Lambs into Lions: Chapter Two

Snow and GuemChi fought for their first time on Judgment Day, for Snow’s first PvP of 2010. They both went a standard one-gate-core opening and scouted each other on the first try in cross positions. GuemChi showed some early aggression, poking at Snow’s choke with his first couple units as he expanded, but he quickly backed away from Snow’s higher dragoon count. As soon as Snow’s first shuttle finished, he moved out to pressure GuemChi, almost losing his shuttle taking a pot shot at a group of dragoons and having to back off empty handed.
Even with GuemChi on gateways, Snow took a fast third as he was coming back across the map. GuemChi followed, holed up right outside Snow’s choke and exploited Snow’s stretched army with reaver drops. Unfortunately, Snow didn’t keep enough dragoons at his base to fend it off and he lost three probes and one dragoon. Snow opted not to reinforce his dragoon count and just as he transferred his probes back, GuemChi turned his shuttle around and popped off another scarab, but snow quickly turned his probes back, getting lucky when it misfired. Fifteen seconds later, GuemChi took advantage of poor positioning to kill two probes at Snow’s third and pressure Snow’s choke with a small reaver push.
GuemChi followed up with a DT drop in Snow’s main and natural, but an observer at each base along with a handful of dragoons killed two of the assassins before they could do anything. Even though he held off the five harass attempts like a champ, GuemChi was able to get storm tech and smash past Snow’s choke to end the game.

Snow did a great job holding off the quick succession of harass attempts, losing a total of five workers and killing two dark templar. Had he positioned his units properly, Snow could have picked off at least one shuttle or reaver.
In every engagement Snow had just as good if not better micro than GuemChi, a player 6-4 in 2010 with 31 more PvPs to his name. I think Snow was a little shaken from all the harass, not to mention a huge army at his doorstep. The observer was too busy to show us Snow’s gateway count but I feel like he could have added more on and massed an army or teched at least as fast at GuemChi. He started his third base long before Guemchi’s and only lost five probes so I’m guessing he simply slipped up in his macro. Also, Snow had a shuttle with DTs in it halfway across the map when GuemChi stormed his front – a great idea but far too late, perhaps another sign of being a bit overwhelmed.

In another first encounter, Snow and Kal duked it out in an epic game on Fighting Spirit. Both players scouted each other immediately and went one-gate-core, and as Snow’s cyber core was building, he manner pyloned Kal’s mineral line, trapping two workers. Two zealots immediately began to hack away at it and Snow quickly cancelled, only stalling Kal’s two workers for fifteen seconds and not delaying his build at all as each player’s robotics facility, second gateway, and robo bay went up at the exact same time.
Once Snow got four dragoons, two zealots he moved to Kal’s bridge, and though Kal had one more dragoon, he hardly microed his units and had one dragoon just out of range for much of the engagement. Snow kept his units in a nice arc and took control of Kal’s bridge, but backed off to wait for his first reaver.
When Snow’s reaver caught up to the army he pushed into Kal’s natural, but was way too aggressive with his shuttle, only getting off one scarab before losing both shuttle and reaver. Meanwhile, Kal’s reaver, far behind his dragoons, shot three times and didn’t take a sliver of damage.
Now with two reavers and a shuttle, Kal took control of Snow’s bridge and tried to reaver drop Snow’s natural, losing both and the shuttle after only two probe kills.
Snow snapped back, and thinking Kal’s army was caught out of position, rushed into the natural to find himself between a group of six dragoons and Kal’s army. Snow got lucky when Kal lost focus and let his shuttle fly over Snow’s dragoons, but in the crossfire Snow also lost his shuttle, along with two reavers, and though he was able to harass a bit longer, he didn’t have enough units left and fell back with Kal on his heels.
In their fight on Snow’s bridge, Snow had his dragoons in the worst position possible, letting Kal bust in with three scarabs that basically killed half of Snow’s army. After that it was cleanup and Snow gg’d.

Snow only started his expansion by the time Kal’s was nearly finished and had two more gateways warping in, and because of Kal’s reaver drop, Kal got a minute’s worth of mining from his natural before Snow even started, and that’s just for minerals. Kal was getting gas from his second assimilator almost a full three minutes before Snow even started warping his in, and that was at the end of the game.
Both Snow and Kal made their fair share of mistakes. For Snow, his biggest slipups were losing his shuttle and reaver during his first push and having his army out of position at the end. Even though Kal had mistakes just as big, his macro was so much stronger that even if Snow had been able to stave off the last attack there would have been no way he could have held on much longer with Kal pumping units off two gas. However, Snow had excellent dragoon micro and positioning, the only exception being caught off guard at the end, and gave Kal a run for his money by being prepared for harass and making gutsy pushes.
In his first attack, Snow lost his shuttle and reaver and Kal was able to expand and eventually out-produce Snow. At the time of the attack, Kal’s shuttle was still building and if Snow had just been a little more careful he could have easily reversed their situations by keeping Kal boxed in his natural or main while getting an expansion.

