Preview
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=54249
Group A
iloveoov (T) - Light[aLive] (T) @ Fantasy
For the first time in 4 games, the spawnpositions aren't at 11 and 7. Instead, oov spawns at 11 - XenoSky and Light at 5 - RoV. oov proxies 2 factories in the middle, Light goes for 1 factory 2 starports, but cancels 1 starport after he scouts the factories. oov has siege mode researched some seconds before Light and gains some free hits, but Light has it shortly after and sieges up above the ramp. oov camps downstairs, building turrets and using his floating barracks for sight. Light on the other hand has landed his barracks in oov's main, producing firebats. However, he doesn't micro them at all so he loses both firebats for nothing. Light does some harassing with his dropship which followed after the single wraith, microing the tanks inside it but without causing much damage (some mining time is lost for oov though).
oov has 2 starports hidden at the low-left corner, so his first 2 wraiths kills Light's wraith plus his dropship, 1 (almost both) of them dies though. oov keeps producing wraiths while expanding at top-left, Light has just finished CC at 6 but the wraiths kills the 5 SCVs there before they can finish their turrets. However, goliaths arrive and picks off 3 wraiths. Light has another expansion up shortly at 3, oov scouts it and sieges up there, forcing it to lift and land on the more defendable position in the middle of 6 and 3. oov only has had the 2 factories in the middle for a longer time now, it's just now that he builds another 2 at 11, while maintaining his new expansion at 1. oov keeps expanding, Light keeps defending... but he knows he has to move out and expand/destroy expansions, so he drops twice at 1 with a relatively large army, but oov just counter-drops it or attack-moves in with some rest-over army. Finally Light manages to take out 1 base at 9, but then oov goes in with a huge army and Light ggs.
This is where oov placed his units throughout the whole game, the slopes yielded him great protection...
This was oov's game from start to end. He got his troops quickly to the encampment outside Light's expansion thanks to the factories in the middle, then he just kept Light contained there for the rest of the game. For Light it was really hard to break through, since oov's troops were stationary above the big slope, so he was busy to just defend himself. I still don't know though, how oov with only 2 factories with add-ons managed to have so many more units than Light with 2 factories with add-ons and 2 without... it took a good while until oov constructed his 4th and 5th factory, and after that he couldn't add any more cause of his barracks constantly being destroyed. After all, he had 6 bases, so I'm pretty sure he had money for more than 5 factories. :-) Anyway, a pretty good game, especially for oov fans... and who isn't?
Group B
NaDa (T) - Hwasin (T) @ Monty Hall
NaDa (5) and Hwasin (11) starts with mirror builds; 14CC into 2 factories and armory. Hwasin rallies down with his vulture but NaDa has a bunker ready and soon a vulture of his own. Hwasin constructs a starport with add-on, NaDa has an early siege mode researched and tries to siege up with his lonely tank + a few marines at Hwasin's natural, but 3 tanks are there rolling over him. Each player takes their second natural as well as a 3rd expansion, Hwasin has now 5 dropships which he plays around with but without gaining any advantage.
It's hard to follow what's happening after this, but let's just say that each player destroys each others expansions while making a new one, then it goes on like that for a while. However, Hwasin utilizes his dropship advantage well and thus can take out more expansions while NaDa has to attack-move in and lose more troops. After 10 minutes, NaDa ggs when Hwasin is 1 base up and drops his entire army in the main, destroying all factories.
NaDa's dropships are constantly getting shot down... thus he has to attack-move like this, which cost him the game.
Both players played really well, it was totally equal for the first 15 minutes. In fact, I thought that NaDa was a bit ahead since he seemed to destroy more units (who were dropped in his bases) while not losing much. Hwasin outplayed him with the dropships though, NaDa did start with dropships after a while but lost too many in the end to be able to defend everywhere. Pretty okayish game.
Group C
Reach (P) - Justin (T) @ Python
Reach (6) teching to core, Justin (9) 1 factory. First 2 initial zealots trying to harass some, picks off 2 marines and 2 SCVs as well as some mining time so Reach did good with that. Justin camps outside Reach's base with a tank and lots of mines, dragoons are there to protect and reaver drop going in... Justin just finishes his ebay so there are no turrets up at all, but the first scarab makes no damage to the escaping SCVs. Reach instead attacks with his 5 dragoons against 3 tanks and with some nice reaver micro he manages to kill off 2 tanks and some SCVs but his reaver and 1 dragoon dies. Now he drops 4 dragoons into Justin's main from the cliffs, shooting some at SCVs before 2 reavers join the party and destroys 4 depots.
