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The new season of the MSL is underway, and that means TL coverage is kicking into gear. Because VODs and results are so easy to find, and are much quicker than the news, we are going to take a different approach this season. Each play day will be analyzed by three writers, one from each race. The writers will give you their insights on how the game play of each of their races evolves over the course of the tournament.
Breaking down the zerg, we have zulu_nation8. For protoss, our very own Kwark. And for terran, you are stuck with me.
I hope you enjoy this MSL season. Please leave any feedback you have about the style of reports, and things you want added.
- Mani
Game recaps: Group A
The first match for the Lost Saga MSL was the highly anticipated rematch between Savior and Bisu. It was Savior who famously told Bisu to "challenge me when you have three MSL titles". Well, Bisu won his third and promptly set himself up against Savior in the first round. As the TL forums blazed with anticipation, Savior took down Bisu in a tightly contested battle on Neo Harmony. He then trounced Zero to qualify for the round of 16. Meanwhile Bisu took care of Magma in the losers match, simultaneously giving him breathing room and shutting up the acorn king. In the final match on Destination, a critical micro mistake cost Bisu his fleet of corsairs and delayed his storm tech. Zero showed incredible muta micro, picking off high templars with reckless abandon which emboldened his hydra army. In a shocking turn of events, Zero emerged from his booth victorious as Bisu stared blankly at the screen.
sAviOr and ZerO advance from group A.Game Recaps: Group E
Yellow[arnc] had no problem advancing through this group, taking out both UpMagic and the new zerg darling by.hero. Much struggled mightily, going 0-2. One has to wonder how much BW is left in him, as he is not showing very good form these days. The final match came down to the Bisu slayer by.hero and UpMagic. The eStro terran showed an ingenious build, and by.hero was left floundering (more on that later).
YellOw[ArnC] and 
UpMagiC advance.This week was all about Savior vs Bisu. Here is zulu's report on this game, an extremely well written and thought out analysis.
For the swarm - by
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Zicon_small.png)
zulu_nation8From the confident execution of his aggressive opening build to the killer instinct exhibited by his excellently timed mid-game hydra drops, Savior, if only for one game, evoked the kind of strategical readiness and psychological dominance only seen during the pinnacle of the Maestro's career.
The buildup to Ma Jae Yoon's zergling attack starts with Savior spawning a very early extractor at 13 supply right after laying down his 3rd hatchery. For both the reasons of to discourage Bisu from building more than one cannon and to carefully nurture his early economy, Savior chooses to produce drones with his initial three saved larvas. The early gas allows for an earlier than usual lair followed by a deceptively quick zergling speed upgrade. When Bisu’s probe dies he sees eight zerglings, however it seems Bisu does not react until his scouting zealot sees another two zerglings hatching from Savior’s expansion. It is perplexing as to why Bisu does not play more conservatively on New Harmony which has a very open natural choke; perhaps due to a combination of lack of preparation and over-confidence.
When Bisu does react, he only adds one cannon, which quickly gets dismantled by Savior’s incoming rush of zerglings. Bisu’s ensuing loss of workers heavily delays his reaver and shuttle upgrades, which in turn provides Savior precious time to rebuild his economy and prepare a defense. Savior’s early lair + spire + scourges deny Bisu’s corsairs from scouting, thus leads to Bisu upgrading +1 air in fear of mutalisks and attempting to regain air control for shuttle harass. When Bisu’s first reaver and shuttle come out, he can not harass right away as he would be vulnerable to a hydralisk break. He attempts to expand but is stopped by Savior’s burrowed units. Meanwhile Savior upgrades +1 range and expands once more to 6 hatcheries, 3 bases total. He has burrow for both scouting and defense vs sair/reaver. Savior does not show any aggression but invites Bisu to harass, which Savior knows is the only thing Bisu can do at this point of the game.
Bisu’s subsequent attacks do little damage as he tries to simultaneously kill Savior’s 3rd expo with zealots and harass Savior’s 2nd expo with reavers. Meanwhile Bisu’s expansion is being severely delayed as for some reason, he does not expand at the same time he attacks, most likely assuming Savior still has burrowed units at Bruce Lee’s preferred expo location. Under normal circumstances, Bisu’s 3rd base would be running by now. But because it’s not, Bisu lacks gas which limits and delays his high templar count, therefore preventing him from engaging Savior’s hydra force head on.
