Group D
Brave > Light - Eye of the Storm
Brave < Light - Flight-Dreamliner
Brave > Light - Grand Line SE
       Brave < Fantasy - Eye of the Storm
       Brave < Fantasy - Flight-Dreamliner
Fantasy qualifies for the OSL RO16.

Group E
Leta < Pusan - Eye of the Storm
Leta > Pusan - Flight-Dreamliner
Leta > Pusan - Grand Line SE
       Kwanro > Leta - Eye of the Storm
       Kwanro < Leta - Flight-Dreamliner
       Kwanro < Leta - Grand Line SE
Leta qualifies for the OSL RO16.

Group F
Bisu > Mind - Eye of the Storm
Bisu > Mind - Flight-Dreamliner
      Bisu > hyvaa - Eye of the Storm
      Bisu > hyvaa - Flight-Dreamliner
Bisu qualifies for the OSL RO16.

by WaxAngel

Game one was resolved in a hurry, as Light decided he would go all-in with a center BBS rush on Eye of the Storm. With pylon-nexus being a popular build on the map, it could have been an easy short cut to victory. Brave decided to play safe, however, and went for the standard gateway first play including a zealot. Even though Brave didn’t even succeed at scouting the barracks in the center, he defended Light’s rush expertly on reaction by pulling several probes off mining. After his rush failed, Light quickly GG’d to move on to the next game.

by WaxAngel

Brave decided to repay cheese with cheese in Game Two, using the two player nature of Flight-Dreamliner to send out an early probe and build an assimilator on Light’s geyser. Light responded with the standard bunker and fast expansion followup, while Brave expected this and expanded in turn.

The game flowed along without much aggression after the two players expanded, with Light soon preparing to take yet another expansion by building a third command center. Brave delayed his own third expansion, instead going for four gateways and a shuttle to put the pressure on Terran. At the same time, he began to warp in a stargate for carrier tech, solidly locking him into two base play for the time being.

Brave found a great window to attack while Light was still stretched thin from having taken his third expansion. He used dragoons and a zealot bomb to deftly remove Light’s tanks, and was easily able to destroy Light’s third CC before being forced to retreat.

It looked like Brave was on his way to an easy 2-0 series victory, but a momentary lapse in concentration immediately flipped the tables. Brave somehow found all of his ground forces in an advanced position when seven vultures paraded completely untouched into his natural and main. At ninety-three poulation before the raid, Brave was left with only sixty-four psi after his carriers finally got rid of the vultures (these were almost purely probe losses).

Right back in his preferred TvP situation, Light proceeded with his original plan of turtling in his corner of the map while he waited for his upgrades to kick in. Brave’s carriers were unable to threaten Light at all, as they were too few in number to keep up with the constant interceptor losses to goliath fire.

After a few minutes of uneventful building up, Light moved out with a big force of 2/2 goliaths and tanks. Brave had been unable to build enough units in that time, and the law of more stuff > less stuff carried the day. With his army trampled flat, Brave GG’d.

by WaxAngel

The game kicked off with the two players on opposite ends of Grand Line SE (Light at bottom left, Brave at top right), which predicted the long game ahead. Brave lucked into the advantageous build order for the starting spots, going for a straight pylon-nexus build, while Light went for a very standard rax-gas-factory. The scouting went Brave’s way as well, with his probe scouting diagonally, while Light’s clockwise scouting discovered Brave’s nexus as it was nearly complete. Fortunately for Light, his first marine came out before Brave’s probe could get up his ramp, which would have allowed Brave to put him on an exact build order. As it was, Light went for a command center after single vulture. This single vulture did manage to get three probe kills at Brave’s natural, as Brave’s dragoons did not come out quite in time.

