EPT
No real heavy hitters in yesterday’s action as groups C and D got started. Doggi was looking to get on the right track back to the StarLeague, and ktf_Autumn also looked to get off to a goods start, but the highlight of this week was the debut of some lesser known players who were trying to make a good impression in their early OGN careers. Players such as Canata, Clon and Iris[gm] were sure to have many fans rooting for them, as rookies always garner a good reaction from the crowd.
Game 1: Doggi (t) vs Soo (p) on Requiem
Starting up top at twelve, Soo scouted Doggi at three very quickly and used this early advantage to sneak an assimilator onto his opponent’s geyser. This quick move forced Doggi to put down a second barracks in order to get offensive units quickly, as the distance between the two bases was very short. Soo saw this reaction and after his first gateway, he chose to put down a forge that led to a pylon and cannon on the cliff overlooking the terran block. With zealots guarding the ramp, the cannon quickly took out a depot and opened up an avenue for the zealots. Charging in with three bladed warriors, Soo was stymied by some good micro by Doggi, as scv acted in a blocking role and marines peppered the zealots with rifle fire. With a bunker now placed at his choke out of range of the cannon, and a factory being constructed, Doggi managed to escape his early disadvantage with only a couple losses and a disrupted build.
After applying this early pressure on the terran, Soo elected to go for the knockout punch, and while his zealots were busy slicing and dicing scv, he first conscripted a handful of dragoons and then teched to his invisible assassins. His next attack consisted of three zealots and four dragoons which ran by the bunker and lone siege tank and into the terran base. He tried to head to the mineral line, but a well placed wall of depots with a seiged tank behind them forced Soo’s army into the corner of the base where it would be pounded into dust by advancing tanks. Once dark templars arrived on the scene, Doggi was so well dug in that their fate was the same as their brethren after running past the bunker. With nowhere to go and nothing to attack, Soo settled on simply blocking the ramp with his templars until spider mines placed under their feet killed them.
Soo expanded to nine at this point, but Doggi’s solid defence had blunted his early pressure and lessened his advantage. After the loss of the dark templars, vultures scooted into the middle and rapidly found the nine o’clock expansion. Despite having a wide array of tech buildings, Soo was unable to respond to this threat. As Doggi rolled tanks out from his base and around the bottom of the map to nine, Soo only had a DT in a shuttle and four dragoons. With tanks seiged inside the expo pounding the nexus, Soo tried to dispatch the enemy by dropping from his shuttle. This was a woefully inadequate and slow solution to the problem, and without being able to bring his dragoons down the ramp to help, his entire expansion fell at no cost to Doggi.
With the protoss reeling and both players taking their natural expansions, Doggi stepped up the pressure on his inexperienced opponent with a tank drop behind Soo’s main minerals. As probes were blasted to vapors, the reaction from Soo was slow enough that Doggi escaped scot free, having again hurt the protoss economy at no cost to himself. From this point on, the game turned a corner, and Soo found himself on the defensive. With a healthier economy, Doggi pushed out into the middle of the map with turrets, tanks, mines and vultures. With his already low troop count, Soo tried an attack on the terran natural, but met only with failure. As Doggi continued to push north, he supplemented his strategy with tank drops behind his opponent’s natural and vulture pressure from the front. With his army shrinking and no damage being inflicted on the terran force, Soo was quickly forced to quit.
Doggi > Soo
Soo really gave this one away after a great start. His templars just could not arrive fast enough, and after losing his initial units, he didn’t make any more to replace them. For his part, Doggi stayed alive well at the beginning, fortifying his base with well-placed buildings and well-timed siege tanks. His ability to switch from a defensive to an offensive state of mind at the right moment showed that he has at least learned something from his stints in the StarLeague.
Game 2: Canata (t) vs Clon (z) on Pelennor
While Clon (@11) opened the game by sending his ninth drone south, Canata (@1) had better luck as his scouting scv hit pay dirt at its first recon point. Clon dropped his second hatchery next to his small mineral patch near his choke, while Canata narrowed his own choke with a supply depot while rallying troops from two barracks. By the time Clon had built up enough zerglings to try and break through into the terran base, medics and firebats had joined the initial marines and passage was denied.
