Before the game started, Shine promised to show off his "Bag of Builds":


Game 1:Circuit Breaker
Shine (Z) spawned at 11 on Circuit Breaker vs Mong (T) at 5. Shine opened with a drone cross scout after overlord followed by a 12 hatch. After scouting Mong's 1 rax opener, Shine threw down another in base hatch on 13ish before pool, using the information from his drone to sneak a minor advantage. Mong telegraphed his planned 1 rax command center letting Shine fearlessly execute a super drone heavy opener.

Mong had also scouted reasonably early, choosing to scout anticlockwise to the 1 base, but after scouting that Shine was not at 1 and seeing the drone enter his base incredibly early, he reasoned that Shine must be at 7, sending his scv across the map rather than to Shine's base. After not finding Shine at 7, Mong correctly concluded that Shine was up to something, for why else would he have sent at least one (cross scout first scout?) scout drone out after overlord. Delaying his expansion, Mong pulled scvs onto his ramp to hold the front for marines and waited for his scout SCV to finally make it to 11 and tell him what the hell was going on here.


With 3 SCVs and 2 marines holding Mong's ramp, Shine finally started his pool. Mong's SCV eventually found Shine's base and Mong expanded while sending his marines out to pressure. As Mong's marines pushed out, hoping to force a ling or two, Shine slipped a drone up the ramp and promptly stole Mong's gas, leaving him approaching an ebay, but no +1 and an academy with no comsats or stim.


Both players settled onto their expansions and started powering up. Mong with a defensive 2 rax bunker and Shine with no sunkens, no units beyond a half dozen lings, way too many drones, and a quick evo/hydra den/lair. It looked an awful lot like the regular +1 armour lurkling front bust at this point, although Mong had no way to know it was coming, because his comsats were late.

Mong did the standard early marine medic push and Shine sunkened in response as you'd expect. Mong's early bio checked the map for Shine's third, which had not yet been placed, and a comsat caught the lurkers, revealing Shine's 2 base lurkling play.


At this point, Mong pretty much knew the score. Shine was on 2 base, decent drone count, no third gas and no plan for a third gas and no spire. This was a classic lurkerling allin. He did exactly what you'd expect and started bunkering up.


Shine's lurkling arrived a little earlier than Mong expected them to (that's 3 hatch before pool for you) and Mong was forced to pull his first bio group back from its delaying expo duty to try to defend. Shine predicted this and set a hold lurker trap on the path, but unfortunately the lurkers held too well.


The +1 armour arrived on time, but Shine decided he couldn't break the front and held off on attacking. Shine cleaned up Mong's first bio group while Mong killed the two lurkers outside of his base and although Shine started his mineral only third, it looked like Mong was in good shape. Shine then sent five speed overlords into Mong's base and this happened.


Mong promptly lost his nat, all the scvs at his nat (stacked and fleeing up a ramp under lurkers) and couldn't retake his nat until he landed his second cc in his main and made another comsat. He made an attempt at a drop, but an overlord scouted it and the dropship was forced to back off.

Meanwhile Shine took the gas expo at 12, teched to defiler mound and cleaned up. The game took another 10 minutes due to some wasteful unit use by Shine and some good drops from Mong but at no point did Shine look in danger. Before Mong's first big army pushed out onto the map, Shine already had consume. Defilers did defiler things and lurkers did lurker things and it was only a matter of time until Mong was forced to type out.

Bag of Builds: 1 - Mong: 0

Game 2: Camelot
Shine (Z) spawned at 5 on Camelot while Mong (T) spawned at 11. A two player map with short rush distances and no ramp, Camelot is considered T favoured. Mong went for an 8 rax at his natural wallin followed by a walling depot, giving him options to bunker rush a 12 hat without committing much in the way of cut SCVs. Shine went for a 12 hatch at his nat and scouted at the same time with his drone scouting the completed rax that should still have been under construction. An 11 pool followed the hatch this game unlike the build from the previous game which would have been hard countered by Mong's opener this game.

Shine pulled 8 drones to contest 3 marines and 2 SCVs, using an overlord over the minerals at Mong's mineral only to drill. However, the micro favoured Mong and in the end, 5 drones were traded for just a single marine. Mong concluded that the rush was a success and backed off before the lings spawned, retreating to his natural wall and the command center that was building behind it.

Shine countered by immediately dropping a third hatchery at the 8 gas expansion, a very unusual play in the current meta that advocates a third hatch in main to consolidate behind sunkens until muta or lurkers gain map control. The conventional wisdom is that the 2 rax pressure following the terran expansion requires multiple sunkens to hold and therefore you can't just open with a quick three bases vs the terran's two.

