Jaedong <Eye of the Storm> Action
Jaedong <Grand Line SE> Action
Jaedong wins 2-0

Stork <Flight-Dreamliner> Sea
Stork <Polaris Rhapsody> Sea
Stork wins 2-0

free <Grand Line SE> ZerO
free< Flight-Dreamliner> ZerO
free wins 2-0

Flash <Polaris Rhapsody> Leta
Flash <Eye of the Storm> Leta
Flash wins 2-0

by Kwark

Jaedong spawned in white at 1 while Action took purple at 5 on Eye of the Storm. Both of them chose to scout vertically which made everything symmetrical. Action went for a twelve pool, eleven gas while Jaedong went twelve expansion, eleven pool, ten gas which gave him a slight edge. Action quickly added his own expansion to make them mirrored but Jaedong had an extra drone.

Both players headed immediately for lair and Action's slightly faster gas didn't make much difference. As they headed to lair tech both players made the standard transition into pure speedling while waiting on the spire as there was nothing to be gained by producing more drones. Jaedong hid his first few lings near Action's base and was able to net himself a pair of drone kills for few losses with some very nice timing and a bit of poor micro from Action.

The completion of the spire largely concluded the matter with Jaedong having more zerglings and more mutalisks. Action's attempt at the same speedling counterattack Jaedong used against him was easily predicted and blocked leaving Jaedong free to cross the map. Jaedong attacked and won. GG.

This was horribly one sided. The build order advantage didn't change much but the nice speedling runthrough did more damage than it should have and Jaedong just played an all round stronger game. Not much more to say, Jaedong was in Tyrant mode.

Action 2/5
Jaedong >3/5
Overall: 1/5

by Kwark

Action spawned at 1 in yellow while Jaedong took 5 in red on Grand Line SE. Both players sent their overlords vertically again and both opted for 12 pool starts. Both quickly added gas, Jaedong slightly earlier, and followed it with an eleven hatchery at their natural. Jaedong had gone for zergling speed before lair, and it turned out to be quite useful as he sent four zerglings running past Action's four zerglings into the main where they killed a drone. However when the spires finished thirty seconds later they were still both on the same supply.

Jaedong sent two more zerglings running in which got past Action and were ignored as Action refused to chase them and instead sent his army at Jaedong. Although his drones microed and killed the zerglings, that distraction could have been what allowed Jaedong to stop Action's main army so easily. As Action's speedlings streamed down the map they naturally formed a line whereas Jaedong anticipated this and created a concave for Action to run into. He got several easy kills and as more of Action's zerglings piled in he disengaged, pulled back to his reinforcements and then blocked them.

As mutalisks came out Jaedong's supply started creeping ahead and he used his zerglings to lure Action's mutalisks away. As Action's mutalisks started killing the zerglings Jaedong hit the natural with mutalisks and zerglings. Action was being outmicroed in the air and his zerglings were on hold position, which he didn't have time to stop, and thus killed a total of no zerglings. With his mutalisks dying in the air and Jaedong's zerglings massacring his own Action GGed.

Action was just outplayed in this game despite macroing perfectly for the first part. His multitasking let him down at several points and allowed Jaedong to take control of the game and play it the way he wanted to. No massive errors on his part in my opinion, he just got Jaedonged.

4/5 Jaedong
3/5 Action
2/5 Overall

by Kwark

Sea got brown at 6 while Stork got yellow at 3 on Dreamliner. Both players took entirely standard openings although Stork's rapidly became interesting. He made an immediate core and walled his ramp with probes, using the gas for a fast robotics facility. His gateway made the best it could with leftover resources, first a zealot and then two rangeless dragoons. As Stork flew a probe to the island Sea did an early push with a tank and six marines, cleverly drawing a dragoon out of position with an scv.

His old FD (fake double, a legacy from when one base expo was rare, look it up) style push looked strangely dangerous as Stork's investment in the reaver had not yet paid off. After some micro on the ramp, in which Sea came out on top, the reaver arrived to end the matter. Both players took their expansion and Sea rushed out a wraith while Stork decided to try reaver harass anyway. Stork killed more scvs than he deserved to for a play so predictable but Sea definitely got the better of the exchange leaving Stork with just gateways and robotics tech while they shared two bases apiece.

