By nbaker

In Game 1 on La Mancha, Flash starts in the bottom left and Hydra starts in the top left. Hydra 12 hatches and sends his 12th drone across the map to scout for proxies, while Flash scouts Hydra in the first position he sends his SCV to, making him feel completely safe to expo at his natural. Hydra decides to place his third hatchery down rather than going for any kind of two hatch tech. At these spawning positions, Hydra would have to go around Flash’s main and natural to get to the natural cliff, which is the easiest place to do harassment with 2 hatch mutas and even so air distances are quite long on this map, making hive tech play much preferable to a more aggressive style. Flash, on the other hand, chases Hydra’s scouting drone out of his base and decides to take his second rax and gas at about the same time and follow up with an engineering bay before an academy.


This strategy gets the terran player a very fast +1 attack at the cost of a few barracks, meaning that Flash will have fewer marines, but they will be more potent. For a player with control as good as Flash’s, this can be a very advantageous exchange. Hydra plays with the standard 3 hatch mutalisks, but Flash, wanting to make sure that he can move out with his timing attack in good time, builds plenty of turrets to ensure that he won’t lose too many marines while defending and that he won’t have to stay in his base for too long. Macroing off of only two barracks, he has more than enough income to spare on this static defense. Hydra’s harassment is utterly repelled, killing only one SCV, but he does get his third up and finishes researching lurker aspect, so he is far from out of the game.


Rather than get the minimum number of lurkers to defend his hatcheries and use his 3 gasses to tech straight to hive, Hydra decides to get a lot of lurkers and try to take some map control with them. The architecture of La Mancha seems to be ideal for this kind of strategy. If you look at the map, there are only two viable lanes of attack that Flash can use to get to Hydra’s base. The first through the 9 o’clock expansion, which can only be exited via a very narrow bridge, which lurkers could hold against a near infinite number of bio units, and the second, more likely route is over the left spoke of the center, which would require Flash’s army to attack into Lurkers on the high ground.


Flash, perhaps accounting for this, takes further advantage of his early gas to get a fast factory before his 3rd rax and a starport after that. This will allow him to range lurkers with tanks and get mobile detection and irradiate much more quickly. When Flash has two tanks with his army he moves out, chasing away Hydras mutas as he goes.


Hydra moves five lurkers into position, choosing not to put them on the high ground ridge, for some reason. My best guess would be that he was hoping to spring a stopped lurker trap on Flash as he pushed out, but it’s also conceivable that the diagonal nature of the spoke would make it too easy for Flash to focus on one lurker at a time. Either way, Flash scans the lurker field and spreads his marines beautifully, stimming them and killing all the lurkers with very minimal losses.


It is true that with his tanks, Flash could have slowly chipped down on the lurkers without putting his bio force in danger, but this would be a huge blunder, as it would buy Hydra ample time to get his defilers out and would prevent Flash from killing all of the lurkers. Flash’s vessel finishes and joins his army while he moves up to control the high ground ridge, forcing Hydra to burrow his next batch of lurkers below him. The lurkers get shelled away by siege tanks and are forced to retreat left to try to set up a flank as Flash barrels towards Hydra’s natural, where lurkers are still being morphed.


Hydra plays tenaciously, flanking with his existing mutas and lurkers to buy time for the eggs to finish, and is able to mostly clean up Flash’s initial army (though at great loss to his own), but Flash cointinues stream units in, taking down Hydra’s natural hatchery and forcing the gg.

By konadora

The game starts on Monte Cristo, with Flash spawning at the top left, and Hydra at the bottom right. Immediately, we notice something different. Hydra sends his 9th drone after building an overlord to the 1 o'clock position.

This drone served two purposes for his game plan. First was to spot for proxies, evident by his drone's movement at the 1:15th mark.


The drone scouts the area in front of his natural, then proceeds towards the 1 o'clock expansion area, thus practically scouting at two most possible proxy spots. No proxies. Good. Now Hydra proceeds to his next hidden card, a ninja expansion at 1 o'clock, a rather unorthodox play.

Usually, this spot is the typical third gas expansion choice taken during the Mutalisk spawning timing, as Mutalisks are able to provide safe cover for the building hatchery at the ramp. By building his first expansion hatchery at this spot, it caused 3 effects.

• It made Flash get a Barracks first, thus denying a 14cc indirectly.
  
• It forced Flash to choose an attack target; either the expansion or the natural.
  
• Better economy (more minerals for saturation = better income).

The first point is made obvious at the 1:53th mark. Flash scouted immediately after his supply depot was done, because Flash was planning to go flexible based on whether Hydra had expanded or not. Did Hydra expand? Yes. But to Flash, when the SCV had reached the natural, no. This could have meant a 9 pool, overpool or even 5 pool (it is a 2 player map after all), thus it was essential to Flash to get that first rax building as soon as he, or at least according to what he saw, 'discovered' that Hydra had not expanded. He would have gone 14cc but he didn't. Hydra, through this, was now ahead in terms of economic advantage by around 75:25. No Pool 3 Hatch at 3 bases vs 1 Rax CC. Bam, huge blow for Flash.

