Group G: 11/17/10 - 19:30 KST and 11/19/10 - 19:30 KST
Snow
Soulkey
      HiyA ►Advances to Round of 16

+ Show Spoiler [Results and VODs] +
Group H: 11/17/10 - 19:30 KST and 11/19/10 - 19:30 KST
great
Paralyze ►Advances to Round of 16
      Leta

+ Show Spoiler [Results and VODs] +
Group I: 11/17/10 - 19:30 KST and 11/19/10 - 19:30 KST
Movie
FrOzen
      Hyuk ►Advances to Round of 16

+ Show Spoiler [Results and VODs] +
Group J: 11/24/10 - 19:30 KST and 11/26/10 - 19:30 KST
Kwanro
Tempest
      Hydra ►Advances to Round of 16

+ Show Spoiler [Results and VODs] +
Group K: 11/24/10 - 19:30 KST and 11/26/10 - 19:30 KST
Stats
HoGiL ►Advances to Round of 16
      ZerO

+ Show Spoiler [Results and VODs] +
Group L: 11/24/10 - 19:30 KST and 11/26/10 - 19:30 KST
Shine ►Advances to Round of 16
Suny
      Bisu

+ Show Spoiler [Results and VODs] +

Soulkey went for a mutalisk and scourge rush, while Snow skimped on corsairs and made only a single cannon in his main. Guess who won!

Match Rating: 1/10
Unbelievably poor preparation from Snow.

After some new-school openings, Snow and Soulkey played some very old-school Starcraft in their game on Gladiator. And when I say Starcraft instead of Brood War, I mean literally.

Soulkey opened with the overpool three hatch, while Snow went for FE into a surprise three gate range dragoon rush. The dangers of this risky rush build was averted through excellent play from Soulkey, who sacrificed an overlord to scout Snow’s main just before his opponent’s attack timing. Upon realizing Snow’s plan, Soulkey easily countered by making a large amount of sunken colonies and speedlings to defend against the dragoons.

With the failure of his early gambit, Snow opted to play a near complete pre-Brood War style of Starcraft, going up to 6 gates and making purely ground units (there were a couple of dark templars in the mix, but they did not impact the game). Although lurkers would have easily nullified Snow’s army, Soulkey decided to play along and went for vanilla SC units as well, making just zerglings, sunken colonies, and mutalisks.

Now, there is a reason why harassment based strategies such as sair/DT or sair/reaver became standard in PvZ, and this game was very educational in that respect. With four bases and his land entrances protected by a billion sunken colonies, Soulkey’s reaction to a purely gateway based Protoss on two bases was rightfully “I don’t give a s***.” Even without lurkers, there was no way Snow could threaten Soulkey.

Snow paraded his large army around the map in a futile attempt to find a place to deploy his forces. It was more an exercise of habit than of actual effectiveness, as both players knew the only places Snow could attack were the two natural bases Soulkey held, which were covered with over 12 sunken colonies each. In the meanwhile, Soulkey simply had groups of cracklings and mutas go around the map, denying Snow any chance to take a third base. Thinking about it now, Snow may have done better to have played very defensively while taking more expansions than pretend to take map control with a lumbering protoss army against a mobile mutalisk and crackling composition. Eventually Snow took a mineral only base, which Soulkey could have cared less about. Without 3 gas, there was still no way Snow could hurt his Zerg opponent.

Finally, Snow decided to attack Soulkey head on in a final, frustrated attack which ended all too predictably. Snow’s force was devoured by the nightmarish zerg defenses, and Soulkey ended the game with guardians and cracklings.



Match Rating: 5/10
I liked the game because it was an extreme demonstration of the necessity of harassment in PvZ, but otherwise there was not much to it.

Soulkey won 2-0.

Great opened the game with one of the greediest Zerg builds ever seen on a land map, making just a handful of zerglings before pumping pure drones and massing hatcheries. Whether it was a skillful read of his opponent or just a show of overall confidence, he did not suffer for taking such an economic risk as his rookie opponent went for a conservative stargate-robo build.

It looked like Great would be going into the mid-game with a significant advantage after getting away with all of his greed, but that was not to be the case. Though he had a great economy, Great squandered it by trying several wasteful drops. His plan appeared to be to hit Paralyze with a succession of drops in rapid order to keep Paralyze off balance, but in reality he just was just spoon feeding his units to Paralyze. Cannons, zealots, and reavers made quick work of every drop attempt Great tried, and he soon found his economic advantage neutralized by his constant troop losses.

After massing a sufficient amount of dragoons to support his zealot and reaver army, Paralyze finally moved out. Great’s prosperous opening allowed him to have enough troops to put up a small fight, but he had still wasted too many of his units in his earlier drops. Paralyze’s army was too powerful, and Great was forced to GG.

Match Rating: 2/10
Great gave away far too many units in pointless drops.

The game opened in a fairly standard manner, with double expand Zerg going against an FE Protoss. Following the trend of other Zergs in OSL Ro36 games, Great decided to go for a mutalisk-scourge rush soon after spire in order to catch his opponent off guard.