Bisu attempts to expand again, but just as he seems to be clawing his way back into the game by safely securing the 2 o’clock expo. Savior somehow pulls off a massive hydra drop right under Bisu’s nose. It could very well have been luck that Bisu did not scout the drop with his corsairs, but whatever the cause, everything is going Mae Jae Yoon’s way. The drop, a brilliant move, attacks Bisu’s worst defended location. It further delays Bisu’s expansion attempt and at the same time strips Bisu of the little gas consuming, high tech units he has. During the drop Savior lowers Bisu’s sair count considerably through smart scourge placement, seeing another open opportunity for harass, Savior proceeds to mass mutalisks to cause more havoc. The pattern of drop to sair sniping to muta harass, whether fully planned by Savior or not, is ingenious. The mid game main drop, if successful, subdues the Bisu build’s aggressive harass by counter harassing where protoss is the weakest. When toss' sair army weakens to the point that mutalisks no longer has to avoid it, high templars become free kills to muta harass, as Zero later demonstrates in the group's final match. Bisu, upon seeing his main getting torn to shreds, has no choice but to counterattack. Savior responds by brilliantly scourging Bisu’s obs to buy time while taking apart the last buildings Bisu has remaining.
The entire game, Savior never engaged Bisu’s main army but instead, slowly chipped away at his economy and high level units through various methods of harass. The Maestro's strategy was effective, and his execution was precise. Bisu on the other hand seemed content to play the same sair/shuttle harass style he has become known for, and lost to By.Hero several days earlier with. The story of a determined, well prepared Savior versus a stubborn, and ultimately unlucky Bisu; The first game of the 2009 Lost Saga MSL hints at the arrival of a new era, or even paradigm shift within progaming. As the playoffs near and the true value of this game becomes clearer, we shall see what the future holds for Savior and the zerg race.
Now here is
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Picon_small.png)
Kwark's take on the same game, as well as some additional notes.For Aiur - by Kwark
Neo Harmony is a new map and is currently 5-1 in favour of zerg over protoss. It is very difficult for a FE Protoss to establish a safe 3rd here. This means that a mobile zerg playing for map control rather than an aggressive win can simply starve the protoss out. The protoss player really must seize map control in the early midgame and maintain the momentum. Expansions can only be taken and held when the protoss player has a lot of threats keeping the zerg pinned down.
I'd judge this map to favour the FE into zeechon timing rush we've seen because the spread out expansions make a unified zerg defence difficult to maintain and a mass of protoss roaming the map covers the otherwise difficult to defend protoss expansions. I think extremely aggressive, macro orientated midgame play is what the protoss player needs to get into the late game in a good position. On a related note, I predict Best being very strong on this map. This is largely theorycraft and hindsight so we will see if time vindicates me.
Any timings referenced here are based off the nevake youtube vod of the game.
sAviOr opened hat pool hat with his 3rd hat going down at the 10 o clock nat rather than the much closer 6 o clock location. In doing this he forced the game to be played across the entire map instead of being localized. Against a large midgame army 10 would be dangerously isolated, being as close to Bisu's base as to sAviOr's, and defending it would leave his nat vulnerable. However, I believe sAviOr expected Bisu would try a subtler harassment based opening against which the isolation of the bases is an advantage for sAviOr. Bisu's opening was solid, cutting cannons as he saw sAviOr powerdrone. This allowed him to get a faster than usual gateway and a quick second gas, a very strong opening for a darksair or reaversair build. In a very sloppy lapse of concentration Bisu lost his first scouting probe to a few zerglings. Bisu realised that sAviOr was missing a hatchery and used his first zealot to scout it immediately at 10. Although he caught 3 defenseless drones there he failed to kill any as 2 zerglings fended him off.
sAviOr knew that Bisu had seen him powerdroning. He knew that Bisu had wasted his first zealot. He knew that Bisu had just lost his scout probe. He knew that Bisu liked his tech units. The sudden switch to a speedling rush at 7:20 into the vod was an excellent play and it decided the game. Bisu had 1 zealot, 1 dragoon, 1 cannon, 1 cannon on 90% done and 1 zealot 50% done. At 7:30 he had 12 zerglings against probes, 1 dragoon and a 80% finished zealot. That Bisu actually survived this is a testament to his absurd skill level although he was so desperate he actually maynarded some probes from his main to his nat to help defend. The attack left his economy in tatters while guaranteeing sAviOrs safety and thus allowing him to pump drones from the moment the last ling was made.
Bisu spent the rest of the game playing catch-up. His corsair arrived at the same time as scourge and did no damage. At 9:00 Bisu still hasn't even got a citadel, the most fundamental building for protoss map control, whereas sAviOr was shutting down sair play with his 2 gas scourge and has 5 hat pumping hydraling. The robo support bay finished only at 9:24 and the shuttle at 9:57.
