[Asia] 17173.com China Hero final day live

1st Freedom
2nd Loner
3rd Super
4th Beckham
5th-8th (no order as far as I know) Newlife, W_Y_W, MTY, Check

Yup, but two other top Koreans (incl. the legendary Maka) were knocked out in the first round. This makes the Shanghai tourney more unpredictable.

Maka does 2x Starport into Banshee expand. Idra responds with spores, spire, and mass mutas. Maka harasses for a bit and then runs from mutas. He transitions into ravens (rushes ravens first) + MMM. Idra harasses with mutas then transitions into banelings + roaches. Huge battle goes in the middle. Maka micros his units backwards while funneling Idra's army into seeker missiles (6-7 ravens), destroying most of it. Idra types, in English, "god that spell is silly." Maka types, in English, "less than queen."

Maka loses every MMM (but keeps his ravens); Idra is unable to take advantage because he lost most of his army as well. Around this time it's about 4:3 bases Z:T. Another battle happens. This time Maka blows up a bunch of banelings at the start of the fight and Idra has to retreat. 5:4 bases Z:T. Seeing that Idra has no hydras, Maka uses his ravens like science vessels to pick off baneling hordes and infestors, though Idra is able to micro his banelings out of the way.

Another battle happens and Maka loses all his MMM again, but now the raven count is 12+. Idra tries to respond by building corruptors, but Maka has turrets in the middle of the map, which he now controls with the help of the ravens. Idra builds more corruptors but it turns out seeker missiles are good against large corruptor groups as well. Idra's ground army gets taken out. Maka pushes into Idra's bases with 20 ravens + MMM and Idra rage quits.

Highlight: Maka's raven + MMM micro.

Super vs. Maka Game 1 Metalopolis

Maka opens reapers and manages to get some decent harass in. Fast stalkers shut that down and a counter-push fails to do any real damage. Maka transitions into Thors. Super has immortals + stalkers. Maka drops a Thor in Super's base and kills about 8 probes but loses the Thor. Unit count is even. Super gets a second. Maka pushes out with 2 thors + MMM but no SCVs. Kills an immortal with 250mm, but gets pushed back. Some very good micro fails to save Maka from Super's stalkers & immortals pushing into his base. Maka ggs.

Highlight: no real highlights except how fast immortals kill thors even with scvs repairing

Super vs. Maka Game 2 Steppes of War

Same strategy from Maka except he skips reapers and doesn't build marauders. Manages to stop an early immortal push from Super. Tries the same drop but for some inexplicable reason fails to hide his medivac and gets intercepted. Manages to save medivac in red health with a Thor at the back of Super's base, where they can't be targeted. Super pushes out and Maka immediately drops the Thor in his base. Super loses several probes and 2-3 warp gated units, proving that warping units in front of a Thor is utterly stupid. He retreats to take care of the Thor + medivac. Maka pushes out with his entire army consisting of 3-4 Thors, two dozen marines, and 5-6 banshees. Super's army consists of 5-6 immortals, a dozen stalkers, a few sentries, and a single colossus. The two armies meet in the middle. Super fails to micro his immortals to take out the Thors and has to gg.

Highlight: nothing really special

Super vs. Maka Game 3 Blistering Sands

Maka uses the same strategy again. But this time, Super doesn't go for the immortal push and instead does a 4-gate timing push from the back door. Maka has four marines and a Thor to defend against 4-5 stalkers, 2-3 sentries, and 2-3 zealots. Fails to pull enough SCVs and Thor gets focused down. Second Thor manages to stop the army with SCV repair but Super focuses down most of the SCVs. Maka pushes out with the Thor to take down the proxy pylon but the Thor gets focused down by reinforcements. He has to gg.

Highlight: nothing really, but shows that a 4-gate timing can be very hard to defend against on Desert Oasis since you can't depend on the wall-in

Check, a Korean WC 3 pro-gamer, had just defeated PJ in a convincing 2-0.

Check vs. Beckham Game 1

Beckham opens with void ray harass. Check scouts it with an overlord and defends with 3 queens + a spore crawler. Check makes spine crawlers while massing up hydras & roaches & zerglings. Beckham makes a phoenix to scout around and harass overlords, while massing up the standard Protoss ground army (stalker heavy).

Check takes a third, and then attacks Beckham while he's making his third. Beckham defends with force fields and kills most of the zerglings, but loses his third nexus. Beckham counter attacks, engages Check's army and annihilates it with good use of force fields. Check ggs because he doesn't have the corruptors to deal with colossi.

Highlight: Beckham's use of force fields

Check vs Beckham Game 2 Blistering Sands

Check builds mass spine crawlers + zerglings while teching to mutas. Beckham plays conservatively, massing up a huge number of stalkers and sentries. Check uses muta mobility to take map control. Beckham is forced to all-in after his natural falls to a fast zergling + muta sneak attack right after he pushes out with his army. Check masses mutas and avoids Beckham's army. The two base race but Check has the superior mobility and Beckham is eliminated.

