LRSL Week 3 Recap: Not much happening
More than halfway through the group stage, LRSL standings changed again. Let's take a look at what happened last week.
+ Show Spoiler [RESULTS] +
Heartland 2:1 ByuuN
Ej 2:0 D-light
Cricketer 0:2 The Red Viper
DBooN 2:1 meepman
Kashim 0:2 Luolis
Wire 2:0 Golo
Durn 2:0 mizenhauer
Elentos 0:2 Olli
Plenty of 2-0s. Only 2 series went to all 3 games, and only one of them was casted, with Heartland vs ByuuN missing the screen time, in our best IEM Shanghai impression.
Ej against D-light was a one-sided affair. With D-light's faulty wall on Fruitland's assistance, the Polish zerg's 12pool did trendemous damage, warranting a smooth transition to 2 base lair play, while the Protoss teching to charge tapped out even before getting to leave his base. The Finn's hold against the build was much better on Sacred Sands, scouting the Zerg on his first try and easily defending with a wall on his ramp to the main. However, the one base oracle followup with a delayed nexus didn't find any damage and as D-light's hidden nexus was found, nothing could save him from the legions of hydralisks storming his door.
The dullness continuned in Kashim vs Luolis, Wire vs Golo and Durn vs mizenhauer.
Kashim's roach/ravager pressure achieved nothing on Ascension and he had to tap out vs Luolis' 2 base tank push, In the game on Mech Depot, the Finn once again went for hellion/banshee and this time tore the Zerg apart with just drops and hellions, forcing Kashim to surrender just under the pressure of harass.
Golo found himself similarly unable to find any damage against Wire. His hydra/ling timing on Ascension was defended effortlessly and the roach/hydra pressure on Abyssal met the iron wall of Wire's defence. The French Protoss had no trouble closing the games with archon/immortal/chargelot pushes.
Durn once again revealed his race to his opponent, but it served no help to mizenhauer as his risky 1-base roach all-in in ZvZ on Sacred Sands was luckily scouted by Durn's first overlord. Mizen quickly tapped out and took the 2nd game to Ascension where Durn rolled Terran. His hellion/mine harass killed 15 workers and mizenhauer was force to quickly gg again.
The ZvZ between DBooN and meepman was a longer series. Meepman took the game on Abyssal Reef as his mutalisk opening was scouted too late and flyers ravaged DBooN's economy while the roach counter didn't do nearly enough damage. In the second one, the Canadian Zerg opted for a 13/12, meeting a 17hatch opening. However, DBooN's control and decision making proved better as he easily defended the aggression and ended the game with a ling/bane counter shortly after. DBooN repeated his ling/bane attack in game 3 on Odssey, killing multiple workers of meepman and keeping him on 2 bases. Meepman held on for quite a while longer, with mutalisks gaining map control for 2 ninja bases to remain unscouted, but when the German finally saw them, he pushed out with a trendemous roach/hydra force and few broodlord with a low roach count weren't enough to defend.
We only got to see the second game of Elentos vs Olli, but it was a good one!
The game on Odyssey opened extremely dire for the Austrian Protoss. Outmultitasked and unattentive, he lost combined 14 workers to a mine drop and a liberator, but through expert usage of his blink stalker army aided by a warp prism, kept the Terran pinned back at home for enough time to get his economy to an acceptable spot and progress his tech into collossi.
Elentos position in the game remained strong up until the detrimental engagement on a ramp. As the Terran army was moving forward, the liberators were caught sieging up clumped and a chain of psionic storms removed all of them from the game, leaving pure bio/medivac to deal with an upgraded gateway army aided by collossi and leftover high energy templars. Losing 80 supply in a blink of an eye, Elentos had to tap out, granting Olli another 2-0 victory.
The week was closed by the most purplexing of all series so far. The Red Viper and Cricketer decided to play a random vs random.
The first game on Interloper went luckily for Viper: he drew Zerg while Cricketer had to settle for a Protoss. Viper's proxy hatchery harass in the opponent's main was stopped by Cricketer and he went on to take a hidden 3rd in the corner of the map, but his stargate into robo into double templar build, while intercepting the lurker drop into his natural, proved unable to stop the one in main from killing 24 probes. From there, knocking all the hidden bases was a formality and Cricketer had to GG.
The second game, on Mech Depot, will perhaps be the most memorable of the entire tournament. Both player drew Zerg, but they opted for completely different build orders: The Red Viper made 2 hatcheries and a gas before his spawnil pool and Cricketer went for a 12pool. However, in a feat not matched by Korea's finest matchfixers, he lost his zerglings to drones microing in a mineral nook and also lost the game as the later speedling counterattack gave Viper the 2-0 win.
POST WEEK 3 STANDINGS
The Leaders Durn Olli
The Top Wire Luolis
The Contenders mizenhauer Elentos Ej Heartland
The Regulars Golo TheRedViper Kashim ByuuN DBooN
The Laggers D-light Meepman
The Rest Cricketer
12pool winrate: 6-1 (85,7%)