Snow and Kal met again two months later for a rematch on Fighting Spirit. After the scouts were dead, Kal expanded after his cyber core, Snow opting for a robo facility and observatory before warping in his own. Their builds continue to diverge when right after he warped in his expansion, Kal threw down two gateways followed by a third and robotics facility. Across the map, Snow made a robo bay, pulling himself further ahead in tech.
With his observer now out, Snow scouted Kal first, added on more gateways, and set up outside Kal’s bridge. With fewer dragoons, everything hinged on Snow’s reavers, his only advantage. Snow led with his reavers and shot nine scarabs, killing and taking the shields off many dragoons.
As Kal focused the reavers, Snow killed off the rest of the army and moved in to destroy the natural. With no army or expansion, one lone dark templar forced Snow back to his natural, but at this point it was only delaying the inevitable. Free from harass, Snow’s macro hadn’t slipped. With a huge dragoon force he flanked Kal’s control group of units and moved into the main, ending the game.

Though only on two bases, Snow had solid macro throughout the game and was careful attacking Kal at the end, taking his third expansion at the same time to set up for the late-game as well as making high templar (and I assume researching storm). Neither player made game-breaking mistakes, but I think that Kal could have had his units better positioned for Snow’s first attack. Snow was very aggressive with his reavers, dropping them in front of his dragoons, and I think Kal could have immediately picked one of them off had his units been in a better arc.
Snow pulled off the ee-han timing, but had he lost his reavers before doing enough damage he would have been behind in macro (Kal got his expansion up first) and gateway count, very vulnerable to a counter-attack and future DT harassment. That being said, though risky, Snow’s timing was dead on and he took advantage of the weakest point in Kal’s build, winning the game.

Snow played Jaehoon on Judgement Day with the same starting positions he had versus GuemChi. In this game, rather than go his standard cyber core-robo facility-observatory, Snow hid his citadel of adun and rushed for dark templar, killing the scout in his base right before making the templar archives. Jaehoon got a second gateway before warping in an observatory, and despite being in cross positions, Snow got his first DT into Jaehoon’s base undetected, killing at least seven probes before Jaehoon’s observer finished building.
Snow, his expansion now up, snuck another dark templar into Jaehoon’s main, this time killing six workers. As this was happening, Jaehoon tried in vain to break through Snow’s choke then backed off until his reaver arrived. Knowing he was 13 probes and an expansion ahead, Snow had no qualms sacrificing money for a shield battery or some probes to stay in the game.
However, none of it was needed as a combination of nine dragoons and sick micro sniped both shuttle and reaver before it could kill a single unit. After that, Snow walked into Jaehoon’s base and ended it.

I really liked Snow’s decision to hide only his citadel. Maybe he was planning on building the archives alongside it but he knew after killing the probe in his base that Jaehoon wouldn’t be able to scout his tech in time. By building the templar archives in his main, even if his opponent destroyed the citadel, he would still have his most important tech safe next to his cyber core.
Snow definitely got a little bit lucky; after Jaehoon’s robo facility finished, probably because he made a second gateway first, there was a small wait before he started his observatory, and Snow’s dark templar started killing probes literally seconds before the observer finished. But even Jaehoon had scouted Snow’s build, it wouldn’t have been until his observer made the long voyage across the map, and before that Jaehoon certainly wouldn’t have pressured Snow’s choke as his build revolved around reaver-shuttle play, maybe giving Snow enough time to add on more gateways. Of course, Snow would still have had dark templar, forcing Jaehoon to keep more units that he would like in his main and build a second observer if he wanted to attack.
Jaehoon’s biggest mistake was letting Snow sneak another DT into his base, giving Snow an insurmountable economic advantage. If he had positioned his observer properly he could have easily stopped it before it got in or at least quickly killed it, but instead his observer was, for some reason, hovering over the robotics facility next to his shuttle. In any case, Snow’s DT harass was a complete success. It should also be noted that Snow warped in his expansion long before his first dark templar got to Jaehoon’s base, showing he was ready to make the most of any economic advantage, not counting on his dark templar to win him the game.

