had made spore colonies in both his main and natural with time to spare, and had a good number of zerglings to hold against any frontal ground attack. As Hyvaa's mutalisks arrived, Kwanro's own spire finished and his scourge were on their way.

hyvaa then revealed his carefully planned strategy by doing something very cool. He used two carefully placed slow overlords to elevator his zerglings up Kwanro's cliff. The zerglings were far enough from the spore colony at the natural so that hyvaa's mutalisks could support them as they attacked the spore colony in the main. Kwanro had to send everything he had at this attack, using drones, lings and his first mutalisk to barely stop the attack, but not before the hp of both spore colonies were significantly reduced, down to 20 in the case of his natural spore.

hyvaa maintained air control and continued to harass, picking off the natural spore, doing a second ling drop and killing several drones. While Hyvaa was getting good value for a one hatch versus two hatch situation, attrition was wearing away at his mutalisks and eventually he was forced to retreat.

Despite Hyvaa's constant harassment, including yet another zergling drop to snipe a spore colony, Kwanro finally got his second gas up and running without taking critical drone losses in the process. It proved to be the game winner for Kwanro, as his resource advantage let him defeat hyvaa in the big mutalisk battle that decided the game. GG.

I loved hyvaa's build. I've never seen anything like it and it's clearly tailored to beat a standard expansion zvz build on Fighting Spirit. Very cool. Kwanro held it off nicely and it certainly didn't hurt that he opted to play so defensively after the opening. But I've got to give hyvaa points for creativity. Using a sunken colony instead of pure zergling may have been more effective. Worth watching.

Baby spawned in yellow at 7 on Eye of the Storm while Movie got orange at 5. Movie opted to 13 nex (very strong on Eye of the Storm) while Baby went for depot-refinery-rax-fact-depot rather than a build where you build two depots before factory. The potentially advantageous fast factory turned out to be for naught, as Baby's scouting SCV was going in the wrong direction to discover the 13 nexus in time. Movie built two gates before core to start heavy dragoon production, and had an unexpected boon when he killed the scouting SCV with zealots before it could see his fast expansion. This left Baby completely in the dark, and he ended up going for a safe, defensive mine expansion several minutes after Movie had already taken his own.

Baby's scouting vulture failed yet again to make it past Movie's wall of units, and by the time Baby was transferring SCVs to his natural, Movie was already three minutes ahead of him. Movie macroed up safely, teching to observers and making a lot of units to stay safe and slowly ride his advantage to victory. His four gateways against Baby's two factories was perhaps a bit excessive given that he had no intention of attacking soon, but perhaps it pays off to play safe when you're ahead. Baby sniped two probes trying to expand to 3 but Movie still got the expansion down eventually while teching to arbiters. Unfortunately for Movie, Baby took a quick third base at 6:00, going overkill on the defensive end with a building wall, floating buildings above it to take dragoon shots, alongside the standard array of mines, turrets and tanks. Movie's army composition was dragoon heavy at the time in order to deal with potential mass vulture harass, and had not yet switched into the mass speedlots to break a tank line, leaving Baby to take 6 with impunity. Movie still gave it a shot, using shuttle-zealot bombs with mass dragoons, but the wall across the top of the ramp stopped him.

Movie then tried to stay ahead by expanding to 1:00, but a vulture quickly shut it down while Baby's main army besieged Movie's main from across the cliff by 6:00. Movie was forced to fight here, and a badly placed stasis did not make life any easier against a very deep Terran position that could only be attacked from one direction. Although the centre of Eye of the Storm is excellent for PvT battles, the sides can be very easily camped out by Terran as they offer only one route of attack. Even though it was a tough spot to be in, Movie managed to push Baby back some distance, although he was unable to break through to the 6:00 base.

Baby pushed forwards again the moment stasis wore off, and again Movie was forced to engage in an unfavourable position. This time he realized the depth of the Terran formation and cast stasis further towards the back, but was still unable to move onto 6:00 after clearing away the immediate danger. At the same time Baby pulled out his signature dropship/vulture play with two tanks in a dropship teaming up with vultures that raced across the map, mining up the land route to 1 and sieging the cannons. Although Movie killed the tanks with a DT, it was too late to save the nexus. Movie countered with a recall into Baby's natural which killed a lot of scvs, but was unable to take down the commend center due to the rapidly arriving reinforcements.

Movie expanded to 12:00, but again Baby's dropship appeared from nowhere to drop tanks and wipe out the cannons while nearby vultures mined up the land routes. As Baby attacked 12, Movie recalled into Baby's natural again, this time with even less success, putting the score at two lost bases for two failed recalls. However Movie's main army was still very large, and a third recall, this time on 6, had more success. Baby was finding himself stretched thin from his relentless dropship/vulture aggression, and now arbiters were threatening him on several fronts. Movie's forces were able to penetrate the defences at 6 and almost killed the cc before it floated away.