Both players have expanded to their naturals, Reach puts up another nexus at 2 and keeps up the pressure, attacking with dragoons and reaver again. The 2 tanks and turrets are getting destroyed, however, Reach misses a great opportunity to kill a bunch of SCVs since they were left over at the expansion... instead, the reaver dies without getting anything more. Doesn't matter much though, Reach is too far ahead and drops 4 zealots in Justin's main while attacking with 10:ish dragoons at his natural, followed by massing zealots for the victory - gg.
1 tank going down by dragoon fire, the scarab is on its way to the second tank...
Pretty close in the start, but once Reach destroyed the depots he was 1 base up and it became one-sided. Constant harass from his side gave him this game, nice to see him use shuttles in such an effective way too, focusing on destroying turrets. Justin didn't seem to rebuild them, so his few sieged tanks and SCVs couldn't help him much.
Group D
Casy (T) - GGPlay (Z) @ Hitchhiker
Casy (11) builds his barracks immediately after depot started, GGPlay (5) goes 12 hatchery into pool. Casy tries for a rush as he sends out 8 SCVs with 1 marine and starts a bunker at GGPlay's natural, however it was started by a single SCV and the rest didn't reach it yet so GGPlay's 9 drones destroys it. Some great micro kills both marines with about the same number of drone lost, but 8 zerglings are now popping out. The block is ramped though, so they can't do anything. Spire and hydra den both morphs for GGPlay, as he at the same time lays down sunken after sunken at his natural, until he reaches a total of whopping 7.
An uncommon sight to see this many sunkens, GGPlay must have been scared as hell for Casy's godly (?) early push...
Casy adds more barracks for a total of 4, factory for tanks and a starport for vessels. He also bunkers up at the northern path, where GGPlay is actually attacking with 5 lurkers and many zerglings, but they can never break through. Casy has taken his natural a long while ago, GGPlay has now both his mineral only, 7 and soon 1 in his possession. This means hive already and defiler coming up. Casy seems to be nervous as he d-matrix a zergling when he was supposed to do it on a tank... GGPlay takes advantage of this and runs it into Casy's army while catching the lonely vessel with 2 scourges.
Casy loses both his tank and his vessel cause of a nervous misclick...
10 lurkers await outside the battlefield on the right side, now with a defiler with consume... Casy has to fall back. He changes strategy to vultures with mines as he noticed GGPlay has mostly lurkers and ultras coming up, but he still has loads of zerglings that takes out the mines. 5 speed ultras out going for the northern path, plague on all 7 vessels + 4 scourges = 4 vessels dead, but Casy keeps defending himself successfully. A muta destroys another 2, as Casy pushes forward with all he has. He breaks the sunken line now consisting of 5 sunkens, but a ton of 2/2 zerglings/lurkers/ultras are just chilling in the base before they demolish Casy's troops. Casy desperately tries to get rid of some expansions with dropships, but it doesn't help cause GGPlay sends a never-ending stream of ultras/zerglings with swarm all over... gg from Casy.
Casy breaks the sunken line and thinks he has it, but he doesn't know about this group of pals waiting for him...
A great game, just GGPlay had loads of bases pretty early on cause Casy didn't harass anything with dropships. So once he got ultras the game was basically over (but it took a while, GGPlay mostly just attack-moved with them...). Anyway, GGPlay didn't even need to use mutas, so that must mean something. Casy was really expecting them though, as he had tons of turrets everywhere. But who doesn't if you play vs GGPlay? :-)
Results
iloveoov > Light[aLive]
NaDa < Hwasin
Reach > Justin
Casy < GGPlay
Two decent games, one good game and one great game is the summary of this week. All results were as I hoped except that I wanted NaDa to win. So what can we see now? In Group A, Light is now eliminated, while oov still has a chance to advance. sAviOr can claim the #1 spot next week though, if he wins Light. In Group B, NaDa is eliminated while Bisu and Hwasin will battle it out for the #1 spot next week. In Group C, everything is still open. Next week's game between Justin and IriS will determine whether Reach will advance (if Justin wins) or if Justin will be eliminated (obviously if Justin loses). In Group D, everything is also open. Similiary, next week's game between Sea.Up and GGPlay will only determine GGPlay the winner of the group if he wins the game. If not, then everything is still possible.
Results & Standings
http://teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=53114