In order to catch up, Light greedily started building his third command center at his mineral-only expansion, relying on only mines for defense. Light placed only a few mines outside his natural, and sent his first three vultures out to try and put mines down outside Brave’s base. The timing on Light’s vulture play turned out to be very unlucky, as Brave had decided to be very enterprising with his first four dragoons and single zealot. Brave was already knocking at Light’s door by the time the vultures reached the Protoss natural, and he went for the home-run play by attempting to manually defuse the mines and break into the Terran natural. He was half-successful in his attempt, not losing any dragoons but taking one critical hit from a mine. Light lost a tank and some SCVs as he scrambled to defend, but he was able to hold off the attack without taking a terrible amount of damage.



Even though Brave should have had a comfortable advantage from his initial build order and successful attack, he quickly set about letting it waste away. Completely unaware of Light’s mineral-only expansion, he had gone up to four gateways in his main before taking his own mineral-only. Brave had only began to warp in his third nexus when Light had already finished his CC. Some dragoons assisted by an observer could have easily forced a lift of Light’s third CC, but Brave was essentially letting Light expand naked. By the time Brave scouted Light’s mineral only, there was already a strong wall-in with tanks in place.

Brave’s took the initiative with the next move, although it’s hard to tell whether or not it was in response to his late discovery of Light’s expansion. Once more, Brave committed heavily to carriers by putting down two stargates and a fleet beacon. In the meanwhile, Light was going for the same old two armory macro style Terran.

In a surprising move, Light decided to be aggressive very early. Before a single upgrade completed, at around one hundred supply, Light moved out with small force featuring eight siege tanks. It turns out he had scanned the stargates and the fleet beacon, and knew Brave would be low on forces (Brave had over twenty dragoons, but was still without zealot speed due to his early investment in carriers). He allowed Light a lot of time to push forward, letting a round of Terran reinforcements (including goliaths) arrive. With his first two carriers, Brave decided he needed to make a stand, and attacked as Light was getting just over the halfway mark on the map.

Luck shined on Brave, as everything went right for him in the pivotal battle that followed. Light’s vultures had all briefly gone north to check on the possibility of a 12:00 expansion. While half of his tanks were sieged, the other half were forced panic-siege. Dragoons can make a decent argument sieged tanks when they don’t have to deal with the initial long range, face melting volley, and Brave’s superior numbers carried the day with ease.



In the aftermath of the battle, Terran was forced back to his original position while Protoss came out with a pleasant-but-not-serious twenty supply advantage. The textbook play of expand while attacking had been in play for Light, who had successfully taken 6:00 and 4:00 despite having fought a losing battle. Brave was still in something of a tight spot considering the fact that he was stuck on three bases, and would need to do something with his carriers soon.

With Light now setting up the majority of his forces on the 'grand line' of the map in order to cover 6:00, Brave made a gutsy move and took his four carriers and motley ground force around the left side of the grand line and attacked the mostly empty Terran main. Light was forced to pull back his troops to clean up the ground troops, but the carriers escaped unscathed. Brave failed to do serious damage, but did get the benefit of killing off two armories and a round of troops from the factory. Or to put it another way, it was like a mildly successful recall, except half your money in troops lived to fight another day. Similarly to a recall, it gave Brave some breathing space as he finally started expansions at 12:00 and the 3:00 isle.



There was a brief respite for both players as they macroed up, and then the hostilities resumed. Brave had over eight carriers supported by a mainly dragoon ground army, while Light had made mostly goliaths supported by tanks to counter. The forces met almost incidentally, with Brave moving his forces down the right side of the grand line to hit the 4:00 base, while Light had just unsieged his army from the center to go to some yet undetermined location. Light took the advantage in this hastily arranged melee, as Brave’s forces were running south in a line into the Terran formation. After watching half his ground forces get decimated, Brave tried to pull back his army while his many carriers remained to trade shots with the goliaths.

It seemed that Brave had made the prudent choice to cut his losses, but Light made an absolutely brilliant move during battle to send his vultures around to place mines behind the Protoss lines. If the battle had gone poorly for Light, the mines would have damaged any arriving Protoss reinforcements, and if it went well….



