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After an explosive first week, Day 3 loomed ominously on the horizon. With one of the most anticipated games in a long time, the days leading up to the third day were filled with immense tension and high expectations. The progamers Lee "Flash" Young Ho and Song "Stork" Byung Goo both had an incredible November (despite Stork's 4 game loss streak, his 10 game win streak was the highest of his career) and were set to face each other on Heartbreak Ridge.
While the battle between The Commander and The Ultimate Weapon was the most anticipating, high hopes were in store for the likes of Jaedong and Fantasy. After Fantasy's dismantling of Calm in the first week, not many people expected Shine to do well. Indeed, the poor Typhoon Zerg hasn't quite gotten the credit he deserves on TeamLiquid, being labeled as an "unskilled cheeser" by the bitter Bisu fans whom he enraged this season. However, his 2 hatch play and super aggressive style is more comparable to beloved Lee Jae Dong, than any cheesy player such as Luxury. Still, Fantasy was expected to quickly dismantle the "fluke" player.
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The boothgirls enjoy a brief moment of peace
The full EVER intro was finally shown this time around and it's probably safe to say it blew the expectations set by the teaser out of the water. Rather than focusing on the campy self-portraits, the new intro is chock full of sexy drawings, sick animation, and heart-pumping music. A good intro, even by EVER standards.
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go.go took a chance against 
Jaedong and opened with double command center. Jaedong went overpool, which was fortunate for go.go since it saved him some time by making his loss much quicker than it otherwise would have been. As go.go saw zerglings headed towards his undefended natural, he made a fantastic face that needs to be posted here:![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/DoctorHelvetica/EVER_OSL2/gogo.png)
Jaedong's zerglings arrive at a perfect time, much to go.go's chagrin
go.go lost a great deal of mining time, pulling eight SCVs for about a minute, but since Jaedong didn't reinforce the attack with zerglings, he wasn't dead right away. In lieu of sending more lings to go.go's base, Jaedong had decided to rush to lurkers. The hydra den was scouted by go.go right away, but there really wasn't anything he could do. His marine count was low, and Jaedong broke down the front door with lurker/ling with ease. Mass bunkers kept Jaedong from doing anything more than stopping mining at go.go's natural, but a simple tech switch to mutalisks sealed Jaedong's victory.
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Pure went double nexus, putting him at an unbelievably good position against Hwasin's 1 fac cc. Scouting a little earlier probably would have saved Hwasin's bacon since El Niño is a three player map. As it was, he sent his SCV out after he had started his factory, seeing the fast nexus far too late to prepare for an effective counter. He had taken two SCVs off gas for a while before he saw the early nexus, so a two factory push would have been weak. Hwasin was pretty much stuck in an impossible position, and it was only a question of how Pure would exploit his huge advantage.Pure got a fast second gas and prepared a DT drop while at the same time getting range for his goons and adding two gateways for a total of four. Hwasin got a fast armory, presumably to defend against the reavers that almost every Protoss gets on El Niño. His academy and e-bay were fairly late, and scans + turrets went up at the same time DTs were being dropped at his natural. Hwasin had to transfer his SCVs, and that additional economic disadvantage would have meant his death in this game even in Pure hadn't followed up with dragoons and killed him outright. The game ended with Hwasin fighting both dragoons and invisible units with SCVs, leading to a very predictable result.
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In this game,
fantasy did a build very similar to one that Leta lost with against FireFist in the MST. The idea in both examples of the build was to get fast gas, a fast factory, and a fast stargate, with the intention of both getting a wraith or two to snipe overlords and getting a fairly quick science facility / vessel. Of course, this meant that in both Leta's and Fantasy's case, the marine count was very low, especially since both Terrans got a fairly fast expand and a few vultures. Shine, however, went two hatch muta.Shine's mutas arrived and killed a few SCVs, meeting little resistance from marines or the few wraiths on the map. When Fantasy's fast vessel popped, he retreated it behind turrets to protect it from scourge. In a cool bit of micro, Shine attracted the turret fire with his mutas, and the two scourge scored a hit on the vessel. After stopping mining in Fantasy's main, Shine spent some time killing the starport with his mutas, probably to stop Fantasy from making a valkyrie. Without a valkyrie, irradiate, more than half a control group of marines, or more than one turret next to Fantasy's single barracks, it was easy for Shine to seal the win.
