By conTAgi0n

The much-anticipated Group D kicks off on La Mancha with Jaedong spawning in the bottom left position against Sea in the bottom right.


Both Sea and Jaedong open about as greedy as you can get, 14cc against 3 hatch before pool. Well, almost as greedy as you can get I should say. Sea builds his command center in his main, trading a few seconds of mining time for a little more safety against early aggression. JD finds Sea with his drone scout while Sea doesn’t do any scouting at all until sending an SCV out four and a half minutes into the game still in the dark about Jaedong’s starting location.

JD rides his 3 hatch before pool opening into a 3 hatch muta build while Sea puts down an engineering bay before academy for a fast plus one infantry weapons. JD puts down his third in the upper left main before his spire finishes, waiting for Sea to move out before building just one creep colony at his natural. As soon as Sea’s first MnM group gets beyond the safety of his natural, Jaedong starts picking away at them with mutalisks and then cleans up the whole group with muta-ling seconds before Sea’s plus one attack is done, losing only one mutalisk in the process.


Sea starts building two starports in his natural and tries pushing out again with his next group. Jaedong attacks head-on and trades his zerglings and all but a couple mutas to kill off Sea’s new force.

Sea starts his science facility as his control towers finish. Jaedong manages to run a single zergling through Sea’s front to see the double starports, allowing himself plenty of time to react to any kind of dropship play.

Sea makes a few vultures, always a good complement to the heavy gas requirements of running two starports, and moves out to try some harassment. The vultures race up the map to Jaedong’s third to attempt a run by, but Jaedong smartly blocks the ramp with an unburrowed lurker on hold position.


Meanwhile a dropship full of MnM eats a scourge hit and has to unload its cargo to provide an escort. Just outside JD’s natural the last of the mutalisks and a pair of scourge all chase after the damaged transport, sacrificing themselves but managing to take it down.


Sea backs off with the marines and vultures after laying some mines, having failed to do any real damage but using the opportunity to take the 3 o’clock. With his first two vessels and next batch of marines, Sea treks back across the map for the pre-defiler push as Jaedong claims a fourth at the upper left natural.

Sea camps outside JD’s lower left natural and irradiates two of the four defending lurkers. He finally decides the defenses there are too solid to attack into and heads instead for the upper left nat. There he finds Jaedong’s new fourth defended by five lurkers with no support. Throwing caution to the wind, Sea goes for the break, running by with his vultures ahead of his stimmed marines to draw lurker fire.


Three lurkers go down, but Sea just does not have enough marines to break through, especially with some lurker micro and hydralisks running down the ramp mitigating the strength of the vulture diversion.


As Sea retreats JD wastes some lings, four scourge and a couple lurkers in an ill advised attempt to flank Sea’s retreating army on the other side of the map. With defilers out and his four bases secure, Jaedong scouts the upper right main with a drone to find Sea already setting up a command center and factory there.

Sea is getting ready for a big mech switch, now up to five factories in his main. Jaedong starts morphing a greater spire in his main and loads up six overlords’ worth of units to drop Sea’s main.

Sea’s MnM are across the map when the hydra lurker ling defiler mix starts landing on his supply depots, so he tries countering at JD’s nat rather than run all the way back. The counter fails against dark swarmed lurkers and the rest of the infantry get plagued and chased down by lings.


Meanwhile, Sea struggles mightily to clean up the drop with mostly vultures against hydralisks. Jaedong’s drop razes a majority of Sea’s supply depots, at least ten in all going down by the time Sea stabilizes with sieged tanks and mines.


Jaedong plants another base at the 9 o’clock and drops a couple lurkers behind the mineral line behind Sea’s 3 o’clock, accomplishing little with a tank and vessels already in place there.

JD comes back a few seconds later with three overlords full of hydras, lurkers, and a defiler to lock down the whole expansion.


The heavy gas costs of the mech switch means that Sea hasn’t been able to build up science vessels and a pack of scourge fly in to chase down and kill off Sea’s only four vessels, all at the 3 o’clock providing detection and irradiates.

Jaedong seals the game moments later with a brilliantly timed guardian attack on Sea’s fourth base in the upper right main. With almost no marines or science vessels left and goliath production not yet started, Sea can do nothing but watch as eight guardians rip through his base unchallenged. GG.


