Group A:
Flash 1-1
Kal 1-1
Paralyze 0-2
Hyuk 2-0

[VOD] Flash < Aztec > Kal
[VOD] Paralyze < Gladiator > Hyuk
[VOD] Flash < Pathfinder > Paralyze
[VOD] Kal < Pathfinder > Hyuk
[VOD] Hyuk < Icarus > Flash

Group B:
Jaedong 1-1
HiyA 2-0
Calm 1-1
HoGiL 0-2

[VOD] Calm < Gladiator > HoGiL
[VOD] Jaedong < Pathfinder > HiyA
[VOD] HiyA < Icarus > HoGiL
[VOD] Jaedong < Icarus > Calm
[VOD] HiyA < Aztec > Calm

Group C:
Stork 2-0
Mind 1-1
Sea 0-2
Shine 1-1

[VOD] Stork < Pathfinder > Mind
[VOD] Sea < Icarus > Shine
[VOD] Stork < Aztec > Sea
[VOD] Mind < Aztec > Shine
[VOD] Shine < Gladiator > Stork

Group D:
free 0-2
Hydra 1-1
Fantasy 1-1
Modesty 2-0

[VOD] Fantasy < Icarus > Modesty
[VOD] free < Aztec > Hydra
[VOD] Hydra < Gladiator > Modesty
[VOD] free < Gladiator > Fantasy
[VOD] Hydra < Pathfinder > Fantasy

Paralyze vs Flash on Pathfinder. Pretty standard openings, Flash did his usual rax cc which I think is fairly abusive but whatever, it works for him because he's very competent at defending. Paralyse threw two dragoons and a zealot at the bunker, despite mass scvs repairing. After his zealot died and he lost a lot of dragoon shields he wised up and just counter-expanded instead. Flash made two quick factories, one with a machine shop rushing vulture speed and making tanks while the other pumped out a load of vultures. However Paralyse noticed his delayed siege mode and sniped a tank before blocking the vulture counterattack with a pylon wall at his natural.

Paralyse responded with a reaver which was fairly effective despite being scouted as the shuttle flew over mines, finding openings and killing several vultures. As the reaver sought to contain Flash, Paralyse rushed to two base carrier, Blue Storm style. Flash took a third, built an armoury and started his upgrades in classic Flash defensive style and despite Paralyse making a lot of gateway units there wasn't much he could do. Instead he took his third and made a load of dragoons and zealots with no speed.

They started trading units over Flash's third. Paralyse had a massive amount of dragoons supporting his carriers but Flash was on nine factories and pumping pure goliaths and tanks. As 2-1 upgrades finished Flash had just a few screenlengths to push from his third to Paralyse's natural in what Wax described as "the most imba push position on this map".

Some sloppy tank placement early in the push threw away four or so tanks and as the push advanced it was eventually held, then rolled back. Carriers over the cliff sniped tanks and there simply weren't the tank numbers to really hammer the dragoons into the ground. 0-0-0 dragoons traded evenly with 2-1 goliaths and Paralyse held his ground while Flash took his mineral only, still a base ahead.

Paralyse kept sending units the long way around the map to try and pressure and divert units from the main push but they were largely ineffectual. Flash was still able to concentrate his forces into that single avenue of attack and it was a question of whether the carrier fleet could harass it enough for the much smaller dragoon force to clean up. Paralyse was really hurting for gas too, somehow squeezing some high templar out but paying the price in upgrades and falling a long way behind. Eventually there was just too much well upgraded mech and Paralyse just couldn't stem the tide while a base behind. GG.

This was in part a map/base sites issue. Flash would always find it easy to push and Paralyse would always find it hard to take his fourth. In my opinion he needed to take the other main base and simply wall it in. With a gateway in the wall for dragoons it'd be tricky for Flash to pressure, he'd have to commit a lot of resources on the opposite side of the map which would leave a lot of potential for carrier harassment. Without a fairly early expansion to the other main he was doomed by the base sites and Paralyse didn't seem to recognise that he was playing a base site behind all game. As I said last week, good ideas but let down by not identifying how he needed to transition in the short term to give himself what he needed to win. Flash played like Flash, a quick expansion, solid macro, good upgrades and an easy win. Maybe some sloppy micro but still a solid win.