The second point is somewhat a double-edged sword. It forces Hydra to spend an extra more on defense (which however, is negated by the fact that Hydra had a huge economic start) in order to cover two bases, but once the resources from 3 bases starts kicking in, it would have led to a huge lead for Hydra. The special characteristics of this map allowed Hydra to expand in this manner.


No matter what direction Flash were to take, Hydra would have been able to cover both expansions with his Guardians and lurker/lings, both with high-ground advantage. The only reason why Hydra was at a huge danger zone at the 10 minute mark was because his mutalisks did nothing. With a mere 3 SCV kill count, Hydra was unable to delay Flash's standard 10-minute marine + medic + 3 tank + 1 vessel push, as a dozen turrets were already erected by the time the mutalisks arrived. This wasn't because Flash cut his economy for fast turrets, but because (as one of the commentators carefully pointed out) of the fact that Hydra had to replenish his drone count after spending half a dozen on static defences. Mutalisks thus arrived around 30 seconds later than usual, which is more than enough time to prepare all the necessary turrets.


With three Siege Tanks shelling the sunkens and lurkers, with the Science Vessel providing detection and vision, as well as irradiating a bunch of mutas, Flash almost brought Hydra to his knees by nearly taking down the 1 o'clock expansion. However, Hydra manages to barely save his 1 o'clock expansion through lots of sacrificed lings and well-positioned guardians, and a clutch swarm going up. Hydra is now at a very comfortable lead.


Third point is pretty much self-explanatory. More minerals means better saturation, means better income. Hydra with a 7 mineral field and 1 geyser advantage, that's huge.

Flash now retreats what is left of his sad army, and proceeds to take his 2nd expansion at 8 o'clock. Flash has not opted to go for a late mech switch, instead pushing forward for the SK Terran build, putting down more barracks while pumping scie... oh wait, dropships?


With three fully loaded dropships, Flash was set to cripple Hydra's main and tip the economy to his advantage, and even possibly end the game right there. But not even God Young Ho is all-seeing, as Hydra's salute-worthy overlord saves the day by spotting the dropships, allowing Hydra to be fully prepared.


Undeterred, Flash decides to go for more dropship harass, hoping to earn points through his multitasking capabilities, because he knew he was behind. It did shine at a few places, such as the harass at 7, where Hydra's inability to catch up to Flash's multitasking started to show.



Meanwhile, Flash himself had expanded to the 8 o'clock expansion, all while continuing to attempt to harass via dropship play. But Hydra had already anticipated this, and after this...


Flash had to give up using dropships.

It is from this moment that the two players' depth of understanding of this map started to become apparent. Flash understood this map perfectly, while Hydra was unable to fully grasp the complexity of this map.

The first event that displayed this was Flash's attack at Hydra's 5th gas expansion at 2 o'clock, and Hydra's subsequent loss of that base not once, but twice to just a handful of marines. Had this been a map like Fighting Spirit, it would have been easy to have that base secured, but this map is different.


Monte Cristo's 2/8 o'clock expansions have two wide (and I do mean, wide) entrances to them. This means unlike other maps such as Fighting Spirit or Dante's Peak SE, this requires more-than-usual unit positioning (such as lurkers, lings and/or defilers) at the expansion's high ground, moving between the two ramps in accordance to the marine/medic army movement. What Hydra failed to do was:

• Failed to dispatch units at all (a grave mistake that will ultimately be the reason for the loss of this set)
  
• Failed to keep check with Flash's versatile semi-SK terran army movement (I call this semi-SK terran as tanks are used for defense while marine/medic/vessel army is the one doing the attacking)

Flash showed why this semi-SK terran build was the perfect build for this map. Flash's early armory (built even before his first 10-minute timing push) showed that he was already committed to getting lots of upgraded tanks for late game. This unit composition allowed huge flexibility on this map, because the army each had individual roles.

• Marine/Medic: The late-game versatile units that allowed for both quick hit-and-run attacks and meat-shields for tanks.
  
• Tanks: Dealing splash damage to kill as many units as possible before swarm is casted (when Hydra is on the offense) and to shut down 7 o'clock expansion through insane firepower and to provide cover for the central expansion at 8 o'clock and the eventual 7 o'clock expansion that Flash will take later on in the game.
  
• Science Vessels: Irradiating defilers, ultralisks, providing map vision, 'erasing' drones' and most importantly, to pick off whatever unit that survived the tank shots and is left under a Dark Swarm.