Sea got severely outplayed this game. Jaedong was a step ahead the whole time and his surgical dismemberment of Sea’s attempted mech switch was a treat to watch. Sea drops down to the loser's match and Jaedong waits to see which of the top two vZ players in the world he will have to best in the next game in order to make a clean escape from group D.

*Not my own caption unfortunately. That used to be someone's signature, but I don't remember whose.

By flamewheel

Flash. Bisu. Monte Cristo. Something punny here.

Anyway, the second set in the Group of Death is now, and the crowd is riled. Flash drops in as the red terran in the bottom right, and Bisu appears from thin air as the blue protoss in the top left. Before I could find the time to insert a Red vs Blue joke, Flash sends out an early SCV! It's a proxy barracks at 9!

However, Bisu is too wily to be tricked by such techniques, and his scouting probe catches the offending SCV redhanded!


As he is scouted, Flash cancels his ill-attempted proxy, and the proceeds to sigh and shake his head in frustration... The commentators focus on him for half a minute before panning to a death-staring Bisu. While Flash starts constructing a rax in his home base, he decides to block Bisu's expansion just for a bit with the skeletal structure of an engineering bay. Manner pylons don't have anything on that now! Bisu returns the trickery, first with a gas steal and then a...


Nothing happens for a while as both players secure their expansions. Stork (and by Stork I mean Bisu?) chases an SCV around for a while, and Flash starts his factory. At this time, since he's taken his natural gas, he hasn't even bothered to kill the assimilator in his main. As the second factory goes up, Bisu's robotics starts. I wish I spoke Korean, since I have a sneaking suspicion there were mindgames involved here. The factories were built in sight range of the assimilator, and the commentators were definitely saying something about it...

Bisu blocks off Flash's potential third in the top right with a pylon and gets his observatory and two more gateways before taking his own third at 9:00. Meanwhile, in this increasingly-passive game Flash starts his own third CC in the protected confines of his natural. It's worth noting that Flash has very few vultures at the time, but does have quite a few goliaths... and a medic?


Bisu stalls the push (and Flash's attempt to float his CC over to the third) by parking dragoons on the high ground, but as the siege tanks move forward the dragoons have to back up. At this point, I'm still wondering what the medic is for. Perhaps Flash has gone for a Really-esque blind build?

Bisu stars a hidden stargate in the top right corner of his base while simultaneously taking a fourth. I'm sensing Carriers! For the next few minutes, Flash walls off his third with supply depots and adds more Factories, while Bisu dances his observers around looking for a weak spot. He's now up to three stargates, and is just hoping to stall for time before carriers are out.

At about 11:45 into the game, is something interesting finally about to happen? Flash has made two dropships and has gotten them past Bisu's now-dispersed dragoon blockade. It seems that Flash is going to go for a drop in Bisu's main, but before he can see the stargates he gets distracted by a pylon at 12. The dropships unload their payload and manage to kill a probe before loading back up and heading home. However, a valiant goliath trades its life for that of a shuttle... kicking the grand total of units killed in this game up to something around 10.

Even though his dropships didn't scout the fleet beacon and stargates, at some point in time Flash definitely scanned the carriers, and so he pushes out around the 13 minute mark, hoping to damage Bisu before the Carriers become a threat. As Flash moves out, Bisu is slowly driven back, and is forced to try to engage with his first three carriers. However, Flash is well-prepared, and Bisu can't stop the death push.


Sensing urgency, Bisu commands his elite group of dragoon commandos to go for a backstab, but he is blocked by the great wall of depot.


With his attack thwarted, Bisu knows it's over. He rushes his forces into the now-turreted maginot line to commit seppuku, and taps out.

You know, I originally had thought "wow this game was kind of close?" But all-nightering and having Smix commentate a game that you're not actually watching can be weird on the senses. This was actually just kind of brutal, man. Luckily, the fifth game was much more close and entertaining.

By conTAgi0n

The Lord of Destruction crosses swords with the Ultimate Weapon in the winner’s game of the group of death. Over the past year of LeeSsang Rok Flash has proven himself the clear favorite, and Jaedong has much more to fear from losing and thus potentially facing Bisu in the final game. JD has been looking fierce again in ZvT though, and has had plenty of time to practice. Furthermore, Circuit Breaker is a mercifully level playing field for ZvT. Flash starts in blue as the terran outpost in the upper left, Jaedong in brown as the zerg colony in the bottom right.