Movie's massive unit count came at a price, and now both his main and natural were mined out. Baby's situation wasn't so rosy either, with a severely depleted SCV count and a temporarily abandoned 9:00 base in order to create a more compact defensive position. So with tenuous map control Movie double expanded to 1 and 2, hoping to hold onto map control long enough to regain momentum through the income from his new bases. Another recall at 6 failed but managed to dodge the minefield well enough to lure some mines into the scvs.

Baby retaliated with a massive vulture attack at 2 killing every probe there, but again suffered an unfortunate friendly-fire mine which killed five vultures. Another recall at 9 succeeded in delaying mining at the expense of several units to mines but was unable to kill the cc. Movie went for rapid recalls, attacking again at 6:00. The first arbiter was immediately EMPed by the fast-reacting Baby but the second one got through. This time 6:00 broke, and Baby briefly lost control of his expansion and almost lost the cc again. Movie followed up with yet another recall at 6:00 to finally pick off the CC and force Baby down to just one expansion. Although Baby continued his dropship vulture play with success, he lacked the units to make it truly damaging without weakening the defenses at 9 and 6. He did however perform another successful of his tank drop + vulture attacks at 1, killing every probe.

Although Movie was on three running bases to Baby's one they were actually equal in supply, a testament to just how many probes Movie had lost. Movie stopped his frontal attacks, defending and waiting to consolidate his economic advantage. Baby flew his main CC to 6 to make it two bases against three, and actually pulled ahead on supply at 122 to 119. However Movie had a lot of gas and was kept it spending it on seemingly limitless arbiters, and able to push into bases at will by the sheer force of stasis field.

Baby was still just ahead on supply at 160 but the game was drifting away from him. With the only untaken expansions remaining at the top left corner, the game would go to whoever could take it. That forced Baby into his first aggressive move into the centre of the map after 30 minutes of just venturing out with only dropships and speed vultures. Baby hugged his side of the map as much as he could but he had to spread his forces in the open to avoid being cut off and destroyed. Movie pushed in from the centre and 12 simultaneously, this time supporting his army with not only stasis but a lot of ht with storm. Although both armies were pretty much destroyed, the 12:00 base was untouched. In the meanwhile, Movie had successfully transitioned to carriers in what would be a game winning move. Baby was under-prepared to fight against air, and the carriers cleaned up the 9:00 base with ease. With 6 almost mined out Baby's only option was to counterattack. Despite doing a reasonable amount of damage to the 2:00 base and downing half the Protoss carrier fleet, Baby's last ditch attack was eventually thwarted. GG.

A very nice game. Baby delayed his second armoury and his starport significantly to rush out a quick third base while macroing hard which left him able to push while expanding. He abused the terrain brutally, using the narrow route between the bases to take on Movie's much larger army with reasonable efficiency. His vulture/dropship play was as good as ever although Movie dealt with it better than I expected. For his part Movie macroed like a monster and showed decent decision making, applying pressure at the right times in the right places. Baby was a formidable opponent and Movie probably would have lost without the most favourable opening imaginable but he played decently from there. Definitely worth watching.

Pure spawned in green at 12 while Zero got 5 in purple on Great Barrier Reef. Zero opted for a overpool gas while Pure got a lucky first try scout and forged at the appropriate time. After mining 100 gas Zero took drones off to get zergling speed and deny protoss scouting. Both players expanded at roughly the same time. Zero quickly put drones back on gas and teched to lair, faking an expansion towards 9 for the benefit of Pure's scout probe, then moved his drone back after killing the probe. In the meanwhile, Zero was actually getting a hydralisk den alongside his lair in his main, while Pure was still unaware as his first corsair was yet to be completed.

Pure used three zealots at his front to draw the zerglings away, trying to get a scout probe out, but was still unable to get past the superbly microed zerglings. Pure's corsair finally came out and saw Zero's lack of drones and the hydra den, and Pure appeared to react correctly by throwing down a half dozen cannons at his natural. However, that wasn't the full extent of Zero's strategy. Two strategically placed overlords at 11 slowly dropped a hydralisk force into Pure's defenceless main.

At this point Pure had several options. By pumping corsairs and DTs, he could have wiped out Zero's economy while holding on to his own natural with his mass cannons. Or, he could try cannon his main, and rely on DTs to buy time. He chose the second option and was able to briefly regain control of his main long enough for a cannon to complete. Unfortunately he was far too careless with his DTs, and they strayed within overlord sight range and were promptly killed, followed by the main nexus soon after.

Having failed to save his main, Pure tried to use his Sair/DT to harass Zero but it was already too late. The DT counter was blocked and Pure GGed out.