Highlight: Check shows how to abuse muta & zergling mobility

Check vs Beckham Game 3 Lost Temple

Beckham opens with gate + forge fe. Check plays macro, but harasses with his first two roaches + some zerglings. Beckham makes a placement mistake (one hex away from his cannon range) and loses a pylon because, guess what, zealots without speed simply can't deal with well-micro'd roaches (and Check's micro is very good). Check expands a third time and a fourth time while using the ledge near Beckham's natural to nydus worm hydras in, which puts the hurt on Beckham's natural. The problem with this strategy, however, is that his expansions are undefended and Beckham takes out the fourth with a handful of zealots, while macroing up to colossi. Check's third is up, and he uses a nydus worm to expand to the island, while macroing up a hydra + roach + corruptor army.

Check's timing is off, however, as Beckham attacks him with a 20 unit supply advantage. His army melts before Beckham's army with four colossi in it and Check has to gg.

Highlight: Check's nydus trick

Freedom is also a Korean WC 3 pro-gamer, and has recently risen to fame in the Asian SC 2 community for his dominance. He's also a poker player. Let's first look at his games vs. Super.

Freedom vs. Super Game 1 Metalopolis

This game is fairly bad. Super tries an early two gate zealot push to punish the standard Zerg FE but gets shut down brutally by Freedom's queen + zerglings. Freedom then rushes to roaches and pushes Super. I don't think Super even managed to kill one roach in the ensuing battle because his gas was late and you simply can't fight roaches with only 1-2 stalkers, no matter how many zealots you have.

Highlight: good micro by Freedom

Freedom vs Super Game 2 Steppes of War

Super does another early zealot push but doesn't really commit this time. Freedom gets greedy and takes the gold mineral instead of his natural. This gets discovered but he manages to "scare off" Super's 4 gate push with speedlings. Super pushes the gold with reinforcements, manages to kill the queen, but an excellent sandwich move with speedlings and roaches defeats this push. Freedom expands to his natural and begins to pressure Super. Without a wall-in and only first tier units, there's simply no chance for Super and he has to gg after making a final push that falls in Freedom's main.

Highlight: nothing really

Freedom vs. Super Game 3 Lost Temple

Freedom fast expands once again, using speedlings to harass. By now, he understands Super's conservative play style and knows that a fast push from Super isn't likely to succeed. He masses mutas and basically wins with them. Not much to say except that Super's strategy simply doesn't work vs. Freedom's.

Highlight: Freedom's fast expansion strategy

Very interesting set of games and I'd highly recommend games 1 and 3. Game 2 is a build I was hoping he would know how to counter as I have had a little trouble against it also.
Also, zergling baneling and infestor as his midgame unit composition? That's awesome and makes me want to try it. I wonder how he deals with any type of helion reactor transition. Burrow + scouting and making roaches I guess.

Loner (Terran) is one of China's strongest Terrans and beat Beckham in the semi-finals as far as I can tell. He is also fairly famous for his cheesy, mind gamey play-style.

Loner vs. Freedom Game 1 Kulas Ravine

Loner, knowing Freedom's fast expansion tendency, goes for a fast reaper harass. The reaper harass fails to Freedom's micro. Freedom uses this opportunity to pump drones while defending with roaches + his queen. He also sneaks an expansion.

What Loner does next, however, is interesting. He times a marauder all-in with about a dozen SCVs for support, just as concussive grenade finishes. Freedom loses his queen, zerglings, and early roaches. He pulls all his drones but loses the vast majority of them to marauder micro. Loner seems all but victorious, as Freedom has (1) no queen (2) no army (3) no larva (4) no static defense and (5) about a dozen drones in total.

But Freedom, being the master RTS player that he is, recognizes that he still has a chance because Loner did an all-in with SCVs. Loner makes a mistake by putting his marauders in a position where the drones could box them in and loses them. Freedom pumps about sixteen speedlings with his remaining larva, and manages to surround the next six marauders that attack. Loner makes a major decision mistake here in continuing to pump marauders, imo, whereas he could've did a fast tech switch to either banshees or hellions. To his credit, he continued to pump scvs.

Freedom uses the opportunity afforded by the death of those marauders to begin his comeback. Loner, at this point, does not know about the hidden expo. Freedom does a zergling run-by into Loner's main while Loner mounts a major push. One unit was out of position and so Loner was not able to stop the zergling run-by and loses all his scvs. His attack into Freedom's main manages to kill off the spawning pool, but Freedom has built a baneling nest by this time and has pumped out a significant number of speedlings. He morphs some of them into banelings and holds off the attack. Not researching stim hurt Loner a lot in this encounter, as he might've been able to out-run the banelings otherwise.

With all his scvs dead, Loner cannot maintain the edge he had earlier. Freedom sends banelings in through the backdoor and manages to blow up supply depots. He pushes for the win.

Highlight: pretty much the entire game; it'd be interesting for Day9 to cast this for analysis