Wednesday, August 11th

Bisu < Flight-Dreamliner > EffOrt
ZerO < Eye of the Storm > Hyuk
Jaedong < Grand Line SE > Pure
free < Polaris Rhapsody > Stork

Friday, August 13th

Action < Flight-Dreamliner > Leta
HiyA < Eye of the Storm > Flash
Hydra < Grand Line SE > Sea
Fantasy < Polaris Rhapsody > Kal


Standings

Group A
Action: 2-1
Leta: 2-1
Effort: 1-2
Bisu: 1-2

Group B
Flash: 3-0
Zero: 2-1
Hiya: 1-2
Hyuk: 0-3

Group C
Sea: 3-0
Jaedong: 2-1
Hydra: 1-2
Pure: 0-3

Group D
Free: 3-0
Stork: 2-1
Fantasy: 1-2
Kal: 0-3

by Kwark

Bisu spawned at 3 in blue while effort got 6 in brown on Dreamliner. Bisu went for a standard pylon at natural scout while effort overpooled, both very standard on this map. Bisu probe harassed with a series of nice moving shots like a range impaired vulture and eventually brought it down. Rather than immediately go for six zerglings effort replaced his drone while Bisu fast expanded with the more economic forge nexus cannon. effort used two zerglings to chase down the probe while spending the rest of his money on drones and double expanding to his natural and to 8 while taking gas.

Bisu responded by teching hard with just one cannon, taking his second gas early and powering hard. effort killed the scout probe and stopped a second one getting up the ramp with a wave of zerglings which finished speed as they reached Bisu's natural but could do nothing because of a wall of zealots and a dragoon. effort did the standard three hatch spire five hatch hydra build while Bisu built a second quick stargate with his high gas income. A robotics at his natural left no doubt what his build would be.

effort's scourge scouted everything and he immediately switched to mass hydralisks with speed overlords, stopping scourge and never making a single mutalisk. The five hatcheries created a big hydralisk army in seconds and the one gateway simply hadn't the units to respond.

Bisu was relying on a reaver to defend himself in this timing and didn't have one, instead having built a shuttle. As the wall broke a reaver popped out and was killed by the hydralisks already inside.

GG.

Obviously you can't build a reaver before the support bay so that's all downtime in the robo and normally I'd be all in favour of using it for a shuttle. But the build time for a shuttle is longer than the build time for a support bay so although you get a reaver in a shuttle faster by doing it in the order Bisu did it takes longer to get a reaver out. effort hit him in that very narrow timing window and took an easy win. Another thing to note is that a robotics at the natural next to the wall is great for reaver first because of the very slow movement speed but is extremely exposed for shuttle first because it's right at the front. In that respect Bisu chose the worst of both options. Still, as much as I love to hate on Bisu you have to give effort an awful lot of credit here. Everything he did was standard up to his lair scouting. He used those scourge to read the situation and then understood exactly what Bisu was doing and how to beat it. He was sufficiently familar with the intricacies of the build to extrapolate that there would be a narrow timing window a few minutes before it happened and then morphed his own build around hitting it. While it may not make great viewing that really is some impressive Starcraft.

Bisu 2/5
effort 5/5
Game 3/5

by WaxAngel

Zero started out at top right while Hyuk started below him at bottom right on Eye of the Storm. Both players sent their initial overlords the correct way, which met halfway between the bases. Without even bothering to drone scout, both players went for perfect mirror builds, doing 11 pool – gas- expansions.

The two players diverged just as their overlords arrived in their opponent’s mains. Hyuk used his first 100 gas to get zergling speed, while Zero opted to go for a faster lair. Zero realized he would have to play defensive for the time being, immediately putting down a creep colony as his expansion hatchery, while Hyuk rallied his zerglings towards Zero’s base.

Although his zergling speed had yet to finish, Hyuk noticed he had a slight numerical advantage with his ten zerglings over Zero’s eight. With Zero’s sunken colony not yet complete, Hyuk decided this would be his window to attack. Zero reacted very well, and he goaded Hyuk into a prolonged zergling dance where both players moved their zerglings back and forth to try and initiate combat in a favorable concave. Realizing the sunken colony would soon be complete, Hyuk forced himself to commit to battle in a slightly disadvantageous position while he still held the numerical advantage. Unfortunately for Hyuk, his two zergling advantage didn’t hold up against superior position, and he was forced to withdraw after a brief exchange.