A fairly standard cheese. Not unbeatable and I think if Pure had taken either route he could have potentially won. But he was caught off guard, which led to his poor reactions which are entirely his fault as a player. The best players adjust effectively when pressured in an unfamiliar situation. Pure failed to do so, and I've got to blame him for the loss.

fOrGG spawned in yellow at 1 while Shine got teal at 7 on Match Point. Shine opened by scouting for a proxy rax cheese and then once he was confident it was safe proceeded to 12 hat at his natural. He followed it with 11 pool 10 gas which was unfortunate because fOrGG just went for a blind 13 cc. Although Shine's overlord saw it fairly early he didn't really have many cheesey rush options open to him. Instead he simply rushed to lair and pumped drones while fOrGG was still left in the dark.

fOrGG hadn't scouted at all and bunkered with two rax, hoping to survive whatever was coming by sheer force of macro. Delaying his factory as standard, fOrGG added a quick academy which would correctly counter Shine's fast spire. For his part Shine expanded twice to 9 and 11, trying to regain the economic advantage against his opponent. Although fOrGG couldn't get a scout scv near Shine's natural he did scout the expansion at 11 and his early two rax allowed him to push out with a quickly produced mnm force. A scan revealed the spire, and although fOrGG knew enough muta would soon emerge to beat his mnm, he continued to press with his units. This attack wasn't suicide, it was a defensive play first used regularly by Flash about six months ago where instead of rushing turrets and turtling up against muta, the Terran throws away his first mnm to pin down the very first batch of mutas which lack any zergling support. Without zerglings the muta must focus their full attention on fighting the mnm, which gives the Terran free reign to tech and macro further, skipping the timing window where muta harass is the most dangerous.

The trick worked and although Shine's muta were just about able to get the upper hand over the initial force of mnm they were unable to harass at all, instead forced to deal with the next wave mnm that had been produced. While Shine defended, he went for heavy drone production on his four bases while rushing to hive and getting carapace upgrades both on air and ground. He brought his hatchery count up to six, and with the adrenal glands upgrade complete, focused heavily on zerglings with mutalisks. fOrGG's delayed tech and rax heavy opening worked against him as late science vessels left him unable to do anything about the mutalisks. By the time fOrGG had a push with science vessels ready, Shine was already using defilers and double upgraded cracklings and guardians.

It was evident that fOrGG had scanned this though and his push came with a heavy compliment of firebats which neutralized the cracklings and dark swarm combo that was intended to delay Terran's progress. Shine had cleverly identified a timing window in which he could hold up a massive Terran push with just a few swarms and lings while teching to ultralisks, but fOrGG knew this as well and countered it with a pre-emptive firebat switch. His push broke through into 11 and killed a lot of drones although failed to take down the hatchery.

While attacking fOrGG expanded to 3 and 5, and despite a massive plague combined with some excellent science vessel sniping, he still had a big enough force left to hold the middle. With three bases with excellent scv saturation and a fourth base coming soon, fOrGG was producing a lot of units to play with and was able to send reinforcements around the top of the map. They prevented a Zerg expansion at 12 and killed the drones at 11, only failing to kill the hatchery out of inattention. Eventually fOrGG's ball reached a critical mass, large enough to simply move around swarms at all but the tightest choke points, and when he moved into Shine's high ground Shine could simply not resist. The Terran death ball broke through into 11 and killed it, forcing a GG.



This was a throwback to what fOrGG is all about. Massive attacks and by the time each one falls a bigger one is looming. Shine never attacked; from the very first mnm delaying action against mutalisks, Shine was always trying to keep up with fOrGG's attacks. He obviously couldn't ignore them and he couldn't really delay them either, so he was forced by the constant aggression to compete in a macro war against a Terran with equal bases, which is a poor situation when that Terran is fOrGG. There was one moment where he could have delayed one of fOrGG's pushes, at a timing where Shine had swarm and fOrGG didn't have much irradiate. And that is what made fOrGG's pre-emptive switch to firebats so good. Shine was relying on that one timing window to delay the terran before he could re-organise, expand and counterattack. fOrGG stole that timing from him, limiting Shine's economy and overwhelming him.

Group A
1st: Flash 2-1
2nd: Kal 2-1
3rd: Kwanro 1-2
4th: hyvaa 1-2

Group B
1st: Movie 2-1
2nd: BaBy 2-1
3rd: Stork 1-2
4th: Hwasin 1-2

Group C

Round One
Calm<Great Barrier Reef> Pure
Calm <Eye of the Storm> fantasy
fantasy <Match Point> Pure
Three way tie

Round Two
Pure <Match Point> Calm
Pure <Eye of the Storm> fantasy

Pure qualifies for Korean Air OSL quarterfinals.


Group D

Round One
go.go <Match Point> Shine
go.go <Eye of the Storm> EffOrt
EffOrt <Great Barrier Reef> Shine
Three way tie

Round Two
Shine <Eye of the Storm> go.go
EffOrt <Match Point> Shine - This game was re-played due to a hardware error
EffOrt <Great Barrier Reef> go.go
Three way tie

Round Three
Shine <Great Barrier Reef> go.go
Shine <Eye of the Storm> EffOrt
EffOrt <Match Point> go.go
Three way tie

Round Four
Shine <Match Point> go.go
go.go <Eye of the Storm> EffOrt
EffOrt <Great Barrier Reef> Shine

Effort qualifies for Korean Air OSL quarterfinals.

1st: ZerO 3-0
2nd: Pure 1-2 - won tie breaker
4th: Fantasy 1-2
4th: Calm 1-2

Group B
1st: fOrGG 3-0
2nd: EffOrt 1-2 - won tie breaker
4th: Shine 1-2
4th: go.go 1-2