TL.net users found Group D to be one of the more difficult RO24 groups to predict, and the group indeed turned out to be quite competitive with every single BO3 series going to the final map. In the end, it was RagnaroK and PartinG who survived to advance to the RO16, but either Dream or Creator could have advanced had they played differently in a couple of key moments.
The night started off with Dream giving a PartinG a taste of his own medicine in their initial series, taking a quick, game one win with a proxy-rax all-in. PartinG quickly scored a point in game two with fast Blink-Stalkers, leaving the two settled things with a proper macro-match in game three. While Dream liked he was keeping up with PartinG's production for a while, he was ultimately unable to pressure PartinG's booming economy and was eventually defeated by Protoss' 'every single splash unit' army.
In the other starting match, Creator gave RagnaroK a real run for his money. Game one came down to a semi-basetrade between Creator's ground forces and RagnaroK's mutas, where Creator had a chance to win if not for some unfortunate micro mistakes. Creator then tied the series with a Blink-Stalker all-in in game two, and stumbled into a golden opportunity to finish RagnaroK off at the start of game three. An early speedling poke from RagnaroK backfired horribly after the lings were trapped and killed, leaving the RagnaroK starving for Drones. However, Creator played his lead too sloppily (including a careless loss of two Immortals and a Prism), allowing RagnaroK to come back and win with a massive mid-game Roach-Ravager attack.
RagnaroK survived another close call in the winners match, securing the 1st place spot in the group. PartinG's game one strategy on Purity and Industry seemed brilliant at the outset, with his Glaive-Adept drop setting up a fast island expansion. However, RagnaroK once again benfited from Protoss misplaying the lead. PartinG's micro during his Stalker-Immortal follow-up attack left much to be desired (including a very questionable offensive Blink), allowing RagnaroK to both defend at home while simultaneously taking out PartinG's island expansion. PartinG looked like he was headed to a 0-2 loss in game two when RagnaroK parried his cannon-rush attempt (thanks to poor focus fire from PartinG), but PartinG managed to compose himself and tie the score 1-1. The decider match ended on an error from PartinG—after going for fast Glaive Adepts, he let his initial force get torn up by Zerglings after a reckless decision to shade in. RagnaroK was quick to pounce, putting together a force of Ravagers and Lings to finish PartinG off and pave his way to the RO16.
After a 2-1 win over Creator in the losers match, Dream earned a rematch against PartinG to decide the 2nd place player of the group. Dream scored the first point by sniffing out a fast Blink-Stalker build from PartinG, shutting it down, and snowballing his lead into a comfortable victory. Yet again, PartinG tied the score with aggressive play, using a MaxPax-style proxy-gate to cripple Dream early and finish him off at his leisure. PartinG had one last trick up his sleeve in game three: a Dark Templar drop. However, Dream seemed to read the strategy completely, and was ready with a Raven to completely shut the strategy down.
Having started with the initial advantage, Dream was well on his way to closing the game out after killing several Probes with a Widow Mine drop and planting a Command Center at his gold base. Unfortunately, Dream failed to correctly account for the strength of PartinG's standing army. Three Colossus supported by Blink-Stalkers allowed PartinG to find the narrow window for an ee han timing attack, and he wiped out Dream's army to secure his RO16 spot.
Coming up: GSL Code S will resume on Saturday, Apr 25 4:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) with TY, Bomber, Armani, and Dear competing in Group E.
I feel like the most important thing about this whole group was the fact that killing a CC full of SCVs doesn't get tracked on the worker kill counter.
On April 23 2020 18:08 Elentos wrote: I feel like the most important thing about this whole group was the fact that killing a CC full of SCVs doesn't get tracked on the worker kill counter.
at least the player-cameras weren't covering the kill-counters
I feel like being one of the main players on those miserable Prime teams really burned Creator out. I understand why JAGW thought a change of scenery could get him back to his old form, but it seems like his time may have passed.
On April 24 2020 08:01 Snijjer wrote: What is meant by MaxPax-Style proxy gates?
it's proxy gateway, chrono zealot out, follow up with zealot and stalker.
You can catch a Terran building CC on site in natural and completely stop it, meaning the protoss will have a much faster expand and therefore huge lead going forward
On April 24 2020 07:06 geokilla wrote: Korean SC2 is at such a sad state. Now I remember why there's no Code A.
I mean i think it's more accurate to say that sc2 is in such a sad state, rather than singling out Korea.