Flash: 4/5
Paralyse: 3/5
Game: 3/5

Kal spawned at 8 in red while Hyuk got blue at 12 on Pathfinder. These positions favoured Kal as his mineral only cuts off one of the avenues of attack and gives him a narrow choke to hold while his natural feeds into the middle of the map. Hyuk opted for an overpool with just two zerglings and two fast expansions while Kal went for a forge nexus gateway cannon and therefore gets my approval. However he did send his scout probe home without being threatened at all, and thus missed seeing Hyuk's lair.

Fortunately Hyuk wasn't making any zerglings and therefore Kal was able to send out another probe and scout, discovering a lair and a LOT of drones. Kal went for +1 and a stargate while Hyuk got zergling speed and made quite a few speedlings, transitioning into five hatch hydra. Kal's reaversair transition was scouted by scourge and Kal didn't really have much stuff. He had a few corsairs with +1 on the way and one stargate, a few slowlots with +1 on the way and one gateway and a reaver in a shuttle while the Zerg had five hatcheries, a lot of income and a lot of stuff. Kal needed to get something done.

The shuttle ran blindly into some hydralisks and just managed to escape, ending the harassment phase with absolutely no damage done while Kal added five more gateways. However he still didn't have much stuff and as he took a reaver to go harass Hyuk just killed him. Kal's investment in corsairs and reavers really slowed himself down while Hyuk's investment in economy had borne fruit. Kal's gateways hadn't really kicked in yet and even if they had they couldn't match an equal number of hatcheries; Kal wasn't ready to be attacked yet. GG.



Hyuk never really made anything throughout the early game. He went to lair off of two slow zerglings, went to five hatcheries off of a dozen speedlings and didn't make a single mutalisk. It is no surprise then that when he went hydralisks there were a lot of them and it was pretty early. Therefore the question is why was Kal so unprepared for them? He had just two cannons, he sent one of his two reavers to go harass and he wasn't rushing to storm. I think Kal came into this game with a fairly rigid plan and didn't adapt to Hyuk's unorthodox build. Hyuk gets some credit for the build though, getting a ridiculous amount of hydralisks just before Kal got the stuff he needed to kill them.

Hyuk: 4
Kal: 2
Game: 2

Calm spawned at 3 in blue while Jaedong got orange at 6 on Icarus. Both players scouted anticlockwise which of course favoured The Tyrant. Their openings varied a little, Jaedong opting for an overgas pool while Calm went for a nine pool eight extractor into lair. Jaedong's lair was only marginally slower and his zerglings hit the ramp at the exact right time to resist Calm's faster zergling rush.

Both players began to pump zerglings as is standard in this phase of the matchup and a stalemate on Calm's ramp developed as neither felt they could attack into the other. However Jaedong had a plan to use his slightly greater gas, taking his expansion to give him sufficient larva to throw into scourge. Normally in ZvZ scourge are a pretty inefficient use of larva but they are cost effective in minerals and gas if you can make them without your macro slipping.

Calm eventually scouted the expansion and attacked while taking his own at 1 but his zerglings lost to Jaedong's zergling concave and despite some particularly ferocious muta dogfighting Jaedong emerged the victor in the skies too. Calm immediately admitted defeat and GGed.

Jaedong's build here was extremely tight. His zergling timing on the ramp was perfect, not a second too soon and his plan was clear. He was trying to have more gas than his opponent and create a situation where he could exploit that to make both scourge and mutalisks where his opponent just had mutalisks, win an early air battle and follow it up to win the game. It worked and he won. Calm's play was pretty flawless too, he executed a perfect nine pool into mutalisks and didn't make any real micro mistakes. He could perhaps have not fallen back to his ramp so he wouldn't so easily be contained while Jaedong expanded but I feel this was largely a case of Jaedong coming up with a clever counterbuild.