Both players were still in very similar situations, but the sunken colony allowed Zero to skimp on zerglings and produce enough drones to comfortable go for two hatch mutalisks. From his slightly trailing position, Hyuk decided he would go all-or-nothing, and went straight zerglings from his hatcheries to try and break through Zero’s front at spire completion timing.


Great building placement and zergling positioning meant Hyuk never had a chance at piercing Zero’s defenses, and the game went rapidly downhill for the T1 Zerg. When his first four scourge failed to do any significant damage to Zero’s initial three mutalisks, the game was effectively over. With about a 200~300 gas advantage in air units, Zero flew over to Hyuk’s natural to collect the GG after a short and one-sided aerial sortie.

Overall rating: 3/10
It was a typical one-sided ZvZ, nothing to say.

Player Ratings
Zero: 7/10
Good building placement, good zergling micro, decent mutalisk micro. Overall good play without mistakes.

Hyuk: 4/10
To be honest I don’t know ZvZ well enough to speculate on whether or not Hyuk’s decision to go mass zergling had a chance of success or not. When it failed, there really wasn’t much left for him to do.

by Motbob

On Grand Line SE, Pure spawned at the bottom left with Jaedong at the top left. At six minutes into the game, Jaedong did a ling run-by, which is normally pretty hard to do but I guess Pure is just that bad! Jaedong saw everything Pure was doing (sair/speedlot) and calmly transitioned from 3 hatch spire into 6 hatch... sunken colony? He had the main at the nat at the top left and right, and he used two sim cities with sunks and lings to defend each of the nats. Pure's army of pure zealots wasn't able to do anything, and his fleet of sairs died to scourge rather easily.

The rest of the game was a rape that was frankly embarrassing for Pure. Jaedong made a bunch of mutas, saw an army of zealots that was protected by an archon and corsairs, engaged despite ostensibly poor odds, and won. He shut down Pure's shuttle/DT harass entirely, and if it weren't for the fact that nexuses have 1500 HP and not 1490, he would have sniped Pure's third with only his lings. The game ended with Pure's shuttle being sniped.

Jaedong 4/5
Pure 1/5
Game 1/5

by WaxAngel

With both players through to the round of 8, Free and Stork had a low pressure game on their hands. Stork started on top, while Free got bottom on Polaris Rhapsody. The two player nature of the map meant both players were forced to allow scouting probes, and they showed each other mirroring 1 gate-range builds before dragoons could emerge to clear away the pesky scouts.

With the probes gone, the players had to blindly pick their strategies. Stork took a risk and went for a quick nexus at his natural, while Free played it safe by making a robotics facility and a second gateway. It looked good for Stork as it was the exact same early game situation as a week before vs Kal, where Stork got away with a fast expand against his opponent’s too-safe build. Free was not too far behind, however, as he followed with a slightly later expansion of his own. The game progressed into the mid-game with Stork just ahead.

There was an extended lull in the action as the players macroed and teched up, both of them skipping reavers to go directly for templar tech. With templar out and troop counts around the 90~100 population mark, both players moved to take their mineral only expansions. There was a little dark templar harassment from Free, but overall the game continued without any major confrontations as the armies snowballed on both sides.

When the population counts hit around 150, the first major movements took place. Stork and Free both mobilized their armies towards the 8:00 double-gas, in what looked like a lead up to a confrontation over the valuable expansion. Instead of looking for a fight then and there, Free took a risk instead. Seeing that Stork’s army was in such an advanced position, Free detached ten of his zealots from his main force to go around the right side and hit Stork’s mineral only natural.



Stork had no hope of getting back to save his expansion before the zealots hacked the nexus down, so the only move left for him was to attack. Although Free was behind twenty supply in possible defenders, his gambit would pay off if he could just get past this one very dangerous situation.

At first Stork’s numerical superiority seemed to prevail, as he emerged from the initial melee with a handful of dragoons and archons remaining. A round of reinforcements would have done Stork a lot of good to consolidate his victory, but it was Free’s blue zealots and templars that came rushing to the scene instead of Stork’s brown. Stork fought his way through Free’s first round of reinforcements, but he was ultimately defeated when Free’s commando zealots returned from their mission to mop up the enemy force.



Now that he was solidly in the driver’s seat, Free casually took the 8:00 expand while letting Stork retake his mineral only natural. There was another lull in the action as both players built up. Predictably, Free’s resource advantage led him to have a significant population advantage.

