EPT
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The first night of round-robin games in Code S had a uniquely GSL flair to it as the competitors brought a slew of all-ins and specifically prepared strategies to Group A. Rogue took the lead amidst the chaos, going 2-0 after surviving cheesy challenges from RagnaroK and Ryung. On the other hand, ByuN fell to the bottom of the group after losing to Trap and Ryung—he'll have to put in a heroic performance in the second half of the group in order to advance.
Trap, Ryung, and RagnaroK all finished with 1-1 records after day one, leaving the possibilities wide open as to whether they'll advance to the RO6 or be eliminated by finishing in the bottom two of the group. Considering that RagnaroK has gotten his two toughest matches against Rogue and Trap out of the way, and that he has a +1 map lead on Ryung and Trap, he seems to have a slight edge against his group rivals in terms of advancement odds.
The second half of Group A will be played on Monday, Apr 18 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00). The next Code S match day on Thursday, Apr 14 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00) features the first half of Group B, with Dark, Maru, Creator, DongRaeGu, and herO set to play.
Match Recaps
Match #1: Rogue [2 - 1] RagnaroK
Game 1 - Berlingrad: Rogue opened with the usual 3-Hatch Ling-Bane opener in ZvZ while RagnaroK faked a defensive 2-Hatch build while secretly massing Lings in a corner of his base. This trickery worked out for RagnaroK to some extent as he was able to catch Rogue off guard with a flood of Ling-Bane and kill his third base. However, Rogue got enough troops out to stop RagnaroK from dealing any further damage, and the situation basically evened out with both players transitioning into Roach-Ravager production off of three bases.
Their plans diverged here as RagnaroK was committed to staying on Lair tech and Roach-Ravager while Rogue looked to eventually tech up to Hive and Lurkers. Rogue didn't cut corners on defense or rush his tech, and he was easily able to fend off a series of Roach-Ravager attacks from RagnaroK. Good use of Tunneling Claws allowed RagnaroK to get a bit of economic damage done, but he seemed to be headed to certain defeat as he wasn't really slowing down Rogue's progress to Lurkers.
However, Rogue might have played it a bit too safe, and seemed to miss his window to add Hydras or Lurkers to his army. Then, after a series of futile attacks, RagnaroK's aggression finally paid off when he caught Rogue splitting his Roach-Ravager army in half. RagnaroK was able to envelop one half of Rogue's army with the majority of his own Roach-Ravager swarm and inflict major losses, while also sending a hit-squad of burrowed Roaches around to take out Rogue's Roach Warren. This one-two punch instantly swung the game in RagnaroK's favor, and his constant stream of reinforcements wrung the GG out of Rogue's hands.
Game 2 - Hardwire: Both players started with standard 3-Hatch openers, but Rogue cut Drone production at 26 to go for a Ling-Roach-Baneling all-in. After softening RagnaroK up with some good Zergling micro, Rogue was able to swiftly end the game with his follow-up Roaches.
Game 3 - Glittering Ashes: Again, both players opened with 3-Hatch, and this time the game proceeded fairly passively for the first few minutes. However, it wasn't long before someone turned up the heat, and RagnaroK decided to skip Lair tech and go all-in with around 40 Drones. On the other side of the map, Rogue planned to work his way up to Spire and Mutalisks.
RagnaroK's first big attack with mass Ling-Bane dealt some minor damage to Rogue by killing off a handful of Drones, but Rogue was able to repel the attack while staying ahead in both tech and econ. However, RagnaroK's second attack was much more successful, as his mass Roach-Bane barrelled their way through Rogue's defenses to kill his third base, inflict major Drone damage, and destroy both his Roach Warren and Spire before being mopped up by Mutalisks.
RagnaroK would have been in a good position then, if not for Rogue's clever decision to send a detachment of Lings for a backdoor strike that killed RagnaroK's third base during the attack. The complete map control afforded by Mutalisks allowed Rogue to make a rapid recovery, while RagnaroK was pinned down on two bases with a huge tech disadvantage. He went for the desperate ploy of going for 'surprise' Mutalisks himself off of two bases, but there was no way Rogue was going to miss seeing the enemy Spire when he had map control with his Mutalisks. Rogue rebuilt his own Spire, and then easily smashed RagnaroK in a Muta vs Muta fight to seal his victory.
Match #2: Trap [2 - 0] ByuN
Game 1 - Glittering Ashes: Trap opened defensive Blink into a fast third base, while ByuN played an expansion into 3-Barracks strategy. ByuN tried to pressure Trap once he had stim, but good Blink micro from Trap forced ByuN to retreat at the cost of just a few Stalkers.
ByuN got aggressive again once he added Medivacs to his army, but Trap's rock solid defense with Stalkers and Immortals dissuaded ByuN from commiting to a major attack. In fact, Trap was so assured in his defense that he even had the luxury of sending a Prism out for backdoor Zealot warp-ins, which hacked through the SCV line and forced ByuN to pull his main army back to defend.
