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The Ever OnGameNet Starleague started off with a bang. Day 1 of the tournament featured the top echelon that progaming had to offer without a single mirror matchup. There was dense tension in the air before the games began. Expectations were high. Reigning champion Lee Jae Dong would be featured in the first game against the Spirit Toss, Park Ji Ho. Jaedong, the invincible tyrant, was the clear favorite in his match. In fact, his likeness was the central theme of the OSL introduction.
The stylized intro to the Starleague features the hilarious progamer self-portraits and an animated bit with the drawn Jaedong. The style was similar to the drawn look of the Ever '07 intro, although going for a sketchier feel, as opposed to the comic book stylings of the previous tournament. The drawings look great, starting off the tournament with style.
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Two zergs in waiting
The anxiety felt in the first hours before the broadcasted matches was intense. It seemed like it would be forever before the clock on TL struck 18:30. It inched ever slowly toward that magic number, the hype growing by leaps and bounds, nerds already arguing and flaming over their predictions.
After all the hype and waiting, the Round of 16 had begun for real. No contest in e-sports is more prestigious than the OSL, each gamer bringing their absolute best to the table. Day one has been brought to end, perhaps foreshadowing the rest of the tournament to come. Glue yourself to your seat, as we take you on a ride through Day 1 of the EVER '09 OSL.
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The Tyrant versus The Spirit Toss
Pusan had said in the OSL group selection that he didn't feel improved over his level of about six months ago. If that statement wasn't simple humility, it foreshadowed very bad things for Pusan in his match against the reigning OSL champ.Things started off in a lucky fashion for Pusan, however, when
Jaedong scouted out his natural with his first overlord, didn't see a nexus, and moved on. Pusan had gone 1-gate, though, a possibility that Jaedong completely neglected to take into consideration. Jaedong expanded to Pusan's natural and canceled his hatchery about five seconds later when two zealots started wailing on it. Jaedong was immediately behind and couldn't get up Pusan's ramp to see his tech (which was a templar archives and robotics facility.)Rather than put a third down somewhere else, Jaedong went 2 hatch hydra. Soon, Pusan loaded two dark templar into a shuttle and flew down to Jaedong's base. Jaedong killed the DTs without losing too many drones and simultaneously attacked Pusan's front, killing a zealot. Soon after that, Pusan lost his shuttle to scourge while trying another drop. He tried to expand, but Jaedong flew in some mutas and shut down mining immediately. Pusan tried a weak counterattack with an archon, a goon, and three zealots, but Jaedong easily cleaned up with a muta/hydra combo. Basically, Pusan gambled that Jaedong would suffer a lot of damage from the DT drop. He didn't, so Pusan was unable to continue through the midgame. Pusan gg'ed before the zerg army could take out his natural.
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The Swarm Prince versus The Red Sniper
Highly Recommended Game
Last season in the Bacchus '09 OSL,
ZerO played a game against 
Hwasin on Holy World in which he used queens and infested Terrans as a part of his game plan, so this match had some built-in hype right off the bat. Also, Hwasin's TvZs are usually really long and fun to watch, and Heartbreak Ridge is a great map for the matchup. It seemed like the planets were aligning to bring the Starcraft-watching masses a much better game than Pusan's one-sided loss against Jaedong.Right away, Hwasin walled in using his natural gas geyser, bringing back memories of this recent post. ZerO 12 hatched and nearly broke down Hwasin's wall with his initial lings. Hwasin repaired just in time, but had to use the SCV that was building his 17cc to do it, so his natural expansion was delayed a little bit. If Hwasin had been a little more greedy and had taken SCVs from only his main to repair, his wall almost certainly would have gone down. It seems like a minor thing to highlight, but I'm sure a fair amount of games on iccup have ended with the Zerg knocking down the wall, just because the Terran didn't want to delay his expansion.
Hwasin now had a very fast natural expansion and was quite ready for ZerO's 3 hatch muta. He didn't have enough defense in his main, though, and ZerO took out two of his tanks, delaying his push a little bit. Still, Hwasin had a vessel building and looked like he would be able to secure his third rather easily, even if his push was delayed to the point that he couldn't kill Zerg before hive tech went up.