In PvP, Snow has very crisp timings. In his game against GuemChi, they both had identical opening builds but Snow was the first to pushed out and pressure, initially taking map control. Had Snow been the one to snipe his opponent’s reaver, or not lost his own so quickly, their situations could have easily been reversed. In his loss against Kal, Snow was also the initial aggressor and had taken control of Kal’s bridge. Kal didn’t yet have a shuttle and Snow was in a promising position, but once again was too aggressive and quickly lost both shuttle, and reaver. In my opinion, Snow’s best timing was when he simply pushed out at the right time and walked over Kal’s army. It was an uneventful game but one that demonstrates Snow’s strategic depth.
Poor positioning was why Snow struggled so much against GuemChi, first in not backing up his shuttle with dragoons, and then by giving Guemchi five easy probe kills. It was also due to horrible positioning that Snow was flanked by Kal’s army, and then later lost to Kal’s game winning push.
In terms of micro, Snow is about average. His shuttle control isn’t the best by any means, but look at his win against Kal, Kal lost two shuttles that game in horrible fashion. When he played GuemChi, besides the one slipup, Snow’s shuttle control was just as good, if not better. Perfect shuttle micro is very difficult, even for S class players.
Snow’s win against Kal was much more decisive than his loss, and Kal has played 76 more PvPs than Snow. Kal is also the only one between Pure, Stork, and himself with more wins than loses in 2010. Jaehoon has played 22 more PvPs and had was on a four game PvP win streak, beating Kal and Shuttle, before playing Snow. The players with around the same number of PvPs as Snow, such as Stats and Spear, still consistently lose to good players like this, when they get the chance to play them (except JangBi, but his PvP is about the same as Snow’s). The only exception is Shuttle, who is a sexy 6-2 against good protoss in 2010, but it’s also his best matchup.

On a four game PvT streak after beating Go.go in Winners League, for the first time Snow found himself pitted against Leta, on New Tornado. Snow went one-gate-core and Leta, the wraith master, rushed for a starport after making only four marines and a vulture. While Snow pressured Leta’s front with his first dragoons, Leta defended with spider mines and dropped four vultures into Snow’s main, killing approximately 12 probes, a zealot, and a dragoon. Snow’s expansion had just finished when Leta dropped in two more vultures, and largely due to Snow’s slow reaction time, they were able to pick off 5 more workers.
At this point Leta was transferring scvs to his natural, building an armory, and just needed a bit more time to solidify his economic advantage. His next drop placed a tank and two vultures perfectly behind a wall of buildings, and with spider mines to defend it, the siege tank was able to kill 3 probes and 2 dragoons. In a last ditch attempt Snow tried to stall with reaver harass, but Leta had seen the shuttle in his last drop and easily killed it off with a wraith.

Leta’s build against the standard one-gate-core worked perfectly, and as we saw in his game against GuemChi, Snow struggled to hold it off. He didn’t kill a single dropship and even let one pick up the vultures and save them after they finished killing probes. After losing 14 units to the first drop, Snow still wasn’t alert enough to intercept the second drop with his dragoons, even though the dropship stopped right next to them. Leta’s strategy and follow-through was so nicely executed that I don’t feel it was a disappointing loss. That being said, Snow was unprepared and could have greatly mitigated the damage from the last two drops.

Snow played Flash, on Match Point, in his first Proleague game of 2010. Flash was the first quality terran Snow had ever faced, and with only 21 PvTs, his first stretching back to mid 2008, Snow was ill equipped to deal with the Ultimate Weapon – so he cheesed.
Flash didn’t scout the proxy two-gate and expanded with one tank, two vultures (plus spidermines), and six marines to defend. When Snow attacked, Flash had already planted mines in a straight line along his only retreat route, and Snow’s zealot dragged the mines into Flash’s first and only tank, forcing Flash to abandon his natural. With dragoons flooding to his choke, Flash did the only thing he could and walled in with his command center, buying him the precious time he needed to finish upgrading siege mode. He lost one tank holding off Snow’s dragoons but siege mode finished just in time to save his supply depot and forced Snow to back off into the natural.
During this, Snow had started his second, then third bases, planning to pull ahead with macro. However, the economic gap wasn’t as great as he’d thought. Since Flash had already built the command center, as soon as he had five siege tanks he simply moved it back to his natural and immediately started to mine, fully saturated, by the time Snow’s third base had finished warping in. After landing his command center Flash almost immediately moved out, pushing back Snow’s dragoon exclusive army, destroying both proxy gateways, and then engaging Snow’s control group. Snow was more than ready to take on Flash’s unsieged tanks with a nice arc of dragoons, and just when it looked like Snow was coming out ahead, a hero spidermine came scrabbled over and took out two of his units.
With that, Flash was able to continue his push across the map and siege up on the low ground outside Snow’s natural, halting mining and securing a foothold into Snow’s main. Snow had one chance to flank and take out Flash’s army, but he botched the timing, sending in one group of dragoons to die right before the second came in from behind. With his army dead and natural destroyed, Snow gg’d, wishing he had never even heard of spidermines.