Even though Light had completely decimated Brave’s ground forces, he emerged from the battle with too small a goliath force left to challenge Brave’s mass carriers. So despite having lost the battle, Brave achieved his initial goal when his carriers moved onto the 4:00 base and removed the CC in a second. The situation had become surprisingly difficult for Light, despite the two players being at similar populations at around 130. Brave had achieved significant air superiority, while Light’s mineral only expansion had run dry (though he had recently taken the 10:00 main). This put both players at roughly three fully functional basis, with Protoss being much more mobile.

The two players smartly tried to take advantage of the advantages they possessed. Light sent a small group of tanks with nothing left to fight to kill off the 12:00 expansion, while Brave used his mobile carriers to fly between the cliffs at 8:00 and 6:00 to evade the goliaths while harassing. Light didn’t have the mobility to stop the harassment at all locations, and ended up losing his own 6:00 expansion in return.

In addition, Brave had the cheek to focus fire down Light’s academy and all but one comsat station. This move paid immediate dividends as a dark templar was able to shut down the 10:00 base with ease, which left Light with only his very dry natural as a mining base.



In a moment of excessive exuberance, Brave tried to go for the kill. Sending some dragoons and DTs to finish off the 10:00 base, his carriers went into Light’s main to start demolishing the factories. Unfortunately this turned out to be a terrible decision for Brave, seeing that Light didn’t actually have the money to make units at this point, and he had almost nothing left to do but try and kill carriers with his huge goliath army. The ability to travel between the 8:00 main and the 6:00 expansion had been the Brave’s advantage before, and when he went into the Terran main, he was inviting Light to trap him.

Brave tried to use his few DTs and Light’s lack of scan to spring his carriers free, but his execution in a close situation was not up to par and he ended up losing them all to a single well timed scan. The carriers effectively trapped, and they lost all but one of their number trying to make their escape.



Light's determination to make it to the OSL Ro16 shined through as he somehow expanded to 5:00 yet again during the chaos. With the carriers now gone and the base situation at 1:1 (3:00 isle for brave, 5:00 main for light), the game seemed like it was on even ground again. However, Light’s situation was deceptively poor. Brave wasn’t dumb enough to stick with carriers while his opponent made an all-goliath army, and had transitioned to a total dragoon and zealot army in the meanwhile. A fair amount of goliaths had been killed off by the carriers as well, so it was no surprise when Brave simply waltzed into the 5:00 base to destroy it.

The game was effectively finished at this point, but Light had to go through the motions of trying as hard as he could, considering what was on the line (and that’s just the way he plays). He floated his natural CC up to the 9:00 isle and made enough tanks to hold onto his main while 5:00 fell, which meant that he could survive for the time being. But he had nothing resembling map control at this point, which left Brave free to expand at will. Light still had a few minutes of fight left in him, before Brave snuffed it out with a strong ground attack.

by Motbob

In game 1 on Eye of the Storm, Leta made a pretty bad mistake early on with his marines. He positioned them so that they'd be able to see Pusan's first zealot as late as possible:



This mistake led to Pusan getting a scouting probe into Leta's base and seeing the lack of a 2 factory build. Soon, Pusan knew exactly what Leta was doing, but Leta didn't have anything in Pusan's base. However, Pusan graciously reciprocated Leta's mistake, letting an SCV see his expansion as it warped in.

After a bit, Leta tried to take a page out of Flash's book and take the expo between his and Pusan's main. Since Leta is not Flash, he overextended himself and lost most of his tanks to dragoons. He was able to take the base, though, and set to work constructing Flashesque depot walls, trying to defend his expo against arbiters and dragoons with, something like two tanks and some duct tape. There was a pretty wide window during which Pusan could have taken out Leta's third, but he missed it and Leta got up a solid wall of depots surrounding his base. Pusan had to be content with expanding and attempting to crush Leta's push for a fourth base when it came.

While he was waiting for the push, Pusan recalled into Leta's main in the perfect position, and supported that recall with a perfect zealot drop. This delayed the push while Pusan teched to carriers.