ZerO tried to be aggressive with his lurkers, with mixed results. His delay of Hwasin's push with his lurkers was probably the most tense part of the game, and he succeeded in keeping Hwasin away from his nat before consume finished. However, there was no nydus at his third base, and Hwasin, seeing that an attack on the natural would be futile, took a detour up to Zero's third base instead. The drones had nowhere to go; ZerO had made a mistake, and the minerals in the way of the path to the natural were not mined out. ZerO tried to pull a Dunkirk, glitching drones over the minerals, but he only saved about three drones this way, lost the rest, and lost the hatchery. To make matters worse, he didn't kill the invading army cleanly, and lost a few lurkers in the process. Hwasin did lose two of his vessels, however, and ZerO had a hidden fourth base, so he wasn't totally dead.
At this point, Hwasin got his third up and pulled ahead economically. This lead to a fantastic series of battles in the middle as ZerO tried to use commando teams of defiler/lurker to keep the size of Hwasin's army manageable while he got his third base back up. Again, results were mixed: Hwasin used his exceptional MnM micro to get out of most of the tight spots ZerO tried to put him in, and he used his healthy vessel count to kill all of ZerO's lurkers and defilers. Hwasin soon had 60 more supply than ZerO and 1500/1500 in the bank. It was clear, though, that he still had no idea about ZerO's hidden fourth. Normally, this wouldn't have been so much of a problem what with the huge supply disparity and all, but Hwasin made a huge mistake at this point: he built a physics lab and started switching to battlecruisers.
In an amazing coincidence, this was the same game-losing mistake that FBH made against ZerO in the Ro36. Just like FBH, Hwasin got overconfident and switched tech, and allowed ZerO to come back.
Hwasin had about 11 vessels when ultras started popping, but promptly lost a bunch of them to scourge when he tried to be proactive and flew them, alone, down to ZerO's natural to hunt down ultras and irradiate them.
At this point, things pretty much went to hell for Hwasin.
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And the tables turn
Ultras killed his main MnM army. His battlecruisers got scourged. He tried to take out zerg's fifth gas, but failed. His vessels got plagued. He showed some neat defense at his third and fourth, but ZerO was starting to go into 4-gas zerg ez win mode and Hwasin just stood no chance. Dark swarms, plagues, mutas killing vessels, a drop on Hwasin's main that killed his academy, lings shutting down Hwasin's mineral only, ZerO taking a fifth base right under Hwasin's nose... Hwasin probably had nightmares about this game when he went to sleep in the STX house that night.
Here's a cool trick that you kids at home can try in your ZvTs: during the late game, just keep sending small groups of zerglings to the Terran's mining expansions and hope that they're slow to react. It worked against Hwasin... why wouldn't it work against your opponent at the C+ level? Hwasin's loss of SCVs to zerglings in the last stage of this game was probably the killing blow for him.
When dark swarms went up around his barracks, Hwasin gg'ed. Again, watch this VOD.
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The Terrorist versus The Brain Zerg
A lot of people see
fantasy's TvZ as his weak point, but let's not forget that Fantasy's big break came in a TvZ series against GGPlay in the Ro4 of the Incruit OSL. Who knows? At any moment, he might come out with a second TLFE-worthy build and completely smash whatever zerg he's playing. Calm is pretty damn good in every matchup, though, and was a slight favorite according to the netizens of TL.Calm 9-pooled against Fantasy's standard opening, putting him behind immediately if Fantasy defended properly. Fantasy did so: Calm's zerglings made it to Fantasy's choke and ran into an imposing SCV wall. The moment Calm saw that there was no way he was getting through, he threw down a third hatchery and brought his lings back to his base.
Fantasy expanded his lead by anticipating where Calm's first scouting overlord was and sending four marines to kill it. To make matters worse, Calm's build was very strange and didn't seem to accomplish anything at all.
- He got a hydralisk den at about the correct timing for 3 hatch lurker
- He got a spire, but didn't make any mutas
- He researched lurker about a minute and a half after lair finished
It seemed like Calm was trying to trick Fantasy into thinking that he was going 3 hatch muta and then instead go 3 hatch lurker. But Fantasy scouted one of Calm's hydras and immediately moved out. At around this time, Fantasy killed another overlord and discovered the location of Calm's third before it went up. It suddenly became a question of whether Fantasy would go for the kill at the natural or try to solidify his economic advantage by either expanding or taking out Calm's third.
