A 5 comes from a top class player playing excellently so I'll never give most progamers 5s simply because they're not capable of it. They need to show strength in all areas of their play with no real mistakes. Flash is the benchmark by which I judge a 5, it's him playing well.
A 4 is great play, strategically sound, if not innovative, with no big mistakes. Say, Flash playing his average game or Kal playing a good game.
A 3 is a standard game played at a skill level sufficient for me to not question how they ever passed courage. In no way impressive or innovative but competent. If they show they know what they're doing and don't embarrass themselves they get a 3.
A 2 is when one or more aspects of their play fail to live up to my expectations of what a progamer should be able to do. If a player messes up his mutalisk vs scourge micro in ZvZ that'll push him down from a 3 to a 2, even if the rest is on par.
A 1 is where their play fails in multiple areas. Significant micro mistakes, poor macro, bad tactics and the wrong strategy are all worthy of a 1. If I get the idea they just don't know what they're doing they get a 1. It's actually quite hard to stay in a game long enough to showcase a real 1 unless your opponent is also playing at a similar level so they usually go together.

Whatever I feel like.

Flash spawned at 4 in purple while Baby got 12 in blue on Great Barrier Reef. Both took the macro route again with rax-CC builds like last week, and again Flash placed his CC directly at his natural while Baby opted to float it out a short distance. They continued to mirror each other with a quick starport, but Flash took his second gas faster and hid a second starport while Baby opted for a faster academy and an ebay. Flash's dual starport wraith harass netted several scv kills but Baby's wraiths and a goliath eventually limited the damage.

Flash took his back expansion at 6 while adding dropships, while Baby set up a contain outside of Flash's natural. Flash had dropships out though and took to the skies, the starting positions favoring him with a short aerial distance to Baby's natural and back expansions at 3:00. Flash tried a big drop behind Baby's natural with wraith's to escort and spot for his pure tanks. Baby's own tank line fended off the attack, keeping Flash's tanks just out of range of hitting the mining SCVs. In the meanwhile, Baby took the back expansion at 11, while Flash took the expansion at 10.

Flash loaded up his dropships and flew out to his 10:00 expansion to lay siege to 11 from behind the mineral line, but Baby had scouted it and used his wraiths to kill the two dropships just after they unloaded the tanks. Flash's wraiths arrived in time to stop the tanks from being killed by wraiths, it had bought Baby the time to secure his mineral line with tanks.

Baby expanded to the 8:00 main and his mineral natural, while Flash expanded to 3 and 7 mineral base. Flash attempted to attack 8 with his dropships, but Baby intercepted them with wraiths and killed two of them. Still, Flash's remaining forces forced Baby to float the CC to the 8:00 natural, and the two players made a small stand-off line between the 8:00 main and natural. Although Baby held the centre of the map with his containment and large army, it was of limited value on a semi-island map like Great Barrier Reef because his commitment to defending his expansions allowed Flash to expand much more easily. Still, Baby was managing to keep the base count equal, although he was constantly on the defensive.

Baby finally made some big moves, using his control of the center to lay siege on edges of Flash's main from the low-ground. In rapid succession, he tank harassed across the mineral line at 10, blocked a major drop attempt behind the 1:00 natural, and shut down Flash's at 7 with tanks behind the minerals, suddenly taking a mineral (but not gas, as none of the geysers on GBR can be hit from behind the minerals) advantage. With Baby's forces scattered from defending and attacking, Flash broke the contain outside his natural with a concentrated attack, opening up control of the middle to anyone. Baby simultaneously moved his ground forces up to secure the 8:00 main, while dropping behind the 3:00 minerals to disrupt the mining. After a heated series of drops, Baby ended up with the position behind 3:00. In a minute of action Baby had shut down mineral collection at all but one of Flash's expansions, and evened up the supply count.

Soon to be out-macroed, Flash immediately gathered his army for an aggressive move. His tanks moved in the direction of Baby's base, but before we could find out their final destination they crossed paths with Baby's dropships that had been heading to 10:00 for another attack. In a spur of the moment decision, Baby decided to immediately unload his dropships, which ended up being a mistake. Flash's army had been slightly numerically superior, and with their superior positioning won a small victory before being halted by tanks further ahead. Starved for minerals, Flash floated his main CC down to his mineral only natural, while Baby took the back expansion at 2:00.