Against Fantasy and Leta, fast muta/scourge won the game easily for the zerg opponent. Shine saw the fast factory, so he got a third hatchery in-base and a hydralisk den immediately after putting his spire up. Since Shine lost a few overlords to wraith harass and had to build those two buildings early, he clearly wasn't pouring all of his minerals and gas into his air units. Yet, his muta/scourge attack ended the game. It is unbelievable that Fantasy never encountered a zerg in practice who went spire before den into muta/scourge, especially since the build had been tried out before in a televised game.
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Each of the first three sets had been one-sided affairs, done in under twelve minutes each. It's almost as if the first six progamers were just as eager to see
Flash vs Stork as the viewers and had sped up their games so that this titanic matchup would happen even sooner.The fact that TvP is Flash's worst matchup is a testament to how strong he is versus Zerg and Terran: according to the ELO system, Flash is the best Terran in the world against Protoss right now. Since Stork is generally considered to be the best PvT player, this match started getting a lot of hype the moment the OSL groups were finalized. The fact that the match was on HBR added a touch of intrigue, considering the reputation of Protoss imbalance that that map has on this site.
Stork sent out his sixth probe, provoking a great deal of chat in livestreams everywhere. Was Stork going to proxy gate? Was this game going to be as short as the last three?
Stork was not, in fact, proxy gating. He was doing exactly what he did in game five of the Incruit OSL finals against Fantasy: using a gas steal to control the flow of the game from beginning to end. Stork is known for his fantastic builds, and he had a doozy for this game.
After Flash's gas was stolen, Stork went 1 gate core into range. Naturally, Flash took his natural expansion quickly, starting a race against time in which Flash had to get a tank out before Stork got enough goons with range to take out the bunker defending Flash's front. While Flash's factory was building, he sent an SCV to the top of the map to scout for a proxy robotics facility. Not finding one, he headed to Stork's natural to see if he was expanding; an expansion, certainly, would mean that Stork wasn't going fast tech. Stork cleverly hid his probe (which was indeed about to expand), and when the SCV got into the main, seeing that there was no robotics facility within, Stork killed it. Now Flash had seen an empty natural and a main devoid of tech, making him all the more suspicious of a proxy robotics facility. He sent out another SCV scout, but it died in the middle of the map. A few seconds after it died, Flash made an engineering bay and started to prepare for the possibility of reavers or other fast tech.
At this point, Stork expanded to the bottom right.
This move was genius on a few levels. First, when Stork sent his probe down to the bottom right to expand, he had vision of the entrance to Flash's natural. If any scouting SCV's came out of Flash's base, Stork could either kill it immediately or send a dragoon to intercept it before it got to the bottom. Secondly, Stork probably knew that Flash would build an engineering bay in response to his empty natural and so the chance of an academy being built would be low. Third of all, the gas steal and the e-bay would make any quick push by Flash relatively weak.
About a minute after the third base was up and running, Flash pushed out with a very tank-heavy army, since it was obviously way too late for fast tech to have been Stork's build. Flash didn't know about Stork's hidden expansion when he moved out. Stork botched his delaying action, losing a couple goons to tank fire and having a couple more damaged. Flash set up a sieged group of tanks between the last spoke on the Heartbreak Ridge wheel and Stork's natural. He built a bunch of turrets and slowly inched towards the natural nexus, where Stork's army of goons lay waiting.
All of a sudden, Stork attacked through a minefield into a siege line of tanks with pure goon. Normally, this is suicide, but the minefield had been set up slightly too far away from the tanks for it to be an effective deterrent. The dragoons only had to take fire from one tank while they were clearing, and after the mines were gone, Stork brought goons from in front and behind in order to clean out most of Flash's tanks. Flash was able to save a single tank, however, saving the push.
At this point, Flash made the move that lost him the game.
Flash spent two scans, one on the normal location for a Protoss third base and one on the Protoss natural-main choke point. He saw that there was no Protoss third, and became very aggressive as a result, underestimating Stork's ability to reinforce his army. He brought tanks and vultures up to strengthen his position, then cleared out his own minefield in preparation of a push up to Stork's nat. Stork had observers watching, and once the mines were cleared, he moved in with an army that was the product of three bases, not two, and completely destroyed Flash's position.
Now, Flash was well and truly finished. Not only had Stork destroyed his army, but carrier tech was incoming, and Flash was quite low on upgrades. Flash still has monster macro, though, and he amassed enough for one last desperation attack to destroy Stork's natural and achieve dominance over his gateways before carriers reached critical mass. However, he made another mistake in the process of pushing: he didn't leave any siege tanks at the depot wall that was keeping Stork from counterattacking Flash's natural. So Stork did counterattack, forcing Flash to pull back his entire army. In the chaos that followed, Flash's supply dropped dramatically, and an attack goliath-first into Stork's main army of dragoons cut down on Flash's anti-air capabilities. Stork was able to move in with carriers and temporarily force Flash's tank-heavy army back to the Terran natural.