Unlike other Protoss players in the Bacchus OSL so far, Paralyze moved out with his speed zealots before his opponent could strike with mutalisks. In past matches, Protoss players would send their zealots out to buy time after they had already taken damage from an initial mutalisk strike, which was always too little, too late. Instead, Paralyze kept Great’s air units from ever getting to his base with split attacks at both the Zerg natural and third expansion.

Paralyze was taking a risk by sending his entire ground force in a do or die attack, but Zerg’s tendency not to split mutalisks into two groups allowed the zealots to achieve a great deal of success. While the flyers took care of zealots at one location, the zealots at the other spot were wreaking havoc in the mineral line. Paralyze sent several gateway rounds of zealots at Great in this manner, and it was not a waste at all. The zealots tied up Great’s mutalisks and did so much drone damage that Paralyze was able to take a third base for free while getting archons and mass corsairs in the meanwhile.

By the time Great was done dealing with Paralyze’s zealots, he was in a very tough spot. Although he had transitioned into hydralisks in order to fight an incoming Protoss ground army, Paralyze had caught up enough economically to fight Great head to head with pure zealot-archon.

Great managed to stay in the game for a while, but it was a losing battle. His initial air control was soon wrested from him by corsairs, and he suffered a terrible blow at the hands of DTs. Heavily out-resourced by his Protoss opponent, it was not long until Great was forced to GG.

Match Rating: 4/10
Good zealot use by Paralyze, but you couldn’t help but think Great’s defense was too panicked. After the resource situation came to favor Protoss, the game was over.

Paralyze won 2-0.

Similar to other players before him, Movie treated Pathfinder like an island map. While Frozen was going for a standard 1 fact expansion, Movie skipped dragoons completely and went for a very fast four zealot drop.

Frozen had been building a starport that would have been ready against a reaver drop, but this four zealot rush caught him off guard. With only a single tank and marine to defend, the situation looked grim for Frozen. However, Movie’s prioritization of chasing tanks around helped minimize Frozen’s SCV damage.

Movie immediately followed up with a dragoon and reaver drop, which looked to be a possible game ender even though a wraith would be out soon. With only two tanks out, Frozen thanked his lucky stars when half of Movie’s scarabs turned out to be duds, particularly crucial ones targeting siege tanks. Although Frozen lost some SCVs, he managed to survive without taking any critical damage.

While Movie had profited from treating Pathfinder like an isle at the beginning of the game, he was about to be punished for the same philosophy. Having sent all of his troops on drop missions from which there was no return, there were no defenses left for Movie on the ground.

It only took a small counter attack of four tanks and a handful of marines to establish a deadly push right in front of Movie’s main, and the game ended as he failed to clear those units away.

Match Rating: 4/10
Cute strategy from Movie on Pathfinder into a really silly loss.

The second game in the series began with standard play, seeing fast expansions go down on both sides (Movie did the recently revived gate, no-gas expansion). Besides a harassing zealot from Movie, the far positions kept things quiet for the early game.

Seeing that Movie was going for a very early third base, Frozen moved out with a small tank force to try and apply pressure. This turned out to be a terrible decision, however, as Movie had gone reaver tech to defend against such small scale pushes. Frozen’s poor spacing and lack of anti-air made it so that his siege tanks were practically free kills.

Movie capitalized on this early boon by reaver dropping Frozen’s main. While a few dud scarabs lowered the effectiveness of his attack yet again, he did manage to come away with a couple of tank kills.

As an experienced Protoss player, Movie knew very well the price Frozen would have to pay for losing so many of his early tanks. With his crucial reaver still alive, he went in for the kill with all of his ground units. Sure enough, Frozen did not have the critical mass of tanks needed to defend against such a protoss force.

Match Rating: 3/10
Poor tank preservation is one of the more boring ways a Terran can lose TvP.

In a similar spirit to game two, Movie went for a quick three base strategy against a fast expanding Terran. Perhaps wary from his failings in the previous game, Frozen skipped any early pressure to go for a relatively quick third base himself.

Although this was the overall safer option, Movie found a way to seize the advantage anyway. A well timed attack with dragoons and zealots as Frozen moved out to take his third base caused heavy casualties on both sides, but as before, losing early game tanks was a tough blow for Terran to take.

Instead of an attack, Movie took advantage of Frozen temporary inability to mount a serious attack by expanding freely to a fourth, and later a fifth base. Without any meaningful dropship or vulture harass from Frozen, the economic advantage kicked in at full force for Movie.

Movie was population maxed very quickly, whereas Frozen was only sitting on around 130 worth of troops at that point. A massive ground force supported by arbiters was enough to end the game, even against a hardy Terran defense.

Match Rating: 4/10
There’s a nice thrill of watching Protoss waves crush Terran positions, but it was too one-sided as whole.

Soulkey became the first Zerg user to try the super optimized 12 pool mutalisk build on Pathfinder, but Hiya came prepared with a powerful counter-build. Two port has become the standard TvZ build on this map and Hiya opened with it as expected. However, instead of going directly for mass wraiths as expected, Hiya gave the build an unexpected and brilliant twist.