Stork was faced with a difficult choice of how to tech and decided to forgo citadel with zealot speed and eventually arbiters in favour of reavers and a stargate, making use of the tech he had. He loaded a shuttle with two reavers and despite dropping one on a mine, placed them in position to delay a push.

Meanwhile Sea was doing a slow siege advance towards his third with a command centre already completed and ready to occupy the space. A spinning armoury and machine shops suggested he knew about the carrier threat leaving the question of how well he would counter it. Stork finally took his own third at 12, moving them towards parity on base count. He also almost killed Sea's expansion at 9 with a sudden dragoon reaver attack from nowhere which killed several scvs as they repaired under reaver fire. Sea responded with a massive push, fueled by pure tanks and goliaths against a toothless Protoss army. The reavers' shuttle refused to go near the range upgraded goliaths and the carriers lacked sufficient numbers. Rather than face his opponent head on without stasis, storm, speedlots, reavers or indeed anything but dragoons Stork decided to go for a base trade. After all he had carriers on the way and could take the island. Stork briefly lost control of his natural and third but as Sea retreated his army to block the counterattack Stork was able to save his natural.

Meanwhile the dragoons at 9 were being smashed by tanks and only some nice reaver micro made the efforts worthwhile, sniping the odd tank and a lot of scvs. The reaver and dragoon threat kept pulling Sea's forces back, despite Sea's much stronger army and the growing carrier count. Stork used them to buy time and when he was finally able to push the carriers were in sufficient numbers to use the terrain and deny Sea.
Sea took 8, continuing his economic advantage that he'd held all game, but now the carriers were claiming free kills everywhere and Sea's army was too small to resist mass dragoons and carriers. GG.

Stork played this really nicely from the midgame onwards. What he was doing was absolutely horribly weak for a massive timing window and both players knew it. Sea spent the entire midgame and early lategame desperately trying to do a push that he knew would win and Stork simply would not let him. Both players knew Sea's tanks would destroy pure mass dragoon but if both players lost their main bases the guy with the island and carriers would win. Stork denied Sea an opportunity to take the win his tanks deserved, controlling the game flow with a lopsided and hard countered army. The midgame reaver use was extremely nice too. What Stork did doesn't work on paper, you need other units than dragoons and reavers in the early lategame to survive until the carriers are done, otherwise a pure tank push simply kills you. Stork made it work by being awesome. Don't try it at home because you don't have the game sense but appreciate Stork doing it as the work of art it is.

Stork 5/5
Sea 3/5
Overall 4/5

by Kwark

Stork spawned at 11 in white while Sea got 5 in red. Stork opened pylon gas steal with a lot of probe harass on multiple scvs which is just cute (and helpful if he goes reaver harass later because reavers do fifty damage against units on the outer part of their splash). Sea reacted the way Flash showed players to on Heartbreak Ridge whenever he was gas stolen, scvs attacking the assimilator while expanding with marines to bunker. Unfortunately Stork was abusing the standard response with his own quick expansion. By making just two zealots Stork had money to spare on his own gas, which was significantly faster than Sea's, and tech. So although they both started off with a free second base Stork was ahead in tech.

Without much scouting information Stork went for a very fast robotics and two gateways pumping a fair sized army with observers for scouting and a potential reaver for marines and medics. With four gateways he retained flexibility and waited for the observer to tell him what to do. Things then got interesting as Sea pushed out going around the bridges, and Stork used his observer to go around them and counter into Sea's base, getting a number of free kills on recently produced units that were very much outnumbered. Stork's superior production and the fact he anticipated the attack allowed him to take a few kills on the near bridge and slow the Terran push down to a crawl as Sea bunkered. Both players broke into their opponents natural at around the same time though.

However Stork created this situation and played it to his advantage while Sea's decisions became absolutely horrible. Stork simply evacuated his natural while grouping units on his ramp and taking a hidden expansion, he wouldn't lose his main, his probe count remained very strong and he could ferry his probes out to 9 whenever he wanted. Sea on the other hand was torn between saving his natural and holding his main and kept trying to push back the dragoons with tank range. Unfortunately his two factories with machine shops had absolutely no hope of creating enough tanks to do that and every time he moved one forwards Stork was more than happy to kill it. His scv count suffered hugely as they tried to mass repair a command centre taking a lot of damage.


one tank simply isn't enough covering fire to make this worthwhile and Sea should know that

He didn't lose a single dragoon killing one of Sea's only two tanks and Sea promptly reacted by unsieging the second and pushing it in to die as well. Sea then sent a newly produced third tank and that died too. The fourth and fifth both moved in together and were gunned down together as Sea lost five tanks as well as dozens of scvs to around seven dragoons. Although the sixth and seventh tank secured his natural he simply didn't have the scvs to make it worthwhile anymore and he'd fallen thirty five supply behind Stork.

