When Leenock and MC faced off for the final RO16 ticket in group B, Leenock came out with a surprising offensive Hatchery build. Mousesport's Stefan "MorroW" Andersson offered his insights on this unorthodox strategy.


Player Style

Before we get into the build itself, let's take a look at the player behind the build. Leenock is quite a control based player in general which means he wants to force the game to be played on his own terms. Leenock uses a variety of methods to make his opponent play in situations that they are uncomfortable in, while they are completely normal situations for Leenock himself. Most of the time, this kind of tactic leads to the controlling player (Leenock) knowing exactly what to do and how the timings will play out, while the opponent is uncomfortable and less capable of dealing with the unfamiliar timings. On top of that, it restricts the opponent's choices and builds from the beginning of the game.

Now, this game happened to be against MC, who is actually very much alike Leenock in this regard – amplifying this factor even more.

This style can be weak when you are playing someone who is very good at scouting and adapting. Players who are good at improvising and/or who have a lot of knowledge of the game (encyclopedic knowledge of builds and proper reactions to each one) just can't be thrown off that easily.


The Zerg Build and Underlying Idea

So onto the build itself.

A simple concept.

The objective is to go Hatchery first in the opponent's natural, get a Queen out to put down a Creep Tumor right after it builds, and use that tumor to delay the Protoss expansion by a ridiculous amount of time. You make Zerglings from the offensive Hatchery to protect the Queen as well as defend the tumor while it is visible. However, they are also produced to simply harass and distract the Protoss from realizing that your big picture strategy actually is the creep tumor itself.

If you are Protoss and see a bunch of eggs spawning in your natural you will most likely spend all your time thinking about and dealing with that, rather than think about the Creep Tumor that's really going to hurt you in the future. Hence, the Zerglings are a distraction.

In short, here's the best case scenario for Zerg: You get your creep tumor down, you kill a few probes, Zerglings run around being annoying for a LONG time in the Protoss main before the eventual Stalker comes out to kill them.

(On a side note, having scouting Zerglings alive in the Protoss main in the case of success is crucial. Because if you succeed, the Protoss will naturally want to retaliate with very drastic measures. Two Stargate or DT rush are natural responses here, as the Creep Tumor will only block the natural, but not delay tech.)

Anyway, if everything goes right, you'll have two bases, queens at home, and be in a pretty stable situation. In the meanwhile, Protoss is completely f***ed – if I might put it that way – and perhaps be in a situation he's never been in before.


Why the Build Didn't Work

The reason it ended up looking silly or bad on Leenock's part was because A) MC knew exactly what was going on from past experience and knew the proper response, or B) he was just stellar at improvising on the fly. Or perhaps C) a combination of both.


Protoss Though Process and Adaptation

Here's what MC did in response.

One good turn deserves another.

First, he Pylon blocked the Zerg natural. This is a pretty obvious move, as Zerg had invested a ton of money in an offensive Hatchery, Queen, and Zerglings. By forcing an additional four Zerglings just to be able to expand, you make him very low-econ indeed. Of course, Zerg expects it, because it's an obvious move. It's just part of the 'dance' if you will.

With his Nexus blocked, MC continued to tech well, getting his Gateway, Gas, and Cybernetics Core without missing a beat. Even if a tumor didn't go down, the remaining creep from the Hatchery was still going to delay his Nexus for a little while, so spending his money on tech wasn't going to delay his Nexus timing in the future.

He Chronoboosted out a Zealot to help deal with whatever came out of the eggs, and kill off the Hatchery faster. Also, by boosting out a quick 2~3 Zealots, he would be able to counter-attack the Zerg later like in an ordinary Forge fast expand game (where they achieve the same goals of scouting a possible Zerg all-in, or forcing an economy focused Zerg to make defensive units).

MC put Probes on his ramp as well, completely blocking it off. He knew whatever came out of the eggs wanted to cause chaos inside his main base, and it was important to stop it. Also, cutting off the ramp just gave him better control of the situation in general. You could think of it as sealing off a water leak and limiting it to a small area, so it's easier to focus on and gives you better control of the situation.

A rather unusual containment.

Now the absolute, most crucial part of MC's reaction might have been the least obvious part: He knew exactly when Leenock's Queen was going to pop out of the hatchery. He knew that he HAD to surround it, and kill it before it could move to put down a tumor outside of the Photon Cannon's detection range. Right as the Queen popped out, he surrounded it with Zealots and Probes, and killed it off before it could achieve its goal.

Incredible timing.


Threat neutralized.

The Result of MC's Successful Defense

There's not much to talk about the mid-game of this match because realistically speaking, everything was pretty much settled in the early game. Even so, here are some notes on why MC decided to follow-up with a Warpgate push off two bases instead of going for other options.

It mostly came down to math, with MC just having a huge pure economic and production advantange. There's no real way around mass Warpgate style for Zerg except to basically have more stuff. With such a big advantage in creating an army, MC knew that there was no real way Leenock could win if he just made a lot of Warpgate units. MC was thinking 'You can't take three base and be greedy (which Zerg often likes to do to catch up), you can't two base all-in with Nydus or something goofy because I'm going to have so much stuff none of that will work. You can't really just adapt to my mass Warpgate with Spines and units because again, you don't have a strong enough foundation to play on even grounds with me.'

A stroll in the park.

If MC had gone for a different follow-up, it's possible he could have been coin-flip countered. For example, if he gone for Dual Stargates, and Leenock had countered perfectly with several Spore Crawlers and Queens, then the game might have become even again.

MC didn't even have to kill Leenock with his Warpgate rush. If Leenock happened to make enough defenses, then MC could just play for a longer macro game with an even bigger economic and technological advantage.