Jaedong: 4
Calm: 4
Game: 3

HiyA vs HoGiL on Icarus. HiYa spawned in teal at 9 while HoGiL got orange at 6, close positions but with the vulnerable mineral lines sheltered. HoGiL opened twelve eleven thirteen (hatch-pool-gas) while the Terran did a rax cc. A wave of Zerglings came within a second of doing a lot of damage but some very nice bunker timing held them off and both went into standard macro play. Three hatch muta with a strong economy tried to hold map control while Hogil took the main base expansion at 3, while HiYa responded with a well timed M&M attack to try and pressure Zerg's third base.

The hydralisks sent to morph on the ramp were a little late and were gunned down as both players sent everything they had to the crucial location. There was a fierce battle with rounds of reinforcements arriving from both sides, but Hogil was eventually successful in holding his expansion by trading mutaling with M&M until his lurkers were complete. This left both players still fairly even, HoGiL had his third gas up which left him still in the game as he headed to hive but was still short of the magic four gas needed for strong defiler/lurker play. Meanwhile HiYa was double upgrading, pumping tanks and making vessels for a fearsome pre-hive push, but it was beginning to look a little like an all-in as he had no viable expansion in sight.

HiYa pushed out at an excellent time before consume upgrade for defilers was complete, forcing HoGiL to engage him in the field. The resulting fight was messy, with lurkers striking a divided Terran force, but getting flanked in turn when Hiya brought the rest of his army to bear. The battle was extremely close and both armies were pretty much wiped out leaving HoGiL saving his natural while he took the natural at 3.

HiYa continued to two base pressure despite the fact he was running out of minerals, going for a double dropship attack to see if his constant pressure had broken Hogil's composure. As it turned out, HoGiL was totally unprepared for this attack after his string of good defenses on the ground. Despite being able to keep up the defence at his natural, Hogil could not stop the dropships simply ferrying more units up into his main. He needed to keep the fight confined to a few small fronts, once it got into the open ground of his main the defilers were overstretched and lacked the numbers or narrow positions to use dark swarm effectively. Despite solid defences at his natural and two more gas bases set up, the blow of losing all of his tech and two hatcheries at his main was too much for Hogil, and he GG'd.

This game was very even with solid play by both players. HiYa pressured very intensively and did alright given how far across the map the Zerg third was, but HoGiL also did a good job of dealing with him, far better than Jaedong did last week. The Terran forces never made it to his bases, he didn't need to cut drones or sunken up, HoGiL did very nicely. His build was solid, he three hatched, took a third gas, went to hive, took a fourth gas and got defilers, simple and logical. HiYa's was worse in my opinion, two basing and trying over and over to do damage before four gas defilers got going. That timing with the dropships was his last real opportunity to get something done and although it is a very strong timing it was a little allin. Still, it was very nice to pressure that heavily and switch fronts at the one timing where Zerg was least capable of dealing with it. He hit the tiny window where Zerg has enough defilers to stall at all of the important land routes, but not all of the ground in his four bases.

HiYa: 4/5
HoGiL: 4/5
Game: 4/5

Stork got red at 5 while Sea got teal at 12 on Aztec. Stork opened with a standard gas core range but after scouting Sea's rax cc opening he cancelled range and took a fast expansion and robo. Sea followed his first factory with siege mode, a starport and turrets, covering all of Stork's options. Sea hit with a vulture tank drop at the same time as Stork hit with a zealot reaver drop and both were successful precisely because the other had gone for a drop build. Sea had no tanks to defend and Stork couldn't get his few dragoons to bear on the tank with buildings, minerals and mines in their way. However he took a third base and added gateways at the same time giving him somewhere to maynard his probes to and enough units to hold his main.

Stork's reaver harass looked like it'd be really dangerous as he took down two tanks but some extremely unfortunate mine timing took out his reaver before it had really done much damage (editor's note: it was a micro mistake, you fanboy). At the same time his dragoon micro was letting him down in his main and it was just the mineral only at 6 keeping him in it. However the dragoon production kept going and the next drop Sea attempted was shut down with ease. Sea had yet to transition into mass ground units while Stork was on three bases and was throwing every mineral he earned into gateway units and reavers so when Sea tried to expand to the mineral only at 3 Stork smashed into him.