The terrain layout of this map at the 2 o'clock/8 o'clock expansions allowed tanks to enjoy a greater role than it would have had on any other maps. It allowed Flash to be highly flexible with how he wanted to use his units. The reason why Hydra lost the 2 o'clock expansion so easily was because of how easy it was for Flash to set his army from defense to offense. Just a 15 second walk and his marine/medic army could travel from his natural or his third base to his opponent's third base or his natural. Other maps would require a much longer travel time, but this map didn't. For example, Flash's epic game against Calm on Fighting Spirit displayed tanks used solely for defensive purposes, because expansions were too far and the middle of the map was too wide for tanks to safely defend and attack at the same time. However, on this map, tanks can be highly versatile.


By only moving along the green path, Flash is able to cover five bases (including the 7 o'clock expansion) while putting pressure on the stolen opponent's 7 o'clock expansion, all while not putting his tanks at risk, as the tanks are all on high ground most of the time. Flash's game plan was already set in place.

This is why we saw very little marine/medic throughout the game. Flash had sacrificed marine/medic count for tanks, as he saw the potential of tanks on this map. They are cheap after all, and easily replaceable, but tanks are not. The rest of the late game consisted of Flash trading marine/medic for ultralisks and zerglings, and vessels for defilers, scourges and drones. While it seemed like Hydra was doing a good job at keeping Flash's vessel count low, he failed to strike where it would hurt Flash the most - his tanks.


Hmm... wait, doesn't this scenario seem very familiar?


Oh. Right. The "I-used-up-all-my-gas-on-scourges-and-defilers-and-all-I-have-now-are-ultras-but-omfg-there-are-a-billion-tanks" scenario.

As Flash's tank count reached a critical mass, Hydra was slowly starting to feel the effect of losing that 5th base twice. His main's gas would have depleted by now, and his second and third base' geyser gas amount would probably have been reaching the 1000 mark. Hydra spent too much on scourges and ultralisks, leaving no gas for defilers.

And right at this moment, Flash decides to slowly leapfrog his way down to the 7 o'clock expansion and take it for himself. Normally, this could have been held off for a while with lurkers and dark swarm, but Hydra had already been preparing for something else - a huge doom drop at Flash's main.

But Flash had already anticipated this, and set up a Great Wall of Turrets. It was a difficult choice for Hydra. Risk losing his 4th base and commit to the drop (which already seemed to be heading for a huge fail) or pull back his drop army and attempt to save the 4th base. As it was already too late for the latter, Hydra went ahead with the drop. Oh how wrong a choice that was.


The drop failed to do any serious damage, only picking off a bit of Flash's army, a couple of barracks and some depots, but not enough to cripple Flash's economy or production line.


While it seemed like Hydra's second attack at Flash's natural did to do some damage at first, I later had to point it out to myself that it was already running dry, and those SCV losses actually compensated for the loss of supply depots, thus freeing up supply and allowing Flash to resume production faster than usual. So, Hydra lost a dozen overlords, most of his entire ultraling + defiler army for a dozen units, SCVs and a few buildings. Oh, and let's not forget his 4th base too.

By now, Hydra's surviving on practically 1.5 gas, and has failed to obliterate Flash's base and take down Flash's tank count, all while continuously having his units picked off by irradiate.


While Hydra's attack on Flash's 3rd base left Flash at practically zero income for a while, he did not do any real damage while he himself was losing his army to irradiate. What he should have done was take out the group of undefended tanks at 7 o'clock, by attacking from high ground. This could have saved Hydra, as his 2 o'clock base was starting to run, but he probably forget about them as he did not have vision (and due to this, I assume that he thought he had lost the 7 o'clock expansion to a more marine-medic heavy composition instead of mainly tanks). Vessels quickly came to reinforce, and irradiated the life out of the ultraling and the following defiler.


Having fended off the huge drop and saving all his tanks, all Flash needed to do now was get his 3rd base running again, keep his tank count safe and cripple whatever economy that Hydra has. And he did this with style, trading vessels for drones, scourges, overlords and ultralisks once again. Flash was slowly squeezing Hydra dry.


Flash knows that Hydra doesn't have a real army anymore, and proceeds to cut Hydra's last lifeline - his 2 o'clock expansion. The army size difference is more than obvious by this point of time.


Knowing that he can't engage Flash's army head on, with or without defilers, Hydra attempts to take down Flash's 3rd base once again. Flash already knew this (he was putting down a bunker) and pulls back his workers and lifts his command center. Economic damage for Flash? Almost none. For Hydra? His entire economy, gone.

Flash pulls back his army without a single loss and chases away Hydra's miserable army.


Hydra now tries everything to crawl his way back in, from a small crackling drop at Flash's main to even a fancy 1 lurker harass at Flash's 3rd base's mineral line. But a lack of a proper gas expansion is hurting, and he could do nothing but watch as Flash's vessels hover around freely to pick off his units.