After a devastating drone massacre, Fantasy killed Calm's third base and the two lurkers guarding it without losing a single unit. Calm's lurkers morphed fairly late, a mistake that some say eventually cost him the game.
A few minutes later, Fantasy had a bone-crushing force with tanks and vessels headed towards Calm's natural. Calm's fast hive and dark swarm could only delay his inevitable defeat for so long. Fantasy had triple Calm's supply, and after every defiler was irradiated, Calm typed out.
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A painful loss
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The Ultimate Weapon versus Pikachu
Kwanro knocked Flash out of the Avalon MSL by, among other things, running lurkers up Flash's ramp. Flash was going through a phase in which it seemed like every aggressive Zerg out there was able to beat him... but at the time this game was played, it was obvious that those days were over. Not many people expected Kwanro to win this game, considering that Flash has played the best TvZ anyone has ever seen over the past month.Flash did a gas steal on Kwanro, perhaps trying to force him not to go 2 hatch muta. However, Kwanro got a quick third base (the "free" one behind the natural on El Niño), so delaying his gas probably had little effect on Kwanro's overall game plan. Flash made the standard timing push that every Terran makes when facing three hatch muta and Kwanro died to it. The natural hatchery was killed before mutas popped out, and Kwanro gave up when Flash's marines moved into his main. It was over in a flash, haw haw haw.
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Winning feels good...
Day 1 ended bombastically. While things went mostly as expected, there were a few surprises along the way. Not many people expected the game from Group B to be the best of the night, however it soon became a TvZ circus and simply outclassed the other matches in terms of entertainment.
Calm's failure was also a bit of a shock to the community of TL. Perhaps the typo in the EVER statistics graphic (spelling his name as inter.clam) cursed him to lose. After all, what chance does a clam have in a game of StarCraft? They don't even have hands. Fantasy's flawless execution and solid decision making might begin to seal away some of the doubts about his TvZ ability. EffOrt, on the other hand, is a ZvT murderer. Without some of the mishaps that Calm made, fantasy might not be on such an easy path this time around.
Flash made short work of Kwanro, a nice revenge for the Avalon MSL. Flash executed a sunken break with brilliant timing and perfect micro. His marines danced around the creep like it was an ice rink, maximizing the health of his overall army. A good example of sunken break micro being done lazily is Lomo versus Jaedong on Katrina. Lomo loses his sunken break army to a perfect ling surround and even after gaining a huge advantage, loses the game. Flash's pristine army control and brilliant strategies should help to lower the zerg excess in the Starleague.
The first half of the OSL week was exciting, dynamic, and full of surprises. Even the expected wins were done in unexpected fashions, and the series overall was shorter than predicted. With Day 2 around the corner, the hype didn't end. Let's take a stroll through the latter half of the OSL week.
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Day 2 had some promising games and yet again we found ourselves impatiently waiting for them to begin. In a surprising turn of events, Sean "Day[9]" Plott decided to cast the games live, turning the hype on TeamLiquid up to supersonic levels. Stork's participation in this group was unexpectedly popular, winning the player poll by 56%. Stork is indeed a popular player, perhaps winning some people over with his new hot body.
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go.go, anxious to begin, cracks a grin
Before long, it began: the tension thick during the slideshow introduction, the stats pages, the Day[9] jokes, and the fanboy fighting in the LR thread. Players sat in their booths warming up, adjusting their hardware, getting ready to do war. Only one would leave victorious. Day 2 of the EVER OSL, begins.
Those players who win their first game are given a huge leg-up, while those who lose are cast into uncertainty. The rest of the group stages will be just as exciting and as the countdown to game 1 began, people were already making predictions, looking forward to the next day. But for now the excitement is focused on the moment, on Day 2 of the EVER 2009 OSL.
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Insect Terran versus The Iron Reaver
go.go is a lot worse at TvP than he is at the other two matchups, although that didn't stop him from having a part in Bisu's elimination last OSL. Movie has performed well recently but that is by no means a sure way to predict how well he would do against his opponent: after he got demoted to the b-team last season there was still some fear of his inconsistency.