Snow’s follow up plan to widen the economic gap was a good idea in theory but I think he overestimated how much damage he’d done. Flash was continually producing scvs in both command centers, even when using the second one as a wall, and Snow only got 6 scv kills. As soon as Flash got siege mode, he had a saturated secondary base.
Snow’s biggest blunder was when he got too aggressive with his dragoons, losing two to the spidermine, giving Flash map control. If he had been focusing on the battle, he would have seen the same mine being planted that tipped the scales in Flash’s favour. The other mistake it looked like Snow made was when, trying to block Flash’s push up his ramp, he didn’t synchronize his dragoon flank and ended up losing half his army before the other group even began to attack.

Three months later, Snow was sent out as the ACE for CJ Entus to face Flash for the second time, on Fighting Spirit. Flash was on the longest TvP win streak in StarCraft history, but on his own 6 game PvT streak, and 8-1 in PvT on Fighting Spirit, Snow was ready to bring the pain. Snow scouted Flash last, and just when Flash thought it was safe to throw down a bunker and secure his natural, Snow’s scouting probe and first zealot came storming in. Flash had to cancel his bunker and, being too daring with his marine, embarrassingly lost it to the probe’s cattle prod.
Snow followed up with a second zealot after his cyber core, and then a dragoon to keep pressure on Flash and delay the expansion as long as possible. While parked outside Flash’s ramp, Snow expanded to the 6 o’clock position, faking out Flash when an scv poked into Snow’s natural to make sure he wasn’t warping in a nexus.
Thinking Snow was committed to the attack, Flash wasted money on a bunker at the top of his ramp when in fact Snow had only two zealots and two dragoons and was transferring workers to his second base, warping his third in at his natural, and laughing as he finally backed off to one siege tank.
His expansion delayed for over two minutes, Flash knew he was behind and tried to push out, but with spidermines still researching he was easily repelled and fell back to defend his bridge and take another expansion. Seeing Flash turtled up and taking his third base, Snow, taking full advantage of his map control, expanded to 9 o’clock while poking around the map to keep vultures at bay. Snow was more than happy to check his aggression and press his macro advantage. Obviously confident in his late-game management, he took his fifth base, added on gateways, and started popping out high templar. When Flash was taking his fourth, Snow was already warping in his sixth base, seventh, and eighth bases and prepping for carriers.
The first real attack of the game came when Snow recalled into Flash’s fourth base, only seconds after Flash had started to mine from it and before tanks were in position to defend. Perfect timing.
Flash was quick to rush tanks over, and though three high templar ate them up with storms, more reinforcements came and cleaned up before Flash had to lift his command center. However, seemingly doing little damage, this recall was much more than an attack on Flash’s base. Unbeknownst to Flash, Snow had built gateways and taken the main of the natural where Flash’s fourth was; the harass not only an attack, but a buffer for Snow’s eighth base.
Growing suspicious, Flash moved into the main, spotted the expansion, and just when he started to break it down with siege tanks, Snow recalled again into Flash’s fourth, killing off most of the remaining workers.
With his late-game plan in shatters, Flash quickly destroyed Snow’s hidden eighth base (which didn’t have any probes), and simultaneously attacked Snow’s sixth base at 9 o’clock, and fifth base at 6 o’clock. With no units close at hand, Snow could do nothing about his sixth base and focused on saving his fifth.
Flash rallied more troops and made a beeline for Snow’s fifth base, but having scouted the carriers, he mixed in, as of yet, unneeded goliaths, and without vultures Snow’s heavy speedlot army caught Flash’s tanks out of siege mode and ripped through them. Flash limped away with not even a control group of units, losing most of the goliaths he had pre-emptively made to counter the carriers. When Snow immediately counter-pushed, this time backed by carriers, Flash simply didn’t have “enough stuff” and gg’d.

