WHY WHY WHY did go.go, and terran players in general in TvT, try and doom drop mains behind fields of supply depots? He constantly dropped forGG’s main, and killed basically nothing except defending units and fast building 100 mineral structures. In the meantime there were two defenseless expansions at 1 and 3 that went untouched (virtually) all game long! It makes absolutely no sense, but maybe someone can explain it to me.

Group C started with JangBi vs Iris on Byzantium. This is an open macro map and plays rather similarly to Othello, and we've all seen JangBi on Othello (Storms vs NaDa). Iris is kind of a nobody these days compared to our #1 PR. Both players opened safe, JangBi delaying his scout to power economy for an early zealot. He was fortunate that Iris was close and was able to force him to make a number of useless marines just to survive. Killing 4 marines early for the loss of a lone zealot put him firmly ahead. He then expanded and continued to pump 1 gate dragoons against the 2 fact terran. What we were then shown is one of the sexiest micro displays in recent memory. Just to try and quantify it, from the start to securing the area of his natural the Iris incurred the following losses: 8 marines, 6 vultures and a tank, along with countless mines. In exchange JangBi lost a zealot and 2 dragoons, and those dragoons were carelessly lost to a mine after the damage was done. Iris expanded and tried some dropship harass with vultures but JangBi had observers out and well positioned pylons round his base. Eight vultures died for negligible probe kills. Meanwhile JangBi's reaver play managed to slow Iris' expansion and kill a tank, although the shuttle and reaver were killed by the wraith.

Next came a dark drop, and although the shuttle was killed by a wraith Iris had to academy and was unprepared to deal with the darks. Clearing them cost him a lot of scvs, depots and mining time while his counter offensive at JangBi's 2nd expansion was shut down by a pylon wall, cannons on the mineral line and a lot of goon reinforcements.

Tiring of this game JangBi then just moved in, executing Iris with a much bigger army and an extremely well used zeal bomb.

This was just brutal. JangBi didn't let up with the offence and while Iris played well and kept trying to get counteroffensive play going and regain the initiative JangBi was always ready and always shut him down. A testament to good pylon placement and defensive walling.

Neo Harmony is at 35% PvT over 14 games. JangBi is the better player by a considerable margin in my opinion but after seeing Fantasy's style on Destination I can see him being really strong here. His harass style favours the map.

This was a really strange game, Fantasy opened proxy 1 rax in the middle and JangBi opened by walling his ramp with 2 probes then making a fast zealot. Fantasy then didn't do much with his proxy rax, making 4 rines and sending them home while proxying a second factory at 6. Despite walling with 2 probes and then a zealot, Fantasy let in an scv. Bit of controversy here maybe, it looked to me like Fantasy used an illegal gas bug to glide through the wall. Maybe JangBi just walled badly and the scv just happened to come from the area near the gas at his nat, I could be wrong and I can't see why he'd risk disqualification like that. Strange.
Anyway, JangBi went 2 gate goon expand while containing Fantasy and sending a probe around to look for proxies. It noticed the vultures and he rushed his army back but it was too late and he lost a lot of units to mines, surrendered all the good defensive positions without a fight and lost probes. Fantasy's main army arrived and JangBi sold his nat at the last second, instead opting to hold his main ramp while getting obs.
Realizing he was considerably behind and could not win without taking big risks JangBi then expanded to 7 which although he couldn't hold was a good risk because not expanding to 7 would leave him in a bad position. Fantasy's siege of JangBi did huge damage, killing his gates and a lot of units, making one of the lamest defenses possible with a bunker, turrets, mines and tanks. However JangBi broke out, using only the units he had because he couldn't make more. Goon micro, mine dragging, tank sniping, dodging mines with shuttles and then picking off the bunker with range were all very sexy and allowed him to clear the contain at his nat. Fantasy was expanding at this point but JangBi had 7 up, was re-expanding to his nat and reaver harassing. Somehow he'd held, done a great contain break and gotten ahead. Fantasy killing his gates had kind of backfired for him as JangBi was forced to use a pair of speedshuttles with reavers and used them very nicely. Fantasy eventually scouted 7 but had to kill a pylon wall on the ramp with vults and could do no damage once he had.