He showed Soulkey his very first wraith as he went to hunt overlords, to give off the impression that he was indeed going for a mass wraith build. Unbeknownst to Soulkey, he was actually going for a fast dropship from his second starport. Although he was only dropping two marines and two vultures, they posed a very strong threat to Soulkey who had skimped on land defenses from expecting the usual wraith build. The drop was timed well, coming a few vital seconds before mutalisks would hatch.

Soulkey had researched burrow very early, but he was so flustered by the early drop that he was not able to take full advantage of the upgrade. Not only did Hiya kill a fair amount drones, but Soulkey was also left with a trio of burrowed drones he completely forgot about after he was done cleaning up the drop.

Hiya was in the driver’s seat after that point. He left Soulkey with two hatcheries and just enough drones to pump straight mutalisks, but nothing else. Soulkey was forced to make only mutalisks for fear of losing straight up to Hiya’s following wraiths, but it left him all too vulnerable to Hiya’s M&M transition.

In the end, Soulkey was stuck with just mutalisks vs Hiya’s M&M&Wraith combination, which led to an easy GG.

Match Rating: 8/10
Personally, I’m in love with how brilliant Hiya’s build was. On a map where 2 port is considered the norm, Hiya executed the perfect fake. His two starport into fast drop looks just like a regular cloak wraith build until the very last second, which seduces Zerg into skimping on ground defenses. That aside, it was a total beatdown.

In a startlingly one-sided game, Soulkey lost to Hiya’s first assault. The game played out in a very standard manner at first, with Terran FE vs Zerg three hatch.

However, Soulkey played poorly against Hiya’s early M&M pressure. In fact, he just lost straight up to Hiya’s first M&M attack that came just as mutalisks hatched. A few more sunken colonies or better mutalisk micro would have allowed Soulkey to survive, but neither were present for him at the time.

Match Rating: 1/10
Terrible.

Hiya won 2-0.

Pathfinder gave way to yet another unusual build order fight, as Paralyze put his fast DT drop against Leta’s fast starport.

It looked like the DT drop would hit before a wraith was out, but Leta showed he had the timings down. An early marine-tank-vulture push forced Paralyze to reserve one of his two DTs for defense, leaving just one to depart in the shuttle. At home, Leta already had turrets and mines down in preparation. Paralyze unluckily dropped his first DT straight onto two mines, and his shuttle was also soon destroyed by a wraith that just finished. With no port of entry for his DTs, it seemed that Paralyze’s plan had failed. Even so, Leta ended up losing most of his FD push force pointlessly, forces he would miss very soon.

There was only one more move left for Paralyze, and that was to enter through the front door. Paralyze was lucky on that day to find that Leta had three mines and no more to defend his ramp. A dragoon sacrificed itself to clear two mines, while a DT tanked the other to allow itself entry into Leta’s base.

While Leta had his resource collecting areas covered by turrets, he had not yet finished turrets at other key areas. What he could exploit, Paralyze exploited well with a stream of DTs to Leta’s base (and some sexy DT mine defusing). There were a few outlying buildings to pick off, as well as incautious vultures, but most importantly he forced Leta’s only factory to lift.

At this point, Paralyze became overzealous. Having forced Leta to build bunkers, rebuild and regorganize large portions of his base, he could have simply expanded and played with a modest advantage. Instead, he cut probe production completely to go for a bizarre 3 gate DT+speedzealot all-in move. This move backfired terribly; as Leta had reorganized his base into a tightly walled fortress with three factories producing by the time Paralyze had anything resembling a threatening force. Even though Paralyze actually took his natural before Leta took his own with scan, Leta still had a far superior economy due to the amount of SCVs he had made.

With the early game chaos over, the game began to resemble a normal PvT game, with the exception of Terran having a 15 SCV advantage. Leta proceded with the standard Terran slow-roll scheme, and the game began to look dimmer and dimmer for Paralyze.

In an unexpected turn of events, the SKT rookie showed more resolve than anyone expected. Given one opportunity to retake the game, he seized it with a vice like grip. Leta had grown comfortable with his economy and army, and moved out to take the easily defended position behind the Protoss natural. In a do or die battle, Paralyze engaged Leta as his first arbiter came along, getting off an excellent four tank stasis field which resulted in a resounding Protoss victory.

Leta tried to gather himself for a later attempt, but the tide had already turned. After a brief period of massing, Paralyze broke through the line protecting Leta’s natural and main to win the game.

Match Rating: 7/10
The early game was quite entertaining, average later on.

Paralyze’s decision to go zealot FE heavily colored the flow and result of game two. By going for one-fact build without a wall, Leta opened himself up to be scouted by Paralyze’s zealot. At the progamer level a fast zealot against a wall-less terran will seldom do any damage against well microed marines, but still offers an interesting advantage in being a much hardier scout than a probe.

Paralyze’s zealot stuck around for a while, but Leta refused to build any important buildings while the zealot was still alive. Only after he had confirmed Paralzye’s expansion build with an SCV and chased out the scouting zealot did he make his move. It was to be a late second factory for an all-in push, a risky move considering that his deception had cost him precious time on the second factory. Still, with the late observer a zealot FE offers, Leta perceived a window of opportunity.

