Haha, as if we would actually pick the best games of the week. No, we picked the games that gave Kwark the most things to criticize.



by Kwark

Remember me? I'm the guy who was heartbroken at Stork's performance in the last OSL and handed over his pen. I stopped watching professional starcraft that day and haven't broken that until today when Wax dragged me back. I'm rusty, out of touch and still wounded from the last OSL. Take what I say with a pince of salt.

Fantasy started in yellow at 12 while soO got green at 8 on Pathfinder. soO opened with a seven pool while Fantasy started his depot at his natural to wall it in as a fast expansion opener. The overlord scouted the correct way and soO sent a drone to block the depot. Things were going well up to the point where he made a real mess of blocking the depot with his drone and his lings got a bit stuck going out of his base with bad pathfinding. Still, it looked good for him when Fantasy didn't scout and sent his first marine chasing soO's drone.

soO broke down the depot and got his zerglings in and then let them get all stuck in four scvs while a single marine killed them all. However his total failure to achieve anything was mitigated by his immediate switch to drones with an expansion and gas. Fantasy returned to his original plan of expanding behind a wall into with mech while soO rushed mutalisks. An attempt to take his second natural at 6 was delayed by vultures while Fantasy kept on making mech and upgrades off of two bases.

Mutalisks killed a single scv because of the waiting turrets and goliaths but soO kept on trying, aware that he needed to get something done after his terrible opening. However Fantasy didn't look the least bit pressured, building a dozen turrets simply because he had the money to waste and couldn't be bothered messing around with mutalisk counterattacks. He just sat on two bases and built goliaths and tanks with upgrades for an unstoppable push.

soO struck out with excellent timing to snipe the first science vessels but lost a few mutalisks in the process. Fantasy then responded by putting all his tanks and goliaths in the narrowest choke of the map and expanding. Seeing this soO decided to throw all of his hydralisks into said narrow choke with predictable results. It turns out that mass tanks beat hydralisks in a narrow choke when the front tank is defence matrixed. Dragoons everywhere, experienced with this bullshit, cried out with sympathy for the unfortunate hydralisks and their amateurish commander.

With just three gas with which to resist the wall of mech soO switched to queens. As the queens gained energy soO recreationally suicided more hydralisks. Finally it was time to strike. The few hydralisks that remained charged forwards with their queen support in about a one to one ratio. Fantasy EMPed them. Game over.



This was a good game to break my strike with. It showed us absolutely nothing new, nothing original, nothing that wasn't long established general knowledge. Fantasy can micro. Fantasy goes mech TvZ. SKT Zergs are bad. Pathfinder favours vulture harass. Standard as ever



by Kwark

I heard something about Jangbi being good now. I don't really know if I should trust this or not because Jangbi was only ever seen as good in the golden age of Protoss and even then he was unremarkable among his peers. Unfortunately in this OSL I don't really have many to choose from so I'll have to watch this game to get my Protoss fix. His rival here in medicority is Calm and they're pretty well matched in that regard.

JangBi spawned in green at 11 and Calm got red at 1 on Gladiator. Calm opened overpool while JangBi opened ten gate eleven gate for a zealot rush. I'm trusting the unit counting station here for the ten, eleven timing but it does avoid the supply block at 17 by allowing a faster pylon and delaying a probe. It gives slightly more zealot production for a slightly weaker economy. Calm expanded, as you'd expect, and scouted the two gates. JangBi was unable to achieve anything against mass zergling and defensively expanded after eight zealots and a forge. This is bad. Like, really bad.



JangBi finally took his expansion with ten zealots and a cannon while sixteen speedlings held the map and shielded Calm's third base. JangBi tried to send out a scout probe but couldn't (should have hidden a second one) so he made some more zealots and cannons.

Meanwhile Calm was making nothing but drones because let's face it, why wouldn't you? JangBi delayed his core and used his first 100 gas for a quick +1 attack so he could hit absolutely no timing. The result of this was that his slow zealots which couldn't leave his base were slightly more capable at defending (with the help of cannons) a chance speedling all-in around the 7 minute mark.

However his citadel of adun was delayed so hugely by this that a +1 speedlot play was out of the question. Calm made a few hydralisks to deal with JangBi's scout corsair but still didn't need any units because JangBi still had zero initiative. His citadel of adun was only just starting and at this point even hydralisks presented a major threat to his massed slow zealots. So JangBi was forced to throw down yet more cannons, upping his count to seven.

Now, let us not forget that his opponent here is Calm who is notoriously bad. Despite the fact that JangBi was only just getting zealot speed after about two hours (or so it seemed) into the game and still hadn't got psi storm he decided that the best context for his hydralisks to fight was in melee combat against zealots under cannon fire. The safer option would have been to ride his advantage to the late game, but with far more drones than JangBi had probes, it didn't matter. The hydralisks poured in and broke him down.

Basically JangBi doesn't know how to do the build he opened with. At all. I'm actually angered that I've come back to writing battle reports and this is the Protoss I have to watch this week. If JangBi had come to me last week and been all "hey KwarK, I'm bad so I don't know how to play, how do you 2 gate vs Zerg" I'd have been all like "well the trick is to transition early so you get into the midgame stuff and regain initiative and don't forget to hide a scout probe".