From there, the game was firmly in Trap's control, as he didn't face any pressure as he established his fourth base and added High Templars to his army. It wasn't long before Trap was the one going on the offensive, showering Psi Storms down on ByuN's bio. ByuN did well to defend against a handful of Protoss attacks that seemed like they might be game-ending, but he had no choice but to tap out once Robotics units were added to the mix.
Game 2 - Berlingrad: ByuN went for fast tech off one base, which Trap spotted early on with a Probe scout and went for Stargate tech in response. Continued scouting with Adept-Shades let Trap see that ByuN had swapped his Factory onto a Reactor, giving him even more vital information. However, Trap didn't see exactly what units were coming out of the factory, and made an incorrect read when ByuN was actually going for a 4-Hellion drop. Caught by surprise, Trap lost five Probes to the Hellions, and had to keep his 2 Oracles at home and waste most of their energy on defense.
Despite this poor start, Trap played fantastically to recover. ByuN's next move was to try and pressure Trap with stim-upgraded Marines supported by Cyclones, but Trap did a great job using a handful of Oracles and Phoenixes to delay the attack and cut off key reinforcements as they crossed the map. This took all of the wind out of a potentially deadly timing, giving Trap the space to secure his third base. Similar to the first game, ByuN was hurt by sending his main army forward without being able to credibly threaten Trap, as he opened himself up for backdoor attacks by Zealots that left himself further behind.
From there on out, it was another clean-up job for Trap in the mid-game as he was able to assemble a powerful army with all the splash damage he could want. One big attack up the center of the map finished ByuN off.
Match #3: Rogue [2 - 1] Ryung
Game 1 - Berlingrad: Ryung recycled the one strategy that had let him steal a map off Rogue at IEM Katowice: a proxy 2-Barracks hidden inside the opponent's natural. While the map was different this time around—Berlingrad instead of 2000 Atmospheres—it still had the same shadowy corner inside the natural that made such a cheese possible. Again, Rogue was caught completely off guard, with his Hatchery completing at the same time as a Bunker just slightly out of vision.
Back at IEM, Rogue had sacrificed his natural Hatchery and had gone for Roach-Ravager off one base, but simply couldn't overcome the economic deficit of taking his natural expansion so late. So this time, he desperately tried to save this natural Hatchery, hastily building Spine Crawlers in his main base and bringing them down to defend. However, it seemed like this wasn't a practiced reaction, as the Spines completed far too late to prevent the Marines from killing his Hatchery. Ultimately, he was left in a similarly poor position as his game at IEM.
In another repeat of IEM, Ryung followed up by expanding and going for Cloaked Banshees, which put even more pain on Rogue's ailing economy. The ending was similar to Katowice as well, with Rogue lacking the production to stop Ryung's game-ending Marine-Tank push.
Game 2 - Blackburn: Ryung went for a different kind of cheese this time, opening with a CC-first fast expansion. As for Rogue, he played a standard macro build, but went for the Roach-Ravager based composition as he sometimes favors Blackburn.
Ryung's focus on economy was very brief, as he used his greedy start to prepare for an SCV-assisted Marine-Tank all-in off of two bases. While at first it seemed like the SCV meatshields would give Ryung the small advantage he needed to bust through, Rogue managed to barely hold the attack off by conscriping his own workers on defense. Despite sacrificing some Drones on defense, Rogue was still left with a massive economic advantage. After a failed last-ditch attack, Ryung GG'd out.
Game 3 - Hardwire: Early game cheese was the plan for Ryung once more as he attempted a proxy 3-Barracks all-in at around the halfway point on the map. Unfortunately for Ryung, Rogue's first Overlord scout headed directly toward the proxy location, and Rogue was able to quickly send three Drones out to sabotage Ryung's plan.
By scouting and reacting so early, Rogue's 3 Drones were able to severely delay all three Barracks from being completed, even creating a comical scene where none of the Barracks were being actively constructed due to all the SCVs being dead or retreating with a sliver of HP.
While Ryung eventually completed his Barracks by sending more SCVs from his main, the game was basically over as Rogue had safely established his expansion and had started mass Zergling production. Ryung tried to play the game out for a minute or so before realizing the futility of his situation and GG'ing out.
Match #4: Trap [0 - 2] RagnaroK
Game 1 - Berlingrad: RagnaroK went for some mindgames to start, going for a 16-pool while faking out Trap's scouting Probe by sending a decoy Drone out. This deception from RagnaroK was quite layered, as he knew Trap had seen the multiple offensive Hatcheries he had used against herO in the group stage. Thus, by sending a decoy Drone down his ramp, RagnaroK was forcing Trap to consider BOTH the possibility that it was going to build a standard expansion Hatchery, AND the possibility that it was headed out to make an offensive Hatchery. This mind-bender actually kept Trap's Probe out of RagnaroK's main for quite some time, and even forced him to send out an extra Probe scout to check for a proxy Hatch.