JangBi had map control, a big army, more expansions and had clearly seen the Tempest game because all his expansions were un-harassable. In a well smooth execution (for that's pretty much the only word for what he did) he dispatched Fantasy.

Stork vs fOrGG on Destination. The map is slightly P favoured at 60% and Stork is the better player so that should be enough to make him the favorite here.

Stork spawned at 6 and fOrGG at 12. In an amusing display of metagame Stork sent out his scout probe on 7, even though 8 is usually fast enough for a gas steal. While attempts to do it on 8 usually get blocked these days the 7 worked and he got the gas while walling in himself from scouting with a zealot. Stork had also slipped out a second probe to proxy a robo at 10 in a very aggressive controlling play. While Stork messed up the wall and fOrGG scouted his main it was too early to see anything missing and it was quickly cleared up. fOrGG went a 2 fact push with rines after the gas steal while Stork, expecting him to use his excessive minerals from the gas steal on a fast cc, opted for a semi all-in elevator with proxy reaver. fOrGG was pretty much played here. The gas steal limited his options and the extremely quick follow up with proxy robo elevator into proxy reaver is difficult to deal with for all the options he had left. While doing this Stork created an excellent defensive position at his nat, preparing to expand while attacking.
If fOrGG had tried any kind of mnm attack the reaver that fast would rape his main. If he'd tried fast cc the elevator would rape his main and even if he held Stork would counterxpand pretty fast. The usual 1 fact options were out of the question because of the gas steal. Any vult play would be raped by the elevator and wouldn't dent Storks defensive position at his nat where he was nicely walled. A defensive 2 fact, which you'd need hack to do, would hold but Storks expansion would let him get ahead while the threat of reaver kept fOrGG pinned.

To sum this up, I'm copying Stork's build and you should too.

In the winners game Stork met go.go and proceeded to do the exact same build as Tempest. Proxy 99, although the location was different. Unlike Fantasy go.go put the depot and rax close together, in an actually useful way. However he still opted to make the factory too far away to be easily defended by depotrax micro. It's like Baekmagoji all over again, proxy gates as standard opening into normal play. The difference is back then terrans actually defended, these terrans have just been sloppy (although Fantasy did at least scout and would have seen Storks proxy). go.go didn't lose his factory but lost an awful lot of mining time to save it. That left Stork surging ahead and he soon had a wave of goons there, overpowering go.go's pitiful army.

Destination is considered P favored in PvT because the bridges favor fast expansions and macro play. And we all know about Tempest's macro. He opted for an aggressive opening, delaying goon range for a zealot. Then, displaying the sexiest thing I have ever seen, he manner pyloned Fantasy's scout scv into the back of his own mineral line so his first goon could pick it off. Unfortunately Fantasy blocked his zealot without taking any damage and then did the rax float wall to hold his ramp against any other aggression without spending much money.

Tempest opted for 1 gate obs into expo, a very safe build that is a direct counter to 2 fact vult and 1 fact vult drop rush, but unfortunately not much else. It doesn't leave him far behind and if Fantasy had done either of those I'd be singing his praises but in this case it was less than ideal. Obviously the KTF coach had prepared his build to deal with Fantasy rushing a vult drop but in this case it wasn't useful.

Meanwhile Fantasy had made an early cc in his main and floated it out covered by 2 tanks and 4 rines before getting a fast pair of armouries. This is the Destination adaption of the FlaSh build and in fact the exact build we saw from FlaSh vs Bisu. Fast 3 base off a low fact count and double grades, held by tank positioning on the cliffs. Tempest tried a break in Fantasy's nat and did a lot of damage before backing off, almost without loss.