The critical attack consisted of eight marines, two tanks, and four vultures with spider mines. On the other end, Paralyze had only two zealots and five dragoon with range, while his third and fourth gateways and his observatory would not be active for fair amount of time.

Paralyze temporarily pulled the probes from his natural to prevent Leta from laying mines in too advance a position, before sending them back to harvesting. The keys to the battle were two critical mine drags from Paralyze. One dragoon was able to take out three vultures which had yet to deploy all their mines, which were the only advantage Leta had and his only way to press an attack. Having temporarily removed Leta’s ability to make forward progress, Paralyze used another mine drag to destroy one of Leta’s tanks and put him out of range of the probes at the natural. With a single tank slowly blasting away at the expansion nexus, there was a small respite as the two players considered their options.

Leta was now pressured to fortify his tenuous one tank contain as quickly as possible, because Paralyze’s 4 gates and robotics facility meant there would soon be a massive imbalance in production. He got three tanks and a bunker up in front of Paralyze’s natural, but it was to no avail.

Paralyze calmly waited for an observer, a shuttle, and then four zealots before busting out. The dragoons supported by zealot bombs were easily able to crush Leta’s containment (including a moment of skillful mine focus fire), and the Entus captain quickly conceded defeat.

Match Rating: 6/10
Paralyze defended with precision and patience against Leta’s impromptu rush, looking like a seasoned veteran in the process.

Paralyze won 2-0.

To start, Hyuk went for the predictable strategy of mutalisk centric zerg, while Movie went for an all around standard FE. There was little chance to see what Movie’s original plan (if any) was, as he played a reactionary Protoss style for most of the game.

Movie probed with zealots at the crucial timing where spire completes, forcing Hyuk to reveal his mutalisks. With this knowledge, Movie spared no expense making cannons in his bases, while adding as second starport and getting the +1 air attack upgrade.

Some initial probing by Hyuk revealed that his Protoss opponent was indeed prepared for his strategy. However, Hyuk decided that he had gone too far down the air based path to back out, and massed even more mutalisks and scourge to proceed with his original plan.

It turned out to be a terribly bad decision, as Movie’s corsairs and cannons were more than a match for Hyuk’s air force. Perhaps being so disgusted with his decision or execution, Hyuk GG’d out as soon as his muta-scourge force was decimated.

Match Rating: 2/10
Hyuk did poorly to keep on going for mutalisks after he had revealed himself to Movie, while Movie simply reacted to scouting. Very straight-forward.

Hyuk went for a 5 hatch hydralisk rush and Movie didn’t have psionic storm in time. Or as we say in these parts… KWANROOO-, er, HYUKED.

Match Rating: 1/10
Lots of players getting caught with their pants down against random lair stage rushes by Zerg, be it mutas or hydralisks.

The defining moment of the third and last game was an early speedling runby from Hyuk, who took advantage of a slight unit positioning error in Movie’s FE wall. Other players may have pressed the advantage and gone for the kill early, but Hyuk was content to play his hand very conservatively. By keeping Movie’s probes off mining and killing a modest amount, he was able to go into the mid-game with an equal population count as Protoss. While nothing to write home about, that is still a solid advantage in ZvP, and one Hyuk managed to sustain for most of the game.

Movie had a chance to mangle Hyuk with his first hanbang rush of archons, zealots, and high templars, but he mismicroed terribly by sending his foot soldiers to fight hydralisks far before the templars could arrive. Instead of a crushing victory for Protoss, the two sides scored a draw, and thus Hyuk retained the lead.

There was a glimmer of a turnaround when Hyuk donated a large part of his army to Movie in a poorly executed attempt to prevent a third Protoss base. However, it was only false hope, as Hyuk was well aware of the old adage: “When in doubt, cracklings.” With a decent lead and not much of an idea of how to finish, Hyuk just pumped massive amounts of cracklings. And as he hoped, Movie really had no answer for the ridiculously cost-efficient Zerg units.

Match Rating: 4/10
Kind of back and forth, but somehow not very exciting.

Kwanro was the second SKT Zerg to benefit from the “whatever, cracklings” mentality. There were a few kinks in the game, but it boiled down to Tempest’s inability to win enough decisive victories against the unit worst nerfed in SC II.

The early game involved a 3 gate speed-zealot rush, Kwanro giving away 12 mutas to a spectacular storm shower, and dark archons maelstroming zealots. But none of this was of much consequence to the larger scope of the game as it flowed into 2 base protoss vs 3 base zerg with hive.

Tempest was the victor of one major battle that allowed him to take a third base but he would not hold it for long. With decent upgrades and a fair amount of hatcheries, Kwanro went for the simple strategy of making infinite cracklings while saving gas for ultralisks. The plan worked exactly as planned, with Tempest running around here and there to put out fires while his forces were whittled down in the process.

Kwanro soon revealed the large amount of Ultralisks he had saved up, and it was a short path to a GG.

Match Rating: 2/10
Only if you must see maelstrom being used, no matter how poorly.

Though not being the greatest of hive stage players, surely game one proved Kwanro could still pull it off against an underdog like Tempest? Perhaps not, as game two left us wondering whether a leopard really can’t change his spots.