Still, things didn't look good when Movie sent his 5th probe to the high ground overlooking go.go's choke and built a pylon/gateway. After go.go walled off, Movie built a forge (placed in his base, not at the proxy position like a lot of bad Protoss players do) and prepared to cannon rush poor go.go, who was caught completely off guard. The cannon started shooting go.go's supply depot about when go.go was building his machine shop, and go.go reacted with a hint of panic, sending three SCVs to their deaths in a futile effort to repair. Soon, the depot was down and three zealots made their way into the Terran base. After killing a few more SCVs, they evaporated, and the pressure on go.go ended.
At this point Movie was essentially going two gate goon with range, except that the second gate was right outside go.go's base. A factory pumping tanks meant that Movie couldn't push in, but he had a very large lead in economy and opted to expand while doing his best to keep go.go from breaking out of his main. Once the tanks got siege mode, it was inevitable that the gateway and cannon were going to go down, so Movie attacked the gateway with the cannon in order to keep go.go from getting vision of it by moving a unit into attack range. Then, when an SCV tried to move out of the main and up the ramp, Movie killed it with goons. It was a smart decision that showed just how much Movie had practiced the build and its followup.
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Disappointment...
go.go was in an unwinnable position when he broke out. Expanding would have been like playing against the Double Nexus From Hell, and a two factory push would be extremely late and weak. go.go tried the 2 fac and died horribly to mass goons. go.go typed out after a frustrating loss.
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Crazy Zerg versus Suave Toss
YellOw[ArnC] has gone about 50/50 in his games versus protoss recently, a lackluster performance at best. One of those games was vs Pure, which he lost. Pure was sort of a question mark before the Ro16, despite beating Hyuk and Leta in a convincing fashion. However, he has historically been a mediocre player and was on a three game losing streak in Proleague before his match against Yarnc. After standard openings by both players, Pure went stargate and was able to do more damage with his corsairs than usual because he
- had gotten a fast cybernetics core
- had suicided a zealot into Yarnc's base so that scouting with the sair wasn't necessary
After killing three or four overlords, Pure pulled back and began massing sairs and zealots in his base. He tried pressuring at Yarnc's third, but no opportunity was there, and he pulled his forces back in order to try to get a third up. He got a shuttle, put two DT's in it, and flew down to Yarnc's main. At this point two things happened that left someone in an advantageous position... I just don't know who.
- Yarnc killed about 7 sairs with mutas and scourge, giving his mutas free reign over the map.
- Pure killed all of the drones in Yarnc's main.
There is a bit of a question as to why Pure's sairs were all hanging around at Yarnc's natural. If he had just used them as muta defence at his third he would have been in a very good position. As it was, things weren't too bad for him, but the mutas which he could no longer drive away easily would cause him big problems.
From that point forward, Pure continued struggling to get a third base up. Mutas, in between doing cruel things to his main base and high templars, shut him down twice. To make things worse, Pure killed Yarnc's 4th base in exchange for eight zealots and a shuttle, a move which leading experts have called "totally not worth it."
The rest of the game was a straightforward victory for zerg, with Yarnc sniping high templars in order to support his main army of hydras. Yarnc built many, many sunkens at the two entrances to his four bases, giving his mutas the freedom not to have to come back for defense and allowing them to terrorize Pure even more than they otherwise would have been able to.
Pure finally got a third base up, surrounding it with cannons, and Yarnc promptly went guardians and smashed it. The game was solidly over at that point: Yarnc was two bases ahead and on hive tech. Pure lost his goon army and typed out.
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The Messiah versus The Typhoon Zerg
EffOrt was easily a huge favorite coming into this game against Shine. EffOrt made his reputation in ZvZ when he beat Jaedong in a Bo3 last season, and has shown pretty good results since then. Shine had never even played a ZvZ in the OSL, and his only claim to fame, pretty much, was beating Bisu in the Ro36 a few weeks ago.A lot of zergs going 12 pool expand have died to 9 pool gas, and when EffOrt scouted the hatchery at Shine's natural right away, everyone watching the stream held their breath to see if he would lose it. Shine defended with some neat ling micro (which we won't bother describing... watch the VOD!) and soon found himself with a running expansion and mutas from EffOrt about to pop. So he did what any zerg would do: he built spore colonies and massed lings. He built enough lings so that EffOrt wasn't able to get a large amount of mutas; EffOrt had to get lings or lose all his drones. Shine just slowly built an advantage by using his ling advantage to kill drones, and when he killed the sunken in EffOrt's base, he built a spire of his own. EffOrt built a hatch in base to gain larva parity, but from there it was a simple matter for Shine to use his gas advantage to mass more air units and win.
