The powerful aircraft sits on the runway, sunlight glistening off its sleek wings. Hot off the assembly line and designed to surpass all other craft, the airplane is unparalleled in speed and elegance. Underneath its massive frame, crew members scurry about, making last minute checks and yelling at one another to hurry it up. After a while longer, all preparations are complete, and the pilot is given the all-clear signal.

Rolster 424, you are cleared for takeoff, over.

The pilot nods, and starts up the plane. The powerful engines rev, and the aircraft screams down the runway. Soon, the 424 is airborne, transporting its one valuable passenger toward his destination--the Golden Mouse.

Upon reaching the cruising altitude of 36,000 feet, the pilot and his co- relax. From up in the sky, the view is amazing. The two feel truly on top of the world, and they sit back, knowing that it will be all smooth sailing ahead.

However, the trip is to be anything but smooth.

Pilot to control tower, there appears to be some sort of disturbance, over.

We see something as well; be careful. You're not alone, over.

What... what is that? Something's streaking through the clouds, and it's approaching the plane rapidly! ...Over.

Pilot, radar signals are crude, but that craft is not of any design we have ever seen, over.

It's broken through the cloudline! It appears to be some sort of extraterrestrial--tkhhhhhhhh.

...

Pilot! Pilot!

Tkhhhhhhh.

There were too many games with too many interuptions to do anything more than a few snide comments about most of them but every now and then a fantastic game would develop and the cameras would ignore everything else and stick to that game. So here are a couple of the best games of the prelims, if you don't have the time to watch the whole show then these are the gems you missed.

Snow vs MVP on Fighting Spirit
We have a Terran who could legitimately belong in the OSL proper against the best PvT sniper around. Snow spawned in 7 and MVP at 11 putting them in close positions that are typically good for Terran, though not as advantageous as horizontal positions on FS. The broadcast started following their game near the start and Snow opened with his signature zealots to mess with a Terran rax cc. The opening worked and Snow got his natural down significantly faster than MVP, a very good start compared to recent PvTs where the Terran takes their natural first.

MVP's reply was to take the 3 expansion on the opposite side of the map while adding factories for a low tech massive push which is quite frankly, awesome.

It's all about the ways the game can play out, if Snow tried to do any kind of early bust play then having those extra factories is very helpful. If Snow tries to macro up then it means MVP can break him. And if Snow scouts them all with an observer, which is what happened, he will realise MVP is going for a big two base semi-all in and refrain from risking expansions and tech. While MVP of course already has a third base hidden on the other side of the map. MVP's build gave him a load of options vs what Snow could be doing and it countered the counter to what it looked like. It's all very convoluted and complicated but at the same time very clever and cool.

This is not what you wanna see when you're a Protoss trying to macro up in the midgame

MVP pushed out a bit and then expanded to 12, happy to sit in his corner on three bases rather than push into a Protoss that was massing units. His trick had worked and he was outspending Snow. Unfortunately for MVP this tipped Snow off that something wasn't right, MVP's defensive play implied he had something to defend and Snow immediately scouted straight to 3 and the hidden expansion. A few dragoons went to 3 to clear it up and MVP lifted it towards 1 rather than fight for it.

The downside of MVP's plan was that his tech was delayed by the fast mass factories and he was forced to create a massive siege line across the top of the middle to defend his four bases. Snow was in the same position though as he had cut his own tech in favour of mass gateway units to defend the early push MVP had been faking. Despite being on late game economies both players were at fairly low tech which gave MVP massive defensive advantages, but made attacking dangerous because of mass speedlots and storms.

Snow attempted to apply some pressure at 1, taking the long route around the middle through 3, but MVP redeployed his tanks and wiped out the attacking Protoss units almost without loss.
It was only the storms cast from high templars in shuttles as the push failed that did any damage. However during the attack Snow took 4 and 5 to even it up at five bases each while teching to carriers. MVP tried a quick counterattack towards 4 but did not set up the ground work for a push with turrets, mines and vultures, instead using exposed tanks in a shallow formation. Snow's zealots and storms cut through them, completely breaking the push and forcing MVP back to his prepared line of mines, tanks and turrets.