Kwanro went for an economy heavy strategy, trying to get by on minimal troop investment during the lair stage while securing four bases to play a strong hive game. And as one may expect, things did not go as planned.

There were far too few scourge and hydralisks to defend against Tempest’s corsairs, which went around shredding overlords like children through Christmas gift wrap. Without missing a beat, Tempest followed up with a two DT drop in Kwanro’s main. Had Tempest been more attentive, he could have done a huge amount of damage, but he had to be content with slicing a few drones and taking down the spire and pool.

Tempest appeared to stall for no reason after taking the advantage, but it soon came to light that he was preparing a crowd pleasing finale.

Kwanro’s bases were still tough to crack by land, as they had lurkers and sunken colonies to defend them. What better then, if you have many leftover corsairs from overlord hunting, than to upgrade disruption web?

Match Rating: 2/10
Kwanro playing hive is funny, d-web is funny, so why didn’t this game entertain me more?

When in doubt, Kwanrooooooooooollll!!!!

Kwanro went for a big 5 hatch hydralisk rush, and Tempest was not prepared for this most Kwanro-ish of Kwanro strategies.

Match Rating: 1/10
It’s a Kwan-roll, what more do you need to know?

After what seemed like unremarkable PvZ openings, Stats stepped ahead with a huge advantage in the air race, having three corsairs by the time Hogil’s spire was complete. Such a gap is rarely seen in the modern game, and it boded well for Stats as he picked up early overlord kills.

And still, Stats managed to lose to mutalisks.

Well, not directly. Hogil had the courage to go for muta-scourge, even though Stats had started making corsairs a long time ago, and had also committed to hydralisks for a fair amount of time.

Stats overreacted ridiculously to these late mutalisks, maybe because he was afraid he had stopped making corsairs for too long after his early air domination. Even though Hogil only had a handful of mutalisks in his stack, Stats must have thought it was a full control group or more as he sent his entire ground army on a suicidal counter-attack.

Hogil thanked Stats for discarding all of his zealots and counter attacked with mass hydralisks he had actually been focusing on. With nothing left to defend with, Stats GG’d.

Match Rating: 2/10
Decision making this bad is usually reserved for players named Killer.

There was a double dose of trickery in play with Stats going for double gates at his natural while Hogil tried a sneaky overpool expansion to another base’s natural. There was an extra wrench in the works as both players tried to cut corners in scouting. Stats scouted only up to the naturals at each starting location and thus missed Hogil’s main completely, while Hogil didn’t bother to drone scout at all.

The two players did manage to figure out the actual situation fairly quickly, as Hogil saw two very early zealots with a slowly drifting overlord scout while some extra probe scouting alerted Stats to his oversight. In any case, forward gates against an overpool with hatcheries on opposite ends of the map was a tough order for Hogil. In addition, Stats’s gateway simcity at his natural had only a single zealot sized gap in it, which nullified the zergling backdoors which were the only real weakness of his build.

Hogil tried to keep both of his hatcheries instead of cancelling his expansion, to which Stats replied by blocking off Hogil’s main ramp with four zealots and mauling Hogil’s expansion hatchery with the rest. At the same time, Stats made the interesting choice of going for a nexus at his natural instead of playing a 1 base vs 1 base game against his impoverished opponent.

There was an ace in the hole for Hogil in a mad dash to spire amidst the initial melees. However, with just 1 hatchery and 1 gas there were severe limitations to what he could do. To give Hogil credit, he did a lot better with 1 hatch muta-ling than one might expect, but there was no realistic way to win. He nullified Stat’s main with mutas for a time, but Stat’s economy was much stronger even with just one base’s worth of mining. A zealot counter finished what remained of Hogil’s drones while dragoons and corsairs mopped up the mutalings at home. Seeing the hopelessness of the situation, Hogil GG’d.

Match Rating: 4/10
The botched scouting and the 1 hatch mutalisks gave this game some comedic value.

Stats came out with his third different build of the night in a +1 speedlot rush. Hogil was almost caught powering too hard, but he started producing hydralisks just in time. There was a close battle at Hogil’s third base, which ended in a successful defense for the Zerg player with heavy losses on both sides.

As in game one, Hogil went for an abrupt mutalisk tech switch. This time he actually had a dangerous number of mutalisks and caught Stats off-guard. Stats had to abandon his main for a while as he produced more corsairs and merged templars into archons.

However, Hogil predicted this move from Stats and transitioned back into mass hydralisks. Combined with mutalisks to remove high templars, Hogil’s hydralisk wave could not be stopped.

Match Rating: 2/10
The Zerg tech switch is a strong ZvP move for sure, but Stats looked unusually terrible against it.

When you consider that this map has been played as an isle by many players, it was surprising to see Shine open with a shamelessly greedy three hatch build and eat a not-particularly-fast one base M&M drop from Suny.

Suny had a very interesting strategy planned out, one might say it theoretically countered a three hatch muta build completely. Starting with a fast M&M drop, Suny’s plan was to follow that up with fast valkyries to kill off the mutalisks to come, and even build bunkers in the enemy main to create some sort of anti-air stronghold.