With the population counts at around 190 to 160 in Free’s favor, the next major happenings occurred. It so happened that Free’s army was idling around the left side of the map, while Stork was on the right side. As he was nearing max population, Free decided to pick a fight by rushing into Stork’s natural. Faced with the prospect of fighting what would be a very tough and possibly final battle against a superior force, Stork opted to roll the dice and countered instead.


Mains, naturals, and mineral naturals were efficiently wiped out on both sides. However, Stork was unable to extend his reach to Free’s 8:00 expansion, where cannons were being mass warped. The aftermath of the base trade ended with both armies still standing, but with Stork on zero bases against Free’s double gas base. Free’s army was still 30 population ahead after the brief demolition derby, and easily crushed Stork’s army for the GG.

Match Rating: 7/10
Big armies storming each other, exciting base trades, overall a decently entertaining PvP. Without anything on the line, however, I did end up caring less.

Player Ratings
Free: 8/10
When he combines his reliably awesome macro and micro with clever tactics, free is unstoppable.

Stork: 4/10
Well played, but his one mistake of leaving his mineral natural under-defended was a fatal one.

by Kwark

The game started on Dreamliner with Action in white at 3 and Leta in yellow at 6. It quickly became unusual though as Leta followed his wallin with a gas, indication that he'd go for his two starport wraith build. Action only got to see Leta was going early gas, but he could be fairly certain Leta was going for wraiths. He opened twelve hatchery at expansion, eleven pool, ten gas, then another hatchery in base and a hydralisk den while pumping drones. A compact base with a strong economy and a lot of unit production.

Leta didn't attempt to hide his build until he got several wraiths together, immediately hunting for overlords with his first wraith and finding one. As he got a small group up he started to harass as it seems only he can. Action had hydralisks in place and although he wasn't able to stop every shot was able to avoid losses to the first wave. However once cloak finished it became harder to keep the wraiths out. Vigilant use of overlords and hydralisks covering every part of the base limited the losses though as Leta decided to expand.

At this point Action suicided an overlord into Leta's base which I love because one hundred minerals really is very cheap for finding out exactly what their build is. He saw Leta slowly building up a mass of tanks off of one factory and responded to the expansion by taking two of his own at 12 and 1. Despite some excellent micro Leta's wraiths had still only claimed two drones and Action felt confident in taking a position on the map. He morphed a few spore colonies in key places and teched to lurkers. Action still hadn't committed to mass hydralisks, instead keeping his army as small as it needed to be to keep up with the threats while simultaneously expanding and teching to hive. Three lurkers and a control group of hydralisks were very few units to have by this stage in the game but it was all Action needed and he knew it.

As the wraiths went to harass the new expansion at 1 the hydralisks burrowed to wait and were rewarded with a kill and a bit of psychological pressure on Leta.

boo!

Leta certainly made the best possible of the situation with the next few harassing runs but it was clear Action had it under control. Action finally decided he was in a good enough position to move his units out onto the map which backfired as Leta immediately dropped him with M&M using wraiths to secured a beachhead. The combination proved frustrating for Action to deal with as the wraiths were in sufficient number to inflict heavy casualties while the hydralisks tried to wear down the energy of the medics. Even after the wraiths were forced to run they went on a killing spree at nearby bases.

Leta then tried to move out and made his first huge mistake of the game. A single defiler with a few hydralisks and a half dozen lurkers would devastate and delay his massive push because he didn't immediately irradiate it (or didn't have the energy to do so because of his late vessels).

the final two swarms in a chain of four that let two lurkers ruin everything

As the swarms wore off Leta sent the mnm part of his army which had escaped round the top of the map towards 12 with his vessels. Meanwhile Action sent his new army of hydralisks and lurkers with defilers down the centre of the map straight at Leta. Leta scanned it and found the overlords lagging behind with the defilers, a perfect opportunity to cripple his opponent with wraiths. The nearest overlord was sniped and all but a few hydralisks were a screen away but Action's reactions were incredible. An instant swarm protected his defilers and was followed a split second later by plague on the clumped wraiths.


Leta moved his wraiths half a screen away and then left them, perhaps forgetting plague decloaked things. While I can attribute the plague to fantastic play by Action the subsequent loss of every wraith in a second is all Leta's bad. The wraiths had been trying to move away before the hydralisks arrived,so it's inexplicable that they didn't run to a safer spot. Leta threw his army into 12 and Action responded by smashing the Terran expansion. Although 12 was destroyed Leta lost his army due to lurkers and dark swarm while his natural was overrun and a continual stream of Zerg reinforcements pushed into him. GG.