It's not like Korea still isnt better than foreign circuits.
Sc2 is perfectly fine, it has a functioning circuit and new tournaments bloom with pleasant frequency.
Foreign Sc2 is healthy and can count on a good number of high level players as well as promising prospects, even younger than the already young Reynor and Clem(Does the name Maxpax ring a bell?).
Korean Sc2 still has more top tier players, remnants of the KeSpa(or pre KeSpa) era, who are slowly being forced to go to the army returing from the game; those who come back can't keep up and, below a certain threshold, foreigners definitely outnumber the koreans. Korean scene has little to no future, there are just a couple of upcoming koreans of which, I believe, Percival(class 2002) is the youngest.
On April 24 2020 07:06 geokilla wrote: Korean SC2 is at such a sad state. Now I remember why there's no Code A.
I mean i think it's more accurate to say that sc2 is in such a sad state, rather than singling out Korea.
It's not like Korea still isnt better than foreign circuits.
Sc2 is perfectly fine, it has a functioning circuit and new tournaments bloom with pleasant frequency.
Foreign Sc2 is healthy and can count on a good number of high level players as well as promising prospects, even younger than the already young Reynor and Clem(Does the name Maxpax ring a bell?).
Korean Sc2 still has more top tier players, remnants of the KeSpa(or pre KeSpa) era, who are slowly being forced to go to the army returing from the game; those who come back can't keep up and, below a certain threshold, foreigners definitely outnumber the koreans. Korean scene has little to no future, there are just a couple of upcoming koreans of which, I believe, Percival(class 2002) is the youngest.
That's a rather interesting definition of "perfectly fine." Remove that first line and I'd think you two agreed with each other
On April 24 2020 07:06 geokilla wrote: Korean SC2 is at such a sad state. Now I remember why there's no Code A.
I mean i think it's more accurate to say that sc2 is in such a sad state, rather than singling out Korea.
It's not like Korea still isnt better than foreign circuits.
Sc2 is perfectly fine, it has a functioning circuit and new tournaments bloom with pleasant frequency.
Foreign Sc2 is healthy and can count on a good number of high level players as well as promising prospects, even younger than the already young Reynor and Clem(Does the name Maxpax ring a bell?).
Korean Sc2 still has more top tier players, remnants of the KeSpa(or pre KeSpa) era, who are slowly being forced to go to the army returing from the game; those who come back can't keep up and, below a certain threshold, foreigners definitely outnumber the koreans. Korean scene has little to no future, there are just a couple of upcoming koreans of which, I believe, Percival(class 2002) is the youngest.
That's a rather interesting definition of "perfectly fine." Remove that first line and I'd think you two agreed with each other
Sc2, as a whole, is fine since the vibrant foreign scene would assure its future even if every korean pro were to retire at the end of this year; a game being in a "sad" state would see its playebase drastically decreasing, its esport scene collapsing, its support being cut and that is definitely not the case of Sc2.
I would surely like to see more promising young koreans, for sure, but I do not think that the slow shrinking of the korean scene implies Sc2 to be "sad" in its entirety.
On April 24 2020 08:01 Snijjer wrote: What is meant by MaxPax-Style proxy gates?
it's proxy gateway, chrono zealot out, follow up with zealot and stalker.
You can catch a Terran building CC on site in natural and completely stop it, meaning the protoss will have a much faster expand and therefore huge lead going forward
specifically i believe the maxpax build is main base pylon, proxy pylon, main base gate, proxy gate, in that order. it's an important distinction because building the home gateway first makes an SCV scout appear more ambiguous for terran, and also means you can make a defensive stalker if the reaper goes across the map instead of microing probes. it's a very cool build
On April 24 2020 08:01 Snijjer wrote: What is meant by MaxPax-Style proxy gates?
it's proxy gateway, chrono zealot out, follow up with zealot and stalker.
You can catch a Terran building CC on site in natural and completely stop it, meaning the protoss will have a much faster expand and therefore huge lead going forward
specifically i believe the maxpax build is main base pylon, proxy pylon, main base gate, proxy gate, in that order. it's an important distinction because building the home gateway first makes an SCV scout appear more ambiguous for terran, and also means you can make a defensive stalker if the reaper goes across the map instead of microing probes. it's a very cool build
Not quite. The Maxpax build is proxying 1 gateway and then expanding behind that at a timing which matches with regular expansions. You don't make a gate in your main for quite a while.
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