Still finding himself behind, Flash gathered his ground forces and dropships together for a major assault, again in the direction of Baby's main. This time, Baby was aware and tried to scramble to defend, but found too many of his troops in the wrong place, scattered across the map to defend or attack expansions. Flash crushed Baby's initial defense and looked to lay siege to Baby's main from the low ground. However, Baby defended impressively, returning his large harassing force at 2:00 via dropships, and dropped on top of Flash's army just as it was being elevatored up into the 12:00 main. Unfazed, Flash continued to press the initiative and was immediately attacking again with a drop at 10:00, simultaneously freeing his expansion there while stopping the mining at Baby's 8:00 natural.

In a critical moment, Baby's dropships encountered Flash's ground army moving up yet again to attack 12:00. Having played so well till that point, Baby ended up committing the same mistake he did before, only this time with lasting consequences. On reflex, Baby tried to drop on top of Flash's troops, but Flash had already reacted by sieging his tanks and focus firing down two dropships. Almost instantly, a 20 supply gap opened up. Flash reacted immediately, taking out both Baby's mineral only expansion, and killing off the 2:00 expansion while regaining mining at 3:00.

With many of the earlier expansions now mined out, the 20 supply gap quickly ballooned out of control into a 60 supply gap, and Baby GGed out as Flash launched a final attack on his main.

A very nice game by both players. Baby tried to take Flash straight-up again and played the same distinctive low dropship style as before. On a semi island map like Great Barrier Reef the lack of dropships makes central map control worthless and makes expansions very vulnerable to harass across the mineral lines. I think Baby was wrong to play it his way but he still gave a very impressive showing, keeping up with Flash for half an hour and tearing Flash back down every time Flash tried to get ahead. Ultimately Flash was able to expand faster along the bottom of the map, partly due to the map layout (harass is easier anticlockwise) and partly because of his air control and that economic advantage eventually added up. But an excellent game either way.

Kwark's Player Ratings
Flash: 5
Baby: 5

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 4.5 of 5
This was very similar to their first game last week, where the two players broke from the TvT mold to play a very fast paced, aggressive style of game. It was a close game down the stretch, where you weren't sure who the winner was until the very last minutes.

Flash won the series 2-0

Flash won the series 2-0

Pure spawned in orange at 11 while Movie got blue at 1 on Fighting Spirit. Both used standard openings, but Pure scouted Movie on his first try while Movie's scouting probe went in the wrong direction. By the time Movie's probe reached Pure's base there was a zealot walling the ramp.

Movie went for a quick citadel as he did last week, a worse choice on a ramp map like Fighting Spirit than it was on Match Point where speedlot and storm transitions are king. Pure opened 1 gate robo, and although Movie managed to scout it he continued to tech to templar archives, perhaps thinking he was committed.

Then, in a key moment in the game, Pure used his scout probe which he'd hidden earlier to build a hidden expansion at 5 (a build used by Bisu against Guemchi on this very map a few months prior).

Kwark's Conjecture
Taking a hidden expansion PvP puts you 400 minerals down in the short term. However on a ramp map you can defend with a 400 mineral deficit so the worst that will happen is you'll be contained. The correct play from the point of view of the aggressor in this situation (map control, contain, no observers and unaware of the hidden expansion) is to contain, expand, and then pull back after you feel like your 'faster' expansion is starting to kick in. This is if the opponent could be doing some funky stuff that you need to play safe against. The advantages of maintaining a ramp contain are outweighed by the disadvantages of having your army on the wrong side of the map when two speed-shuttles hit your base. Rather than risk a game winning advantage of a faster expansion while preventing the opponent's expansion with a contain, the aggressor pulls back and camps, allowing his opponent to take a slightly later counter-expansion. That is exactly what happened here: Movie went on the offense, expanded and pulled back to allow Pure to counter-expand. Normally it's good play because your faster expansion is a big enough advantage to let you play defensively, but in this situation it ended up being the worst possible choice because the weird thing Movie should have been preparing for wasn't a drop or a proxy robo, it was economic cheese. It's another of those beautiful situations where the reason Pure's build worked was because Movie could be trusted to reliably follow the metagame.