Snow expanded to 9 while sending more units through 3 up to 1 and 2 in order to draw attention away from his newest expansion. While his gateway units were quickly beaten by MVP when he shifted forces to 2, it opened opportunities for Snow's carriers at MVP's 10 natural. Despite having five bases against six, a very respectable position for a Terran, MVP found his extended line a nightmare to hold while pushing from top to bottom on Fighting Spirit.

Unfortunately we missed the next few minutes because the camera switched to a PvP on Great Barrier Reef but MVP finally did a big goliath tank push at 4 after losing his natural. MVP's army made it into 4 where it was savaged by storms, and carriers were able to hold the line. MVP's forces were exposed at 4 and despite doing a lot of damage they were overwhelmed by dragoons, ht and carrier hitting from every side. MVP then tried to pressure 9, and when Snow's carriers went to relieve that position, MVP switched the pressure back to 4, exploiting the poor mobility of carriers on a map as big as Fighting Spirit. Snow simply counterattacked with his carriers into MVP's main and won.

I can't emphasise enough how much I love Snow because he just gets PvT. You stop them fast expanding and fast expand yourself. Then you scout. If they mass you mass. If they power you power. And then you get to dragoon, carriers and ht with the economy to do it. A lot of players just rush to that winning combination but in this game against MVP that would have been suicide because MVP's build was so clever. Equally arbiter play just doesn't work against a Terran with half the map and a degree from the university of camping. We've all seen Kal vs Flash. Snow not only does the right thing but at the right time with the right stuff. He restores my faith in Protoss. MVP played pretty damn well too. This was certainly higher quality than your average OSL game.



Bisu vs sKyHigh on Great Barrier Reef

We joined Bisu and Skyhigh very early in their game on Great Barrier Reef as evidently the people at OGN were as hyped to see it as I was. The exact openings were missed but Bisu went one gateway dragoon with a very fast natural while Skyhigh's wasn't much slower with fast mines defending it. Both players were content to play defensively, aware of the other's expansion and just trying to build up.

Bisu rushed observers out with two more gateways to get some dragoons together while Skyhigh followed his command centre with a very fast starport, only making one tank and a pair of vultures. He quickly followed it with a third command centre next at his natural, ready to fly to his outside expansion.

Bisu's fast observer saw the third command centre but not the starport which meant Bisu took his back expansion too, promptly leaving it open to sieging across the mineral line. Skyhigh used the range of his tanks to hit the nexus and then retreat and hit dragoons when Bisu tried to stop them. A ballsy opening but if Bisu's observer had ventured over the starport Skyhigh could easily have lost his dropship and been set a long way back. Bisu eventually managed to get a shuttle out, but not in time to prevent Skyhigh from focus-firing the nexus down.

Bisu anticipated losing the nexus and started his mineral only before it died, as well as immediately replacing his back nexus, but it still set him back and for a minute it was two bases against three. As he bounced back up to four bases and got his arbiter tech up, Bisu felt comfortable enough to throw down a lot of gateways and prepare for the late game. Protoss at 8 against Terran at 4 favours Protoss because T will tend to expand towards 5 and 6 which naturally makes pushing towards 12 difficult.

As Skyhigh took his mineral only beneath his main cliff he pushed out a short distance across the bridge to Bisu's mineral only. Bisu bought a little time with a sneaky counterattack with a half dozen dragoons at Skyhigh's mineral only, diverting focus from the push and forcing some units back, but he didn't have the army to take Skyhigh's push head on. With the bridge to their back and Bisu's mineral only directly in front of the tanks Bisu was in trouble.