Unfortunately, while carriers were massing, those pesky vultures of Leta's got into Pusan's base and started killing massive amount of zealots and probes. They saw the fleet beacon. Pusan was 50 supply down and looked like he was in really bad shape, but he recalled in what looked like a desperation move. Somehow, it worked perfectly: by the time Leta was able to start taking out bases with his ground army, Pusan had enough carriers to drive him away. Except... Pusan didn't drive Leta away. Leta's army just loitered around and died to the carriers. It was all downhill from there. Pusan 1-0.

by Motbob

Game 2 was on Dreamliner, and it was really long carrier game! Alright! Maybe I can make educated decisions about this map now. The parallels to Blue Storm just keep coming: every protoss seems to be going reavers, carriers, or both. Let's take a look at how Pusan lost after switching to carriers late, which, as our resident progamer Idra claims, rarely ever happens.

One cool highlight of this game was Leta's use of misdirection to get a vulture into Pusan's base early on. Take a look:



The vulture got what are perhaps the most richly deserved probe kills this year before biting the dust. After that, Leta was pretty obviously ahead: his second base was up without any trouble at about the same time as the Protoss's, and he was on the way to a favorable endgame against a mechanically weaker player. Unfortunately for the Miracle Terran, his opponent had prepared the perfect build for Dreamliner. After getting 2 bases, Pusan both rushed for arbiter tech and took a quick third. Obviously, this meant that he had no army, and Leta accordingly pushed, probably thinking that the game was in the bag.

However, Pusan came up with a stroke of complete genius: since every Terran is scared to death by reavers on Dreamliner, he banked on the fact that Leta would build only a engineering bay in the early midgame, and not build scanners. If Leta had built an academy, Pusan would have died right then and there, but defending with pure DT was definitely a correct risk to take.



After he crushed Leta's first push, Pusan just sat there passively with his arbiter tech, and it was really mystifying to watch. He didn't even try at all to poke and prod towards Leta's natural or his new third base. I think there was even a window of time where Pusan had arbiters but Leta didn't even have scanners. Basically, Pusan let his tech advantage go to waste.

The fact that he shouldn't have been so passive with his arbs isn't changed by the fact that he went carriers shortly after his second arbiter popped. He should have tried to get an advantage -- Leta was cruising towards a good situation, with double upgrades and four bases close to one other (he hadn't moved to take the top island, which would have been vulnerable to carriers), and Pusan shouldn't have just relied on the element of surprise from the carriers to win him the game. If he wanted to beat a superior player, he should have used his ground army.

Pusan did do one thing really well. He made it look as if a recall were imminent, and Leta reacted really strongly to that perceived threat. He mined up his main densely and didn't seem to even suspect the carriers. He was content to sit on his four bases, build defenses against recalls, and eventually push. And that's what he did -- in fact, once he moved out, he had a higher supply than Pusan, which isn't really a good sign for Protosses in the TvP matchup.

Pusan moved his carriers to Leta's main at the south as Leta moved to the north with his ground army. This sort of seemed like the wrong decision -- I mean, Leta barely had any goliaths with his army, so when carriers started tearing up his main, he shrugged his shoulders and just started ravaging Pusan's expansions from the top down.

After a few minutes of ravaging, Pusan brought an arbiter down to recall goons into Leta's main. He was trying to take out the factories and end the game right away. However, things didn't work out so well because of the mines that Leta had laid earlier to defend against recalls. Soon it was just a battle of goliaths vs carriers over factories that were pumping more goliaths. In the meantime, a force of tanks were continuing their siege of the north.

After a little while, Pusan came to his senses, stopped trying to all-in on the factories, and went back to defend his main, which was being sieged. Then he took his remaining ground army and carriers and barreled down the left side of the map, destroying the defenses at the base Leta was preparing to take, the command center he was planning to float there, and Leta's 4th base. However, he lost a lot of interceptors in the attack and had zero minerals after everything was said and done. For a Protoss going carriers, that's the sign that things are going downhill.