Despite scouting the fast robo Movie still tried dts instead of ht, ignoring the fact that dts don't work vs obs while ht work really well vs reavers. Movie tried to break Pure's later expansion at the natural with a few dragoons and some DTs, but blocking pylons and reavers kept it secure. The weird thing is that Pure was able to go reavers without shuttles because of Movie's tech choices, if Movie had played this standard with a reaver+shuttle opening then he could hypothetically have broken Pure's natural. He certainly had more money to spend than Pure whose expansion at 5 was extremely undersaturated, it was simply that his army was very inefficient against a pylon + reaver + dragoon defense. Movie attacked again with twelve dragoons against six dragoons and a reaver with a battery, which shield recharge ended up being critical as Movie failed to break the expansion again.

Even though he had been unable to stop his opponents natural expansion, Movie was still thinking he was ahead with his own earlier expansion giving him more money and a higher gateway count. He completed his tech with zealot speed and observers and moved out onto the map while trying to expand at 3. Unfortunately for him Pure's DTs delayed attempts at taking 3 twice, so Movie tried to build a nexus at the 5:00 natural instead. At this point, Movie finally became aware of Pure's hidden expansion, which had cannons and plenty of probes mining by now.

Movie immediately divided his forces, sending a few units to wear down 5 while his main army got into position to assault Pure if he tried to move out and save his expansion. However Pure's DT saved his 5 o'clock expansion, while Movie was forced into a hasty attack from his suddenly disadvantageous situation. Movie microed competently, getting his archons and zeals mixed up in Pure's army while Pure carelessly lost two reavers but stormed nicely. Movie won the battle, but it didn't really matter as the resource advantage had kicked in for Pure and his reinforcements arrived quickly and in large numbers. Movie stayed in the game for a bit longer, running around the map and trying to belatedly take the 3:00 expansion, but he couldn't attempt to face Pure had on. Pure had solidified his advantage even further by taking the 9:00 expansion, and eventually he attacked the 1:00 natural with his superior army and ended Movie's OSL dream. GG.

Kwark's Player Ratings
Movie: 2
Pure: 3


And here's where we saw it 5 months ago. I know I don't give Pure much credit, and I know he talked about why it's a good build in his interview, but I spent a season doing this build on icc so I don't feel he deserves too much credit here. It's a good build for getting wins from better players (which is why I'm so familiar with it), he used it and it worked perfectly, netting him the win. I will however take points from Movie for trying a dt opening again despite the fact that his reaver micro is some of the best in progaming, and some more points for trying dts instead of ht against a robo opening and a few for not scouting the hidden expansion because the build isn't that rare.
Sorry Movie but you let me down.

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 2.5** of 5
A few key moments early on decided the game. Movie's early attack failed, while he also failed to learn about Pure's hidden expansion. Once Pure's resource advantage kicked in, it was an inevitable loss for Movie.

**Notable Play: Pure used a very audacious strategy, but according to his interview it was well calculated. Pure said his build looks perfectly normal to an opponent, and he claimed a maphack would be the only way to suspect a hidden expansion at that point in time.

Pure won the series 2-0

Pure won the series 2-0

Effort spawned at 5 in brown while Zero got blue at 11 on Match Point. They mirrored each other with blind 12 hatch - 11 pool - 10 gas openings which are fairly good on Match Point because the expansion is protected by a ramp and terrain that favours defending zerglings. They both pumped drones as much as they could and teched to lair at the same time with overlords telling them they were mirroring. Then when their economies reached the point where they could sustain two hatchery production, they both simultaneously transitioned into pure zerglings rather than waste larva on excess drones.