Snow’s recalls were the highlight of the game. Before I said that they served to both harass Flash’s economy and defend Snow’s eight, but in fact there were even bigger, third and fourth purposes. As all the recalls were happening, on the other side of the map, Snow’s seventh base had become fully saturated, far from Flash’s focus and immobile army. The recalls pulled Flash’s already stretched, highly immobile forces away from it, letting Snow mine from a base so close to Flash’s own, yet so far from where the terran army needed to be. It’s refreshing to see such forethought, so many protoss end up spamming recall, no matter how well defended a base is, because they let the terrans get an advantage early on.
The fourth purpose was to buy time for his carriers. Snow’s fleet beacon was warping in before his first recall, and when Flash destroyed Snow’s sixth and eighth bases and suddenly the map looked a lot less yellow, Snow’s first carrier finished – and he let it sit in his base. The fact that Snow didn’t go gung-ho and use it to reinforce his army, or even help defend his fifth, shows an extraordinary amount of calm and maturity for such an inexperienced player in such a high pressure match. Similar to how strong zerg spend larvae on drones amidst chaos and massing an army, Snow slowly massed carriers while still maintaining a strong force on the ground, juking Flash into over-saturating his army with goliaths.
Snow’s recalls were precise and quadruple-purposed, and even though he lost one base to Flash’s subsequent attack, Flash was unable to hold the position and Snow still had five mining bases, more than enough to support his carriers and deal with a terran who had just begun to mine from his fourth.
Snow did not only have incredibly clever late-game play, his early one-gate aggression against Flash tricked him into delaying his expansion for two minutes, giving Snow his initial advantage and putting his plan into motion. After that, Snow then delayed Flash’s fourth for two minutes, also after the command center had completed. When looking at the game, one doesn’t think of harassment as the factor that gave Snow such a decisive lead, but it was this harassment that widened their economic gap and made Flash’s pushes delayed and weaker.
Another thing to note is that unlike the many players who mindlessly two-base-arbiter, Snow didn’t get his first arbiter until his fifth base had finished warping in, and used it for a distinct purpose that flowed into the scope of his strategy. The same thing can be said for his high templar.
At first glance it looks like Snow played a passive game, but his carrier tech and aggressive expansions must have put a lot of pressure on Flash and made him feel like he was falling further and further behind, which he was.

Before he played Snow, Sea was 7-3 against some of the best protoss and hadn’t played a protoss below 2100 ELO since December. Snow, on the other hand, had just come off winning the 4th set against eSTRO, crushing Really with carriers and winning the series for CJ. At cross positions on Fighting Spirit, Sea one-factory fast expanded and Snow cyber core FE. Then, on three gateways with his highest tech being an observatory, Snow took his third expansion in Bisu-esque style. However, upon it being scouted by Sea, Snow cancelled and rebuilt it at 12 o’clock, added on an arbiter tribunal, templar archives, and pressured as Sea attempted to take his own expansion.
Both players starting mining from their thirds within seconds of each other, but, because he’s a cheeky bastard, Snow expanded yet again at the top left main to one-up Sea. Now ahead in both tech and expansions, Snow decided to add on four more gateways, for a total of seven. A couple times Sea tried to use vulture to poke into Snow’s expansions, but somewhat surprisingly, Snow fended off each harass and threw up a fourth expansion upon seeing Sea taking his.
Having just taken his fourth, Sea was playing in ultra-defensive mode, giving Snow full reign to recall into Sea’s third base, maintaining his stance that Sea had quite enough bases already and should really let protoss take the whole map.
However, unable to reason with the scvs and make them give up the expansion, Snow went to see if the 6 o’clock base would be more reasonable. It wasn’t, and Snow, feeling quite abashed, took his sixth expansion as far away from Sea as possible.
Now on only two mining bases, Sea decided it was time to move out on the money-grubber and destroyed Snow’s fifth base, sieging up two tanks outside his third. Snow, of course, was having none of this, and to maintain the ratio of base distribution, attacked one of Sea’s two running expansions, forcing the command center to lift while Sea’s army was on the other side of the map. Snow also managed to get zealots to 12 o’clock in time to save to the nexus, smugly leaving Sea on one mining base to his four as he expanded yet again.
Desperate, Sea landed the burning command center at his 6 o’clock expansion and started building another one at Snow’s old fifth base. However, poor Sea simply did not have enough units to reinforce both locations, and Snow, with 9 gateways up the ramp from his old fifth, never gave him the chance the finish the building the base. After Snow destroyed the command center at 6 o’clock, Sea conceded the game.

As you might have guessed, Snow won this game by simply and methodically taking more bases than Sea. Snow was confident enough in his ability to macro and abuse terran’s immobility that he was glad to see Sea turtle for the entire game and play him head-to-head in macro. Snow’s small attacks, more harassment than anything, lined up perfectly with when he took expansions.
Snow’s first harass was at the 9 o’clock expansion while Sea’s command center was floating there. Snow took his entire army of dragoons and just sat them on the high ground, forcing Sea to siege and unsiege his way forward before landing his base. Snow simply backed off every time the siege tanks got in range, and then just left. This small harass keeping Sea distracted and thinking defensively while Snow was transferring workers to his own third. The next attack, just moving 5 dragoons into Sea’s fourth base as the command center was building, came right after taking his own fourth. Not only did it once again drag Sea into being wary of harass and thinking defensively, but it pulled Sea’s attention and five of his tanks away from his 9 o’clock base which Snow, upon taking his fifth base, recalled into a minute later. In each small attack Snow lost money, but the benefits of having his expansions go up unmolested and keeping Sea on the defensive quickly added up, and by the time Sea moved out Snow’s economy was so strong that it was too late.