Stork then broke out easily enough because he'd been not throwing units away or wasting minerals on repairing and losing half his workers.



To be honest Sea should have known he no longer had the forces to contain and withdrawn because Stork had been building up for the last minute, but he didn't and was massacred. That left Stork's massive army heading towards Sea's base where there were nine tanks missing due to stupid losses. Sea promptly died. GG.

Stork's opener was really cool, manipulating the predictability of the Terran response to rush to tech while fast expanding for the bargain price of one hundred minerals in an assimilator. However you really have to question what Sea was thinking. Stork simply pulled back, took a hidden expansion and held his ramp while massing with a very high probe count. That would have been even easier for Sea to do, as a Terran he has tanks which are great for this stuff and can build a second command centre in his main so he can instantly retake his natural the moment he has five tanks to clear it. That would have meant he retook his natural a full minute before Stork even started rebuilding his natural nexus. For that matter he could have just flown his first command centre back if he wanted, losing some scvs on repair but nowhere near the number he lost leaving it where he was. His refusal to accept the reality of the situation left him unable to see that the solutions really were very simple. There is absolutely no reason why Sea couldn't have come out of that base exchange ahead, he had all the tools he needed to do so. Instead he made a series of incredibly stupid decisions and threw the game away. I hate to be the one to say it but this is why Sea has a reputation as a starleague failure, he's an incredible player everywhere else but he can't seem to bring his A-game here. Absolutely awful.

Stork 4/5
Sea 1/5
Overall 4/5

by WaxAngel

Going into their undesirable team-kill match, both Free and Zero looked unusually nervous in their booths. Zero spawned at 10:00, and Free started off at 8:00. With his first overlord going the correct way, Zero opened with a direct nine pool build which opened up early pressure opportunities.

Free ended up playing right into Zero’s hands, going for a very risky 14 nexus before forge without probe scouting at all. As Kwark has mentioned before, that is really a stupid risky to take. Zero was visibly smiling as he arrived at Free’s base where not a single cannon was complete.

Free actually ended up defending relatively well, at least compared to losing the game outright. He had several probes surround the warping cannons, which Zero focused fired down. As the cannon was about to complete, Zero tried to move his zerglings up Free’s ramp into the main, but Free used some excellent mineral-clicking micro with his probes to completely entangle Zero’s zerglings. Zero ended up getting three very low HP zerglings into the Protoss main, which were soon killed off. In the meanwhile, Zero had not been producing extra zerglings, instead going for the standard three hatch at his natural and the 2:00 natural, content with having killed a few probes.

Expecting Zero to lay off on lings for a while, Free sent his first zealot to harass the zerg main, and his second zealot to bother the 2:00 natural expansion. Free failed to do much drone damage, succeeding only at distracting Zero. It ended up being too much aggression on Free’s part, as the lack of zealots let Zero slip 6 speedlings into Free’s main for some additional probe kills.

In the big picture, Zero’s 9 pool opening had left him a little drone starved, but he was still barely running five hatch lair. Although Free had taken a small hit to his probe count, pulling off the 14 nexus meant that on the whole, he was in a pretty decent situation. His tech was considerably faster than Zero's, allowing him to have one or two more sairs than usual.

Zero decided to apply some pressure with hydralisks and speedlords while Free was relying on sairs and DTs to defend, but it turned out there was barely any window of opportunity at all. Free was racing up the tech tree untroubled, and he had psionic storm done before the hydralisks could even bring down a single building at his wall.

At this point, Zero was in quite a difficult spot. Protoss had pretty much done everything he wanted without trouble all game, racing up the tech tree and now assembling his hanbang army. Zero would have to delicately balance drone production, tech, and troop production so that he could survive the first major protoss attack and have enough left in the tank to be competitive in the late game.