The tanks were cut down at the hands of some more reaver micro and Stork shut down the expansion attempt at 3 with just mass dragoons, slowzealots and a reaver. Sea had only had one factory early game which had spent much of its production time on vultures for the drops, so his tank count was low and he was relying on Stork discontinuing reaver production after the initial harass. Stork refused to spend any money transitioning into more standard counters to tanks such as arbiters, speedlots or storm which allowed him to attack much earlier, breaking through by sheer force of reaver micro. As Sea struggled to hold the push at his natural Stork made yet another fantastic move, move firing his dragoons into Sea's natural to kill the tanks there.

I love this because I hate the way Terrans think they can just defend a base with one or two tanks placed at the back, so it's awesome when Protoss players just have the balls to say "Are you f***ing kidding me?" and just take pure dragoons and shove them in there.

At the same time Stork was setting up his fourth and making a million gateways to keep the pressure on and consolidate his victory. He remained on gateway tech but would not let Sea take a third and the constant pressure and tank losses meant Sea couldn't even secure his own bases. Mech terran relies on reaching a critical tank mass, and the constant dragoon attacks and losses in drops were taking their toll. Stork made a dozen gateways and just hulksmashed his opponent. GG.

Sea's build was very ambitious and could easily have worked. If he'd been given any respite then the Protoss would quickly have found themselves suffering from harass on multiple fronts while the tanks built up behind a solid wall across three bases. Sea just needed a bit of momentum to allow him to consolidate his holdings and then he could ride his economic advantage to victory. Therefore I need to give a lot of credit to Stork for refusing to let his losses to the tank/vulture combo in his main or his reaver loss get him down. In the face of harass and losing units on both fronts Stork's response was to make a load more of what he was already losing with and smash into the heart of his opponent. Sea simply wasn't expecting it and didn't have the units to deal with micro as good as Stork's. From then on Stork simply had more income and could dictate the game as a pure macrofest.

Stork: 5/5
Sea: 3/5
Game: 4/5

Shine spawned at 8 in orange while Mind got green at 4 on Aztec. Shine nine pooled while pumping drones and taking a quick expansion while Mind went depot rax depot in his main which doesn't really flow into any transition in my opinion. Six zerglings came out and Mind was forced to pull scbs onto his ramp to wall it. Eventually his one barracks had produced enough marines to let him push up and he killed every zergling with some very nice micro, following with a command centre at his natural. Shine added a third hatchery in his main while Mind pressured with his marines, not trying to fight (they were half dead, had no support, no upgrades and Mind couldn't replace them) but just trying to force a few zerglings.

Mind reached the midgame with an advantage, having three rax, an ebay, academy and a decent force by the time Shine's three hatch mutalisks were out. However it all looked very standard, Shine taking an expansion at 12 while his mutalisks took map control in typical ZvT fashion. He followed with the very standard evo, lurkers and queens nest, giving himself the assets he'd need to survive the midgame and play the lategame. Mutaling and mnm clashed with favourable results for Shine as he kept his opponent off the middle of the map with micro. Buoyed by the success of his mutalisks Shine tried to keep the pressure on his opponent with his first lurkers rather than surrender the initiative. Unfortunately for him he simply didn't have the units to be investing in the late game as much as he was while aggressively containing his opponents and the result was a massacre.


Mind pushed out and Shine's defiler mound was only just finishing with just three gas, not enough to stop Mind in his tracks. A small force escorted three tanks up to Shine's natural and Shine had to sacrifice a lot of units to clear them. He finally got defilers with consume out but by this point Mind had taken his mineral only third and added many factories to start pumping vultures. Mind had just four barracks and now added two armouries showing he had always intended to transition into a very strong mech late game.

