I like Luxury's 12 hatchery opening here. Given that no Protoss is going to open a series with a blind 12 Nexus, the only way to extract an advantage from the openings is to 12 hatch and hope your opponent misses on the first scout, which is exactly what happened. Luxury's drone served two purposes as a scout and as a simple way of making a 13 hatchery at top left without interruption.

Major credit to Luxury for what happened next. ZvP is traditionally about maximizing drone production in the early game. Luxury's initial 7 zerglings rushing to Jangbi's main tells me he either understood that the forge was out of range of the cannons, or was planning some sort of slow runby. There would be no other reason to get 8 zerglings moving to the Protoss expansion while fully scouted by an overlord.

I remember watching the game live when the forge was taken out. I said "Speedling rally finishes this" and I stand by that statement. Without a forge, I believe a timed speedling rally (and possible runby) would have finished the game. However, playing for the long game is always the safest move, and I commend Luxury for repairing his economy before moving forward with another attack. Safe preparation often wins series. In this vein, I would have prefered to see Luxury continue with drone production than try the second speedling attack; however, the attack should be deemed a success. Jangbi lost quite a few probes in that attack, his forge yet again, and any sense of security.

Luxury began to seal this game away when he deflected Jangbi's midgame attack with minimal units. Typically, all things equal in a game of StarCraft, Zerg wants to live attacks with no units leftover. This means you are maximizing drones and maximizing your late game potential. And that's what I like about Luxury's play in this game. He makes the necessary preparations to keep Jangbi behind with simply maneuvers like well-timed Lurkers and defenses and denying Jangbi from expanding to 3 with a single lurker. Small plays like this compound into big Zerg late game advantages.

The thing about this game is that the Zerg strategy is so mechanically simplistic; it's something all foreigners can appreciate. Luxury gains the advantage, stays just far enough ahead to play for the late game, and then drags Jangbi's army back and forth from north to south enough times to make his head spin. Watching Luxury simplistically and systematically take Jangbi from 5 bases to 1 in 90 seconds is something every Zerg play can appreciate.

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Carthage is a two player map, and hence favours pool-first builds. Luxury's 9 pool shows an understanding of this. The idea of going 9 pool speed instead of overpool speed is a little curious to me. They both serve similar timings, while overpool speed gives a noticeably better economy. His plan was clearly revealed as the 100 gas is used for lair rather than zergling speed once the scouting probe was dealt with. I'm never a fan of builds like this. It seems more often than not they provide a brief advantage to the player performing them, and inevitably the opponent defends and wins the game in an overwhelming counterattack backed by a superior economy.

It turns out Luxury was opting for the fast spire simply to have quicker scourge out. At the cost of sacrificing economy, he got to skip a hydralisk or two - a seemingly bad trade off. In the end, Jangbi's cute hidden Corsairs baited Luxury into trying an Ee Han Timingesque Mutalisk attack, which was deflected easily. Down in economy and with many resources wasted in mutalisks, Luxury found himself behind quite a bit. I was actually surprised when Luxury had Hive so quickly and +1 carapace before Jangbi's +1 attack, however, he had given up all presence on the map. His only play was a Zergling counter, which ended pretty poorly. At this point Luxury had resigned himself to trying more counters and running around with control groups of Zerglings - anything to keep Jangbi from pointing his army at a base.

Unfortunately, that play only works if you are stalling for someone. Despite having great upgrades with ultralisks on the way, you can't beat a 3 base protoss with 3 bases. It's just not going to happen. Luxury's hand was finally played and his army significantly defeated. He tried a bit of a strange opening and was drawn into using a strategy that Jangbi had prepared against. Luxury was simply strategically outclassed this game.

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Destination is again a 2 player map, favouring a pool-first build. However, unlike Carthage, the quicker rush distance makes speedling builds a definite possibility. Luxury again opted to try 9 pool speed, with nothing tricky this time. Again, I much prefer overpool to 9 pool if you're going to get gas and especially if you are going to try a runby (like Luxury did).