With a few rounds of dragoons left until he could break out with force, Free passed the time by serving Zero with some 2007 Chateau de Bisu (one of the finest PvZ vintages).

Two DTs were parked outside the 2:00 expansion, but the well-prepared Zero had overlords and hydralisks in place to stop any unwanted intruders. Free played Zero like a fiddle, by smartly faking a zealot templar break-out which drew every hydralisk to the center of the map. The protoss troops casually retreated back to safety, while corsairs flew into 10:00 to shred the overlords to pieces. DTs hacked away at drones as Zero’s simcity worked against him to prevent the drones' escape. Free also made a good decision to suicide a few of his corsairs to kill arriving overlords, allowing him to prolong Zero’s misery.


There hasn't been this much sair/DT ownage since Bisu destroyed Savior's soul in 2007.

Free had Zero dazed and on the ropes, and it showed as Zero was unable to properly chase down the offending DTs with hydralisks with overlords. This immediately came back to haunt him, as they snuck right back into the 2:00 natural while a devastating storm drop at the 10:00 natural distracted Zero.

Much of Zero’s vulnerability to these attacks was due to the concentration of his troops in front of the protoss base, as he feared the hanbang army. However, by leaving his other bases so undefended, his economy took such a blow that he didn’t have enough troops to defend the hanbang when it came.

Free busted out in a fury, and threw in a simultaneous storm drop for good measure. Zero had been so battered down by then he could only put up some token resistance. He GG’d out as Protoss troops flooded into his natural.


Gratuitous storm shot

Match Rating: 7/10
Clinical PvZ destruction from Free, using a sair/DT style we haven’t seen so much as of late.

Free: 8/10
Great multitasking to harass Zerg all over. Not enough resistance from Zero for Free to be able to show more.

Zero: 5/10
Like we learned back in 2007, Zerg is going to struggle with the DTs if they can’t keep corsair count under control.

by WaxAngel

Free started at 3:00 while Zero started at 6:00 on Flight-Dreamliner. Zero opened with overpool 3 hatch (with a hatchery at the 9:00 expansion first) while Free opened forge-nexus-cannon. The early game went by uneventfully, with Zero droning up while Free let his opponent see a +1 upgrade going on his forge.

It looked like it could be a fast 3~4 gate +1 speedzealot push from Free, and he certainly tried to make Zero think so by moving out with his first six zealots. However, he did not commit to any action against Zero’s simcity, and was actually teching very quickly to dark templar drops at home. On Zero’s part, he did not overreact to anything, and he built cost effective defenses with simcity while he continued to power.

With his shuttle out, Free first dropped a probe to take the corner island expansion, and then picked up two DTs in his main. Zero had some hydralisks and speed upgraded overlords, but without scourge it was not a pretty proposition against Free’s sair/DT. Free correctly decided it would be worth it to sacrifice a sair or two to kill Zero’s four overlords which led to a lengthy blackout in the Zerg main. Free tried to perform simultaneous zealot attacks during his drop, but the defenses were more solid at Zero’s other bases. Even so, it shifted the balance solidly towards Free, as he had dealt Zerg some damage while he took his third base undeterred.


I haven't seen such sair/DT ownage since Bisu made Savior lose hope and turn to evil in 2007

If things played out without any twists, Free was certainly going to win. Unfortunately for Zero, he had nothing he could try to change the flow of the game. He managed to drop Free’s isle expand and take it out, but Free’s hanbang army was already at a fearsome state.

Everything ended up playing out predictably, with Free’s superior army utterly crushing Zero. Zero had no tricks to bail him out, and he GG’d out of the quarterfinals.


More storm porn

Match rating: 7/10
Pretty much identical to the first game. Sair/DT damages zerg econ early, which prevents Zerg from having enough troops to defend against the hanbang rush.

Free: 7/10
Same as game one, except he didn’t perform as many cute simultaneous attack tactics.

Zero: 3/10
Defended the DT drop extremely poorly, despite the fact that he seemed to expect it.

by WaxAngel

Flash started bottom while Leta started top on Polaris Rhapsody to open the series. Leta put a small twist on his opening build, building his barracks in a forward position where he could try to pressure a 14 CC or get a quicker floating rax scout against safer builds. As it turned out, both players ended up going for 1 fact expand builds, so Leta simply floated his rax to scout after making two marines.

