Bigfile MSL Round of 32, Week 1
Results for Groups A, B, and F


Recap and Review
Group A:
The first group to play, A, a group styled around revenge. This was Flash's group, and he had brought in EffOrt in an attempt to get back at him for OSL finals. The other two players in the group, s2 and Classic, shook in their boots: everybody knew this was to be a battle between Flash and EffOrt. However, one couldn't help but hear the little voices of doubt, whispering "what if?" Flash has been losing TvTs, so what if he drops his game to Classic, despite the fact that Classic is terrible at TvT. I mean, Flash lost to RuBy... And what if EffOrt loses to s2? I mean, s2 has been playing well recently and ZvZ is a pretty volatile matchup. I'm sure there were people out there that were just looking for Flash to drop out of the group 0-2, which would probably have been the biggest upset of this MSL. After all, we've gotten used to seeing Flash in the finals, right? The fears were for naught though; Flash easily cruised by Classic, starting with some nice wraith harassment that led into a massive contain. Flash then continued to milk his advantage, and outmacroed and rolled over his hapless opponent to make it to the Winners' game.


After it was ascertained that Flash would be moving onto the Winners' Game, everybody watched with bated breath as EffOrt vs s2 unfolded. From the start, EffOrt showed that he was not afraid to use an unorthodox strategy, hiding a hatchery up in the corner of his base and preparing for a mass ling break. However, s2 became suspicious and eventually scouted it, but by that time EffOrt was already rolling with two control groups of zerglings. s2 made a sunken at his natural and defended well enough, and EffOrt was behind.


However, after this s2 proceeded to throw away his advantage by vainly throwing scourge at EffOrt's mutalisks, who microed with ease to destroy the kamikaze creatures. In a last ditch attempt, s2 spawned a large group of zerglings, but they were all destroyed, and the SKT zerg tapped out.

Flash and EffOrt were in the winners' game, and the crowd was cheering. What followed was one of the highest level ZvTs played in a long while, in which EffOrt used psychological warfare and turned Flash's greatest strengths against himself to 2-0 out of the Round of 32. l10f will be detailing this wondrous game below, so don't fret! After the winners' game was over, it was a pain to watch the losers' game, as the play was just on such a lower level than that of the one before it. s2 and Classic both played poorly, and couldn't manage to kill each other for the longest time. s2 triumphed in the end, however, and went to the final game to face Flash.

Flash went mech in this game, and s2 responded correctly (though I'm still not sure what was with the queen), and at several points in the game viewers thought Flash was going home. However, Starcraft is an unforgiving game, and after s2 failed to use his guardians correctly, he found himself with a small ground army against Flash's tank ball. After that, defeat was swiftly incoming and s2 GGed. The finals game was tense and well-played but s2 wasn't able to close it out, and so Flash walked out of his group 2-1, shaken. In the end, his revenge hadn't come to fruition; EffOrt had trumped him again, and the notion that EffOrt was the July to Flash's Oov continued to grow stronger.

Group B:
Group B was a slaughterhouse for the Tyrant that is Jaedong. His first match was against Tyson, the man who knocked out BaBy convincingly in Survivor. This was to be Jaedong's first vP in a long time, and it went as expected. Jaedong summarily destroyed Tyson, using his perfect unit control and spot-on timings to eke out small advantages, which eventually snowballed into a huge lead for Jaedong. As Tyson's third, only protected by cannons with no army to back them up, went under the dark swarm, Han GGed. To celebrate this being Jaedong's first ZvP in a long time, Atrioc has a battle report below to demonstrate just exactly how good Jaedong is at ZvP.


The rest of the games in Group B were just, for lack of a better word, terrible. After sKyHigh's initial bunker rush was repelled, he proceeded to suck terribly for the rest of the game. After a failed drop in which four vultures netted a single drone, RorO simply overran sKyHigh. Seriously, how can somebody be so damn good at TvT but suck so terribly at the other matchups?

The winners' game was already decided before it was played. Jaedong straight up dominated RorO with just his early zergling pressure with his 9pool against RorO's 12hatch. Quite nice to see this, as it's usually Jaedong 12hatching and his opponent 9pooling. Either way, Jaedong, as predicted, destroyed his group and walked out 2-0. The losers' game between Tyson and sKyHigh was yet another failure game. You know it's sad when the key moment of the TvP is when the Protoss player recalls nine dragoons over mines. Yeah, that happened, and sKyHigh moves on to the final game, eliminating the person who deprived this MSL of BaBy. In the final game, sKyHigh decides to go mech again, and tries to build valkyries and goliaths off two bases. RorO laughs at this, and masses mutalisks to overrun sKyHigh's poorly defended base. Must've been taking some lessons from Shine.

Group F:
This was supposed to be a group for the Protoss. On one hand, there was MVP, who despite improvement as of late is still a Woongjin Terran. Then, there's Light, the Winner's League monster who absolutely hates and sucks at TvP. Because of this, most people assumed that the two protoss--Snow, our new "PvT bonjwa", and Kal would move out of this group. However, surprises do occur.