I really liked how Action played this. Everything about his build was confident and restrained. He made sure he was aware of the situation and made not a unit more than he needed to, instead building up to a late game where he could win. He could easily have had a lot more hydralisks a lot earlier but he couldn't have used them against that many tanks. By spending his money wisely and using tricks like burrow to minimise Leta's opportunities he set himself up in a very strong position for the late game. Leta was doing alright until one defiler ruined everything. It split his mnm from his tanks and forced them to choose between hitting early without tanks or missing the timing window and failing with tanks. But Terrans should be well aware by now than one defiler can ruin everything, that's why they make so many science vessels. So letting it happen was a pretty huge mistake and I can't really let him off for that. Great by Action, not so great by Leta.

Action 4/5
Leta 2/5
Game 4/5

by Motbob

I've been watching too much SC2. After Hiya and Flash finished their first supply depot, some time passed and I started to think, "hmm, this is way past normal rax timing, they must both be going double command!" But then they both built barracks at SC1 timing instead of SC2 timing. I'm such a noob.

Both players went 1 rax cc. Flash did a "prepare for everything" build. He didn't scout until he had made 2 factories, an armory, and an academy, so he was totally prepared for any build Hiya could throw at him, which, this game, happened to be 2 port wraiths.

Hiya couldn't do any damage at all. Almost immediately, Flash had as many goliaths as Hiya did wraiths, and he had plenty of scans to deal with cloak. When Flash built up about 8 gols and 2 tanks, he went on the offensive, killing Hiya's poorly positioned, spread out, sieged tanks one by one. Soon, Flash's army was between Hiya's nat and his just-started third base... a third base which hadn't yet been scouted by Flash. Hiya took a risk and let the base finish, while also starting an additional ninja expo on the other side of the map from both players.

An intense tank battle at Hiya's natural and a pretty effective vulture drop at Flash's third kept Flash's attention away from one of the two hidden expos for a while, but eventually both were discovered and destroyed with Flash still maintaining a killer contain. Hiya tried to break out, but Flash did a good job of target-firing Hiya's tanks and the contain stood firm. Both players played well, but Hiya's build order was decisively countered and he couldn't beat Flash's essentially perfect play. GG.

Flash 5/5
Hiya 4/5
Game 4/5

by WaxAngel

Grand Line SE reared its ugly head again, as Sea vs Hydra faced off. Sea started off at 5:00, while Hydra began at 2:00. Despite the fact that Sea opened 8 rax bunker rush against a 12 hatch, the map guaranteed that this would somehow turn into another long, mediocre mech terran vs zerg game where the map is split in half.

Hydra survived Sea’s bunker rush with decent drone micro, losing three drones in the process. Sea had pulled only a few SCVs to join the rush, and was building a command center at his natural very soon. Hydra went for a fast 2 hatch mutalisk rush, while Sea went for a very fast engineering bay to get quick +1 attack upgrades before anything else. Sea’s timing on this build was solid, as he had plenty of M&M to defend with despite his slower barracks. Hydra tried to harass with his initial mutalisks, but lost more mutalisks that he would have liked to Sea’s excellent force fire control.

Despite having warded off Hydra’s mutalisk harass effectively, Sea wasn’t able to get the added benefit of preventing Hydra’s third base at 10:00. But even then, Sea’s preservation of his marines and economy combined with Hydra’s mutalisks losses meant that the terran push would be extremely hard to stop once tanks and vessels were out.

In a puzzling move, Sea decided to send out all of his marines and medics to camp outside of Hydra’s natural, despite the fact that he was still a minute away from the vessels and tanks he would need to combat the lurking defenders. Hydra took advantage of this unlikely gift by countering Sea’s main with his mutalisks, which sliced up a large amount of marines and SCVs.



Rather than delay his push by returning his marines, Sea decided to eat the losses and fend it off with several rounds of troops from his barracks. When Sea’s vessel finally completed he sent it alongside some tanks to his advance marine position, even though mutalisks were still torching his main.

Hydra’s counter really paid off, as he had damaged Sea’s economy and torn through several rounds of barracks troops. This meant Sea had been completely unable to reinforcement the M&M count of his push, which allowed Hydra to make enough zerglings and lurkers to crush the terran attack.



Almost immediately after he thwarted Sea’s push, Hydra was following up with his next move. He had gone to hive tech already, and his surviving mutalisks made their heroic return as guardians over the Terran natural. Sea had yet to produce many vessels, which meant further trouble for him as he was forced to lift his natural briefly while he waited for irradiate mana.