What probably sealed the game was when Leta, in a flash of ballertude, sent vultures out to Pusan's natural and sniped three crucial HT's. The camera flashed to Pusan's face, and although there was no zoom-in of death to emphasize Pusan's plight, all the spectators needed to see was his knowing grimace.

Leta prolonged the game with some questionable decision making -- he tried to go for the kill at Pusan's main and it led to the destruction of his army. But Pusan never really had a chance to get another base, and, since he needed to rebuild his interceptors, that meant that, after he was mined out, he didn't really have a chance to win.

by Motbob
On Grand Line SE, Pusan double nexused and Leta was forced to go the "Oh shit, my factory's already going up, better take my one SCV off gas and get a command center ASAP" route. This basically meant that Leta was behind from the start -- but the Hite Terran's nickname isn't "miracle Terran" for nothing. Before this game, Leta had pulled off much more difficult comebacks than overcoming a double nexus against a Protoss who hasn't tasted much Proleague action since the year 2007.

The comeback began with Leta stopping Pusan from mining at his natural with a single marine. It continued as Pusan mystifyingly got four relatively fast gates instead of a quick third, and Leta got his third up and secure much more quickly than his Protoss opponent. As Pusan put up a third and fourth, he also teched to carriers for the third time in three games. Pusan did a really awful job of delaying Leta's subsequent push (for what it's worth, Leta controlled the push flawlessly, and that was probably part of the reason Pusan looked so inept.. I've rarely seen tanks, vultures, and goliaths work so well together) and it was only the fact that Pusan's carriers came as a surprise (very strange, as Leta must have been suspecting something after the lack of units. He had barely any goliaths) that saved him.

After that stage of the game, Pusan displayed some of the poorest unit control I've seen from a Protoss this year. His ground army never coordinated with his carriers, and although Leta made a few strategic mistakes, like expanding at inopportune times or not expanding when necessary, Pusan couldn't win a single battle. Thus, he couldn't win the war. Leta 2-1.

by Pangshai
Game 1 had all the makings of a macro game, Bisu's 12 nex facing off against Mind's rax-cc on Eye of the Storm. Fast teching to arbiters off of 2 base, Bisu easily held off Mind's half hearted vulture harass - a sneaky ploy by Mind that was actually designed to provide him a degree of map control and army awareness so he could position for a quick third base.

As the third base went up unhindered, and Mind solidified his position with mines, depots, turrets and a tonne of tanks, Bisu answered with 3rd and 4th bases of his own. Mind's defense against recall was strong though, and the supply of both players was quickly reaching 200, meaning Terran was in a good position to take the game. Mind probably had every intention of pushing out once his 2/1 was done, and was posturing to do so when Bisu's attack on his third came.

This time, the supplies were roughly equal at about 190~, but Mind made a crucial mistake - his tanks were sieged on top of mines. Stasises and EMPs went off as soon as the armies clashed, but what really made the difference was Bisu's shuttle of zealots that flew above Mind's tanks and unleashed its payload of death. Mines took out a good chunk of Mind's tanks, roughly 7 or so fell to friendly fire, and this reduced the damage output of Mind's army by a huge amount.



Despite the major losses, Mind actually did considerable damage to Bisu's army, reducing it to roughly 10 goons or so. Reinforcements quickly made their way to aid their Protoss brethren though, and Mind was forced to abandon his third base, with essentially no hope of retaking it in the near future. Fighting the might of 5 bases Protoss with just 2 bases, Mind was easily overran by a constant stream of units and arbiters from Bisu's camp, and was forced to GG out.

by pangshai
Game 2 of Mind vs Bisu almost felt like we'd returned to the days of Blue Storm and Sin Peaks. In the modern era of PvT where arbiters have taken over as the Protoss tech of choice for late game, Bisu showcased a refreshing, and very much welcomed change, reintroducing a long forgotten element in the Protoss arsenal to the battlefields of today.