The first game epitomized everything we hated about TvT. The match between MVP and Light was long and arduous, and went on for a long time before ending in Light's victory. Between Kal and Snow nothing impressive happened either; just another standard, decent game. However, in the winners' game between Light and Kal a great game was played. Light displayed some uncharacteristically good TvP, and after a back-and-forth opening the MBC Terran took the advantage and rode it to a 2-0 finish. For your viewing pleasures, l10f has this game detailed in a nice Battle Report below. As for the losers' game, it was simply one-sided... in MVP's favour. The game was brutal, and Snow was destroyed as MVP sieged up in front of his natural. A hard fall for the so-hyped Snow, being eliminated from both leagues by Terrans. Sure, Really is good at TvP, but MVP?

As for the final game, MVP went on to face Kal, and I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much out of this game. However, what transpired was a nice PvT, with a lot of tense moments, back-and-forth action, and some stormuuuu. Interestingly enough, the first 15 minutes started with almost no interaction between the two players; it was just a straight-up macro game. After a lot of huge battles and base-trading, Kal won in the end, but it was an impressive effort by MVP nonetheless.

Group A Winner's Set: Flash vs EffOrt on Fighting Spirit
By l10f

Both players easily overwhelmed their enemies in their respective first sets, and the stage for the OSL finals rematch has started. Effort started at 11 o'clock and Flash started at 7 o'clock, their positions flipped from the 3rd set of their OSL match. Effort starts up with 12 hatchery 11 pool 10 gas, and Flash starts up with the standard 11 barracks fast expansion. Flash even uses two SCV's to scout to see any strategic builds that Effort might use. Flash is confident that if he does not lose in the early game, he will beat Effort like he did in the first two sets of the OSL finals.

Effort gets zergling speed first, while taking an expansion at 1 o'clock. By showing the speed zerglings, he plays a mind game on Flash that he's going for an all-in. Flash scans Effort's natural and sees the hydralisk den, and prepares for a 2 hatchery lurker all-in. He builds two additional bunkers while moving out with his marine-medic force. He pulls back after seeing a lot of zerglings, but Effort only uses his lurkers to defend while getting a fast hive.


Flash is content macroing and waiting for the lurker attack to come, but Effort has already finished his hive and has 3 gas secured. By the time Flash realizes that Effort has 1 o'clock, Effort has proper defenses set up. Right before Flash reaches Effort's natural, a defiler comes out and puts a swarm over Effort's lurkers. Flash realizes that he has to do something to turn this game around before Effort's 4th gas is complete, but he isn't able to do much but irradiate a few units.

Flash is still on 2 base since he's been macroing up as much units as he can preparing for an all-in. He decides to take 6 o'clock and the 5 o'clock main base to try and gain the economic lead. Flash does well keeping the center under his control, but Effort uses his defilers and zerglings well to catch off any of Flash's units off guard. Effort only uses gas on defilers, and stores up gas for ultralisks. Effort stalls Flash for a long time using his Zerglings to harass Flash's expansions. Effort even drops in Flash's main.


In the end, Flash is unable to do any economic damage to Effort before his ultralisks come out. Flash kills Effort's 12 o'clock expansion, but the already 4-2 upgraded ultralisks are dropped in Flash's main. Even before Flash is able to defend, Effort attacks Flash's natural, 6 o'clock, and the 5 o'clock expansions all at once, killing every one of Flash's expansions. Flash goes from mining from 3 bases to 0 in a few moments, and is forced to GG.



Group B Opening Set: Jaedong vs Tyson on Polaris Rhapsody
by Atrioc

Ladies and gentleman, lets just be clear going forward: this game is a start to finish domination. At no point after the first five minutes does the spectator even feel any real sense of tension as to the outcome - hell, anyone who paid attention to the group selection would've had serious doubts about Tyson's chances after he began an action that looked suspiciously like crying when Flash wouldn't switch him out of Jaedong's group.


The match begins with Tyson spawning at 11 o'clock and Jaedong at 5. Tyson chooses a safe forge fast expand opening while Jaedong goes for a more aggressive 9 pool - sending his zerglings immediately towards Tyson's base in an attempt to take advantage of the small window before the first cannon warps in. While it seems like Tyson will just barely defend with a probe wall right as the cannon finishes, Jaedong chooses to barrel in - killing the probe wall under cannon fire - and running the remaining two zerglings up the ramp into Tyson's main while expanding to both his natural and his third at the same time.


Letting the zerglings in his base is bad for Tyson, as it gives Jaedong complete scouting information and the ability to slow down his gas income by harassing probes back to the mineral line, but it goes from bad to worse when he allows them to pick off a 5th, 6th, and 7th probe. Meanwhile Tyson's second scouting probe dies after successfully spotting Jaedong's third, bringing it to a grand total of 8 probes killed in the first five minutes of the game. This is where it really gets interesting, as Jaedong now has the freedom to snowball his significant advantage. First: the delayed minerals/gas slow down Tyson's first corsair to the point that the spire is already completed before the corsair even begins crossing the map, and upon arriving in Jaedong's base it falls right into a trap - being chased by one pair of scourge into the waiting arms... or wings? of another.


