EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Tadzio/LSMSL/mslbanner14.jpg)
Sorry for the delay this week. We are still working out the kinks with the new style, coordinating our efforts, and (for me anyway) increasing the value of the Asahi Beer company. Next week will be timelier, and will have images (as long as my memory stick doesn't fail again - cj face mad -_-.)
This week featured our all-Terran group (thanks Bisu - how'd that work out for ya?), as well as a dangerous group showcasing the PL all-stars Leta and Luxury.
Kwark, zulu, and I break down the action. Please take note, if you want to write for the MSL, read the bottom of the report!
A Dragon Slain - by Kwark
Kal vs Luxury on Carthage
Carthage is a relatively open map, well suited to big armies, sweeping flanks and mass storms. The distance between base sites is large making early aggressive play by either player relatively weak. Despite this, Kal delayed his mid game play by opening with 3 zealots. Quite frankly, this is bad PvZ after starting with a fast expansion. It delays the protoss and it does not delay the zerg to counter it because the zerg can continue to drone as normal and then make a round of lings as the zealots reach them. Not only does this delay the protoss more than the zerg, but the protoss will also have to be extremely lucky to get anything near the cost of his zealots in ling kills. It can only ever work when your opponent doesn't expect it and Luxury, being a good player, had a ling scout outside Kals base.
So, with Kals midgame play delayed, Luxury went into macro mode. A timely lair was followed by a spire and speed-ovs to stay safe while massing drones and hatcheries. Kal's plan was to go reaver-sair into mass zealot and reaver, but Luxury's solid defense gave him nothing. By then it was too late. When Kal was finally throwing down the gateways and getting zealot speed upgrade Luxury decided he had enough and simply smashed him. Kal delayed himself early for no gain giving Luxury a few seconds respite to do what he liked. Luxury used this small advantage to play safe while macroing which allowed him to shut down the reaver-sair giving him a big advantage. He then rolled over him for an easy victory. I can't imagine Kal's build working any better in practice so I honestly don't know what he was trying here. It was a bad build and Luxury shut it down smoothly leaving himself a long way ahead.
Destination has been worked out for PvZ. To see how it should be played players need look no further than Stork who is, as usual, the guide to straight up ownage. Yet people seem reluctant to copy him and just go for a zealot / archon timing attack into macro. Kal's opening was fine, although I question the way he cleverly microed his scout probe away from Hyuk’s base far earlier than he should of, forcing himself to play blind.
Lack of scouting left him opening with 6 cannons and 3 zealots against a total of 8 speedlings which definitely overkill. Again, he messed around with the 3 zealots which is simply bad play. If you expect your opponent is going some kind of hydra break (which isn't good on Destination due to the ramps) then they'd come in handy. But instead of just making redundant units because you're bad at the game you could just scout. Kal is just doing this wrong.
Quick pro tip. Hotkey a second probe early on. Do loops around the zerg min line with your first scout probe for as long as you can. If you keep drilling and use his drones as obstacles you should be able to survive for a decent amount of time after speedlings are done. This lets you see lair timing and how many drones he keeps on gas. The moment your scout probe dies select the other one by hotkey and send it to his min line. That way you don't have to completely mess over your midgame to be safe against stuff which isn't coming.
Hyuk calmly blocked the early 1 gate slow zealot play while continuing to macro, because lets face it, what the hell was Kal ever going to achieve with that. A flock of scourge scouted him and established air control while Hyuk continued to macro. Eventually Hyuk decided he had a big enough advantage (4 base vs 2 will do it) and started making hydralisks. Lots of them. Meanwhile Kal was still messing around with stuff which should have hit several minutes ago. He tried to move out and Hyuk just ran right over him.
Moral of the story. Scout and use builds which are actually good. Early zealots like that work if you're going to some mass zealot build because it's good to keep all your gateways running. Early zealots don't work if they delay your reaver-sair tech while adding absolutely nothing to its impact. Kal's build was counterintuitive and undermined itself. My only possible explanation for it was paranoia about a possible cheese all-in which could be avoided if he could actually scouted properly. Kal's play was pretty much inexcusable.