The two Terrans diverged in their plans after their command centres finished. Flash went straight for tanks and goliaths as tends to be his preference, while Leta went for heavy vulture production. Leta would only have a short window where vultures would be effective against Flash’s unit combination, so he pursued it very aggressively.

Leta first sent four vultures at Flash’s natural, which did little damage before being cleaned up by tanks. Flash decided to move out immediately after with a small force, which may have been a miscalculation as Leta was continuing to commit to vultures. While Flash’s force traversed the central path of Polaris Rhapsody, Leta cleverly sent another four vultures around the eastern route into Flash’s now unguarded natural. Flash’s troops were already at the halfway point on the map, and it would be pointless to return to defend. He continued to press on with his attack, while his newly produced troops did well to defend his natural without taking much damage. Leta mined the path leading out of Flash’s base to cut off reinforcements, and turned his attention to defending himself. Flash showed a lot of skill microing his three tanks and goliath against Leta’s vultures, but rapid reinforcements from Leta cleared them out nonetheless.

As the early aggression came to an end on both sides, the advantage of going early vultures was quickly made apparent for Leta as he had been able to go up to five factories. Flash, who had spent money on tanks since the beginning, was only just getting his third factory. This allowed Leta to pump vultures and resume his aggression immediately, which worked to great effect. Flash had over extended himself by moving some of his troops into position around his mineral only natural, which meant vultures were able to hit Flash on many fronts. This delayed Flash’s mineral only, while Leta was taking his own easily while keeping up the pressure.


One...

Now tanks began to get mixed into Leta’s forces, and they moved on Flash’s spread out positions. Leta concentrated a small force of four tanks and vultures on Flash’s natural, who had split his forces in half to cover both his mineral natural and his regular natural. It looked like Flash would be in for some serious grief as Leta ploughed into the natural, but Flash did well to immediately bring his remaining forces back to defend.


Two...

Leta would not let up however, and he continued exploit the attacker’s advantage of being able to choose the battlefield. This time he concentrated his attacks towards the left side of the map on Flash’s mineral only natural, though Flash was able to hold yet again. Having drawn Flash to the left side of the map, Leta again shifted his focus to the right side of the map with another attack on Flash’s natural. Flash’s high ground tanks allowed him to save his natural, but Leta was still camped outside his base in containment.


Three...


Four...

So far Flash had been able to prevent himself from taking any economical damage, despite the dizzying series of attacks from Leta. However, Leta had been constantly engaging Flash at very advantageous locations, frequently outnumbering Flash 2 to 1. This had slow built up into a 20 food advantage for Leta, which meant he finally had the extra numbers to take down a base for good. With all of Flash’s forces distracted yet again, Leta rolled into Flash’s mineral only natural and destroyed the CC. Flash was so flustered, he could not even remember to lift his CC as tanks railed away.


FIVE HIT COMBO!

Leta had played the early-mid game brilliantly, exploiting the fact that siege tank positions are very much attackable before they reach critical mass. As a reward, he had all four north side bases: his main, natural, mineral natural, and double-gas expansion. On the other hand, Flash had his main, natural, and a non-mining CC he had managed to get finished at the 8:00 double-gas during the chaos. With such a huge advantage accumulated, it was time for Leta to sit back and take a breather.

Flash’s respite was very brief, as Leta knew that aggression was what was winning him this game. Although he had chased Leta around all game, Flash had still managed to build and maintain a fair sized army. Now with critical mass tanks for defense, Flash set up two strong defensive positions. One large position covered the entrance to his natural from the right side path and the central path, while the other major position was just below the 9:00 natural and protected his double gas expansion. Leta wasn’t going to be able to take either position head on, but it was no great worry. He had transitioned into dropships far ahead of Flash.

As Flash scrambled to get the bases on his side of the map working again, Leta executed a textbook expand-and-attack by taking the neutral base at 3:00 while dropping Flash’s main. Leta got his aggressive rhythm going again, with a powerful follow-up drop at Flash’s double-gas expansion after Flash’s attention had been directed towards the right side of the map. The expansion went down, and now it appeared that Leta had an unassailable 6 to 3 base advantage.


Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee-suit

Only a miracle was going to stop Leta from riding his resource advantage to an easy victory, so Flash must have been praying pretty damn hard to have gotten one.