Clon invested heavily in his zerglings early on, and they patrolled the area outside of the terran base in increasing numbers. He decided to forgo his lair for the time being and a third hatchery took root at twelve. Once completed, sunken colonies started to morph on the cliff overlooking the terran choke and anything that passed was guaranteed to take a hit or two. During this time, Canata had continued to mass his MM force while also making a couple vultures from his factory. His MM group that toured the middle of the map had to be wary of the skittish zerglings, but Clon merely used them as decoys in an effort to buy more time.
With his choke impassable to marines, Canata had little choice but to wait and tech to siege tanks. In the mean time he stayed busy as he tried to take out the twelve o’clock expansion with his marines. Going up against five of the prickly defence structures and a handful of lings, he succeeded in taking out those sunks overlooking his cliff, but failed to take out the hatchery thanks to some timely zerglings being hatched in the area. Nine minutes into the game, Clon finally had a lair and a hydralisk den to which he added a queen’s nest while still staying with zerglings.
At long last, and thanks to his tanks, Canata wore down the zergs attempts to sunk his choke. With his mobility no longer restricted, he gathered his forces in the middle of the map, and loaded a dropship full of MM to drop in the zerg main. Fortunately for Clon, he had used his queens for more than a stepping-stone to a hive and a queen spotted this ship as it floated up from nine o’clock. He quickly attached a parasite to the dropship and forced it to turn back, but without a spire or hydras in the area, he was unable to take care of it altogether
Now making lurkers, Clon was forced to hurry as Canata moved out with his four tanks and a double handful of MM. A parasite infested one tank, but this only served to give Clon a good view of the destruction of his expansion at twelve. As Canata came down from twelve, Clon tried to hit it with a lutker ling force, but his lurkers burrowed too early and he suffered a fruitless loss of units. This setback was further compounded as the infected dropship made its way back into the zerg main and a firebat lit up the mining drones. The sagging look on Clon’s face said it all as he saw his drones pop like corn. He launched one more lurker/ling attack on the terran choke, but Canata had retreated his walking army and the fight was one against overwhelming odds. Clon put a good effort into it, but his troops were simply overmatched.
Canata > Clon
Clon did well this game, but his enormous delay in getting his lair allowed Canata to build up his forces with little opposition. Once his strategy of boxing in the terran with sunkens failed, the zerg could not adapt and come up with another effective strategy. Canata for his part played a simple but effective game, allowing the zerg strategy to blow itself out and killing what he could when the opportunity presented itself.
Game 3: Iris[gm] (t) vs ktf_Autumn (p) on Mercury
As Autumn warped in at five, a two gate range build allowed him to pressure the block of Iris early on. Iris had taken up position on the western edge of the map at eight, and his build suffered a slight delay as Autumn’s probe fired up a pylon to prevent the addition of a machine shop. He kept his block alive by repairing it, and after setting his first tank in place he started a CC. Autumn had obviously done his homework, because to counter this increasingly common terran strategy on this map he placed a templar archives next to his proxy pylon at the bottom of the seven o’clock expansion. As Iris repositioned his tanks to guard his bridge in preparation for expansion, they left the protective radius of his turret and dark templars descended upon them. Their blades cleaved apart two of the tanks before they could retreat back to safety, which also gave the added bonus of forcing back the floating CC.
With Iris concerned about his tank force and detection, Autumn seized the opportunity and expanded to seven. Despite still only having one factory, Iris managed to retake his natural with the aid of a comstat. As the OGN observer flipped back to Autumns base, as excited babble rippled across the crowd as he revealed an arbiter tribunal and a flickering StarGate. These arbiters would come as a surprise to Iris as his first scans were used to defend against probing DT’s, and Autumn started to group a considerable force of speedlots under the cover of the arbiter. With a now fat economy, Iris moved out with a group of tanks and a group of vultures, but they were quickly chased home by the cloaked speedlots. Again Autumn capitalized on this success and took his natural expansion. Determined to make a move, Iris saved up his comstat and moved out again with a metal army, but the tanks that rumbled along behind the vultures were quickly locked in stasis by the arbiter and the thrust lost its teeth.