Skyhigh inched forwards keeping his formation deep and tight against the terrain in the middle of the map. As his foremost tanks moved into range of Bisu's mineral only Bisu decided he had to make a move and attack moved straight into it.
No flank, no storm, one stasis into a deep Terran formation
As you'd expect the Protoss army got bogged down in vultures and mines while the tank heart of Terran cut them down. As the last of the zealots died Bisu realised he was throwing away his dragoons and saved as many of them as he could with an all out retreat.
Skyhigh looked to continue his push and destroy the Protoss mineral natural, but Bisu had another round of production out and that meant a lot of gateway units. Before the stasis from the first battle wore off Bisu engaged again, trying to hold the line and save his expansion through pure determination.
For a second it looked like he would succeed, but then Skyhigh's reinforcements arrived and the battle turned into a massacre as Bisu lost his entire army, losing all the dragoons that he'd saved from the previous defeats.

The probes evacuated up to Bisu's new expansion at 12 and Skyhigh was reluctant to push further north towards Bisu's natural with the exposed flanks and potential for counterattacks. Skyhigh's vultures threatened 12 and as Bisu moved his army to deal with them, Skyhigh's own mineral only looked dangerously exposed. Skyhigh instead chose to camp on his four bases with a third of the map firmly under his control while Bisu expanded to 11 and added yet more gateways, this time at 12 to diversify his centers of production against contains.

Skyhigh realised that 12 its natural represented an awful lot of potential income if he gave Bisu control of that corner of the map, and shifted his push from the lower bridge between 4 and 8 to the higher bridge between 4 and 12. As before he exploited the natural choke point to guard his flanks and force Bisu into a head on engagement.

As before Bisu attack moved straight into it, this time for the legitimate reason of hitting before Skyhigh got properly set up with mines and an extended line. Skyhigh's army was strangely lacking in vessels and Bisu's stacked arbiters were able to get four good stasis off. Bisu killed all the vultures and his dragoons were able to kill almost every unstasised tank although the formation proved too deep to push all the way through for a total rout. However the damage was done, and though Skyhigh still had a dozen tanks in stasis he'd lost more than half his tank force which would take considerably longer to replace than the Protoss gateway units.
Content that he'd done sufficient damage, Bisu backed off and macroed back up while the tanks thawed.

Skyhigh refused to give up on his push and used his remaining tanks and a few spare units to push towards 12 whereupon they were overwhelmed by mass dragoons and speedzealots which caught them without vulture support. Skyhigh's attack had failed and Bisu was left with map control and five bases to Skyhigh's four. Skyhigh tried to take the last of his natural expansions, the base at 3 and Bisu decided it was time to make his move. He crossed the bridges for an attack of his own but took terrible losses from mines. His futile smashing against Skyhigh's mineral only gained enough time for dragoons to kill 3 and Skyhigh's very ambitious expansion at 7 was forced to fly back across the mineral line to safety at 6.

Bisu retained map control and moved in for another attack, trying to overwhelm Skyhigh by sheer volume of production.
Spider mine friendly fire? Saved by the stasis.
He pushed through and was able to kill the mineral only and shortly afterwards his army made it into Skyhigh's natural, fuelled by a constant stream of reinforcements. Skyhigh GGed.

A less than perfect game by Skyhigh with bad upgrades and a distinct lack of vessel use. Some more preparation on his pushes wouldn't have hurt either, he lacked mines, blocking buildings and his tank spread could have been better. And admittedly there was very little depth to the game. It was very good watching though and it did showcase is some fantastic macro by Bisu.

If he'd shown any strategic diversity I'd have been the first in the "HE'S BACK" choir. He didn't though, just macro and arbiters which is simply not enough to beat a top level Terran. It was the same story in his other prelim games too. Maybe Bisu felt he didn't need to use his best builds to beat the prelims and would rather rely on his macro. But unless I see him dismantle a push with storms or transition into carrier, dragoon, high templar at the perfect time I'm not going to be impressed. While his macro was top level his style was outdated and one dimensional. Sorry guys.

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