Flash moved out one last time. After a beautiful zealot/goon/carrier/HT attack with equally beautiful storms, it was all over.
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The man of the hour
The third day of the EVER OSL would have been disappointing were it not for the fantastic 4th set of Flash versus Stork. Flawless execution from both players and a brilliant opening from Stork made up one of the best TvPs in recent memory. While a few people though Stork might be in a slump, he showed an extremely high level game; a series between these two players would shake the earth itself.
As for the rest of the games, brutal domination was the theme. Blitzkrieg means "lightning war", a swift and ruthless battle. Indeed, this would be the week of the Blitzkrieg. Two days of dominance and lightning fast games, with the exception of Flash versus Stork, a gem hidden beneath the bloodshed of Week 2.
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Truthfully, there wasn't much hype about the fourth day of the tournament. All the matchups were mirrors, three of them ZvZs. The swarm is strong in this OSL and it is looking to take over the quarterfinals.
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Even the boothgirl doesn't like ZvZ's
Another Blitzkrieg was on its way. This day was the shortest of all, each game over before it even finished. Brutal domination after brutal domination.
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Both players got two gates and a core. After driving away
Pusan's scout, Movie got a Citadel of Adun, preparing for DT tech. Pusan got goon range before immediately expanding, and got a third gate a minute later. Pusan made absolutely no detection the entire game, GGing the moment DT's walked into his base.Pusan was facing elimination in this game, so it's pretty brave that he chose a strategy that was as much of a coinflip as this one: if the coin landed the wrong way, Pusan was out of the OSL.
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Right away,
ZerO had the build order advantage when he went 12 pool speed into expand against YellOw[ArnC]'s 9 pool into fast lair. With his larva advantage, ZerO set up a ling contain around Yarnc's base and started pumping drones. ZerO's spire started as Yarnc's finished, so he had to get spore colonies up. Yarnc had built a hatchery in his main, so ZerO did a very prudent thing and built a sunken colony at his choke along with the spores. This paid dividends when Yarnc attacked with mass ling/muta but couldn't break through. After the attack, Yarnc's muta count was devastated, and ZerO won easily.![[image loading]](/staff/DoctorHelvetica/EVER_OSL2/day4cgruppe.png)
Calm got gas before 9 pool, and EffOrt went 9 pool gas. EffOrt's faster lings arrived at Calm's base right after Calm's lings hatched, so they weren't able to do any damage and Calm had a pretty obvious, if small, build order advantage. Calm was able to sneak lings out of his base past EffOrt's ling blockade in order to see what was going on in EffOrt's base, and he saw that EffOrt hadn't gotten a second hatchery in-base. EffOrt took his natural, but after a ling battle that was in Calm's favor pretty decisively, that looked like a bad decision. Calm had a window of time where he could either get an advantage in the air by producing scourge with his extra larva, or simply pump lings with the excess. He chose scourge, and attacked EffOrt's main with his air units and the lings he had left over from the previously mentioned battle. He won the air battle decisively and EffOrt typed out when all his drones died.+ Show Spoiler +
]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nvFYPVU52o
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Both players went 12 pool gas. After some early-game ling shenanigans, where
type-b tried to hide his early ling numbers in order to strengthen his attack on Kwanro's natural and almost succeeded, both players were on equal footing when their spires were building. At that point, type-b went all-in ling, didn't break Kwanro, and typed out. It was an unspectacular end to an unspectacular day of games.+ Show Spoiler +
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Day four ended before it hardly began. The commercial breaks were actually the longest part of the entire broadcast. No one was expecting a long series with the amount of ZvZ that was to be played, but there was still a bit of surprise as to exactly how quick the series was.
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A good day for woongjin zergs
Week Two was fast, unforgiving, and it leaves us begging for more. Week 5 has some dynamite matches:
fantasy versus EffOrt, Flash versus type-b, Jaedong versus Movie and a whole set of new and promising games. We draw nearer and nearer to the quarterfinals. The blitzkrieg is over and now the final battle will be fought.![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/DoctorHelvetica/EVER_OSL2/OSL__Red.jpg)
This OSL News Report brought to you by the dynamic writing duo of DoctorHelvetica and motbob. Special thanks to HnR)Insane for editing/proofreading and to EVER for sponsoring the OSL.