In one of the most inexplicably bad moves in history, Leta instantly lost 50 supply worth of units in a horrendous drop attempt. It looked like it would be a routine drop from Leta to maintain pressure, with six dropships flying to the north side of Flash’s main. There were a decent amount of turrets there, but not enough to stop a drop. It looked like Leta would see the turrets and fall back right away or just drop anyway understanding that the dropships would be sacrificed. Instead, Leta did the absolutely worst thing possible. He flew in with the decision to drop, then changed his mind and decided to retreat while he was right above the turrets, changed his mind and decided to drop again, then changed his mind again and decided to fly away. Leta never got to make up his mind as the turrets did the deciding for him by killing all of his units.


I hope to see a similar reversal of fortune once they ship Savior to jail

With a huge chunk of Leta’s units dead, Flash immediately pushed up across the left side of the map in order to take the 9:00 expansion. The game was suddenly half map vs half map, possibly Flash’s favorite position in the world.

For the first time in the game, there was a real break in the action as the players massed units and tried to figure out what to do next. Several bases had run out of minerals by now, leaving only the double gas expands and the neutral expansions across the middle band of the map with any resources left. Leta took the mineral expansion on the right side of the map first, while keeping a small group of troops to prevent Flash from taking the mineral expansion on the left.

Flash broke the silence with a massive drop on 3:00 which failed to kill the expansion and ended up being a wash on both sides, and there was another period of massing as population counts remained very close. Leta began to make battlecruisers at this point, but was only able to slowly produce them out of two starports. With the double-gas expansions holding only 2500 gas at each geyser, they had been depleted a long time ago. With four depleted geysers and one regular geyser, both players were effectively running on two gas.

Flash broke the deadlock again with a big drop in Leta’s main, which navigated a complicated path to get there. The drop nullified Leta’s BC production and killed some supply depots, but without any resources to defend, Leta didn’t really mind that Flash was camping out in a remote corner of his main. When Flash made an overoptimistic push deeper into Leta’s main, Leta cleaned it up then. Leta tried a strong push down the central path of the map, but was stalemated midway by Flash’s army. Overall, it was still very much a wash as no one was gaining a real material advantage and the supply counts stayed even. What was very perplexing was that Leta had managed to stockpile over four thousand minerals by this point, although he was running very low on gas. With over ten factories in his main, he could have easily made mass vultures to max out his supply within a few minutes, but he seemed to have forgotten that unit entirely. On the other hand, Flash was wisely supplementing his army with vultures in a gas scarce situation.


Pictures of scenes that had no effect on the overall narrative. Like a children's book!

Flash made what would be the final decisive move of the game by sacrificing many redundant SCVs in order to push up into the left side mineral only expansions. Neither player had made a truly effective attack during the half map vs half map stage, but resources had run out around the map nonetheless. Leta has begun mining the right side mineral expansions much earlier, so now the left side expansion was the only one left.



Amusingly enough, that was basically how the game fizzled out. Just like that, Flash had the only remaining mining base on the map, and Leta couldn’t do anything about it. It was particularly infuriating considering that Leta had been camping that one base for pretty much the entire game until Flash decided to casually take it once it became the most important position in the game. Not to mention that Leta should have seen it coming for miles when he noticed every blue spot on the map was starting to disappear. There was a final push from Leta which was big in terms of scale, but small in terms of drama. Flash held the high ground at the mineral natural, and more to the point, he had money and Leta didn’t. Leta inevitably lost all his troops trying to attack, and GG’d out.


"I can't believe I won/lost that game"

Match Rating: 7/10
This was a dynamic TvT that went through a lot of phases, but most of the effective plays were performed in the first half. The latter half of the game slowed down a good deal, with neither player able to achieve much with their movements.

Flash: 7/10
Started the game playing in the palm of Leta’s hand, but had excellent crisis management skills to make a long term comeback. He did need an incredible gift to win in the end, but his solid execution of his plan to play defensively for resources deserves credit.