In 2010 Snow has only lost five PvTs, only two of which were televised, so I didn’t have any options in choosing which losses to write about. Luckily, the televised games weren’t horrible and showed consistent patterns in Snow’s play. Not so coincidentally, neither of the games Snow lost went to the late game. Against Leta, the game was won with constant harass, and against Flash, it was to a brilliant, early-game counter-push.
In PvT, Snow is a huge bluffer. What I mean by this is that Snow has the ability to appear to be doing one thing, when in fact he is doing another. When his opponent falls into his pace of game, Snow then exploits all the weakness of an immobile terran and wins with a combination of straight-up macro and genius strategy.
In his wins against Flash and Sea, in the early game he acted aggressive, making it look like he was positioned to put constant pressure on his opponent, but in both cases it was only a ruse to make the terran player fall into Snow’s style of macro play where he slips in an early third expansion. Even when his two-gate proxy failed against Flash, Snow double expanded, hoping Flash would stay sieged up on two or three bases while he saturated his bases. However, Flash, not even knowing Snow had a third until after he was sieged outside Snow’s natural, was ballsy enough to move out, and with Snow’s inability to deal with the pressure, was able to win in one push.
Snow is a macro beast who loves tricking his opponent into playing a management game, and once that happens, he uses genius strategy to exploit every weakness of his opponent. Every decision made by Snow has a distinct goal, each move flowing into the next, a gear in his grand design.

In April, Snow and RorO played each other for the first time. Typical of his aggressive self, Snow warped in a pylon at RorO’s natural, delaying the expansion. But RorO, not missing a beat, expanded to Fighting Spirit's 1 o’clock natural.
When RorO’s mutas popped, Snow had just lost one of his two corsairs and had one cannon warping in. The mutalisks picked off the one corsair and photon cannon, and Snow, with no defences left, had to run all the probes to his natural. With this, RorO was so far ahead that Snow couldn’t do anything but spend all his gas making archons and corsairs.
RorO kept making more mutalisks and Snow, now with one archon at his main and two at his natural, transferred his probes back, and just when it looked like he might weather the storm and make it to the late-game, RorO switched to hydra tech and busted down Snow’s front. The hydralisks ran over Snow’s three archons, and with those dead Snow gg’d.

This game really shows Snow’s inexperience in PvZ, namely his unfamiliarity with timings. Losing his corsair and then making incredibly late photon cannons was such a huge, simple mistake that RorO just had to make mutalisks to win. Then RorO did the easiest thing in the world, stalled the protoss with mutalisks while massing hydras. With his brutalized economy and three ground units, even if he had known two minutes in advance that the hydra switch was coming, there was simply nothing Snow could have done.

Eleven days after losing to ZerO and Hyuk, Snow had just beat Light and Jaehoon and was halfway to an all-kill. MBC, with their best terran and protoss players defeated, sent out their best zerg, HyuN, to play on Match Point. This game Snow showed really nice, if risky, corsair micro, and without mutalisks, he was able to barrel right into HyuN’s main like a boss with a very clever and successful speedlot/archon push. Snow kept the units in the back of HyuN’s base for as long as he could, distracting HyuN as he warped in a nexus at the 6 o’clock expansion and sent another group of speedlot/archon past a lone sunken and into the mineral line at HyuN’s natural. Between the two attacks, over 10 drones died and mining was delayed at HyuN’s main for over two minutes.
To continue the harass, Snow DT dropped into HyuN’s main, but unfortunately missed the opportunity to kill three defilers and ended up not doing much of anything with them. Also, while this was happening, Snow failed to save, or mine any resources from, his third base.
Now with only his first two bases to mine from, Snow stepped up the harass and storm dropped the hell out of HyuN’s natural, killing every single drone while taking out a couple more and HyuN’s spire with one last, hidden DT in HyuN’s main.
Then, Snow ran a group of zealots into HyuN’s natural, catching and killing three defilers, and then a subsequent group that picked off the spawning pool. Snow took a deep breathe, slowed down, and expanded to the mineral-only – and then simultaneously bum-rushed HyuN’s third and reaver dropped the natural.
Someone must have thrown a can of beans in the other direction because the bum-rush turned on a dime, leaving the third untouched, and the reaver got sniped while zipping away in his shuttle, without killing a single drone.
It was at this point that Snow’s unrelenting pressure drifted off and he awkwardly had to pick back up on the macro game, at a timing not of his choosing. Both players danced around the map, trying to get the positional advantage until HyuN got caught making a drop, losing his overlords and all the units.
Just when Snow defended his newly taken 12 o’clock expansion, all his harass had paid off and he was going to win the macro game, HyuN exploded out of his base, trashing 12 o’clock, and successfully defending Snow’s counter-attack. Now with total map control, HyuN doom dropped Snow’s main and simultaneously rushed his third with cows and kittens.
Snow barely survived and fought back with sick reaver/dt drops, but HyuN’s macro was so strong and with wave after wave finally broke Snow’s third base, destroying the nexus. Severely behind, Snow rallied all his troops for one last attack. Plagues and ultralisks killed it off, and though Snow took out a hatchery, he had nothing to left and gg’d.