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The Commander versus The Thug Zerg
type-b was 2-1 against Stork going into this game, but still no one expected him to break Stork's hot streak.
Both players went standard in their openings. After type-b got his third base, he built a fourth hatch in his base and prepared a four hatch hydra build. Type-b didn't get lair until well after his hydra den finished. He built about a control group of hydras and brought them down to Stork's natural, where a bunch of cannons were warping in.
It clearly wasn't an all-in, though, since the hydra den was fairly late and type-b had a healthy drone count at the same time his hydras were pressuring Stork's front. He was, however, very behind in tech, and Stork demonstrated that fact by sending out two DT's to stop the hydralisk pressure cold. The DT's tried to do something at the bases of type-b, but the zerg army had retreated to defend the moment DT's had been sighted.
Stork soon had a formidable army with mostly goon/temp, and type-b likewise had a formidable defense: lurkers at all expansions and templar-sniping mutas on the way. Because type-b is a baller, he researched burrow and used it to great effect to scout the Protoss position and to delay his expansions for a significant amount of time. This put pressure on Stork to use his large army to do some damage, and he did, marching up to the zerg nat and spending a few storms to kill the lurkers that were interspersed with the sunken colonies. Soon afterwards, he got an observer up to his planned third base and killed the burrowed ling.
After another hit and run at the zerg nat, type-b brought a bunch of lings and his muta group down to Stork's natural and killed all the cannons there, which seemed... kind of pointless. But whatever!
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type-b? Never head of 'em
After a failed but intense HT drop, Stork continued multitasking away until he slowly gained the advantage. Stork added reavers, which allowed him to make a slow but seemingly inevitable push into type-b's natural. He got his 4th base up without too much effort. When type-b morphed guardians and stopped mining at Stork's natural, Stork simply ignored it and continued what he knew would be the game-ending push. He methodically destroyed type-b's sunkens and lurkers and natural hatchery. Ultralisk tech delayed the game by a little bit, but if you've watched either of Stork's famous hour long games against zerg, you'll know that he knows how to wield Protoss late-game tech units in a powerful fashion.
Stork capped the game off with a huge drop, and soon afterwards, type-b left the game.
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Victory for Aiur
The latter half of this OSL week couldn't have had a better ending: starting off with one of the most entertaining rushes in a long long time it concluded with an insane macrofest and a fantastic display of multitask by Stork. The mid games were quite one-sided but had far more entertainment value than the dominations in Day 1. In fact, we're gonna go ahead and recommend that you watch every single game.
Oh man, what is there to say about Stork? The man showed how to win a standard PvZ against the turtle style of zerg so many protosses are clueless against. Classic usage of reavers to break Zerg natural defenses. Stork did exactly what needed to be done and walked out victorious where many protoss would have fallen. Silver mining jokes aside, he is an OSL champion, and a WCG champion, perhaps he might take it all the way once more. Stork fans, let's hope he has erased the word "choke" from his vocabulary.
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Champions having fun
Stork, Flash, and Jaedong look pretty much godly at the moment; things are just as they should be. Will this Starleague belong to the three kings, or a newcomer? Fresh players like Movie, Shine, and Pure have a golden opportunity to show off on the biggest stage in e-sports. Old qualifiers like Hwasin and Pusan want to prove their experience will make the difference.This week has shown us just how tough the competition is going to be. After the weak are eliminated, the strong will go on to do war in the Round of 8. As those who are unworthy fall by the wayside, a new champion will rise. The bloodshed has begun.
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This OSL News Update was brought to you by the dynamic writing duo of DoctorHelvetica (graphics and writing) and motbob (battle reports). Thanks to HnR)Insane and riptide as always for proofreading and to TwoEightSix and Daigomi for the official OSL Chart. Thanks also to FOMOS/DailyEsports/SplashImage/NeverGG for providing photos and to EVER for hosting another great OSL.
