GSTL 2013
Season One

Azubu vs. PRIME
Recap


Brackets and results on Liquipedia

by kollin

Resultsr from Live Report Thread by digmouse.
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Another match, another Terran all kill. In just the first four GSTL matches, we're already up to two all-kills, both of which were 4 - 0 streaks by a starting player. On the previous night, it was Startale's Sound running a number on the hapless NS HoSeo. This time, the perpetrator was Prime's very own ByuN, who played some extremely clinical and well executed Starcraft in all of his games. He took out a trio of SuperNova, San, VINES and even AZUBU's star player Symbol to end the series. ByuN's multitasking and unrelenting aggression broke down his opponents, until he could just roll them over with his superior army in a final engagements.

Machine

The opening game between SuperNova and Byun was fairly one sided, as the Prime Terran used a superior build to propel himself forward in the early game before finishing Supernova off with a marine tank force. Both players opened gas first and Supernova opted for banshees off the back of it. Byun went for the popular marine-widow mine drop in an attempt to do light economic damage and then abusing the scans that had been forced out by following it up with cloak banshees. Supernova lost over half his workers to this harass, while barely doing any damage with his own banshee. Byun took his second and third bases and secured his vital infrastructure while Supernova desparately scrambled to recover. It was not enough, and Byun's much larger marine tank army crushed through the front of Supernova's natural and forced Supernova to GG.

VINES was the next player to be sent out, and he fared no better against Byun's beautifully executed builds. VINES opened with a fast expand, and Byun with reapers to apply light pressure to his Protoss foe. Both players macroed up through the mid game, and Byun moved out at the 9 minute mark with a double drop to pick off some probes where he could. It did much more than that, as Byun's fantastic splitting and micro resulted in him taking out most of VINES' zealots as well as a colossus with only 16 marines and 2 medivacs. It was a fantastic trade which rocketed Byun ahead in the supply count, and the quad drop that followed ended the game decisively in Byun's favour.

Byun's next opponent would be another Protoss, San. Due to the large size of the map Whirlwind, Byun felt comfortable opening with extreme greed, going CC first, two barracks and then another CC. While San was also fast expanding, he failed to punish Byun's greed with the usual stalker and MSC poke, which put him massively behind economically. San, having scouted the third CC with an observer, realised how far behind he was and went up to 7 gateways while adding on a templar archives. San crashed into the Prime Terran's natural with a scary looking force, but Byun's stellar control and worker advantage meant he could afford to pull SCVs and eventually stave off the push. At the same time he had three medivacs of infantry dropping San's main, crippling his infrastructure. VINES was forced into a final, last ditch attack, and GG'd out once it was easily thwarted. Byun took the game, and went on to face Azubu's final hope in Symbol.

Monster

What would end up being the final game of the night started with both players going for standard builds. Byun opted for reaper-hellion while getting up 3 CCs, and Symbol went hatchery first into muta-ling-bane. As his reapers and hellions did their best to be a nuisance to Symbol as well as keep map control, Byun got double upgrades going and the production facilities he required for bio mine. After establishing his own production base, Symbol went for a large early-mid baneling bust timing into ByuN's natural. While Symbol killed around 20 SCV's, Byun stabilised quickly with his 3 CCs and mules, and the game progressed on without much impact.

Having stabizlied, ByuN started to up the temp, dropping in Symbol's main while the rest of his army moved to take out the AZUBU Zerg's incompleted fourth. Byun continually dropped all over the map, while threatening at any moment to run in and snipe another base while Symbol's army was out of position. Symbol endured through the harassment, slowly securing more bases while using swarm hosts and spine crawlers to set up a strong position in the middle of them map. As ByuN continued to drop whenever he could, Symbol made his way to ultralisk tech as his final choice to pair with his swarm hosts.

Symbol slowly started to push across the map, but Byun's relentless drops and small bio runbies were causing him no end of trouble back at home, and his bank was slowly beginning to dwindle while Byun's only grew. Ultimately, Symbol couldn't do worthwhile damage to ByuN when he left his side of the map, and paid the price when ByuN inevitably honed in on undefended expansions and tech buildings. Despite the fact that Symbol's standing army was much larger than Byun's and could win in a head on fight, Byun never let such a fiht occur and by the time Symbol realized he was going to have to force some action, he was already down one base to three, and without a bank behind him.

Once ByuN deemed he had led Symbol bleed out enough, he moved forward with a bio-mine-raven army against Symbol's broodlord-infestor-ultralisk-viper combination. Byun killed off Symbol's last mining base and forced an engagement in the middle of the map. His 20+ widow mines destroyed the infestors and softened the ultralisks to no more than putty, while the seeker missiles added to the firework show lighting up Akilon flats. When the dust settled, Byun stood victorious and he completed the all kill of AZUBU.

Player of the night: ByuNPrime

Byun played like a beast, to put it simply. He was utterly destroying his opponents by force of sheer speed, exhibiting superior multitasking and micro. At the same time, he was also playing clinical, machine like games where he used clean, well executed builds and strategies to pick his enemies apart. If ByuN keeps up this level of play in the GSTL then Marineking might have some serious comeptition for his ace spot. Even if Byun's inconsistency prevents him from doing well in individual leagues, the glimpse of raw power we saw from him tonight reminds us of what he's capable of when he's on his game.

Writers: kollin.
Graphics: Pathy.
Editor: Waxangel.