Zerg Notes by zulu_nation8
As the only zerg who advanced from week 2's matches, Luxury claims centre spotlight for this week's zerg notes. In two quick games Luxury shrugged off Kal with an impeccably timed hydra rush build and some solid micro. Carthage, the map of the first match, has an unusually wide choke that makes protoss especially vulnerable to early zerg aggression. Luxury took full advantage of this weakness by executing a fast +range, 3 base 5 hydra build after spire which, using the room provided by the open choke to flank Kal’s front, broke Kal’s defense and ended the game before Kal could amass a ground army. The hydra break was excellently timed, and Luxury macroed perfectly. When the rush came, Kal needed a lot more cannons to defend successfully; he also lost a shuttle with a reaver carelessly as he tried to pull off some cute shuttle micro to hang on.
Kal vastly underestimated Luxury’s hydra count, and looked oblivious to Luxury’s incoming rush despite scouting it days before. Luxury's build seemed to counter the shuttle harass build quite nicely, but it also looked as though Kal could have stopped it easily with more cannons and safer play in general.
In the losers' match, both players opened exactly the same as the previous game. However because of Destination’s narrow, parallel chokes, Luxury chose to defend rather than attempting the same timing rush. Luxury’s hydra placement prevented Kal from harassing effectively. When Kal finally managed to sneak a DT into Luxury’s natural, Kal naively came out with a tiny army to try and expand. He succeeded only in getting demolished by Luxury’s massive hydra force, and then proceeded to lose his natural. I have no idea why Kal came out and put himself in perfect position to be flanked. He lost the game with one mistake, much like last game.
Congratulations to Luxury for joining Zero, Savior and Yellow[arnc] as the zerg players who've advanced so far.
Day of the Terrans by Manifesto7
After a light week last week, I had my hands full with an all terran group, as well as the hottest Terran on the planet, Leta, in the other group.
Here is a look at our two winners from Group G.
NaDa cruised easily through his group, showing that TvT is still a thinking man's game, and that there is no substitute for experience. His game against Frozen was an easy build order win. He showed some nice style by floating his barracks over an unfinished armory and academy to make completion more difficult as he picked off the building scv. His second game against Canata showcased a terran stretching his limits. Canata set up a long contain line, investing tremendous time and resources to secure the top 2/3rds of the map. Unfortunately, NaDa promptly took the bottom 1/3rd more quickly, and sixth-sensed his drop ships through the defense to take out Canata's second expo. When you watch this game you really see how Canata struggles to capitalize on his early advantage.
Despite a lackluster first game, Frozen came out and dismantled Ruby (who was way out of his depth here) to face Canata in a final match. Back in the Superfight days, Canata was heralded as a TvT specialist, and went up against Sea in some epic games on Peaks of Baekdu. On Thursday however, he looked anything but spectacular. Frozen handled the two port proxy wraiths extremely well considering he had 14CCed. From that point on, it was all about gobbling up enough expansions to feed a massive switch to BC's. At the end of the game he had maxed and dropped a cool 6k/7k in the bank. Canata tried his own BC switch, but it was futile.
Protips from a non-pro!
1) Save your drop ships.
In most pro TvT games, lines of tanks are quickly established along key areas of the map. From that point on metal goes airborne, and the size of your army depends completely on the number of ships you have to carry it. Something NaDa and Frozen did SO well, and Ruby did not, was dropping their armies and sending their ships back home with their first command. Whether their attacks were effective or not was secondary to their concern of being able to carry out another. Dropships should not be meat shields.
As a player, building turrets in natural flight paths around the map can work to your advantage, acting as scouts and repelling attacks before they occur. When attacking, it is imperative to scan the route you wish to take, looking for mines and turrets along the way. In interviews, Boxer has repeatedly stressed the importance of practicing flight plans with ships in practice, and figuring out what parts of the map will be free from detection. Again, experience matters.