There's really no excuse for Jangbi here. He had ample time to scout the 9 pool and saw the gas. He saw zerglings forming up outside his bridges. Letting 7 of 12 zerglings into your main is an utter disaster. This game doesn't really require any further analysis - there is no way to come back from this for a Protoss as long as the Zerg plays one of many calculated followups. Jangbi rolled the dice on two stargates and got two groups of hydralisks rammed down his throat. End of story.

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A return to four player maps mid-series brings with it many options of openings. The analysis from game 1 indicating that 12 hatchery is the proper opening no long applies here and deception, adaption and mindgames are well underway at this point. After two 9 pool gas builds, Luxury decided to switch it up with a 9 overlord. This is an understandable, albeit predictable, change.

I'm not sure if Luxury was planning on overpool all along, but after being scouted by protoss it is certainly the correct adaptation. All advantage from a 12 hatchery has been lost after scouting, and reverting to overpool kept many options open for Luxury. 8 gas furthered his options at the cost of his economy. For comparision, the famous Mondragon runby typically gets gas at 10 control. Not much came of the speed since Luxury did not run by; however it did force two cannons from Jangbi before his nexus.

I like Luxury's adaptation, falling back into the 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra build. We can really see the timings line up as usual (usual being 12 hatch vs 12 nexus; while in this case they were overpool gas vs forge cannon cannon nexus) when the first corsair arrived to see the spire finish morphing. Everything seemed well and good for both players. One would expect a followup of a 2 archon speed zealot attack from Jangbi, which Luxury should have been able to defend with upgraded Hydralisks...

However, things don't always work out as they should in StarCraft. For whatever reason, Jangbi decided the 2 archons were superfluous and decided to forget them. The result being a quick hydralisk flashback to game 3. After a cute storm dodge the game was easily decided by hydralisk a-move.

JangBi warps in at 5 in orange while Luxury takes the adjacent 7 in white. These positions slightly favour JangBi in my opinion as the expansion site at 6 is vulnerable to harass by JangBi and the expansions up the right hand side are a very long way from Luxury. However there have been questions raised over the balance of this map.

JangBi scouts correctly and is able to nexus before cannons against luxury's 12 11 opening but unfortunately misplaces his forge by one grid and gets it killed from outside cannon range. This forces him to spend money on zealots although it seems from the lack of cannons that his plan involved mass speed zealots so this is perhaps not so problematic. That said, the mass zealot attack he went for generally involves a synchronised +1 and losing the forge killed any chance of that. JangBi scouted Luxury's 3rd base at 10 but had his scouting shut down by speed zerglings afterwards. This allowed Luxury to mass a lot of speed zerglings move in for the kill against his undercannoned natural, timed perfectly with the arrival of the scouting corsair. Fortunately for JangBi he is really good and managed to hold it through some good zealot micro and probe drilling. Unfortunately for him Luxury is really good too and killed a dozen or so of the probes.

Having held the attack and scouting Luxury trying to recover the drone count he sacrificed to attack, JangBi hit Luxury's natural expansion at 7 with his speed upgraded zealots and archon. The lack of a +1 attack upgrade really showed in the fight against the zerglings and it was clear Luxury was in control of the game flow as he took control of the air with scourge and morphed lurkers at his bases. While the attack did break the sunken and force its way into the natural the timely completion of the first lurker forced JangBi to back off before doing any real damage. He did attempt to run into the main, but again Luxury showed excellent play by blocking his ramp with an egg.

With his attack defended, JangBi tried to expand to the 3 expansion site but a lurker was there waiting for him. Instead forced to spend his money on macro JangBi massed zealots, archons and corsairs, clearly expecting Luxury to try and lame a defence with just a few lurkers and a lot of scourge to keep them alive. While it is true you need dragoons to deal with mass lurkers, they are vulnerable to speed upgraded zerglings. Against a few lurks it is often easier to opt for zealots (especially with the +1 advantage (which JangBi didn't have, just to clarify)) and just outlast the damage. As JangBi moved his corsair fleet out to support his army he sloppily managed to lose two of them to scourge - impressive given he had a fleet of six, more than the critical mass needed to kill scourge. He hadn't stacked the sairs, and with them functioning as two smaller groups on the same screen neither had the firepower to kill scourge before they hit. This was both a clumsy mistake and an important one, because if JangBi was to break one of Luxury's expansions he needed air superiority. Losing two corsairs brought JB down below the bare minimum of five.