It looked bad for Sea at this point, since he was facing a hive zerg with three bases going on four, while he himself barely had two bases. There was only one thing to do in this situation on this map, and that was to switch to mech and turtle up.

The fun stopped there. After an entertaining fifteen minutes to begin with, the fundamental nature of Terran vs Zerg on Grand Line could not be suppressed. Hydra was a decent player, but not one with good enough execution to break through the mechanic defense line of an equally skilled or superior opponent. For the next fifteen minutes, Sea slowly but surely crawled his way left across the map, taking 6:00, and then the 8:00 bases. During that time, Hydra launched a great many attacks of varying quality, none of which were sufficient to cause Sea any real hurt.

Sea let Hydra squander resources with continued wasteful attacks, and then easily crushed the hapless zerg at his leisure.



Match Rating: 6/10
Although I despise anything vs Terran on Grand Line, the game was still decent up to the point where Sea made his mech switch.

Player Ratings
Sea: 6/10
Although he didn’t even play to his best, it was still good enough for a win.

Hydra: 3/10
Pretty good lair game, atrocious hive game.

by Kwark

Fantasy spawned at 11 in teal while Kal got brown at 5 on Polaris Rhapsody. Kal rushed a gas steal, delaying his own gas and core and following it up with two early zealots. Meanwhile Fantasy used scvs to wear the assimilator down but also pumped some marines and took a quick expansion with a bunker. Both players ended up with early expansions, late tech and obsolete units in the form of zealots and marines respectively. Neither player was particularly delayed by it and entered the midgame extremely early with two gates and two factories apiece.

Kal prepared for a timing attack on Fantasy's natural with four zealots and two dragoons against six marines, a bunker and a tank. It is quite possible it would have succeeded (depending on repair) but instead he chose to wait until his third and fourth dragoon arrived which in turn allowed Fantasy's second and third tank to arrive. He missed his timing and the attack failed, wasting units. Meanwhile Fantasy was taking a quick thrid base off of just two factories which quickly pumped out a lot of double upgraded vultures. As Fantasy pushed he scanned Kal's main and saw a shuttle over the robotics, a robotics support bay and most critically, the cybernetics core spinning. That's right, two base carrier.

Fantasy is a good player and I'm certain the implications were not lost on him. He pulled back and consolidated his third base, safe against reavers in the short term and adaptng towards the carrier threat in the longer term. And in a particularly styish touch he made a medic and researched blind for the reaver's shuttle. Kal sent the hapless shuttle with its dragoon and reaver cargo in where it was promptly blinded and managed to kill just two scvs before it stumbled into a turret.


This reimagining of the old Blue Storm reaver into carrier build was going rather badly and Kal's attempt to take a third at 6 was brutally crushed by nine factories of tank and vulture production. Everything Kal had tried had gone badly wrong and by this point Fantasy was able to simply flatten him. The arrival of the first two carriers changed little as Fantasy had finished his first wave of goliaths and Kal's counterattack into Fantasy's third was crushed between Fantasy's returning army and his reinforcements. The Protoss player was a full fifty supply behind and a desperate attempt to take a third base at the 3 mineral only was crushed.

All Kal's hopes rested in the idea that two base carrier was still something that might work simply by carriers being unstoppable and unfortunately for him that isn't the case. They're great in the right contexts with the right support but their presence could not stop Fantasy moving into Kal's rebuilt third at 6 and killing it. Kal tried another big dragoon counterattack up the middle of the map and again had passing success until it was sandwiched by the retreating army of Fantasy.

Again Kal repeated himself, losing 6 for the second time and taking 3 as he lost it, for the second time. It was rather pathetic really though as Fantasy just killed all the interceptors and vultures brought down the nexus. That left Kal without any mining bases while Fantasy added 9 for a fourth. With his opponent at a seventy supply deficit with no income Fantasy put him out of his misery, claiming a noprize for his 1-2 score.

Fantasy could have ended it a few times over but this match was pointless and I think both players knew it. Kal's build hasn't worked in a while and Fantasy was content to just play standard and boring and win by virtue of not doing a stupid build. Still, it was nice to see blind in action. Not really all that much you can say about a match where neither player has anything to gain by winning.

Fantasy 3/5
Kal 1/5
Game 2/5

Progamer pokedex is written with some knowledge of the competitive Pokemon scene, but not based solely upon it. There's too much esoteric knowledge to be explained to the casual reader. Instead, the combined portrayal of pokemon in various media are the basis for the pairings.