As Mind pumped out vultures and tanks he became increasingly aggressive with his remaining mnm, hitting Shine's main with a drop and killing the hydralisk den and defiler mound while his main force attacked 12, killing all the units defending the ramp and pressuring Shine hard. Although he was able to clean up the mnm Shine GGed shortly afterwards when the first wave of mech hit 12, recognising the futility of trying to fight mech with just three gas.

I liked both of their play here. Mind managed to get an awful lot out of a fairly low number of mnm, pressuring effectively off of four rax without really commiting to mnm play. He was able to force Shine into countering one style while retaining his own flexibility so he could smoothly tech switch into a win late game without Shine being able to follow. Shine was doing nicely until he decided to take the few units he made for defence during the investment phase of his plan and attack with them. He needed to make Mind fight to push across the map while taking the 1 natural as his fourth gas for defiler play, by throwing all those lurkers away he let Mind inflict a lot of damage before defilers were out and he could never establish a fourth gas. Without a fourth gas Shine could never get enough gas units to get map control and in turn take a fourth gas, there was a critical timing and he was too impetuous to hit it.

Shine: 2
Mind: 4
Game: 3

Hydra spawned in orange at 11 while Modesty got green at 2 on Gladiator. Hydra's overlord scouted directly towards Modesty while Modesty's headed for the centre of the map. Their openings differed wildly with hydra opening pool extractor overlord while Modesty opted for a pretty unusual nine hatchery, eight pool extractor.

Hydra's opening was a very standard ling rush but although his zerglings made it to Modesty's natural before Modesty had any zerglings he could do no damage. Modesty's build rushed to mass zergling production and exploiting their cheap cost to cut drones without a disadvantage. He was playing with two hatcheries against one while Modesty's surplus income was invested in the standard lair spire transition.

Naturally as the game progressed Modesty's zerglings massively outnumbered Hydra's and Hydra was forced to make a sunken colony and use all his larva for zerglings just to survive. Modesty hit him with masslings and when the dust settled Hydra had just two drones and two mutalisks against Modesty's ten or so drones across two bases with two spore colonies. Modesty could simply pump drones and with a greater starting income, twice the unit production capacity and twice the minerals to mine the game would be over in short order. Or so I thought...

Modesty's spore colonies were sim citied into his bases to avoid being exposed to zerglings. This meant they were also not covering the mineral lines allowing a single mutalisk to shut down all the mining in Modesty's main. Suddenly it looked a little more interesting, Modesty unable to exploit the innate advantages of his position to recover economically.

Modesty responded by producing another massive wave of zerglings, stopping his opponent from pumping drones while the 100/100 cost of mutalisks was out of reach for a player with a handful of drones. Hydra struggled to hold onto his mineral line but each time drones were forced to drill into the zerglings to save the sunken their count was reduced. Hydra split his two mutalisks, one to sit on Modesty's main mineral line while the other defended but the attacking mutalisk suicided itself into the spore colony for no reason. As the last of Modesty's zerglings died Hydra found himself with just a mutalisk and two drones. He needed to keep his mutalisk back to defend and he couldn't afford to make a second one any time soon. It'd destroy any hopes of economic recovery to save up for one and it'd only cost Modesty 175 minerals to add a spore and counter it. The writing was on the wall and Hydra GGed.

This was a very interesting ZvZ for me showing two distinctive styles of play. Modesty's build was very lean, immediately getting two hatcheries, zergling speed and just the right number of drones to pump lings. It worked perfectly against Hydra's spire build, not allowing him to save larva for mutalisks or to power drones and continually pressuring him. According to the ZvZ textbook Hydra's position was stronger but Modesty's second hatchery allowed him to continually outproduce his opponent. Larva are like a third resource for Zerg, they must choose how best to spend their limited production income. Zerglings may be cheap in terms of minerals but two zerglings have the same larva cost as a mutalisk and it was this, with his fast hatchery, that Modesty exploited. At the critical time in the game Hydra didn't have the larva to defend his economy and from then on he didn't have the larva to recover it. Very nice to watch.