At the beginning of the game Snow’s units came flying out of their gateways like bats out of hell, and it was amazing how long he was able to sustain serious pressure on HyuN’s economy. The problem was that right when Snow had HyuN pressed up against the fence, he let his third expansion get taken out by a sloppy handful of units. If Snow had just left a couple zealots at 6 o’clock he would have secured the base and been laughing all the way to the bank.
I also would have liked to see Snow spread his harass across all three of HyuN’s expansions. HyuN was so busy taking care of speedlots and reaver drops in his natural that I doubt he allocated very many units at all to his 5 o’clock expansion, which received zero harass. Snow focused so many units and energy on HyuN’s natural and main, as if HyuN didn’t have a third expansion. One reaver drop or DT to HyuN’s third could have been devastating in the early game. The other thing to note is that, while Snow killed dozens of workers, he destroyed his first and only hatchery at the end of the game. I feel like he had a couple opportunities where he could have sacrificed a group of units to kill HyuN’s natural or main, but decided to keep them dancing around trying to kill drones and delay mining instead. Losing his third base was the big blunder in Snow’s play, but the game was a thirty minute slugfest in which Snow showed some vicious, vicious harass and amazingly long lived aggression.

One month earlier, Snow and HyuN played on Fighting Spirit. HyuN opened with a very aggressive, but not all-in, three hatch hydra build that cost Snow a gateway and made him throw down an additional four cannons. Snow tried to sneak in a DT drop before HyuN got scourge out, but he was a bit too late and lost his shuttle. With both map and air control, HyuN took his fourth base at 1 o’clock.
In a risky gambit, Snow used a corsair to pull away a pair of scourge guarding HyuN’s natural, and slipped another slow shuttle with DTs in it up and into HyuN’s main. The dark templar killed 13 drones before starting to work on the hatchery, getting it to half health before being driven off. As soon as Snow’s reaver popped, he expanded and pushed out to the middle of the map, also dropping two more DTs into HyuN’s fourth base at 1 o’clock. There the dark templar were not so successful, killing about 5 drones, but it had given Snow time to start mining his third base and consolidate his force on HyuN’s bridge.
Snow slowly pushed his way through dark swarms and waves of lings and into HyuN’s natural, reavers leading. HyuN simply couldn’t break the push, and with Snow reinforcing with more reavers and also DT dropping HyuN’s fourth, HyuN gg’d.

At the beginning of the game, Snow hardly made any corsairs, only enough to scout HyuN’s base. After seeing that HyuN opened hydra, Snow knew he didn’t need a large corsair count and saved the gas for a fast templar archives and support bay. Snow began to claw ahead when he lured two scourge into following his corsair, making enough room for a DT drop. Snow followed up with another DT drop on the other side of the map, which, combined with his first drop, hurt HyuN’s economy so much that Snow was easily able to get in position on HyuN’s ramp. Once set up, Snow’s army was immovable, storms and scarabs ate up everything inside dark swarms, while at the same time Snow’s army was 90% dragoons, making a switch to air ineffective.
Once again we see sharp timings, but as a whole Snow was never really pressured or harassed, something I think he may be weak against.