Just to give you an idea of the economic damage Bisu took from the speedling attack, his robo finished at about 7:40 yet he did not start building his first reaver for over 130 seconds. There was nothing he could do. I could argue that he should have gone reavers faster instead of the corsairs because the corsairs had absolutely no offensive potential and without aggressive map control he was doomed. With 3 well saturated bases, 5 hats, hydra den and spire sAviOr could do what he liked. Bisu probably felt his only shot at actually surviving the next 2 minutes was to scout continually with sairs. This is all very well and good but it was quite simply not going to win. At 9:35 sAviOr expanded again and Bisu at this point had 5 corsairs, 0 shuttles, 0 reavers, 2 zealots, 1 gateway, and no citadel. There is no other way to describe this but over. Outexpanded, outmacroed and with a smaller army there was nothing he could ever have done.
The next 15 minutes were an exercise in extreme caution. sAviOr never attempted a head on attack against Bisu's nat, as there was no point. He had gained a game winning advantage and was simply playing to hold onto it. Every time Bisu tried to get some kind of offensive going sAviOr distracted him, countered at his expo attempts or dropped. sAviOr played to disrupt him, to distract him, to make sure he always had something more important to do than launch full scale attacks. The 15 minute point is a classic example of this, as it was Bisu's only real chance in the game to get something going. He had a decent sized speedlot force supported by sairs and reavers, with a 3rd base building, defended only by the aggression and momentum of Bisu's army. Savior, instead of defending and therefore giving up the initiative and letting Bisu expand to get back into the game, launched a small and utterly doomed drop against Bisu's main. Bisu was forced to bring his entire army back at which point a second group of hydra shut down his now undefended expansion attempt. While Bisu was being aggressive he could expand safely but sAviOr disrupted Bisu's game flow and prevented him gaining any momentum. It was quite frankly a boring game at this point. At the time of the drop Bisu's main was already pretty much mined, some crystals already gone completely and the others very nearly. sAviOr was waiting him out, tripping him up, disrupting him, buying time.
sAviOr didn't play this badly, but it was no masterpiece either. It was 3 hat speedling switch the moment the scout probe died. Entirely mundane and very effective if the protoss doesn't expect it. Bisu did very well to stay in the game but the damage was done and sAviOr never let him recover.
Other protoss game notes
- Against Magma Bisu did an excellent job using his storms on the zerg army and then backing off to limit his own losses. This weakened the lurker/ling army greatly.
- Also against Magma, Bisu chose wisely with his expansions, taking five oclock because it was more valuable to Magma, rather than out of any real intent of mining it.
The terran lineup featured only
UpMagiC this week (although this will change once we hit the all terran group!). This weak I will focus on his final game, against by.hero.A Terran Nal_rA? - by Manifesto7
After getting crushed by Yellow[arnc] in the first game, UpMagic showed how misinformation can be an extraordinary weapon. The game opened on Destination with UpMagic in the south and by.hero in the north. Hero sent out an incredibly early scout, using his 9th drone. His next decision would be based upon what that drone saw, and that was nothing. Trundling into the terran main, the drone looked, looked, looked, and found no barracks. UpMagic was building it on the right side of his main, out of view.
This caused hero to not only pool first, but also pull four drones off of minerals and patrol the bridges leading to his natural in preparation for a bunker rush. Unfortunately for him, UpMagic had no intention of rushing. By the time he figured this out, UpMagic had gotten away with a one marine, one factory, one vulture, CC build. The advantage gained was incredible, and would allow UpMagic to dictate the rest of the game.
Now way behind, Hero put down a sunken and another hatchery at his natural to prevent vulture harass. However, his entire build seemed disjointed. He quickly got a lair and a spire, but never made any mutalisks. He was unable to scout the terran main despite having an overlord near the back door.
Rather than play catch-up, Hero went for a three-hatch hydra pump to break UpMagic's natural. This was an awful decision, as crossing the bridges with hydras versus tanks is suicide. UpMagic simply played defense and hero tapped out after his failed offensive.
With this game we saw the real magic in terran play, and how a simple missing building can cause game ending fear in zerg opponents.
Game of the week
Without a doubt, it is Bisu vs Savior on Neo Harmony. Enjoy once again.
As always, you can find VODs of all games on the VOD Tracker, or at the nevake YouTube channel. Keep up with all the stats in the TLPD.
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Until next week,
Mani, zulu_nation8, and Kwark
. Although it could be summarised in 'Bisu's build was retarded and then he lost some sairs'. Wasn't really a very technical game.