In practice, Suny couldn’t quite get things to work out the way he had imagined. Upon being dropped, Shine quickly ran all his drones to his natural where there was sunken cover, which left Suny’s 1 dropship load of troops with their pick of tech buildings to destroy. They took out the spire first, but not before Shine was able to start a decent amount of mutalisks hatching. The M&M had started firing on the spawning pool and a valkyrie had come in to cover them by the time the mutalisks hatched. The marines tried to run back to the newly completed bunker when the mutas swooped in, but over-stimming with just one medic allowed mutalisk bounce to finish off all the marines before they could reach the bunker (some serendipity here). Suny tried a follow-up drop of M&M, but Shine had already made a round of speedlings in anticipation.

All in all, Shine had come out quite well for having eaten a M&M drop flush in the face. He had preserved his drones while killing the Terran troops with very few losses of his own. The only real damage he had taken was losing his spire and spawning pool, but he was in no immediate danger of losing as two defeated drops had depleted Suny’s army for the time being.

The danger would be in the follow up hanbang force Suny was massing off one-base while Shine waited for his new pool and spire to finish. With three rax, a factory, and a staport, Suny put together a fearsome force of M&Ms, two tanks, and two valkyries very quickly.

The rush came at a very dangerous time for Shine, who was forced to defend with pure muta-ling. It was disappointing then, that Suny did not include any firebats in his army. Suny was more than ready to handle to Shine’s mutalisks, but did not having enough ground firepower to take on mass speedlings. With two or three firebats he could very well have won the game.

Suny tried to belated defend and expand afterwards, but this put Shine right back in his comfort zone. Mutalisks harassment kept Suny at bay until lurkers arrived, upon seeing which Suny quickly GG’d (a bit early).

Match Rating: 6/10
Suny's strategy was really well planned out, and it works out so brilliantly on paper. Suny's execution and moment by moment decision making were inferior to Shine's, so he couldn't utilize the strategy to its fullest. I'm looking forward to Flash's play on Pathfinder and what strategies he and the KT coaching staff can come up with.

Though not the sharpest ZvT player around, going against Suny made Shine look downright clinical.

Suny opened with the normal rax FE, but played extremely passively to allow Shine an easy third base and a lot of drone production time. By the time Suny had his first big army ready to push out, Shine displayed what a free-powering Zerg could do by having a formidable lurker – ling – mutalisk army of his own at the ready.

While an epic battle would have pleased the fans, Shine had different ideas. Before Suny could depart too far from his base, he found his natural being swarmed by a giant Zerg force. In a moment of what could only be explained by a powerful case of TV nerves, Suny fled all of his SCVs to his main, where his attention lapsed for just long enough so that two lurkers could kill 90% of them. Suny’s micro continued to fail him, as many of his returning marines haplessly walked into lurker spines and to their doom.

Even though Suny managed to survive this attack, it was clear that the game was lost. Too many SCVs had perished, and there was no way Suny could have a serviceable army before Shine struck again. Suny decided not to drag the game out any further, and GG’d after a last ditch attack.

Match Rating: 1/10
One of the worst TvZ showings at the professional level we've seen in a very long time.

Shine won 2-0.

Hydra opened overpool against Kwanro’s 12 hatch exp, giving him the initiative early. Instead of early ling pressure, Hydra opted to use his faster pool for faster tech while expanding as well. Kwanro paraded some speedlings in front of Hydra’s natural as a threat, but did not commit to any attacks. And so, the game proceeded to spire stage without much incident.

With spire complete, Hydra’s mutaling caught Kwanro reacting slowly by taking out speedlings that had been in an advance position too long. This created a ground and air imbalance for Kwanro which Hydra exploited right away.

Attacking Kwanro’s main by air and natural by land forced Kwanro to choose a location to defend first. Kwanro opted to chase Hydra’s mutas around his main, which allowed Hydra’s lings to get several drone kills at Kwanro’s natural.

After restoring the barest semblance of order to his base, Kwanro immediately went on the counter-attack with his air units. After the usual ZvZ air fight where no one really knows what is going on until it’s over, Kwanro emerged victorious and received the GG from Hydra.

Match Rating: 2/10
Your typical ZvZ that builds up to a muta ball vs muta ball fight where you really don’t understand the reasons for victory.

Both Kwanro and Hydra went for mirroring 11 pool expansion builds. The parity was broken early when Kwanro failed at a zergling run by into Hydra’s main. Hydra used his brief zergling advantage to attack Kwanro’s natural and kill a single drone, while making a couple more for himself.

These small advantages mounted into the spire stage, as Hydra had the economy to mine two gas and make continuous mutalisks from two hatcheries, while Kwanro was forced to take his 2nd gas later while making more scourge than were optimal. There were no twists, as Hydra used this advantage to win the air war straight up and take the game.