Hydra's subsequent attacks do absolutely nothing. Flash sits comfortably with his marine medic tank army, and once he sees that Hydra's 2 o'clock expansion is up, he brings only his cost-effective marine + medic + vessel army to shut it down for the fourth time.


With Hydra's last real expansion taken down and he himself having taken Hydra's former 7 o'clock expansion for himself, all Flash had to do was defend. And so he did.


With no way of harassing Flash's two running bases while having none for himself, Hydra types out. GG.

---

This game was a fine example of just how far Flash was ahead. Not just mechanically, but in terms of his preparation. He understood the map better than any other Terrans did, and executed it perfectly, even despite Hydra's trump card strategy. Flash showed he could adapt; Hydra only showed stubbornness. Flash was already reading ten, twenty minutes into the game, and knew the key factors to winning under such a huge disadvantageous start. Hydra's insistence on ramming waves of units into Flash's Iron Curtain and his disappointing lack of usage of defilers was what cost him this game and the chance to reach the finals consecutively. Hydra just wasn't ready to face God himself yet.

By nbaker

Game 3 starts on Circuit Breaker with Flash at the top left and Hydra at the bottom left. Although he looks visibly shaken after losing such a big advantage last game and going down 0-2 in the series, Hydra keeps level enough to open standard, hatching on 12 and drone scouting cross map for proxies. Flash feels confident that he can beat Hydra without antics after Game 2, so he opens up with standard play as well, building a barracks on 11 and following up with a fast command center. Hydra tries to go up Flash’s ramp with his drone just as Flash’s first marine finishes, but is chased out before he can get an eye on the terran’s build. Hydra decides to play with 3 hatcheries. Vertical positions are ideal for 2 hatch mutalisks on Circuit Breaker, as you can rally straight towards the terran’s natural cliff and harass there while expanding across from him and the mutas can lock down the natural choke and harass the scv line while lurkers and hive tech finish. However, Hydra favors the safer 3 hatch option, hoping to exploit the bridges and wide open center with hive tech play rather than try to apply early economic damage. Flash gets an e-bay with +1 attack followed by an academy for stim and range. Flash then goes straight up to 4 barracks, which are timed to finish around when Hydra’s spire completes, allowing him to push out with a large, upgraded marine force just as Hydra is hoping to do some harassment and force him to fight outside his base.


Hydra sends him mutalisks over and Flash moves out onto the high ground pod to avoid engaging on the bridges. Hydra micros his mutas very well, carving down Flash’s infantry purely by controlling better and manages to clean up Flash’s first attacking force with the aid of a few supporting zerglings.


However, Flash is undeterred as he continues to pump out more bio units off his 4 barracks, while going up to a fifth and starting his factory. Hydra, who took a relatively fast third base before starting his mutas, has now finished lurker tech and sends a pair over to hold the 3rd’s ramp and starts his Queen’s Nest while his mutas and lings try to keep control of the middle. Flash makes numerous attempts to push across the map with his mobile medic and marine army, but Hydra does well to shut Flash down. First, he uses his muta ling force to pinch Flash’s units and kill them off.


As Flash’s armies get bigger and bigger, Hydra switches tactics to threatening with a backstab, leaving lurkers burrowed outside Flash’s natural and running zerglings up the high ground pod, which forces Flash to pull back across the double bridges.


Flash waits until his science vessel finishes to truly commit to a push, clearing out Hydra’s pinning lurkers and then attacking across the map. Hydra once again leaves a bunch of lurkers unsupported by swarms out in the open, hoping to force Flash to stop and siege, but Flash just spreads his marines, stims, kills them off quickly and continues his advance.


Hydra’s defilers finish just as Flash reaches his natural, but with all the lurkers killed off, Hydra has little to push Flash back and is forced to use his dark swarms only to delay Flash.


Flash does pull back when he scans Hydra’s fourth base, realizing that he needs to kill it off as he has yet to take a third, but he leaves five tanks outside the natural to force Hydra to continue using dark swarms and prevent him from countering. Hydra is using his mutalisks and zerglings, which cannot engage Flash’s army, to patrol for a third and keep Flash on a weak economy while he turtles up and tries to get a big hive tech army to fight against Flash in the middle. Flash easily forces a cancel on Hydra’s fourth base, but misses an opportunity to take down the third due to inattention.



However, Flash is sending all his reinforcing units to Hydra’s sieged natural, breaking the darkswarm defense by getting a few vultures in there to lay down mines while the zerg is still morphing his reinforcing lurkers. The lurkers are unable to get under the swarm without being hit by spider mines and Flash breaks into the natural.



Hydra’s rallied reinforcements cannot put a dent in Flash’s army and Hydra ggs as Flash forces his way into his main.