The early stages of the game were a prelude to the unorthodox play to come, Bisu stealing Mind's gas, and going for fast reavers, to which Mind responded by 1 rax FEing. Early aggression by Bisu came in the form of a 2 zeal, 1 goon drop, and it succeeded in taking out all of Mind's marines before an SCV surround cleaned up. Unfortunately for Bisu, the follow up reaver was denied by a ring of turrets surrounding Mind's main, and the shuttle was brought dangerously low on hp before he finally found a gap in the defense at Mind's nat, taking out a bunker, turret, and marines, for free reign over both mineral lines.



What commenced next was some exceptional reaver harass, given the circumstances. Despite both shuttle and reaver being low on hp, Bisu's surreal control meant that Mind's SCVs spent more time maynarding between the 2 bases than they did mining minerals. Had the scarabs not glitched as much as they had, the game would most likely have been won there. While the reaver didn't actually kill much, it bought Bisu enough time to double expand and come back from his economic deficit.

The game then descended into your standard TvP macro game. Mind starting up his upgrades and taking his 3rd and 4th base, and Bisu grabbing a quick 4th, and teching to carriers in a corner of his main, all the while maintaining a roughly 40 supply lead over the Terran. Aside from some minor vulture harass attempts, not much action occured in the game, Mind aiming for his 2/1 push, Bisu building up his carrier numbers from 3 stargates.

When he finally hit 5 carriers, Bisu launched his attack, timing it perfectly to happen just before Mind's +2 attack upgrade completed. Mind's sieged up, entrenched army was strong, but was insufficient to duel Bisu's 40 supply lead. They ended up trading armies, but the loss of all those tanks (in addition to him having to spend gas on goliaths now), meant that Mind had already lost the game.



He tried to salvage the situation, and did well in taking out a good number of Bisu's carriers with his goliaths, but Bisu knew he already had the game won, and after his expansions went down, Mind quickly threw in the GG.

Bisu won 2-0.

by WaxAngel

The game opened up with Fantasy starting at the bottom left position and Brave at top left position on Eye of the Storm. Brave got the advantageous start with a nexus before gateway build, while Fantasy went for a standard rax-gas-fact build. The game was played out similarly to Brave’s games against Light on Grand Line the previous week, where the Terran player responded to a fast Protoss expansion with two fast expansions of his own, and Brave attempted to counter this with fast four gateway pressure. Brave had some success again with his four gate pressure, killing off several of Fantasy’s early tanks that had moved out over-aggressively.

And in another repeat of the last week, Brave found himself with no units protecting his front door after winning a battle against his Terran opponent (his macro had been poor in this case, with money piling up in the bank). Three vultures sped into his main and began to plant mines just as dragoons popped out of the gateways. Brave’s nearest observer was miles away, and in his hurry to put out the fire, Brave tried to fend off the attack with only dragoons. Bad decision.



The three vultures managed to kill four dragoons and a handful of probes with mines, while two more vultures sped into the protoss natural and placed more mines which killed another group of four dragoons. Brave didn’t even succeed at killing the vultures, they continued to go on killing probes. Having lost forty supply in thirty seconds, Brave GG’d to Fantasy’s five vultures.

None of this happens if Brave just macros during the first battle and has four dragoons and an observer at his natural. As it stands, all we can do is wonder how the hell Light lost to this guy.

by WaxAngel

The story of game two was Brave telling himself “I AM NOT LOSING TO VULTURES,” and then losing to vultures anyway. The game started with another gas rush from Brave, which developed into another standard situation where both players expanded very quickly. Brave made sure to sim-city all of his chokes with pylons and dragoons (including an awesome 6 pylon wall at his mineral natural), and made sure his observer cover wasn’t atrocious like it was last game. Fantasy constantly poked with his vultures for openings, but with not much going on, the game slowly progressed to three base versus three base.



The action began when Fantasy moved his tanks and vultures to a position where they could defend his mineral only expansion. Brave went in for the early-mid game break he had attempted in a few of his previous games, this time with a reaver shuttle and goons. It was a bad idea this time around, as Fantasy’s tank position was too strong. Brave was forced to pull back after taking heavy losses.