Match Rating: 4/10
That’s ZvZ for you. Get a three zergling advantage early on which snowballs into a significant mutalisk advantage ten minutes later. I dunno if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Kwanro opened 12 pool expand while Hydra went for the slightly advantageous 12 hatch expansion. Hydra massed zerglings and tried to time an attack just as Kwanro’s spire was about to finish, but just barely failed to break through. Kwanro tried to counter-attack with his own zerglings soon after, but he experienced some tough luck as Hydra had sent another zergling force by a different path. Hydra brought Kwanro’s spire HP down into the double digits before Kwanro’s lings returned to just barely save the day.

The fear of mutalisks flying in and sniping his spire kept Kwanro pinned inside his base until Hydra decided he had enough mutalisks to attack. Kwanro’s scourge heavy composition lost to Hydra’s higher ratio of mutalisks as usually happens in ZvZ, and it was GG.

Match Rating: 3/10
I dunno man, it’s ZvZ. For ZvZ, one to ten is probably too complex a scale considering the typical BW fan’s tastes. A system of “watch” and “don’t watch” might suffice for this matchup.

Both playered mirrored 11 pool expansions to open the game. As with most mirror build ZvZ’s, there was an extended period of tense stalemate as the players waited for air units to become available.

Zero decided to initiate the usual just-before-spire zergling confrontation by attacking Hogil’s natural. Hogil made a terrible micro mistake in the battle, as a significant fraction of his zergling force stood idly aside before joining the fight. This let Zero win with a handful of zerglings leftover, which went on to cause significant drone damage.

Zero went for the kill with superior mutalisk numbers, but Hogil pulled off a good counter-attack with his own mutalisks to snipe some drones and force a temporary retreat. However, vacating his main left Hogil open to a counter-counter attack from Zero’s zerglings, which effectively bottomed out Hogil’s economy. Hogil’s GG was not long in coming.

Match Rating: 5/10
A little bit screwy with all the backdoor attacks, but at least I didn’t have to see a ling vs ling battle or muta vs muta battle where the cause of victory cannot be perceived by eye.

Zero opened 9 pool gas while Hogil went for an overpool expansion with late gas. Unlike other ZvZ build order matchups with a two drone difference seen so far that week (like 12 pool vs 12 hatch), this scenario differed in that the low drone count of the 9 pool player made it difficult for him to catch up in hatchery count in reasonable time.

Basically, Zero would have a 30 second window where his zerglings had speed and Hogil did not to win the game, or else he would be at a very large economic disadvantage. Zero did what he had to and committed to a fight as Hogil’s hatch was just about to finish morphing, but he lost the fight despite superior upgrades and positioning (ah, the mysteries of ZvZ).

Now the only advantage Zero had left was a significantly faster lair, but that would not be much of an advantage as Hogil would soon prove. Even though his opponent had a much quicker spire, Hogil’s superior drone count and two hatcheries meant that he could vastly outproduce Zero in zerglings. Hogil simply sent waves of speedlings on suicide drone raids, which whittled down Zero’s already faltering economy and forced all of his mutalisks to stay back on defense.

Though Hogil lost far more minerals worth of zerglings than Zero lost in drones, the end result was still eight drones left for Hogil and just two for Zero. It didn’t matter that Hogil hadn’t even started on his spire, having only spore colonies for air defense. With two drones left, Zero couldn’t even mine the gas to make his spire work.

Eventually Hogil got his spire up, and his 2 hatch 2 base easily prevailed over Zero’s one hatch one base.

Match Rating: 5/10
The game was a one-sided affair after Zero failed to exploit the brief thirty second window where his build could beat Hogil’s. However, Hogil’s hatchery advantage was not one that could be manifested immediately, and he showed good patience and decision making to make sure he won very slowly but very safely.

The game began with mirroring 11 pool expansions. There wasn’t much action early on, with both players playing identically until the spires were nearly finished. Hogil decided to make extra lings with his larva before spire completed, hoping to get a temporary advantage while Zero was saving his larva for mutalisks. This strategy succeeded in letting Hogil break through Zero’s front line, but surprisingly he only got two drone kills with his leftover Zerglings. Considering how his zergling investment left him behind in mutalisk count, it was not a good trade at all. Furthermore, a small six zergling backdoor by Zero killed a pair of Hogil’s drones, giving Zero the lead in every department.

A heated air battle occurred, where both players broke off without any clear victor. However, Zero used the distraction to send another backdoor zergling raid. Zero cut down Hogil’s drone count to the point where he could not fully mine two gas, which would mean a huge air advantage for Zero in minutes.

With a clear lead in the air, Zero tried to force a conclusion to the game by attacking Hogil head on. Hogil’s fled from the hopeless battle, but to his luck, Zero gave chase instead of ransacking his main. Hogil milked this to the best of his abilities, luring Zero’s mutalisks away as far as possible while he build spore colonies in his main and backdoored Zero with zerglings.

Zero’s focus on hunting down Hogil’s mutalisks did give him an insurmountable air advantage, but it was still a poor decision. At least he could have spent some more time microing his drones at home, as he lost way more of his workers than he should have to Hogil’s backdoor. He was left in an extremely unbalanced situation where he had control of the air but only four drones.

Having made one poor decision already, Zero went on to make a chain of them. He tried to poke at Hogil’s main, to which Hogil calmly replied by backdooring all four remaining drones with his tattered air force. Zero didn’t realize he would be in a no-drone situation quickly enough, and he made quite an “OH F***” face when his cancelled egg only brought him to 33 minerals.