A look at JangBi's main revealed a huge mistake: he was not researching anything at his single forge, despite being behind on upgrades. While any chance of taking a +1 window (the three windows in the game where the Protoss has one more attack than the Zerg carapace are critical timing windows where the Protoss can usually attack at will) had been lost, equality of upgrades would be necessary if JangBi hoped to hold in the late-game. Perhaps frustrated that he had a large army and no way of punishing Luxury's macroing with it, JangBi suicided five zealots in a run through at 11, failing to kill anything. JangBi took the expansion at 3 but really needed to establish the fourth base area, both for the minerals there and to deny it to Luxury. As JB massed his army near Luxury's natural, he lost four more corsairs to well-microed scourge. This was the direct result of his sloppy losses earlier. Four corsairs can kill a scourge with micro anyone can learn to do (select the front one and move it away). Five can safely attack move towards a few scourge. Six allows for mismicro and more than six and you can just leave them around, safe from anything but a 360 degree flank. By wasting a few corsairs needlessly early on, JangBi had stopped himself approaching the mass at which Luxury couldn't kill them.

When JangBi went in for the attack he'd been trying to do since he first got observers out, zealots, archons, corsairs and observers smashed into sunken colonies and lurkers (with a few lots running through to draw fire for the rest). As I said earlier, you can use zealots against lurkers if there are only a few relying on scourge for support. However, three lurkers is probably the tipping point where zealots stop being cost-effective - and Luxury had seven! Realizing his attempts to break the natural were futile, JangBi attempted to run his last few units up the ramp where they were promptly trapped and killed by speed upgraded zerglings running in from both sides. This attack was a complete failure.

It is important to note that JangBi was still very much in the game at this point. He was at a distinct disadvantage because Luxury has held more bases for longer and was fully teched, but if JB could hold the top right then Luxury would be, at best, one base ahead of him (12 o'clock) because 6 is unusable without any way of defending it from storm drops. However, with his gateways and expansions so far apart, JangBi would have difficulty protecting all of his expansions from the hivetech onslaught that Luxury was finally ready to unleash. Again JangBi was hosed by his waste of corsairs early (which kept his count low for most game): he attempted a storm drop at Luxury's 7 o'clock natural expansion, but without corsairs to clear the path for the shuttle it was scourged.

JangBi had by this point macroed up an impressive, if very low-tech, army and was dominating the map. Rather than challenge him for it, Luxury opted to snipe at it with plague (doing some very nice damage) and drop JangBi's main. By using drop, Luxury could exploit the long distance between the expansions and the gateways to overextend JangBi. Evidently, JangBi had read that particular Zerg textbook and was massing corsairs for drop defense.

I believe JangBi dropped the ball here. Admittedly, Luxury was keeping him really busy - but even so, you need to be better to win Starleagues. JangBi had five corsairs on drop defense (where he left them after the first drop) but his stargate rally point had another four at it, nowhere near the drop route. Yes, Luxury had been keeping him busy and yes Luxury was a long way ahead by this point, but if you're relying on corsairs to kill drops and get you back in the game, they have to be positioned properly. The five corsairs killed two overlords and left about ten others on low health, but dropping. While JangBi immediately brought in the other sairs, they were too late to kill any units in transit. JangBi's main army had to trek back down the map, at which point ultralisks and zerglings, backed up by dark swarm, hit his 11 o'clock expansion again, killing it.

GG

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JangBi's fast scout probe saw the 9-pool speed upgraded zergling opening and JangBi countered smoothly, cutting probes to still get a fast nexus. JangBi's opening was optimal - if Luxury had continued to mass lings, then pumping probes and delaying the expansion to stay safe with more cannons would have been the correct play, but as Luxury expanded and droned up himself, JangBi cutting probes for his own counter-expansion was correct.