More interestingly, Fantasy had sent a group of vultures behind enemy lines just before the battle began and they had chipped away at one of the pylons in six-pylon wall at Brave’s mineral only. After having had a good vulture defense early on, Brave found himself without an observer nearby and was forced to evacuate his mineral only expansion. Fantasy pressed on against his flustered opponent and slipped three vultures into the Protoss main, simply moving through a tiny gap in a three dragoon barricade. In a particularly humiliating scene, Fantasy’s vultures managed to kill the mineral only nexus before Brave could react and send dragoons and observers to defend it.

Once rocked, Brave couldn’t stop teetering, and he found himself with no defense at his natural as even more vultures flooded in to make his life miserable. Presumably very annoyed, Brave went for broke and ran his entire dragoon force into the main Terran siege line in a very suicidal attack. Brave GG’d in a rare progaming rage-quit.

Fantasy won 2-0.

by Motbob

I was facepalming for basically the entire first seven minutes of the game. If you want to see how NOT to deal with an aggressive zerg, watch the first part this VOD.

After some early game happenings that are too painful to describe, Kwanro got his third base up really easily during muta harass. Leta did a good job of surviving, building a bunch of turrets near his barracks. When your marine count is low, for god's sake build turrets around your barracks! This allows yourself to get your marine count up and not die.



Of course, this left Leta in a bad position for the endgame, but at least he wasn't dead!

Kwanro kept trying to bust in, and Leta defended competently. When Kwanro got hive tech, the coolest sequence in the game happened:



Leta built wraiths and got cloak, timing it so that he activated cloak while a pair of scourge were attacking, so that he got hit by one scourge but was protected from the other one. AWESOME.

Leta seemed pretty screwed. With Hive tech at his doorstep, it was going to be really difficult to break out to a third base. Clearly, the only answer was dropships. Kwanro should have known this, which makes his utter failure to defend against Leta's drop on his nat and main really embarrassing. After this, Leta finally had a chance to expa-- WHAT ARE YOU DOING LETA? DON'T ATTACK KWANRO'S EXPO, MAKE A COMMAND CENTER!! ARGHHHH.

Leta quickly pulled back from his attack only to do a really awesome dual dropship attack on Kwanro's expos. It did some pretty good damage and gave Leta some breathing room, but he was about to mine out and he should have expanded instead of attacking.

Soon, we saw the clash of styles that I was talking about earlier! Harassment vs direct attacks is what defined the rest of the game, and it was really, really fun to watch! My god, was it fun to watch. Everyone should watch this VOD to the end from about the 19 minute mark. Leta lost, but he put up one hell of a fight. If he'd been a little bit better about protecting his only mining base, he probably would have won. I cannot believe that a lot of people thought that this game was bad (Editor's note: Kwanro was playing Hive zerg, how could the game be good?)! This is what Starcraft is all about.

by Motbob

Leta dusted off his ancient 2 port wraith build for use on Dreamliner, a map with a short air distance. I hope you aren't expecting me to recap Leta's use of wraiths in detail... you should really watch the VOD. Leta introduced a new style of 2 port wraith which I think works better than the established method of "harass at all costs." He only took opportunities when they were available. Additionally, Leta looked more on than I've seen him in months. During a big battle vs a Zerg army supported with a bunch of overlords, Leta realized that he wasn't going to be able to kill the overlords in time to make a difference in the fight. In a split second, he uncloaked his wraiths to save energy. It was so impressive to me mostly because the decision was made so quickly.

Leta dominated Kwanro with his wraiths. It wasn't even close and it was beautiful to watch. Go watch the VOD, seriously; I can't do the micro and decision-making justice with words.

After dominating Kwanro with wraiths, Leta switched to a bio army and dominated some more. Kwanro killed the first push, but only because Leta was killing all the drones on the map.