In the end, this mind-game didn't really set up anything major for RagnaroK as he was just going for 3-Hatch macro play behind his 16-pool, but it was pretty interesting to see how much anxiety he clearly forced onto Trap in the first two minutes. Meanwhile, Trap had his own unorthodox play in mind, starting with 3-Gate Glaive Adepts and then transitioning to 2 Stargate Phoenixes.
Perhaps the combination of Adepts and Phoenixes had worked out way better for Trap in practice—we really didn't get to see the point of it in this game as RagnaroK took negligible damage from Trap's harassment. RagnaroK was able to comfortably go up to 4-base Ling-Bane-Hydra production, while Trap belatedly transitioned into a more ground-based composition.
The fruitless detour at Phoenixes had clearly set Trap behind: when he attempted to pressure with a handful of Zealots, Archons, and Immortals, he was met with a far more powerful force of Hydralisks and Zerglings that told him he had no business being out on the map. In fact, Trap was actually sent scrambling to set up defenses at his third base for an impending deluge of Hydralisks, Banelings, and Zerglings. Unfortunately for Trap, some warp-in mismanagement meant that his Templars didn't have energy in time for RagnaroK's big attack, despite Psi Storm research finishing with plenty of time to spare. RagnaroK's first attack did huge damage to Trap's economy, and then the second wave forced the GG.
Game 2 - Hardwire: RagnaroK opened up with a regular 3-Hatch PvZ start for the first time this tournament, while Trap also looked to go for a standard strategy in 4-Gate Glaive Adepts. However, RagnaroK wasn't one to keep things normal for long, as he quickly pivoted into a Ling-Bane all-in off of 20 Drones. RagnaroK was able to hide this attack until the very last moment, and busted through the single Adept at Trap's wall to end the game.
Match #5: ByuN [1 - 2] Ryung
Game 1 - Glittering Ashes: Both players opened with 2-Barracks proxy Reapers, triggering a base trade scenario that they both seemed quite familiar with. Rather than run their SCV's away, both Terrans looked to get as much mining done as possible before their workers were wiped out, so as to squeeze out as many infantry units as possible. When it was all said it was done, Ryung ended up with 1 SCV, 7 Reapers, and 4 Marines, while ByuN had 8 Reapers and 1 Marine.
The two players then ended up in a bizarre situation where they floated their CC's to establish new bases that were right next to each other in the central region of the map. Even more bizarrely, they landed their Barracks within vision of each other on the same screen to resume Marine production (Mules and the 15 supply provided by the CC was enough to crank out a few more Marines on each side). Ryung's existing Marine advantage ended up winning him the game, as he defeated ByuN in the deciding battle for control of his new base.
Game 2 - Hardwire: ByuN went for proxy 2-Barracks Reapers again, right outside of Ryung's main. Ryung started going for a regular Factory expand build, but noticed the proxy when he placed his second Supply Depot at the edge of his base. Despite getting discovered, ByuN was still able to micro his way to a win by picking off Ryung's crucial first Hellion and snowballing from there.
Game 3 - Berlingrad: Both players cut out the cheese in game three with Factory expansions on both sides. Ryung got slightly more aggressive with a faster Reactor, but in the scheme of things, the game turned into a fairly passive Bio-Tank-Viking build-up on both sides. There were a few moments where it seemed like the two players might collide as they jockeyed for position on the map, but both sides ended up refraining from making any drastic moves as they went up to four bases.
The turning point in the game came when ByuN moved his main army for a potential attack on Ryung's fourth base, before backing off and sieging his Tanks a few screens away. Ryung saw an opportunity to rapidly reposition his main army before ByuN noticed, and diverted his troops around ByuN's army to advance into the enemy half of the map. Even with Sensor Towers, ByuN reacted just a few beats too slowly, and allowed Ryung to establish a deep siege position at his third base. Though ByuN pulled his troops back and prevented any further advance from Ryung, he still ended up losing his third base, lost his Vikings due to some sloppy micro, and allowed Ryung to set up a semi-containment line well past the halfway point on the map.
There were still five expansions on ByuN's "half" of the map, but it was clear that he'd have to break through Ryung's containment or circumvent it if he was to play beyond the mid-game. ByuN made a few attempts to crack through the containment line at weak points, but Ryung's air superiority meant ByuN was extremely limited in his efforts. That air advantage allowed Ryung to eventually shift from containment to attacking, and he started to push into ByuN's key expansions. ByuN was forced into increasingly desperate attempts to break through Ryung's tank line, and had no choice but to GG after failing to make any headway.