And then I'd have watched the game with high hopes and been even more upset because JangBi is just bad. You used to see this stuff all the time on iccup at D+, usually on python, and it was always the same mistake. People would open two gate and then decide they were committed and just make a bunch of zealots and push out, only to then realize that their zealots were dead if the opponent made any number of speedlings, leading to them making even more zealots. Those players do that because they're terrible at Brood War, and I don't expect to have to watch that kind of play in the OSL. Jeez.

Two gating isn't hard; the faster you expand the faster you start teching, and the faster you start teching the faster you get into the midgame and regain control of the matchup. Making zealots doesn't get you anywhere because zealots only defend against one threat and that threat is also countered by just sending a scout probe to his base and seeing if he has any drones.
Calm, you were half-decent at best. Fortunately that's all you needed to be. And JangBi, you haven't changed a bit.

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by Ver



Killer taking the star role in a featured strategical analysis, wait what? How things have changed!

+ Show Spoiler [Hwaseung House] +

The opening was pretty basic for both players: Killer@7 opened the standard 3 hatch muta, taking his 3rd at 9 and going with a ling heavy midgame. Baby played an aggressive 3 rax tech, transitioning into 2 factory vultures with vessels and taking his 3rd relatively early, aiming at a full mech switch after the 3rd was secured.

With the overall map terrain, particularly in the middle, favoring mutalisk usage, Baby paid quite a blood cost in threatening to press on and attack Killer's 3rd before lurkers were out. The real benefit was more indirect, for Killer spent crucial midgame larvae making lings instead of drones thus delaying the full saturation of his 3rd. Thus even though he lost a number of marines, Baby still retained a comfortable position.

The middle terrain makes it difficult for either party to attack, and having forfeited the early tanks in favor of vultures to secure his third, Baby had no threat of a timing attack. Worse, Killer had made it past Baby's bio forces to scout the 2 factories making vultures in the main, and knew it. Thus, Killer was able to invest in a minimal amount of lurkers, freeing up gas for guardians.

The key point here is not whether Killer got guardians, but when he got guardians. Baby went 2 fact vultures in the initial period after his mech switch, still producing some bio and making 2 vessels with irradiate. By using the vultures to secure his position and still threatening enough to make Killer think twice about taking too early of a 4th, Baby gained an economic advantage. However, Killer only got guardians after Baby sunk his gas into 4 total factories, stopped making vessels, and began to make tanks.

That timing meant that Baby only had a small contingent of bio and 2 vessels that could fight the guardians. If Killer had rushed guardians at the normal timing, Baby would have smelled that something was up from his pressing in the middle and still had the gas reserves to get more starports for wraiths or vessels. As it was, Killer's army composition looked normal, and lacking the forces to really push him hard, Baby had no idea what was going on.

Normally one would think the mech switch leaves a period of vulnerability, and this is true. However, Zergs have had trouble punishing it because they are forced to rush defilers on 3 gas due to the bionic midgame. The 3 gas defiler/lurker/ling is ill equipped to break through even a weakened tank/vulture force, thus the Terran can survive the period of weakness because the Zerg just can't break it.

In a rare and interesting example, Killer took effective advantage of this weakness by using the often-maligned guardian to break the Terran. Bio/tank/vulture has an easy time defending versus swarm/lurker/ling, but even with 2 vessels it can't do much versus guardians. Even if Baby had seen the greater spire, he could still not easily have dealt with it. He can't get the goliath count he needs due to the necessity of making vultures and tanks to hold off the ground army, and thus would have had to rely on vessel/wraith, which he didn't have the gas for. So while Baby may have been caught by surprise, his plans would have been thrown into disarray even if he had seen what was coming. Using guardians in this fashion is normally impossible because Zerg needs to save all their gas for defiler/lurker to hold off relentless Terran aggression. However, the mech switch, particularly Baby's vulture first and fast 3rd variation, limits the attacking capabilities of the Terran. With less gas needed on defense, Killer had the freedom to spend it in guardians.



Baby's clever 3rd timing allowed him a supply lead of 150~ to 100~ and his 4th finished at the same time Killer's did. However, his army was woefully underequipped to deal with the guardian and swarm backed army of Killer, and that supply lead evaporated almost instantly. The swarm + lurker/ling combo prevented him from getting close to the guardians, and without enough irradiates, goliaths, or wraiths, he could not even hit them.



Terrans are going to have to put some more thought into their play and stop thinking that their mech transitions are 100% safe. Killer's build not only secured him an important group stage win, but also made future ZvT's that much easier merely by the threat of what could happen if Terran players don't account for an off-beat guardian timing attack. To be sure, there are many variations of the mech transition and Killer wouldn't have such an easy time vs ones that press harder in the midgame and are more aggressive with tanks initially. But with one win Killer just limited his future opponents' hands and made them a lot more nervous. He is a player to be feared, as strange as it sounds to say that.