2) Another important aspect of play is choosing the appropriate place to drop. Idially this place should both neutralize an expansion, and allow for your own expansion. Canata did a good job of this against Ruby, attacking his positions from the high ground at both 5 and 11 (on Harmony) which allowed him to halt mining and claim the territory for himself. It is pivotal your forces be able to do this, as there is often no trip home in TvT. With the excess minerals available in TvT, taking an expansion to mine 1/4 of a geyser before losing it is always worth it. CC's should be treated like zerg hatcheries. Carrying one less goliath and two scv can pay big dividends in these situations.
3) Art of the main drop. Much like the crackling drop in ZvP, a few years ago this was always the coup de gras in TvT, occurring when a player had massed enough of an advantage to kill their opponent's factories. There is a reason we do not see it as much recently. These days, with dropship play being much faster to react, it is a dangerous proposition. In order to kill high hp buildings like factories the size of the drop must be very large. A counter drop to defend the main normally wins, as it is bolstered with reinforcements directly to the front line. To fail in this doom drop leaves you open to losing an expansion in exchange for scratching the paint on some factories. It should only be done if your opponent can move by ground only. Ruby learned this lesson the hard way.
And now for something completely different...
I have heard people call Leta "boring" or "standard" or "nothing special" on TL. To those people I say.... wat? Leta showed serious flair in 2007 when he took out Stork on Tau Cross, but it has been the recent performance in proleague that has sent his stock soaring. His MSL performance on Thursday further cemented my opinion that he is the best Terran alive at the moment. It isn't that he is winning, it is that he makes his opponents look so bad. Like, superbad. Like, dare I say it, Pokju bad.
Thursday was the perfect example of this. Perhaps I shouldn’t blame Luxury, because after all, so much practice playing cookie-cutter ZvT makes you numb to the possibilities. But really, to lose a ZvT to 4 marines, two tanks, and one wraith is very hard to swallow. Hopefully those of you who watched the game, and witnessed Leta proxy-tanking Luxury's natural, noticed the way he blocked his tanks into the wall with a supply depot. Just the kind of flair BW needs.
Enter Hyuk. After watching Leta make the red-hot Luxury look like a D+ noob, he entered the winning game with a spot in the ro16 on the line. Leta calmly dropped a metal build, lost a few scv to mutalisks, and then rolled over the drone-starved Hyuk. The guy wins with anything he uses, and has enough flair that nobody can predict what is coming. Facing him is a scary proposition for anyone in the MSL these days.
Ok, the Leta lovefest is nearly over, but his game against Luxury qualifies for the game of the week:
The results from the banner poll last week have been looked at and summarily ignored. Tadizo made a new one instead! I hope you like it, thanks to him for his work.
Get famous!
Want to write for the MSL? Pick your race, and write up some notes about the week's matches. Your comments should be less about what happened, and more about why it happened. PM it to me by Saturday TL time and I promise I will include the best parts of it on the front page.
Next week (this week really) we have 5 terran players and 3 protoss players going at it.
Poll: Which of the three protoss stand the best chance of advancing?
(Vote): Jangbi
(Vote): Stork
(Vote): Tempest
This week's games:
Thursday 29th
Lost Saga MSL 2009 Round of 32 Group H
Stork < Destination > 
fOrGGSea < Neo Harmony > go.goWinners Game < Carthage >
Losers Game < Carthage >
Final Game < Byzantium 2 >
Saturday 31st
Lost Saga MSL 2009 Round of 32 Group C
JangBi < Byzantium 2 > IrisTempest < Destination > fantasyWinner < Neo Harmony > Winner
Loser < Neo Harmony > Loser
Final < Carthage > Final
Happy Chinese New Year!
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Ticon_small.gif)
Mani, ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Picon_small.gif)
Kwark, and ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/images/Zicon_small.gif)
zulu_nation8