Flash opens one rax FE against Jaedong’s 12 hatch. Both worker scout the upper right first before sending their scouts towards each other’s mains. Flash drops his natural cc as soon as he confirms the 12 hatch, while JD’s drone heads back home as soon as he sees the fast expand. The SCV scout sees the third hatchery before lair and the gas timing before being chased out and killed by the first four zerglings.

Flash puts down his engineering bay even earlier than Sea did, before his academy or second barracks. Just after the spire starts a batch of zerglings hatches and fans out across the map, giving JD great map vision and presence. As against Sea, JD skips sunkens at his nat and grabs his third early, his spire about halfway to completion.

With his turrets up and plus one attack almost finished, Flash moves out with a control group of marines and four medics as the first mutalisks hatch. The mutas arrive in time to catch the first infantry squad on the high ground island to the east of his main.

Even with his plus one finishing, Flash’s force is clearly outgunned against Jaedong’s eleven mutalisks and control group of lings. In a lethal display of his muta micro, JD deftly baits three consecutive stims without engaging, and then slaughters the MnM force with a muta-ling flank.



Before the blood has even dried, Flash moves out again with an almost identical MnM group. Having lost nothing more than a couple lings in the first battle, Jaedong easily surrounds and eliminates this force as well.


This pair of brief, one-sided skirmishes puts Jaedong at a decisive advantage. Whereas Sea at least took down most of the mutalisks with his second bio group, almost the whole flock is still intact this time. JD starts lurker production and techs to hive, stalling Flash’s next control group of MnM with his still substantial mutalisk flock.

Flash adds a second group to the first and pushes into the middle of the map as his first infantry armor upgrade finishes, but his window of opportunity has long since passed. Half a control group of lurkers in the middle of the map move north to defend the third, and when Flash’s army reaches the double bridges leading to Jaedong’s natural, six more lurkers on the other side force a retreat.


Flash regroups his whole army, now including a few tanks, just across his own double bridges. Flash’s army is very vulnerable here, up against a wall and a narrow bride on one side and a wide, open area from which Jaedong can attack on the other. He may have been staging for some sort of pre-defiler push, but with the mound already complete and so many lurkers already on the field, there was no way he could make that timing anymore.

Instead, Jaedong launches his own pre-defiler timing attack. Catching Flash’s army unprepared, Jaedong sacs his mutalisks to absorb damage while his lurkers surround the terran forces and burrow. With their back up against the wall, the majority of the Flash’s army is demolished in the retreat back across the bridge.


Jaedong gives chase with his lurkers and finishes off the rest of Flash’s troops outside the natural. With a very sexy ling blockade JD prevents the two surviving tanks from escaping.


With a massive lurker contain outside the natural and defilers on route, it’s essentially game over for Flash. Dark swarms create an easy path into Flash’s nat, JD being careful to let his zerglings stay just ahead of his lurkers absorb most of the damage from some hastily placed spider mines, and within seconds the command center is floating. When JD pushes into the main with dark swarm, Flash has no choice but to concede, and ggs.


Or at least, he should have gg’d here. Instead Flash shows us some truly Fantasy-esque gg timing and drags the game out for another three minutes. Jaedong eventually backs off to Flash’s natural while going up to four or five bases, preparing for drops just in case, and adding an ultralisk cavern. Thankfully Jaedong pushes back into Flash’s main with dark swarm and lurkers before waiting for ultralisks to come into play and Flash finally leaves the game.


Jaedong's ZvT has rarely looked more ferocious than in these two games. His micro was stunning and his decision making rock solid the whole way through. Interestingly enough, both his games in this group unfolded quite similarly, with Jaedong comfortably taking a third early and then crushing the first two plus one attack MnM squads with muta-ling to put himself in control for the rest of the match.

Those first two engagements are what really decided the whole game. Flash fatally underestimated Jaedong’s mutalisks and got punished hard for it. After this, Flash was in a lose-lose situation: he couldn’t allow Jaedong to build up unchecked, but he lost all his windows of opportunity to go on the offensive after having to rebuild his army. At this point taking a risk with drops or something would have been wiser than trying to play standard from that kind of disadvantage against the best zerg in the world. Flash is a player that often seems so invincible that I think even he himself sometimes forgets that he isn’t. With this little lesson in humility, Flash goes on to play in the last game of the group while Jaedong becomes the first to cheat death.