Leta: 7/10
Leta was incredible early on, taking the initiative and exploiting the attacker’s advantage brilliantly. He made Flash look absurd as he danced to Leta’s tune, always a step too late against Leta’s incisive attacks. It was terribly disappointing when Leta made his dropship blunder, and he seemed to be mentally crushed afterwards. There was no coherent gameplan from Leta from that point, which led to the inevitable loss.

by WaxAngel

Flash started at 2:00 while Leta started across from him at 11:00. The early game started off with a little bit of intrigue, as both players sent early SCVs towards the middle of the map. However, since both player’s SCVs went to the same spot and saw each other, neither player was able to try whatever cheesy plan they might have been thinking of. Seeing the directions the SCVs had come from, both players simply sent their workers off to get some very quick scouting done.

Playing under each other’s watchful eyes, both players opted to go for fast command centers before barracks. Neither player could build their CC directly on top of the sweet spot at their natural due to harassing SCVs, but Flash got the additional bonus of killing one of Leta’s workers. Flash also built and cancelled an engineering bay at Leta’s natural, to further annoy his opponent. Overall, the harassment didn’t do so much, and both players went on to factory units.

Like their previous game, Leta went for vultures early while Flash focused on tanks. Leta found no holes in Flash’s defense to exploit early on, and was eventually forced to go on the defensive when Flash moved out to contain with a strong combined force of tanks, goliaths, and vultures. Leta attempted to vulture drop in the meanwhile, but Flash was already well prepared for such tactics. Having taken map control early, Flash decided to expand to the 3:00 base.

Leta massed some tanks and broke Flash’s initial containment, which he had not bothered to reinforce. It had already served its goal of delaying Leta’s third, and Flash had moved onto other things. Flash set up new, much wider containment line that roughly covered the upper left third of the map.

Leta noticed how thinly Flash’s line was stretched, and mobilized his troops to attack it at concentrated points. He worked quickly and effectively to break the containment’s south side, which would allow access to the 8:00 expansions.

Instead of trying to continue to deter Leta on the ground, Flash quickly changed his tactics and loaded up his dropships and preemptively established troops at 8:00 in a position where he could prevent both the main and natural expansion. At the same time he was taking the 5:00 main and natural for himself, a dangerous move considering he had committed many units to hold the 8:00 base as well.

Instead of trying to dislodge Flash from 8:00, Leta tried to relieve him of the 5:00 base in return. However, Flash had already established an initial defensive position there, and Leta was only able to force a lift of the 5:00 main CC, while the natural continued to mine unhindered.

Leta now was forced to try remove Flash from the 8:00 bases in order to stay in the game, and he was almost successful with a large drop. However, Flash had somehow predicted or scanned Leta’s movements, and immediately dropped even more troops to cling on to the 8:00 base. The resource advantage now began to kick in, with Flash nearing max supply while Leta remained around 150.

Deciding that unrooting 8:00 to play catch-up would be too little too late, Leta went for a more aggressive move that might rapidly turn the tables. He mobilized his troops to try and take out the 5:00 natural, but once again Flash was able to match Leta’s speed and had ample defenses there in time. Leta was forced to withdraw and ponder what to do with his troops.

It would have to be another attempt to wrest 8:00 from Flash’s hands, but after the failed assault on 5:00, this was obvious to Flash as well. He was quickly on the scene as Leta tried to roll in with tanks and dropships, and got enough troops there so that Leta was only able to establish himself at the 8:00 natural.

Having expended many units to take a base, Leta had to slow down for a breather. Flash exploited this quickly, by taking out the tanks that had prevented him from taking the 5:00 main, while cheekily building a CC at the 8:00 main as well. Leta tried vainly to prevent Flash from taking complete control of 5:00, but only lost units in the process.

With a large unit advantage, Flash felt comfortable enough to attempt a game finishing attack, and he succeeded with a well coordinated land and dropship assault on the 8:00 base.

Match Rating: 7/10
The kind of fast paced TvT you expect to see at the top level, where both players are trying hard to be constantly active. Flash was consistently faster than Leta throughout, so there was not much back and forth.

Player Ratings.
Flash: 8/10
The ideal form of TvT for Flash, where he’s one step ahead of his opponent to every critical location. He was constantly attacking before Leta expected it, and always knew where Leta was going to try to attack.

Leta: 6/10
Leta’s decision making was sound in this game, but he was just too slow to keep up with Flash. Although he may not have enjoyed it, Leta may have just been better off playing a plodding, slow TvT once he knew he was behind. He tried an aggressive solution, but Flash was expecting it and responded easily.