However a dropship, some sneaky vults and nice multitasking then played havoc with his mineral lines, raiding his 3rd, his main and his nat simultaneously. In the confusion Tempest carelessly lost his shuttle and reaver which would have been invaluable defensively.

Both players kept on macroing but Tempest was taking damage and not dealing any. Fantasy's vultures just kept getting in while that tank count just grew and grew and the upgrades made their way to 3-3. Like any self respecting terran with 200/200 of tanks and a better economy he wasn't interested in risking an attack, instead choosing to take all the bases on his side and cover them with the lamest defenses he could think of. Tempest tried to get some recall play going and if he had successfully stasised Fantasy's ramp he may have killed the facts and taken the game back. But he didn't. Fantasy cleared up the recall and Tempest was left with less than half the map facing a wall of tanks, out-expanded.
GG. Extremely solid game from Fantasy. Just didn't give Tempest anything to work with. Stayed safe, stayed solid and kept harassing.

Tempest wasn't hanging around. Opening 13 nex without scouting he did a "We're playing this my way and I don't care what the fuck you do". Not even bothering to play safe he kept pumping probes and got a fast pair of gateways. Iris opened 1 fact cc and scouted him last. The game was as good as over before it started. A counter-expansion that late, with no time to adapt because Iris scouted the 13 nex so late (3rd scout on a big map) and it just didn’t matter. Iris' army couldn't deal with the 2 gate goons, there was no way he could damage Tempest early and then Tempest just did his thing. 4 gates and fast dark tech, macroing his ass off and just getting further and further ahead. This wasn't Starcraft, this was just rock paper scissors. Tempest's first army was able to pull Iris out of position and although he wasted units the darks arrived and raped. Iris held by the skin of his teeth, the last dark dying as the turret went down but still had to stop mining and abandon his nat for a bit when the next wave hit. By this point Tempest had a 3rd coming, safely walled in and was getting a robo and stargate. Iris tried to get vult play going but Tempest evidently felt he had enough of an advantage and took no risks.

There were a few very nice plays, Iris managing to entrench himself on some bridges and force Tempest to waste a lot of goons to break very small numbers of tanks. And nice vulture sniping of probe maynards. Iris was playing a very nice example of terran aggression. Rather than launch an all out attack he got small groups of vults and tanks and put them in annoying places, forcing Tempest to waste units. I'm writing this as I watch the game (rather than with any hindsight) and I am really fucking impressed by Iris here. I was ready to write him off after the opening builds but he is abusing the fuck out of Tempest with fewer units. Hitting 9 then the probe convoy then 9 again then the nat with vults then 9 again then the nat with tanks. This is total map abuse, on an open map these tiny isolated armies would get killed for almost no losses but on here they're getting far more than their cost. I can see why this map is so T favoured. This is the textbook terrans should copy for this map.

Irish expanded to 8 and Tempest recalled his main. The recall did reasonably well, less damage than Tempest could have hoped for but good for him in terms of game flop and initiative. Then Tempest scouted 8 and after attempting to counter expand himself hit it with a recall. Iris saw the arbiter coming and reacted immediately but Tempest still had time to kill a lot of scvs and the command centre before his army was wiped out. At the same time he hit with a simultaneous recall in Iris's main, doing a good amount of damage with some unfortunately placed mines detonating 3 tanks. Tempest did a good job of disrupting his unit production and getting good cost for his losses. Seconds afterward he hit with another recall, again disrupting Iris. Iris's abuse had ceased while putting out the fires Tempest was lighting all over his base and the battle for map control was opened up again. Iris had been forced to take the 7 nat and doing so stretched his defensive line across a huge front. His army was caught out of position and his tank mass destroyed. Tempest went on to kill Iris's expansion while Iris made another small abuse group and almost killed Tempest's base at 5. While Tempest was dealing with that yet another abuse group of vults hit his main, getting in and mining the gates. But realizing he had run out of mining bases Iris decided to stop postponing the inevitable and typed out.