Shine's 10 lings could do nothing to threaten Mong, so he opted to spread them over the map while droning up. Using just slow lings, he managed to find, surround and kill FIVE! scout scvs in quick succession. Mong, learning from the first game, played as defensively as possible while looking to find out what Shine could have up his sleeve. Mong's first two dscans revealed a lair and a hydra den, so Mong started laying bunkers at his front.

Meanwhile, Shine's quick third at 8 was completely undefended, relying purely on Mong's paranoia to be secure. Mong tired of waiting for the lurker allin that was never coming scanned 8, revealing a thriving base, a creep colony, and two hydralisks on the ramp. His bio rushed to 8 as quickly as they could, but were deflected at the last second.


Realizing that he'd been duped, Mong decided to try and break the natural which had just two lurkers and two sunkens defending it. Unfortunately for him, Shine placed overlords directly above his two lurkers to make them more difficult to snipe and Mong's attack failed without inflicting damage.

Shine teched to hive and added a greater spire to spend his insane gas stockpile. For reference, Shine got no evo upgrades, made no muta, made just four lurkers in total. His only gas expenditures were the lurkers, the lurker upgrade, the ling speed upgrade and tech buildings. And this was after being on three gas for the entire game. It was clear that we were going to see guardians, and quite a lot of them.

Mong's bio waited outside of Shine's base, but didn't want to try the sunks a second time, so he started a command center at the 12 third expansion. 9 muta spawned and Shine caused havoc on Mong's mineral line, killing a decent number of SCVs without any opposition. Meanwhile, Mong elevator-ed his bio army across the wall into Shine's main killing literally all of the drones, Shine's entire ground army (composed of hydra? and lurker), the greater spire, pool and an awful lot of hydralisks.


Guardians were able to clean up the drop, but Shine's economy took a serious hit and pretty much his entire ground army was dead. A second drop attacked 8 and Shine managed to hold it off with just drones, two hydras and micro, but it wasn't looking good for Shine. It was 3 base vs 3 and Shine's economy was weaker and his tech buildings were already dead. All he had going for him was the guardians and so he attacked.
And now we go to Jaedong and Mind (with extreme thanks to Tiny Land) for our coverage of that attack.




Bag of Builds: 2 - Mong: 0

Game 3: Outsider
Shine (Z) spawned at 5 on Outsider while Mong (T) took 9. Mong opened in an extremely standard depot rax command center fashion while Shine also opted for the fairly standard 12 hatch 11 pool 13 hatch with his third hatch at the 4 location mineral only behind his base. Mong added a quick second rax while scouting intensively, gliding a new SCV to Shine's main mineral line before backing the first. Shine trusted his game sense rather than scouting Mong beyond a quick location and rax timing scout and was quickly punished as Mong pushed out with his first five marines and immediately punished Shine.


Shine lost two drones, was forced to cancel his greedy second gas, lost a sunken and killed absolutely nothing as Mong backed his marines off before speedlings could hurt them. Shine's speedlings were unable to punish Mong in any way and Shine found himself with three hat fast lair, but only one mining gas and not much economy behind it. Mong pushed out again with medics and stim and Shine was forced to add a sunken wall, consuming more drones he couldn't really afford to use.

Mong completely mis-microed the sunken break, not waiting on the two firebats he needed for the lings (and not stimming them across the map), target firing a sunken while lings overran and attacked his marines only to switch back to the lings with the sunken on low health, then target firing a different sunken once the lings were cleared and finally ignoring the first low hp sunken to attack a third sunken that was still morphing. To make matters worse, his firebats were ordered to attack the morphing sunken (with a minus 75% modifier) over the drones and lings rushing up to try and hold the attack. The result was probably still good for Mong. Shine suffered more damage that he couldn't really afford, but it should have ended the game.


Shine looked for a third quick hive game and took the gas expansion at 7 (behind Mong's 8 mineral only) to give him the gas he needed for hive tech while Mong massed up on two bases, adding more barracks, tanks, a dropship and a valkyrie. With dscans informing his timing, the Terran simply walked across the map and sieged up outside Shine's natural. The tanks started their work to bust the sunkens. Meanwhile, Shine made a control group of muta and started his greater spire, but was unable to threaten the colossal ball of marines around the tanks, nor save his new gas expansion at 7 from a drop.

A drop threatening Shine's main was cleaned up, but without defilers, guardians or lurkers, there was nothing barring Mong's tanks from their inevitable advance. Mong executed Shine with a timing attack, capitalizing on the significant delays built by his earlier victories to smash through Shine's front before the guardians could complete.