Five days after losing to HyuN, Snow was chosen by CJ to play on Judgement Day, the first game of the night and against Hero, who had just beaten Free and was on a six game PvP streak. Hero went for an early hydra bust, but Snow saw it coming and just barely held it off by pulling all the probes from his natural and warping in extra cannons. While Snow kept eleven probes in front of his cannons for a full minute, waiting for his reaver, Hero teched comfortably to lair and started building a fourth base at the 6 o’clock expansion.
Without any ground units but reavers and probes, Snow expanded to his third, and with shuttle speed and a group of corsairs, he popped around the zerg expansions, keeping Hero on the defensive while he established his third base. More reaver drops shaved away at Hero’s hydra and drone count, but more importantly gave Snow enough time to pump three shuttles and six reavers out of his two robo facilities, an absolutely terrifying number that, when dropped simultaneously into Hero’s natural, made everything explode in about four seconds.
Hero tried to counter attack at Snow’s natural, but cannons, dragoons, and two more reavers kept the swarm of hydralisks back, and with hardly any defences, Snow easily dropped his reaver army into Hero’s main, killing more drones before flying back to his natural to save the day.
With his six reavers, an army of dragoons, and total air control, Snow bulldozed back across the map, stopping briefly to squash Hero’s hydras before busting into Hero’s third and ending the game.

Snow came very close to losing the game, but decisive thinking pulled all the probes from his natural to protect his choke, and while it seriously hurt his economy, Hero’s was also weakened and Snow was still able to come out ahead. Hero was kind of banging his head against a brick wall when he kept massing hydralisk, but I guess without seeing templar tech, Hero could have underestimated the potency of the reavers, thinking he could simply mass and win if Snow didn’t have storm. Also, seeing as Snow had used Hero’s hydra opening to take air control, Hero had to keep a large number of hydralisks in his bases just to defend against harass, another reason why Snow was able to tech and expand so quickly.

Snow has shown he is more than capable of defending hydra busts, and against both three hatch hydra builds, we saw Snow dismantled his opponent with harras while massing high tech units to end the game. In each of his victories, Snow’s first and only push broke the zerg army and won the game, without him ever really being in danger after the initial attack.
Snow’s PvZ, is, most of all, very exciting to watch. He pushes his aggressive play style to the extreme, not giving zerg a moment to breathe in between drops and small pushes. Then, right when the zerg player thinks he’s weathered the storm, Snow moves out with his gas heavy army and easily shuts everything down.
As we saw in his loss to HyuN, there are a few things Snow could do to sharpen his play, namely spread out his harass and remember to protect his expansions, not just rely on the zerg not scouting them. However, in Snow’s win against HyuN, which was actually played before his loss, Snow did these very things – kept units at his third expansion, which saved it, and threatened harass across all of HyuN’s expansions. The same can be said for his game versus Hero, Snow had great harass that went on constantly from the moment he got a shuttle to the end of the game.
My biggest concern with Snow’s ZvP is that he skimps too much on corsairs, making him very susceptible to mutalisks. His strengths are that he is more than able to deal with hydra busts, has relentless harass, and has good late-game army management.

      In all three matchups, Snow shows his inability to deal with harass. Against GuemChi, Snow was kept cooped up in his base while GuemChi picked away at him with reaver drops, both of which could have been better defended. In Snow’s game against Leta, Leta’s build hinged on the element of surprise and was very difficult to counter once started. However, some of the drops went right past Snow’s dragoons, catching him out of position. We see the same thing in Snow’s PvZ. Against RorO, what should have been just muta harass effectively ended the game because Snow was caught off guard, without cannons or enough corsairs to defend with.
      In each matchup Snow starts out very aggressive, usually the first one to engage whether it be to delay Flash's expansion, pressure Kal's choke, or beat down HyuN’s economy. Then Snow typically likes to quickly take his third base and move out, with a very small army while quickly climbing the tech tree. In PvT, Snow uses this early aggression primarily to delay terran and get an economic advantage. In his wins over Flash and Sea, Snow kept clipping at the terran army, taking full advantage of terran’s immobility and lack of early map control. Unlike so many protoss, such as Kal, who try in vain to but heads with a 200/200 mech army, Snow uses well timed expansions and scant, purposeful recalls to delay the terran until his expansions are up and running and he is ready to engage.
      Snow’s macro is clearly top notch, as is his multitask, but based on his response to drops and general harass, his reaction time might be a bit lacking. His record against terran is phenomenal and quite obviously better than his PvP and PvZ, however, according to Snow:

      Snow’s timing and transitions in PvT show such a strong game sense that there is no reason he can’t figure out the other matchups just as well. I think that we will only see Snow continue to dominate against terran and steadily improve his mirror matchup and PvZ. It’s no surprise Snow received the Best Newcomer award, his stats are insane and his crisp, organized play is both exciting and extremely effective. I expect nothing less than Ro16 in the upcoming MSL.

vs. GuemChi
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vs. Kal (Loss)
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vs. Kal (Win)
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vs. Jaehoon
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vs. Leta
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vs. Flash (Loss)
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vs. Flash (Win)
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vs. Sea
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vs. RorO
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vs. HyuN (Loss)
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vs. HyuN (Win)
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vs. Hero
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