Unable to move out in force, Iris decided to act a little more covertly and snuck a half dozen vults into seven via the top of the map. Two well-placed cannons ruined his chances of damaging the protoss economy, and for the third time Autumn used a terran mistake as an opportunity to expand, this time to three. By simply containing the terran until this point and not throwing away units by attacking the bridge, Autumn had a significant force of speedlots under the cover of arbiters. As Iris again tried to push out with his tanks and vultures in order to expand again, Autumn retreated in the face of the army. Sensing that he could take advantage, Iris forced his army south, unaware of a second arbiter floating in behind from the center. Once Iris committed, Autumn recalled a secondary force waiting in his base in behind the terran army to form an instant pincer. Storms crackled and hummed in the air as Iris was forced to fight on two fronts. He made a good showing of himself, but in the end he lost all of his units while still leaving Autumn a working army.
Iris, now working off only the minerals at his natural, tried to once more break out with a vulture force but was again repelled. With his economy vastly superior to his opponent’s, Autumn saved up his arbiter mana and recalled into the terran base. With nothing left, Iris quickly retired.
Autumn > Iris
This was a great game. Autumn dominated from start to finish as Iris followed a predictable terran build on this map. The poise he showed using those arbiters and keeping them alive was tremendous. The stasis’ and recalls were perfectly timed and executed, leaving Iris with no option but defeat. I can’t stress enough how well Autumn played in this game. A work of art.
Game 4: Rumble (z) vs SaferZerg (z) on Biofrost III
Both players were determined to get their spires fast, so they both got their pool, hatchery, and extractor in short order. Rumble, who spawned on the left, decided on the hatchery first, while SaferZerg, on the right, got his hatchery only after his pool. Regardless, both players decided against any early zerglings, and it was only when both spires were morphing that any of the spry devils roamed the map.
Just as his spire reached for the sky, Rumble took his gas expansion and then focused on gathering mutalisks. Saferzerg decided against expanding right away, and this allowed him to hatch seven mutas at once. He used these early flyers to reduce Rumble’s overlord population by three, but when he headed for his opponents mineral line he was cut off by Rumble’s own air force, mutalisks backed by scourge. After dancing for a bit, both players broke off contact, with neither of them willing to commit to total battle. Two minutes after Rumble started mining gas at his expansion, SaferZerg expanded himself and then brought his army across the map. Muta/ling forces met at Rumble’s choke, and although the air units fought to a stalemate, Safer’s superior zergling numbers paid off, as he was able to kill the gas drones at the expansion while also sneaking in a raid on the mining drones of Rumble. Rumble miscalculated poorly at this stage of the game, as scourge popped from his larvae when he really needed zerglings to stem the tide of reinforcements that continually came from the east side of the map.
Although Rumble eventually managed to halt the onslaught, he was at a disadvantage after losing his precious drones. He took his drones off his geyser in order to mass pure lings, and soon his own force was heading east. Despite all odds, he managed to break through and halt the mining of gas at SaferZerg expansion. In an eerie copy of SaferZerg’s own success, another wave of zerglings split and got into the opponents main mineral line, which helped close (but not equal) the economic gap between the two. SaferZerg struck back, and for the next few minutes both players focussed exclusively on zerglings, running them back and forth across the map in an attempt to break the others defence. After an extended period of attrition, Safer eventually came out on top thanks to his stronger economy. He tore down Rumble’s expansion hatchery and then set up camp outside the entrance to Rumble’s main. Rumble tried to regroup in his main, but with two hatcheries vs his opponents three, the task was insurmountable.
SaferZerg > Rumble
This was a good good zvz, but one which really degenerated into a mass ling slaughter halfway through the race. Air superiority, which so often decides this match-up, seemed to fade in importance as the game wore on. Rumble was aggressive, but Safer was smarter, and he prevailed.
There were some really good games this week, with strong and imaginative play. Liquibet is back in action for the challenge league, so go vote on next weeks game and get a good start at the prize.
Cheers,
Mani