Bag of Builds: 2 - Mong: 1

Game 4: Andromeda
Shine (Z) spawned at 7 on Andromeda while Mong (T) spawned at 1. The games so far have favoured Mong when he was able to play a standard macro game and Shine whenever Shine was able to throw Mong off balance with the Bag of Builds. In theory, Andromeda should favour Mong and although the Ro16 showed some extremely innovative ZvT on Andromeda (double upgrades, double islands, ling heavy drop play with hidden hatcheries and nydus) that style must have been intensively studied since then, so it's no longer likely to catch anyone off guard.

Mong opened with 8 rax in a walling spot at his natural followed by a depot, able to punish a 12 hat the way he did in game 2 and be safe against other openers. Shine went for 12 hatch, 13 pool, greedily squeezing another two drones out after the hatchery. Mong scouted Shine second, but rather than starting a bunker out of vision range of the building hatchery, he opted to send the SCV to scout the main. When the SCV returned to Shine's natural, it was followed by a drone as Shine was now aware of the potential threat. Given the late pool, I believe a hidden bunker would have been very effective, but, of course, Mong had no way of knowing the pool timing without first abandoning plans for a hidden bunker and he didn't want to commit to a rush cross positions with his single rax at his natural.

As in game 2, Mong effectively punished Shine with the single 8 rax opener, killing 5 drones for 2 marines and finishing the bunker. Shine was left with just 9 drones total, of which only 5 were mining, the other 4 being stuck on the wrong side of the bunker, while Mong had 3 SCVs to repair his bunker, but just a single marine inside of it. The 4 drones on the map successfully delayed the bunker being reinforced at the cost of 2 more drone deaths and 10 lings overran the bunker. However, the opening had put Mong decisively ahead. Shine had just 7 drones left while Mong had marines, a wall at his natural and a good number of SCVs. As long as the lings were not allowed to do any damage, this was to be a game pointlessly thrown by Shine for the sake of squeezing an extra two drones out before pool.

Mong took two of his six marines and sent them out onto the map with no clear objective while the other four held his wall. Two SCVs joined them to block the single point where lings could squeeze through, but, unfortunately Mong placed a marine in the blocking spot and the SCVs behind the marine in positions that would still allow lings through if the first marine was to die. Shine promptly attacked and well, let's say that Mong didn't defend his wall properly, losing some SCVs as he tried to defend against Shine's lings.

Fortunately, Mong had three SCVs to every drone of Shine due to the huge early advantage he won, so he was able to throw pure SCVs at the lings until all the lings were dead. But it squandered a ridiculous lead due to completely unforced errors. The game then entered a weird stage because Shine had previously thought he had too many lings and that they wouldn't be able to do anything and was going pure drones for recovery. Then miraculously the lings were allowed to be really effective, but because Shine was doing nothing but drones, there were no lings being built to follow up the lings that broke through the wall and died to SCVs. Shine then concluded that because the first lings had done so well what he really needed was more lings to follow them up, and not drones as he had been making, and so he made another twelve lings. By this point, Mong had secured his wall and the lings were the wrong choice again. In a brief 30 second window, Shine went from accidentally having too many lings and being unable to do anything with them to not having committed hard enough to lings and being unable to capitalize upon them, and then straight back to having too many lings and being unable to do anything with them.

Amazingly, Mong failed to block the gap in the exact same way as before, but this time there was a bunker and Shine succeeded in doing nothing, but compounding his folly, making drones when he needed lings and suiciding lings when he should have made drones.


The game settled onto three hatch Zerg on the three available bases in Andromeda vs two base Terran with both players making a series of unforced errors that left them in a somewhat even position. Shine showed off the slow ling SCV sniping he displayed in game 2 to deny Mong scouting information, but one SCV was able to get in and scout three hat lair spire. Mong responded with a standard ebay +1 academy four rax defensive build, seeing that Shine hadn't made any attempt to take a 3rd gas. His early bio pushed out to keep Shine honest and force sunkens, but he didn't attempt to break in because he was confident that, assuming no funny business, he would come out ahead. With an easy 3 bases available to both and no more than 2 gas accessible to the zerg, Mong could afford to play a slow game and win by denying a 3rd gas while slowly choking Shine.

Unfortunately for Mong, Shine was doing funny business. Shine upgraded drop the moment his lair finished, added a queen's nest as drop was half done and followed drop with an immediate hive. An overlord promptly elevator-ed a drone up to the cliff behind Mong's nat, shielded from view by the neutral buildings. Six mutalisks served as a feint so Shine could pretend that he wasn't doing a really weird build, but made no effort to do anything beyond forcing turrets through their existence.


Mong went for no machine shop two starport SK style, anticipating a need for dropships to control island expansions, assuming that Shine was copying the weird Ro16 zerg builds rather than one upping them. Meanwhile, Shine teched to lurkers, hive, defilers, cracklings and set up a nydus to his proxy hatch inside Mong's base.


Mong picked the worst possible time to push out and this happened:



Bag of Builds: 3 - Mong: 1