Hydra: 3
Modesty: 4
Game: 4

free vs Fantasy on Gladiator. Free spawned in purple at 8 while Fantasy got orange at 2. Both opted for standard openings heading for a factory and cybernetics core respectively as you'd expect. Fantasy went for a rather unusual transition with an expansion, a vulture first from his factory and a bunker forcing Free to cancel dragoon range and respond with his own expansion. Free decided Fantasy wouldn't be pressuring any time soon so rather than resume range he immediately rushed to robotics and observers. Both ended the early game by playing defensively and focusing on scouting with fast comsats and observers respectively.

Free expanded at 7 and Fantasy started making moves on the map in that direction, hesitantly moving tanks around the bottom middle of the map and trying to set up mine traps. However he eventually decided against it and took his mineral only instead. Fantasy got a lot of use out of his vultures but Free was even better, using his observers to block Fantasy over and over and deny a lot of potential harass. With his third base up Free headed to arbiters as standard while Fantasy made a lot of factories with no starport and just one armoury, preparing himself for a timing push. However Free's observers were again there to see it and the cross positions favoured him, Fantasy was unable to set up a push.

Both players took a fourth, Fantasy at 1 and Free at 9 and both transitioned to their planned lategame with a second stargate and armoury. Free's macro was really showing as he surged ahead to 200/200 gateway units, a full 40 supply ahead of his opponent. So, channeling the spirit of Kal, he recalled Fantasy's main the moment he maxed. This could have done massive amounts of damage if he'd put a second arbiter in the force he was recalling and stasised the ramp. That's the right way to do it, it's not one of those situational things, it's basically if you want to tear their base up then you stasis the ramp. But he didn't and as such he just killed the starport, science facility and a load of depots. Fantasy cleaned it up with ease and the buildings lost were rapidly replaced. The only thing it had achieved was gaining Free some breathing room to expand at 4.

Free continued to pressure his opponent, not because he could really do much damage but more to distract his opponent from the expansions being taken at 3 and 5. However eventually Fantasy pushed out and the retaliatory recall at 2 was shrugged off by Fantasy who continued to push right into Free's natural. However Free had diversified both his income and his production and although Fantasy was marauding around the centre of the map Free still had mining going on at both other main base sites. His main gateways survived and new gateways were being produced at 11. When Fantasy's main army went to attack 4 Free was able to counter into Fantasy's mineral only.

Fantasy resisted the attack and retained map control with his army still dominant. However Free was proving difficult to eradicate, the roots of the bases at 6 and 4 having survived and the moment Fantasy moved on they regrew. An excellent stasis on the ramp at 11 delayed Fantasy's army considerably while Free counterattacked and destroyed Fantasy's new base at 3. Somehow Fantasy appeared to have just two mining bases, his mineral only and 12 while Free had 6, 4 and 9 although 9 was under some pressure. Despite spending the entire game losing Free finally felt strong enough to engage Fantasy head on, fighting mass tanks without any storm, carriers, reavers and just one stasis.

He was of course defeated but the result, 80 Supply for Free and 102 for Fantasy, was pretty close. Fantasy's victorious army claimed 4, 5 and 6 but Free was already rebuilding at 11 while his main army again went to kill 3. Unfortunately Fantasy had finally worked it out and was able to
predict his move, moving his army back to save 3 quickly. Free's army was trapped and annihilated, ending the game.

This was great fun to watch, classic refugee toss. Refugee toss isn't really seen often anymore because it basically doesn't work and Protoss players tend to try and avoid getting in that position and would rather fight a big battle and lose than refuse to fight at all. Still, free put on an excellent display of it. Fantasy was very sloppy with his base defences, such as lifting off his natural for no apparent reason and losing most the scvs at 12 to a single zealot but his macro was pretty solid. Free could have used a gateway at 3, 6 and 9 for dt/ht production to squeeze a bit more value out of those bases but to be honest his mistake was that first recall. If you're going to play Kal style (200=recall main) you need to do a lot of damage with it which means you need to stasis the ramp with the second arbiter. The recall did no real damage and Fantasy could push out, take map control and win.

Fantasy: 4
Free: 3
Game: 5(I miss refugee toss)