Effort ran a speedling into Zero's base and saw larva being saved for muta, which meant there would be lack of zerglings he might exploit. Seeing his opportunity Effort delayed his muta by pumping another wave of speedlings and lured Zero's lings out into the open for a slaughter. Zero was forced to morph many of his own saved larva into zerglings to defend, and although he managed to lose very few of his drones with excellent micro, he took a big economic hit from not mining and fell behind in the mutalisk count.

Both players returned to a mirror with safe play, focusing solely on mutalisk and scourge production. However Effort simply had more mutalisks (and still had better micro vs scourge) and as their mutalisks clashed he came out on top. GG.

Zero could have held that attack with good positioning, despite having fewer zerglings. His problem was he let Effort lure him out while at his most vulnerable. When you have six larva in the bank and mutalisks won't arrive for another twenty seconds or so is the worst time to get ambitious. I guess Effort's play was decent and Zero's wasn't awful up to that one mistake. But that's ZvZ for you.

Kwark's Player Ratings
Effort: 3
Zero: 2

WaxAngel's Match Rating:2.5 of 5
Your run of the mill ZvZ.

Effort won the series2-0.

Effort won the series 2-0

Kal spawned in orange at 1 while fOrGG got blue at 11 on Eye of the Storm. Kal went for a 13 nex (and this is the perfect map for it) while fOrGG did a standard depot rax gas, scouting anticlockwise and finding his opponent first. He immediately took an scv off gas, added a factory as soon as possible, rallied marines to Kal's natural, and got sight of the natural minerals to send scvs as well.

Kal reacted badly. Sending a unit out of its way to sneak a look at the mineral line is a fairly transparent tell and even if he didn't see the marine scv coming, Kal should have reacted better when he saw the bunker going up. The bunker started building before the marines arrived, and had Kal immediately used his probes to access to the bunker (think July drone micro) he could have greatly limited the impact. He could have also just abandoned his natural immediately, where the lost mining time, awkward tech choices and the obsolete units would have probably put the players in an even situation. Instead Kal chose to try and defend his natural with probes, but not enough probes to succeed. Three probes took on some marines, failed and died while the bunker still got filled to force Kal to give up the nexus.

Kal retook his natural with dragoons but couldn't scout because of the threat of mines, and was forced to re-expand blind or face giving Terran a faster expansion. Meanwhile fOrGG simply made a second factory and squeezed out units for a quick 3 tank and vulture push which promptly killed Kal, who was caught without observers or dragoon range. There was some bad dragoon against mine micro too. GG.

13 nex getting scouted first is unfortunate but the difference between a 13 nex and a cheese is that it should be playable even if scouted. You can either abandon it or defend it, the middle route is losing both the nexus and the defending units. fOrGG scouted Kal first, knew what was up and executed him. Very solid by him, what he did showed a clear strategy of how to deal with the situation and he played it nicely. Kal for his part showed confusion and poor micro, although retaking his natural was an acceptable gamble in the context of playing blind.

Kwark's Player Ratings
fOrGG: 4
Kal: 2

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 3** of 5
A short, sweet match where fOrGG's great planning and execution in a sequence of early attacks easily won him the game.

**Notable Play: While not the most innovative of strategies, fOrGG's delayed 2-factory attack after a bunker rush was an interesting counter to 12 nexus. Mentioned because dealing with fast expanding Protoss TvP seems to be a topic of frustration for many TL readers.

fOrGG spawned in red at 12 while Kal got green at 8 on Great Barrier Reef. Kal opted for another 13 nex which I guess is one way of cutting down on practice time and using it more efficiently than your opponent. I'm a fan of any game defining opening play simply because you know it's coming and can practice for it whereas your opponent does not. fOrGG opened depot rax gas and kept three scvs on gas, opting for a blind two fact, scouting Kal second. Kal was unable to scout fOrGG because of his wall and was placed in a difficult position as the terrain on Great Barrier Reef isn't really ideal for playing vs blind, especially when a FE delays your observers (one gas late while being forced to pump two gateway dragoons plus range makes robo impossible, anything normally countered by robo tech is very strong against 13 nex).

fOrGG started a starport the moment he scouted the 13 nex and pushed out with three tanks and some vultures shortly afterwards which was immediately scouted by Kal's early warning probe. A line of pylons bought time and stopped vultures running up to lay mines at the feet of dragoons, stopping the two fact from overwhelming him.