JangBi also sent out and hid a second scout probe, because the wide choke on Carthage is so vulnerable to cheese it's better to know for certain what you're up against - especially against a player like Luxury. The probe succeeded in scouting the Luxury's fast third base and the lack of a second gas, but couldn't get into the main. The drone count at the nat ruled out 3 hat hydra cheese builds, but otherwise left JangBi in the dark. Going for the standard corsair, he scouted spire and two morphing evolution chambers. Spotting those evolution chambers was critical. As far as I know there is only one common build which uses two early evo chambers with spire, and that's an ultraling hive rush: mutalisks to buy time and double upgrades to give zerglings a powerful attack and ultras their tanking ability. With that early scout, JangBi immediately knew what he was up against and could counter it appropriately.

The correct play for JangBi here was to go for one of three options. First, he could make nine gateways and attempt to break an expansion before ultralisks are out, using more archons and speed-upgraded zealots. He'd easily beat mutalisks and zerglings, and on two gases Zerg simply cannot deal with a two-gas Protoss. JangBi's second option was to double upgrade while techiing to reavers with sair support (against the mutalisks), and attempt to shove a lategame Protoss army of zealots, dragoons, corsairs and four or so reavers in Luxury's nat just after ultralisks come out. JangBi's third option was to mass corsairs to deal with the mutalisks, while taking a quick third and double upgrading to set himself up for a late-game macro war. What simply doesn't work against a double-upgrading three-gas hive rush is no upgrades, no timing attack, and no expansions.

Unfortunately for me, that's exactly what JangBi did - massing zealots, dragoons and corsairs. Aware of his mistakes in game 1, he kept his corsairs in a tight safe group until he had more than enough, and then started using them aggressively while taking no damage at all from scourge. 11 minutes and 20 seconds in JangBi moved out, having made a total of 11 dragoons, two zealots and three high templar from his seven gates and armed with absolutely no upgrades. Admittedly he had a decent corsair fleet in the air above him but even so, this move makes no sense to me.

As two more rounds of production joined JangBi's army and his high templar revealed three psionic storms worth of energy each, his strategy finally started to look credible. Luxury attempted to snipe the high templar, but the corsairs drove his mutas away without loss and JangBi began to move his army down the left side of the map while taking the gas expansion at 9 o'clock. Luxury tried a mass zergling counterattack down the other side of the map, and both armies slammed into both natural expansions simultaneously. A wall of zealots, backed up by cannons and probes, held JangBi's natural for a victory in terms of unit costs. Meanwhile, JangBi's attack took a lot of mutalisk and zergling kills in some excellent storms, before simmering when its zealot meatshield died and its dragoons became vulnerable.

Both battles were victories for JangBi in terms of unit cost, and the attack shielded his new expansion with its momentum. It's worth noting that JangBi's attack hit about 20 seconds before the ultralisks arrived, so while his play may be theoretical nonsense it is clear he knew exactly what he was doing. While JB knew his army was ill-equipped to deal with ultralisks and zerglings, he knew he could do a lot of damage and then back off to hold his expansions and remix his army. All he really lost were zealots, which are worthless against adrenal gland zerglings without better upgrades. The dragoon core of his army survived and formed the heart of his next army.

With only a narrow front to defend and seven gateways pumping units, JangBi camped his high ground with psionic storm and dragoons as his main damage dealers, backed up with countless zealots to block. Although Luxury did open up the center of the map, this did nothing to widen the front and eventually Luxury decided to engage JangBi on his own ground. A trio of excellent storms and a sacrificial archon to hold the line left JangBi in a strong position. That solo archon which ran in first and died may have seemed pointless, but it held up Luxury's army while the rest of JangBi's caught up, formed a cohesive line, and then stormed all over the front of that line. JangBi continued to be aggressive with his army, keeping it in Luxury's face while refusing to engage on anything but his own terms and covering Luxury with psionic storms whenever he got pushy.

