NSSL Ro16 Group B Recap



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This week’s NSSL group was a brutal and one-sided group of death, as everyone got completely destroyed at some point or another. However, two people had to advance, and they did so by delivering more thrashings than receiving. In the end, (P)Stats emerged almost unscathed, while (Z)Life resorted to risky yet effective tactics to claw his way through the losers’ and final matches against (P)herO and (P)Classic.

Stats and Classic played a stereotypically short PvP to kick off the group. In the opening game, Classic sacrificed his oracle to gain an economic advantage in his attack, which proved to be fatal once the hidden dark shrine of Stats came into play. After taking advantage in the second game with his own DT opening—which immediately killed Stats—Classic attempted a third DT build, but Stats sniffed this out and took an insurmountable advantage to close out the series in under half an hour.

Game 1

Nimbus

ST.Life Z11 RATING:

Life wasted a lot of zerglings trying to do damage in the early game, and he ended up only getting one sentry. Although he tried a swarm host transition, he couldn’t deal with herO’s multipronged harass effectively, and he repeatedly lost his fourth base in addition to every other base besides his main at some point. By the time herO walked across the map with four colossi and blink stalkers, Life didn’t have enough high-tech units to deal with it and crumbled.

RATING:

Both players got away with relatively greedy openers: herO opened nexus first into stargate and a fast third while Life built three hatcheries before spawning pool. Life attempted to force a cancel on the third base with a swell of zerglings, but herO managed to ward off this aggression and took a lead going into the mid-game. From there, herO repeatedly inflicted grievous wounds to Life’s economy as he built up enough colossi to crush Life’s swarm host play.

P5 CJ.herORATING:

herO held Life’s mass zergling aggression at his third extremely efficiently, using a geyser and force field walls to save all but one of his sentries. Going into the mid-game comfortably, herO applied heavy pressure on Life’s fourth base while using ten warp gates and a warp prism to harass Life with lots of zealots. His attacking was so ferocious that he managed to kill every single base except for the main while retaining the core of his army, giving him more than enough time to build up the army of his choice.



Although Life used a much more aggressive style for the second game, opting for a roach/hydralisk all in off three bases after a similar mass zergling opener, herO’s defense was stellar and Life could not pierce his armor at all. This sent Life down to the losers' match with the difficult prospect of facing 2 more protoss if he wanted to advance.

herO vs Stats proved itself to be a slightly better series than the opening PvP. On Merry Go Round, Stats attempted to skip colossi while taking a third, but herO simply attacked once he had two colossi with his gateway army, and took the game easily. herO confidently tried to secure a quick victory in game two—after killing three sentries at almost no cost early on—by harassing with blink stalkers, but he sacrificed far too much and Stats’ followup attack killed him.

Game 3

Foxtrot Labs

KT.Stats P7 RATING:

Stats did a reasonable job fending off herO’s attack, immediately pulling his probes to stop the stalkers from taking a good position. From there, he played extremely safely, slowly building up an army of immortals and archons. He was caught off guard and lost 12 or so workers against herO's storm drops, but he always managed to quickly catch up in the probe count. Stats’ solid play eventually allowed him to overcome an army and economy deficit by taking advantage of herO’s mistake and crippling him with a strong counter-attack.

RATING:

With the score tied 1-1, Stats chose a phoenix + expansion opening, a build that left him vulnerable against herO’s three stalker rush. However, herO was unable to kill Stats outright and they entered a mid-game slightly favoring herO. After doing a moderate amount of damage with a storm drop, herO tried attacking Stats’ simcitied natural and lost an unnecessary amount of units. Stats’ counterattack did more than enough damage to allow him to take the victory.

P1 CJ.herORATING:

Although herO took a quick build order advantage, some slightly sloppy micro meant that he lost a stalker to probes, and he only had a small advantage afterwards. His storm drops were cute, but he never took advantage of his much faster third base and slight probe lead, instead choosing to attack a 2-base Stats. This went poorly and herO found himself on the back foot against Stats’ pressure despite unpowering all of his gateways. Even though he held this attack off, he had nothing left to use for a counter attack after pulling almost all of his probes into archons.



Life surged through the final two matches by using his trademark unit to its full advantage. Against Classic on Foxtrot Labs, Life massed zerglings off of two bases and caught the SKT Protoss off guard, overwhelming the two sentries and zealot of his opponent. Life followed this up with a six pool against a nexus first, which went about as expected.

After winning this nine minute series, Life did almost the same thing against herO in their rematch. Although herO opened forge first at his natural and deflected Life’s 9 pool on King Sejong Station, Life broke the backdoor rocks and flooded the natural and main bases with 22 zerglings, which for some reason took the CJ Protoss by complete surprise . Even though herO survived, he lost his main base and his four gate all in followup was easily deflected by roaches. In the second game, herO tried to crush Life with a two base, seven gateway attack, but Life’s mass speedling attack found herO moving out and Life quickly crushed his opponent to move on after one of the dirtiest half hours in recent memory.