Zero needed to be very decisive right then, but the he panicked in his difficult and unusual situation. For the casual observer, Zero’s course of action was obvious. Zero had around a control group of mutalisks, while Hogil had 2 spore colonies defending his main. With all of Hogil’s mutalisks still away on their backdoor mission, Zero should have immediately focused down the spore colonies while he had the opportunity. That way he could kill all of Hogil’s drones as well and put himself in a superior position for an elimination fight.

Instead, Zero… stalled. It looked like he was just doing what came instinctively, and that was to pick away at the edges of Hogil’s base ala TvZ. Hogil’s mutalisks returned to defend, but he was forced to give up his spire and evolution chamber as they were built near the edges of the creep.

With no more obvious moves left for Zero, this was the situation we were left in: 12 mutalisks, 0 drones for Zero, 4 drones, 4 mutalisks, and 2 spore colonies for Hogil. Zero could only fly around the edges of Hogil’s base now, as every target would now be well defended. A suicide attack on Hogil’s drones was a possibility, but at best it would be a draw while failure could mean a loss.

Fortunately for Zero, the pressure got to Hogil as well. Forgetting he had only four drones and that Zerg buildings require drones to build, Hogil crippled his own economy by making an evolution chamber and a creep colony. Only after they were complete did he realize his mistake, making an “oh s***” face of his own.

Two drones would be much easier to snipe than four, and Hogil took them off mining and hid them in his defenses until he could decide on what to do. After a minute or so of deliberating, he tried to sneak one off to his natural hoping that Zero had forgotten about it, but Zero sensed it and flew off to kill the drone. The distraction gave him enough time to get a few rounds of minerals, bringing his count up to 54.

Hogil sat around for a few minutes, hiding his drone and thinking about whether he should make another drone or finish his third spore colony. However, he mulled around for too long, and the natural drift of air units began to move the overlords obscuring his drones. There was only a sliver of drone visible but Zero accurately sniped it and ran.


A few minutes of stalling ensued as Hogil could not bring himself to make a move given his dilemma. Before too long, the KeSPA referee decided to intervene. Asked whether they would accept a draw, both players agreed that it was a stalemate.

Match Rating: 8/10
Unusual and tense situations made for great entertainment. There’s a decent amount of stalling however, although not as bad as some matches. You have been warned.


Re-game
Technically a rematch of game 3, the deciding game took place once more on Aztec.

If the last game was unusual, the rematch followed one of the typical ZvZ clichés. Hogil had a slight build order advantage with a 12 hatch expand versus Zero’s 12 pool, and he rode this to an easy victory after a muta battle.

Match Rating: 3/10
Surprisingly, the most “normal” ZvZ played in week four. Not a good thing.

by Milkis

The game starts off with a standard 3 hatch versus a Forge FE. However, Shine fails to kill off Bisu's scouting Probe early, and his Zerglings spend a good minute or two chasing it around, while Bisu pokes at Shine's Natural with a Zealot. Shine, however, pulls of some nice micro and manages to kill the Zealot without losing a single drone.

Bisu responds with a +1 Speedlots, sending them towards Shine's 3rd, all the while managing to mass corsairs, taking over the air for a short while. Shine loses all his Drones at his third, but manages to hold on while Bisu prepares yet another push toward into Shine's third, which with the help of Dark Templars and the corsairs, he manages take down.

What Shine managed to do well during this time was to reduce the number of Corsairs with Scourge, suddenly reclaiming air superiority with his Mutalisks. The Mutalisks go around and take over Bisu's main, but Bisu responds by dropping Dark Templars and Zealots into Shine's main.

Shine loses his main, leaving him with only a natural. However, this puts him at an advantage against Bisu -- who could not mine from either of his bases due to Mutalisks harass, which leads to all of his Templars being sniped. This opens Bisu up to a Hydra Ling Bust by Shine, who does not miss this opening and bursts through Bisu's natural, and Bisu concedes.

by Milkis

Both players decide to go for game ending builds this time around -- Bisu with Five Gateways, and Shine with a 3 hatch no Lair Hydrabust. Shine does a good job keeping Bisu away from this knowledge, going as far as cancelling a Hydralisk building at his third in the face of a scouting Probe.

However, where Bisu went wrong was when he did not build any more cannons past his first two he had built to deal with Shine's early Zerglings. Bisu, through his sheer number of gateways, manages to hold off the first wave of Hydralisks with his Dragoons.

Bisu finishes his +1, and Shine has trouble bursting through initially. Bisu moves his Dragoons out, which is quickly hit by Zerglings and Hydralisks. Bisu pulls probes to defend, effectively ending the game as Bisu can no longer support 5 gateways. Shine slowly bursts his way through with Zerglings and Hydras.

Bisu manages to hold from his main, and finally destroy Shine's army back at the cost of his Natural. Knowing that he needs to end this now, Bisu pushes with what remains of his army, but is quickly overrun by Shine's reinforcements. Bisu concedes.

Shine won 2-0.