Bonus: Map Considerations

Looking at the map pool, you can see why Leenock choose to employ this strategy on ESV Cloud Kingdom instead of some of the other two player maps.

Leenock loves to do regular mass unit all-ins, first of all, and Bel'Shir Beach and Dual Sight are pretty good maps for those. Both maps have two, equal distance attack routes which makes scouting the all-in much harder. Also, both maps are quite tough to wall-in on, and Leenock did in fact end up using a Baneling all-in to exploit a weakness in MC's wall on Bel'Shir. In comparison, the three building full-wall available on Cloud Kingdom on top of the overall layout in the natural makes it very easy to defend Zerg all-ins.

As for Daybreak, the distance between bases is quite long in general. You would have to send your drone earlier – a very big deal – and it makes the strategy less practical.

Overall, it wasn't so much the offensive hatchery strategy being a strong strategy on Cloud Kingdom as much as regular all-ins being weak on it.

Bonus II: Further Map Considerations

by iamke55

It's highly unlikely that MC will have run into this build order on the ladder. When you run into proxy Hatch on the ladder, it is usually a reactionary build where the Zerg player opened with some standard Pool first opening, then built their Hatchery at the opponent's natural as a response to seeing a forge. However, Leenock’s build order was Hatchery first, then Spawning Pool. Leenock sent his drone blind, knowing MC would go for a Forge FE on Cloud Kingdom.

Now look at the ladder map pool. On Xel’Naga Caverns, you probably will not use this build because Protoss usually avoids forge FE. On Metalopolis and Shattered Temple in close air positions, you might be able to see Protoss’ base in time with the scouting Overlord to do this build. All other maps have multiple possibilities for spawning locations, so you can’t use Leenock’s build on those at all. We know from watching MC at MLG events that he uses gateway openings on Xel’Naga Caverns and Metalopolis. Hence, it is highly unlikely that MC ever ran into this build on ladder! Ladder maps only allow for the Pool first version. The fact that MC was able to defend so well against a build he probably never encountered on the ladder is a testament to either his foresight for practicing against it in custom games, or his crisis management for figuring out and countering Leenock’s plan on the spot.

The group with John's favorite player.

Group E: SlayerS_MMA, FXOGuMiho, SlayerS_YuGiOh, Liquid`Zenio

First, let's go through this group from MMA's perspective. He's the last GSL champion, so I think you guys can forgive this preview being a little single player-centric.

When you look at the results sheet, it might look like Mvp was on the brink of being knocked out of Code S last week. It might look like the new Code S system has assured only the very best players get in, and that even the RO32 doesn't offer any safety for the top players. It might look like the other Terran titan, SlayerS_MMA, could be in for a hard time.

Nah, it's not like that. If you look at the content of Mvp's games, he wasn't really in that much trouble. Nestea's casual decision to be a good player again complicated matters, but Mvp was still clearly going to beat IdrA and Lucky. In MMA's case, he's better than all three players in his group. Barring circumstances that are even more unusual than Nestea's "I'm back, let's never talk about fourth quarter 2011 ever again" comeback, MMA should have an easy time.

His round one opponent is GuMiho, a ridiculously good player who conveniently has a TvT Achilles heel. If not for his TvT, GuMiho could be championship caliber. He still needs to prove he can control his nerves on the GSL stage and that he can prepare for matches with the meticulousness required in GSL, but the raw skill he's shown in AoL, WCG, and limited GSL games show that he could win it all one day. On that note, he will probably wipe the floor with the other two guys in his group. However, since he hasn't yet learned to play TvT at a super high level, MMA will walk over him. The X-factor is that Gumiho may have had some kind of incredible TvT breakthrough in the past few weeks, but that's a pretty unlikely window for drastic match-up improvement in pro-gaming.

Yugioh is the King of Code A, an honor that's also a somewhat back-handed compliment. He has the consistency to stay in Code A constantly, and recently found a way to break through the Up and Down matches. However, upon gaining access to Code S, MMA unceremoniously booted his teammate back to his lesser kingdom. Yugioh actually did surprisingly okay against MMA last season, but that's not saying much. The best TvZ player in the world looked completely in control, and it's likely he's just going to crush him again if they meet. With the format changing to best two of three, there's not even the chance of using a well-planned all-in to steal an upset. Even if Yugioh improved a lot since we've last seen him, it's hard to think that will be enough to take down MMA.

That leaves us with Liquid`Zenio, the Code S stalwart. RO16 isn't enough to retain Code S in the new system, but Zenio survived his Up-Down test to retain Code S for the time being. Zenio's always been said to suffer from nervousness in the GSL. The fact that he's managed to stay in Code S despite playing below his potential is supposed to suggest that he can be a championship caliber player if he takes care of all of his mentality problems. I can see a bit of that from his stream, but even if he is playing 100%, I don't think he has a chance against MMA. MMA simply plays TvZ on an absurd level, where it's doubtful if any Zerg player can beat him in a lengthy series.

So, obviously (I hope) MMA will take first place in this group. Let's back off from the defending champion (or is that Jjakji?) and look at who might take second place. Gumiho is the best bet with his incredible TvZ, and the the BO3 format offers further protection against shock losses to Zerg all-ins. Yugioh and Zenio are both veterans who haven't had much skill fluctuation in their GSL careers so far, but Zenio is a better upset bet as he's made it to the RO8 once, and he's taken games off championship class players now and then. Of course, he might just lose to Yugioh straight up, since it's ZvZ after all.

Prediction:

MMA > Gumiho
Zenio > Yugioh
MMA > Zenio
Gumiho > Yugioh
Gumiho > Zenio

MMA and Gumiho advance.