Leta just toyed with Kwanro for the rest of the game, keeping the supply difference at about double, slowly building up his mass of tanks and vessels. Eventually, Kwanro lost his hundredth drone as Terran forces attacked his fourth base and he GGed.

by Motbob

After games one and two, it was clear that all Leta had to win the series to do was to get to late game and let his superior management win the day. That's what he tried to do -- he walled off his natural, build a crapload of turrets, and just built up his army. Kwanro went for a variant of the fake spire build, building both a spire and a hydra den (at what would normally be 3 hatch lurker timing) and then just building a bunch of mutas with a few hydras in the mix. Leta defended for a while, then pushed out with the perfect army composition: enough MnM and tanks to take care of the hydras, and enough goliaths and MnM to deal with the mutas. With perfect army control, Leta made his way across the map, destroying Kwanro's forces with ruthless efficiency. Again, it was fascinating to watch. Again, you should watch the VOD to get the whole picture here.

by Pangshai
Group F's Bisu vs Hyvaa was probably the most anticipated match of the night. With Bisu seeking to redeem himself after his recent string of losses in proleague that threatened to send fanboys packing, and Hyvaa trying to prove that his entry into the ro16 last OSL was no fluke, we were prepared for some good games.

Game 1 began with a standard FE vs overpool. Bisu's probe found Hyvaa right away in the top right position of Eye of the Storm, and it succeeded in being immensely annoying by blocking the nat hatch with a pylon. Other than that, early game shennanigans were kept to a minimum and both players were happy to macro up into the midgame, Hyvaa with 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra, and Bisu going for +1 corsairs and a couple of DTs, before taking his third base.

The pair tried unsuccessfully to poke at each other's defenses, Hyvaa with 3 lurkers at Bisu's third, and Bisu with a small zealot army at Hyvaa's well sim-citied and lurker defended bottom right. The first game-changing move came in the form of a storm drop. Two zealots were first landed in Hyvaa's main where they began wreaking havoc on the drones, forcing a maynard to the nat. There, Bisu sprung his trap, frying the majority of Hyvaa's drones with 2 storms.



Hyvaa responded with drops of his own, simultaneously hitting all three of Bisu's bases, taking out his main nexus, and a good amount of probes. This minor victory, however, was unable to pull him back from the deficit he had suffered, and after Bisu cleared out the drop, it was just Protoss, Protoss, Protoss. Bisu's sizable army rolled over Hyvaa's smaller hydra lurk force despite some observer sniping by Hyvaa.



Hyvaa tried his best to prolong the game by turtling with lurkers and taking out Bisu's obs, but a couple of minutes later, the game was over with the Protoss army rolling into a defenseless Zerg nat.

by Pangshai
Game 1 had momentarily seemed pretty close with the back and forth drop antics, but game 2 was all Bisu. Hyvaa's overpool gas forced Bisu to cannon before nexus, but Bisu still managed plenty of scouting with his probe, as Hyvaa elected to not spend the gas on speed. Once again, nothing exceptional occurred into the midgame except for Hyvaa carelessly losing a couple of overlords to a goon.

Choosing this time to 2 stargate corsair, Bisu built up his corsair count quickly, and the overlord harass that commenced was brutal - there was probably a brief period of time when Hyvaa's supply came only from his hatcheries. Bisu followed this up with reavers, and with no overlords, Hyvaa was unable to produce the hydras he needed to defend the drop. Needless to say, the reaver left him hurting pretty badly.



Bisu then went straight for the kill. A newly macroed army of zealots headed out for Hyvaa's nat, supported by 2 reavers. Really, the reavers were excessive, as the zealots would've done fine by themselves. Hyvaa tried some last-ditch mutas in desperation, but their numbers were too few to be effective.



Having taken down Hyvaa's nat, Bisu split off a couple of his zealots to stop mining at the Zerg expoes while the main force made a beeline for Hyvaa's main. A shuttle full of DTs also arrived on the scene to add insult to injury, springboarding Bisu into the OSL's ro16.

Bisu won 2-0.

Progamer pokedex is written with some knowledge of the competitive Pokemon scene, but not based solely upon it. There's too much insider meta-game knowledge to be explained. Instead, the combined portrayal of pokemon in various media are the basis for the analogies.