Sensing that things are definitely not going his way, Tyson opts to rush templar tech and immediately build two dark templar in an attempt to harass his way back into the game. This decision, unfortunately, also plays right into Jaedong's hands, as the delayed robo bay means he is able to fully contain Tyson - killing his forge - with just two lurkers while droning hard at his expansion, which is fully dt-proof with both a spore and a sunken colony. Tyson eventually runs past the lurker contain with a handful of zealots and manages to snipe a hatchery, but is otherwise unable to do any serious damage. Meanwhile, in a completely artful display of scourge cloning (pictured above in the main MSL article), Jaedong manages to take out Tyson's remaining 5 corsairs at once, completely cutting off his only possibility of exerting any form of map control. At this point the first observer arrives, wherein Tyson makes his first real push on the map and grabs his third.....for about 30 seconds, before Jaedong's hydra/ling arrives - expertly dodging storms that end up hitting more of Tyson's own observers and transferring probes than killing hydras.


Finally, going out with a whimper rather than a bang, Tyson rather anticlimactically calls GG as the first dark swarms go up over his completely undefended 3rd. A true work of art, start-to-finish, conquest by Jaedong that really shows the difference between S-Class and the rest.



Group F Winner's Set: Kal vs Light on Odd-Eye 3
By l10f

The two aces of their respective teams met on Odd-Eye 3 to decide who gets to advance 2-0 to the Round of 16 of MSL. Both players haven't been playing well lately, and they need this win to bring them back on their feet. Light starts at 11 o'clock and Kal starts at 5 o'clock. Kal opens up with a 12 nexus build, trying to take advantage of the long rush distance. Light plays standard with a 1 factory expansion, so Kal starts with a small economic lead.

In response to the 12 nexus, Light expands after making only one vulture, and adds a second factory. Kal builds two gateways in his natural to close up the choke so vultures can't run in. Light adds a few marines to attack Kal's natural with two factories before Kal's macro kicks in. Light moves out with 3 tanks and 6 marines, and adds vultures. Kal moves his dragoons out to try and kill off some units, but a lot of his dragoons die to mines and tanks due to the small choke he made with his gateway.


Light builds a bunker and sieges his tanks. He kills the two gateways in the natural, and creates a line right in front of Kal's natural. Light is only a few steps away from Kal's nexus, but Kal's reaver micro allows him to break through. However, Light's 3rd is already running and Kal is still only on his natural. He gathers up his 2 reavers and dragoons and attacks Light's defense line between his 3rd and natural, and kills all of the tanks. Kal decides to attack Light's natural while taking a 3rd himself, and although he is successful in making Light lift his command center and killing the armory, his units are cleared out, and more dragoons die at Light's 3rd without doing any damage. At Kal's 3rd, Light's two vultures kill a few probes. In response, Kal takes a 4th base in the mineral only expansion.


Light has a better economy than Kal at the moment, but many of his tanks died during Kal's attack, so he stays defensive. Kal gets his arbiter and successfully defends Light's vulture harasses. Light builds two armories for upgrades, but his upgrades are behind Kal's upgrade due to his armory dying earlier. Kal recovered quickly due to his 4 mining bases, and Light, seeing that he won't get a timing, prepares to take his mineral only expansion while only using a couple of tanks to harass Kal's mineral only expansion.

Kal recalls a few units to stop Light from taking his expansions, but doesn't go any deeper. Kal takes the 7 o'clock expansion, and Light brings two tanks to deny the expasion. While Kal brings his units to defend, a lot of the dragoons die to mines, and is forced to cancel 7 o'clock. Kal recalls on Light's natural, but his units including 2 arbiters die without doing much damage, but Light kills a lot of probes at Kal's 9 o'clock mineral only expansion with his vultures and two tanks.


Light decides to move out with his army after defending the recall. He sieges up next to Kal's center mineral only expansion and cancels the 7 o'clock expansion once again with a few tanks. Kal recalls 12 o'clock, but it dies without doing any damage. Kal gives up his center mineral only expansion and takes 1 o'clock instead. Light unsieges all of his tanks and attacks towards 1 o'clock. Light EMP's one of the two arbiters, but the other arbiter uses stasis on a lot of the vultures. Light takes 7 o'clock for himself, and while Kal takes care of the tanks near the center, he fails to clear the units at 1 o'clock.


Kal tries to attack Light's mineral only expansion as a last ditch attempt, but mines and tanks defend the attack. Kal gets a good stasis on a large amount of tanks and kills a lot of tanks with only a few units, but with his resources running out, and Light mining from 7 o'clock, soon gets overwhelmed by Light's army.