I haven't seen JangBi's counter to hive rush before, but I'm impressed by it. It is very delicate - had those high templar been sniped by mutalisks or had his dragoons not retreated at the exact right moment, he'd have been in real trouble. Skipping upgrades like that is very risky business, and attacking a Zerg just as ultralisks are about to hatch (while knowing that his army can deal with yours) is dangerous. Had Luxury not counterattacked JangBi's natural when he did but instead used those zerglings to cut off the dragoons' escape route, I am fairly confident JangBi would have lost his new expansion and therefore the game. But his build worked - he killed an awful lot of zerglings with storm while wasting no gas units of his own, and through excellent use of storms and terrain abuse he successfully fought ultralisks and zerglings with storm. Very well played.

GG

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As in game 2, JangBi opened fast expansion while hiding his second probe at the third base. Luxury opened 9-pool speed, and quickly dispatched the first scout probe. JangBi did poorly to lose it so quickly, and it cost him because he didn't see the next round of eggs were also zerglings. On Destination, I believe you should always pump probes and build a second pylon in your main against a 9-pool speed opening. This delays your expansion, but adds to your probe count and thus only really hurts you if you are rushing a second gas. Most importantly, it allows you to immediately cannon your main against a runthrough (or even better, cannon it beforehand and fake an accidentally vulnerable nat to lure the lings in), keeps probes that would be blocking, mining, and gives you more money to spend on cannons in the short-term (a single nexus pumping probes doesn't cost much). JangBi did not use this tactic, and while his opening may have been correct against a six zergling then drones opening, it was not correct against a mass speedling opening.

Luxury went mass speed upgraded zerglings and ran through. JangBi wasn't prepared for it and got his economy owned, to put it simply.

Forced to opt for a build that was defensively strong and could overcome very unfavourable odds if used correctly, JangBi went for sair-reaver. This was a gamble from the start - the stars would have to align, Luxury would have to go fast mutalisks, lose them all, and micro awfully against the speedshuttles with reavers - but it still stood a better chance than straight-up play. Unfortunately for JangBi, Luxury just made a load of hydralisks and shoved them down his throat.

GG

Don't lose your scout probe to six zerglings without speed. Don't leave yourself open to runthroughs. If in doubt, use the safer build and pump those probes. JangBi should have done better.

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JangBi chose to FE and scouted first, while Luxury went overpool gas. JangBi built a pair of cannons before expanding, which I'm not convinced by. As I've said countless times in these writeups, the correct build against overpool is 13-nexus 13-cannon, although if the Zerg gets gas and you suspect a speedling runby, you can also use the probe-pumping build I described above. While JangBi and Lux were in close positions, the zerglings spent a while chasing the scout probe and were no real threat.

In games 2 and 3 JangBi hid a second scout probe early, but in game 4 he sent it out then brought it back - probably a mistake. Forced to cannon against an unknown build, JangBi was left with four slow zealots and a corsair against a Zerg with three bases, five hatcheries and an awful lot of drones. His speedlot rush was blocked by well-positioned hatcheries which formed a wall, and as he attempted to go around and flank the wall Luxury hit his natural. Newly-produced hydralisks were able to resist JangBi's speedlots while Lux's counter-attack broke down JB's wall and left the cannons and speed zealots helpless against a mass of hydralisks. This was really a build order win, although JangBi could have adapted if he'd scouted and gone for storm faster.

GG

A note on maps and walling: hydralisks are very good at killing speedlots coming from a single direction, which means a hydralisk attack on a natural is very good against speedlots. Cannons help a lot here, but you absolutely must have a concave so they can cover each other. If you have a flat wall of cannons like JangBi had, then new cannons must be built behind the cannons they are replacing. They are then distanced from the front line and on most maps you cannot fit enough of them. A concave forces the hydralisks to expose themselves to several cannons to attempt to snipe one warping.

Byzantium is a difficult map to do this on because the choke is wide and the nexus site is immediately behind the optimal walling area. On maps where you can't fit six or so cannons on the front line, if needed I think you should only place one directly behind the wall and the second and third (if needed) slightly further back where you will form your defence against hydralisks. That thinnest part of the choke which is so good to wall against lings is exactly where you want a hydra army to be standing.