That's Kal's entire army, the dragoons are all half dead and the shuttle is empty. That mine exploded doing no damage. This game was so intense and so close that a place in the OSL semifinals came down to something that small.

Kal's mass of gateway units held the front while he barely spared a couple of dragoons for the possibility of a drop. So when a dropship with four vultures arrived Kal was prepared. He had spotting pylons around the edge of his base, and a core behind the mineral line trapped the vultures into a corner as they attempted to run around causing havoc. The drop was quickly cleaned up. A simultaneous push at the front saw Kal show some excellent dragoon micro, sniping the mines, using a loaded shuttle to pull mines back towards fOrGG's units and to disrupt tank fire. Despite being under tremendous pressure Kal's multitasking pulled through and with his teching done he was free to devote his full energy to pumping units. In an extremely close meat grinder in which at several points probes had to join in and lay their lives down Kal held, if only just barely.

Another vulture drop killed a lot of probes while another simultaneous push at the front forced probes to defend. A wraith got involved to snipe the shuttle and at one point Kal completely lost control of his natural. However his waves of units were simply larger than fOrGG's and he quickly retook it. Another drop hit the main, killing yet more probes, followed by another at the natural. However fOrGG no longer had the forces to kill dragoons or to really hurt Kal in a straight fight, he'd lost that battle, and as Kal's army grew the harass did less and less damage. With two nexus pumping probes Kal wasn't taking any long-term damage and fOrGG was still on one base.

More attempts at dropship play were discovered by an observer and fOrGG was forced to siege his tanks on the high ground and take his natural. An attempt at reaver harass was shut down when a wraith killed the shuttle forcing the reaver and dragoon to land behind fOrGG's natural but as fOrGG cleaned them up (with some nice dropship vs scarab micro) Kal used the distraction to break in with a bulldog. Three tanks missing from fOrGG's defence and some zealot bombs left him exposed and although he was able to control the situation he was getting behind.

On the offence and with total map control Kal took his mineral only below his cliff and expanded again to the 4 main. Another bulldog did yet more damage, not killing fOrGG but holding him in place, inflicting some damage and more importantly, keeping the momentum firmly in Kal's hands.
fOrGG tried to take his mineral only but with speedzealots out Kal was able to harass fOrGG's natural and then smash into his third with well positioned troops. As fOrGG tried to deal with the attacks on several fronts he lost scvs and shortly afterwards, control of his third. With fOrGG's supply staying static Kal was growing out of control, expanding, adding gateways, pumping speedshuttles. fOrGG could only hold the tide for so long and was eventually forced to GG.

An excellent game. fOrGG was unfortunate to choose to 2 fac against a 13 nex on a map where 1 gate robo is more common. For the last few weeks Kal has spent every PvT he's played going gateway core zealot robo dragoon with the zealot denying scouting and dragoon range really late. That reaver rush is great against Flash's FE builds but dies horribly to a 2 fac. On a semi island map like Great Barrier Reef fOrGG's 2 fac was an excellent choice and would have been an instant build order win over Kal's standard play. I think this was a great example of fOrGG being aware of Kal's style and Kal being aware that fOrGG was aware, hard countering the hard counter. Still, fOrGG showed some great multitasking and really made the build almost work, despite being hard countered. That scrappy battle for Kal's natural really could have gone either way, if fOrGG had been allowed to set up a position for a second Kal couldn't have retaken it. Both players played extremely well with no notably strategic, tactical or micro mistakes. I'm not sure if they were at Flash level simply because it's hard to directly compare when he's not involved but the game was so good I feel compelled to give them 5s.

Kwark's Player Ratings
ForGG: 9 of 10.
Kal: 9 of 10.
(Kwark refuses to use non-integers in his rating system)

WaxAngel's Match Rating: 3.5 of 5
fOrGG brought another all-in strategy to the table, but Kal was much better prepared this time. Nonetheless, fOrGG's constant aggression made the game very exciting, even though it was clear that after a point, the game was going rapidly downhill for Terran.