By conTAgi0n

Sea gets the bottom right location on Circuit Breaker while Bisu spawns in the bottom left. The loser of this match is outright eliminated while the winner will have to get through Flash to avoid the same fate, so I doubt either of them are feeling particularly comfortable right now.

Sea one rax fast expands and Bisu goes one gate robo for observers. Bisu takes his natural and then an early third at his mineral only while applying the pre-siege mode dragoon pressure to Sea's bunker. After forcing the goons back with his first siege tank, Sea gets out some early goliaths to shoot down observers with and deter any sort of shuttle play. From here he puts down his science facility while starting his fourth factory.

In the meantime Bisu starts warping in his fourth at the 9 o’clock and techs to arbiters. The game continues with relatively little action as Sea takes his own mineral only and both players macro up.

The first real engagement happens when Sea pushes through the 6 o’clock expansion to siege up just outside of the mineral only, about half the tanks up the ramp on level with Bisu's expansion. This is a position Bisu could easily have prevented Sea from taking if he had his army positioned here, or at least kept an eye on the 6 o’clock. This is also partly to Sea’s credit, as his goliaths and science vessels kept Bisu relatively blind with regards to his army movement.

This is still not the most advantageous position to attack from, though, given half his tanks are still on the low ground. With a larger army, Bisu breaks Sea’s push relatively easily, especially after killing the majority of the vultures and spider mines with a zealot bomb.


Bisu then counterattacks along the same route but is forced back by the same low ground disadvantage and the funneling effect of the ramp.


Bisu maynards a conga line of probes to his new base at the upper left natural, losing a couple to vultures along the way. Sea is clearly still bent on pushing along the 6 o’clock position and starts building a command center to float down there while setting up mines, a turret, and a couple of tanks at the expo.

Bisu easily blocks the attempt, pushing in with his army to clear all the mines while using a zealot bomb, stasis, and mine drag to kill off a lot of the tanks.


Once again, the choke and low ground advantage prevent him from going for the guttural. Bisu has the good sense this time to back off before wasting any dragoons.

Sea has fallen considerably far behind now on economy, sitting at three bases against Bisu’s five. To try to catch up, he ninjas a command center at both the 3 o’clock and the upper right main. Bisu takes the upper left main and forces a cancel on the upper right main cc with a single zealot.

Bisu pushes across the middle of the map now, where Sea has no presence besides vultures and mines, and mounts his own offensive from the high ground route to Sea’s third. A larger army, a good stasis, and a small flank from the other side of the six o’clock allow Bisu to break Sea’s defenses there.


Bisu could have at least forced a lift and probably killed the mineral only command center, but instead foolishly pushes with most of his dragoons (and none of his zealots) in the direction of Sea’s natural. The sieged tanks in that direction quickly convert the whole force to blue goo and Bisu is forced to settle for killing the units coming out of stasis.


As it turns out though, all Bisu’s mistake does is delay the inevitable, and not by much at that. Sea finally lands a command center at the 6 o’clock. Bisu responds by marching across the map to shut down Sea’s 3 o’clock uncontested while placing a Nexus at the upper left mineral only.

Bisu then gathers his forces and flanks Sea’s main tank cluster protecting his mineral only and 6 o’clock and with the assistance of some nice stasis succeeds again in overwhelming Sea’s defenses, giving him unimpeded access to both of Sea’s mining expansions. Sea leaves both the game and the MSL.


Sea’s game plan really let him down this match. I can understand the logic behind pushing through the short and narrow path through the 6 o’clock. The terrain, however, meant he was literally fighting an uphill battle and by focusing everything on one isolated route to Bisu’s corner of the map, he sacrificed the map control he needed to hold other expansions or deny Bisu’s. The other big criticism I have for Sea this game is that he was not on top of his EMPs, and as a result Bisu was able to get a lot more mileage out of stasis than he should have been allowed to.

Bisu’s play was mostly solid, but solid is not good enough when you’re up against the greatest TvPer in the history of the game. Bisu avoids a depressing 0-2 exit from the group, but to get any further in this MSL, he’ll have to step his performance up significantly in the next game.

By nbaker

Flash and Bisu meet again in the fifth game of the group to see who will advance with Jaedong into the round of 16. The game is on Dante’s Peak SE—Flash spawns in the 7 o’clock position and Bisu at the 11. Bisu opens up standard with 1 gate core and Flash plays a bit greedily, getting his command center after rax. Flash has shown us that this build can be very safe and standard in general, but against Bisu, who punished him for that very build recently (albeit on Aztec) and against whom Flash recently crushed with early game disadvantage, cutting corners seemed a bit ill advised. Still, Flash gets away with it without a problem, easily repelling the first Zealot that Bisu sends from his gateway, sending his SCV all over the map to scout for proxies in the meantime. Flash gets two factories going, building a machine shop and research siege mode, while Bisu puts on a little pressure at Flash’s natural while he takes his third base. The dragoons hammer away fruitlessly at Flash’s bunker, which is repaired by SCVs, but Bisu cleverly slips a zealot past Flash’s defenses and gets into his main, seeing Flash’s tech before being killed off a vulture and tank.


The tank then goes down to the natural, sieges up, and forces Bisu’s dragoons to back away. Flash gets vulture speed and sends two vultures up to Bisu’s third base while he starts his own third command center in his main. The vultures find the base defended only by two out of position dragoons and are able to pick off several probes before eventually being taken down. Flash starts to build up his tank force to fortify his third base, but continues producing vultures and driving them into Bisu’s third. They are continually picked off, but never before taking down at least one probe a piece, always a cost effective trade.

His third taken, Flash goes up to five factories and researches +1 attack, while Bisu, his probe count at his third still low, goes up to seven gateways and starts his templar archives. Bisu walls his third base in with pylons, but even that does not deter Flash’s harassment and his vultures continue to pick off probes there. Meanwhile, Bisu, knowing that he needs to get a better economic foothold in the game, places a fourth nexus at 12 o’clock and makes three cannons to protect it against vultures. He expands again to the 1 o’clock natural and tries to attack Flash and cut down his tank line, but every time he tries to move out, vultures breeze past his army and pull it back to his side of the map, killing off probes and delaying Bisu’s attack.


Finally, Bisu attacks at Flash’s third, showing excellent macro by accruing a sizable army in spite of Flash’s harassment. Zealots stream uphill into Flash’s tanks. At first, they all go down, but Bisu has more and they start to take down tank after tank. Just as it starts to look like Bisu might be able to take down Flash’s third, all of the protoss forces start dying and the observer pans down, revealing a second, untouched line of tanks which force force Bisu back.


Flash instantly counters with vultures at Bisu’s 12, knowing that the main army is out of position to defend. He ignores the cannons and kills off more probes, forcing them to retreat through pylons and then cutting them off on the other side, keeping Flash even with Bisu, who should be ahead economically (five bases to three). Bisu retakes control of his bases and, his army drawn back and his 6th base starting, decides that now is the perfect time to recall. He sends his arbiter into Flash’s main, but it is met with a barrage of turret missiles and is only able to recall a few dragoons, which are picked off almost instantly.


Bisu decides he needs to continue to be aggressive if he wants to prevent Flash from taking a fourth base, so he wraps a huge ground army around the right side of the map. Flash meets him outside of the 6 o’clock expo and sieges up. Bisu attacks and makes a critical error, stasising the tanks Flash has positioned in the front, effectively making an invincible barrier between his units and Flash’s tanks further back. To make matters worse, the stasis also gets his shuttle, preventing him from dropping zealots and storms on Flash’s tanks further back.


Unable to win directly, Bisu moves his dragoons up to 6 o’clock to try to get a quick snipe on the command center, but Flash has already lifted it off to safety and cleans the dragoons up with vultures.


Flash pushes through the center of the map. Bisu tries to crush the push, landing several excellent stasises, but Flash has so many units that he wins the battles even with much of his army frozen.


He is eventually able to siege up on the ride between the 12 o’clock expo and Bisu’s third, shelling both of them down while he takes his fifth base.


Flash then rolls back to take out Bisu’s fifth and sixth base, but is caught by a nice stasis en route. With his last army, Bisu takes advantage of the stasis to try to break Flash’s attack, but Flash has been reinforcing from his myriad of factories and kills off Bisu’s army. Seconds away from losing his last two mining bases and with an army that can’t touch Flash’s, Bisu concedes the game.