GSL Super Tournament - Midway Report

By b_unnies, confusedcrib, TreeHugger, and WaxAngel

Writers' Picks: Games of Note

Confusedcrib's pick: Nestea vs Top, Game Two

Play by Play:

Peaks of Baekdu

It's like that ad is telling me, 'your GSL reports suck.'

Thanks to ChickenLips for some of these awesome baneling bomb screencaps

Analysis:

Treehugger's Pick: LeenockfOu vs SlayerS_Alicia, Game Three



This doesn't seem smart to me.



Leenock lets the the thief into the art museum.



Alicia lets the cops into the doughnut shop.



What a game ending positional error looks like.

Nestea provides the most epic ZvTs imaginable. This is due to his incredible ability to come back in a game no matter how behind he is early on. In game one of Nestea vs. Top, we saw Nestea nearly come back despite being behind in workers and even an entire expansion against Top. Yet more support for the theory that Nestea has a chance to come back insituation.One of the defining characteristics of Nestea for me is how safe his early game tends to be in order to ensure that he can get into the midgame. In this series, however, Nestea was uncharacteristically unsafe in the early game and Top punished him for it.After a close first game, both players spawn in onCrossfire. Nestea opens with a speedling expand, not wanting to repeat last game's two rax silliness. Top opens reactor hellions into cloak banshee, just looking to harass while getting his expansion up. Again, Top gets way ahead of Nestea from his opening, as Nestea is simply not prepared. Nestea only has one spine crawler, two queens, and some zerglings, but Top manages to micro his four hellions very nicely and roast a ton of Nestea's drones.But the harassment by Top isn't quite over as a cloak banshee makes it's way over to Nestea's mineral line. Nestea begins a late evolution chamber, most likely due to dealing with the hellion harass. Nestea then goes into panic mode as the cloak banshee begins racking up even more drone kills.After the harassment is over with, Top is up in worker count over Nestea and on equal bases with a zerg: a tough to lose situation, unless your opponent is Nestea.Nestea has decided to stay on two bases getting muta baneling up and re droning before getting a third base. A few clutch baneling hits allow Nestea to hold the push for a little bit longer while he tries to make a bigger army.After having used all his drones to barely defended against that attack, Nestea finds himself in an impossible to win situation.And yet, the beginning of a comeback:With that one move Nestea has evened out the food and takes a third base just after Top does. Nestea is also still behind in workers, but not nearly by the huge deficit that existed a few minutes ago. Top pushes out with another big attack, but fancies himself to be much further ahead then he actually is and manages to lose everything with some poor tank positioning and bad marine micro.Top attempts to go for a drop to deny Nestea's third but it is overdue and Nestea is able to shut it down. At this point in the game it is a three basing zerg against a three basing terran with a gold base. Nestea is slowly adding on more mutalisks while taking a fourth base, allowing him to keep Top's tank count from growing too large through muta harass. Nestea begins poking to check for counter attacks and finds an exposed location at Top's back rocks. Nestea decides to go for the counter attack while Top begins pushing through to Nestea's expansions.And there you have it, probably the most epic baneling land mine that ever existed. After that, Nestea is able to clean up Top's attack and win the base trade.To me, this game really demonstrated two things, first, zerg's ability as a comeback race, and second, that Nestea managed to win with less economy then a terran.First things first, this match was pure proof that players should not be leaving games the moment they are put behind early on. Nestea lost over 11 drones to the early banshee and hellion play, that's nothing to poke a stick at. Players make mistakes, and TvZ is an extremely micro intensive matchup, where positioning can mean everything.Nestea was able to use some sneaky zerg tactics to pull his way back into this game: burrowed banelings and slowly growing mutalisk numbers. These units had to be used to maximum efficiency for Nestea to stand a chance.Since Nestea was able to survive on less economy then Top, and in fact even straight out win a macro game with less economy, it makes me wonder if we are truly playing Zerg the correct way. Perhaps Zerg should go for huge baneling busts or other forms of aggression early on as part of their standard game plan. I'm just trying to imagine what Nestea could have done had he not been forced into a low drone situation, but instead chose to be in one. With so many powerful units and tactics like baneling burrows, infestor usage, and muta harass, perhaps zergs should be a little more willing to sacrifice economy for aggression.The other major point that this game demonstrates is the absolute importance of micro in the matchup. Recent Terrans don't seem to be as micro-focused as before, and this game showed what can ultimately happen as a result. The same goes for zerg, if not even more. The game has shifted more and more to powering hard and maxing out early, but there's such a ridiculously difference in how far micro can go in making your army more efficient.This game really showed to me that Zerg may have a bright future ahead, if Nestea can do so much with so little and come back for the win. Even though he lost the series, it makes me wonder how much more Zerg can learn from Nestea's play, and how much more powerful they can become.After two very similar games, the third set of this series went in a wildly different direction. A curious quality of this game was how lackluster the opening was, with both players making critical mistakes, and yet when the midgame rolled around the mistakes ended and the set proved to be one of the most entertaining games in the Super Tournament so far.It begins with Alicia forge fast expanding, a choice that doesn't really seem to make sense on the wide wide open natural of Bel'Shir, which would seem nearly impossible to cannon off. His solution is a typical half-wall connecting to the nexus, but the choice is confusing with the game's most exposed natural expansion.Leenock's response is perfect and it comes in three parts. His first move is sending his initial zerglings around the mineral line to snipe a pylon that blocks the runby. Alicia hastily makes his second cannon on the mineral line, something he would've done anyway, but preferably at a later time. Leenock's second move is to immediately throw down a roach warren, which will allow him to pressure his opponent before stalkers can arrive on the field. Finally, Leenock only makes three roaches and takes his third instead. This works out well on a number of levels. Leenock's roach pressure forces Alicia to overmake cannons to be safe against a bust, while he loses his forge, a few probes, and mining time to Leenock's pressure. Meanwhile, Leenock simply turns his attention to economy, having gained a good lead.While defending against a range of Leenock's possible threats, Alicia has been building a stargate, and as Leenock's pressure abates, the stargate becomes Alicia's best opportunity to come back into the game. It's not clear whether Alicia had planned to play out Bel'Shir like the two games previous, producing only one void ray to deny the third and take map control, but finding himself behind, Alicia gambles on heavy air, and now it is Leenock's turn to make a mistake. Perhaps expecting a the same light touch as before, Leenock builds one, not two spore crawlers at his third and natural, but neglects his main. He takes cosmetic damage at his third, losing two queens, but he seems surprised when Alicia gambles for more damage at the zerg natural, and finds a mass of exposed overlords. Like a trail of breadcrumbs from Hansel and Gretel, Alicia snipes a total of eight overlords all the way to Leenock's main, which he finds completely unprepared for air units, and he takes out several drones, the roach warren, an extractor, and several more queens before finally being repelled by hydralisks.The game having so suddenly turned on it's head, Alicia now is free to put his just completed massed gateways to use, pumping out a large blink stalker army in little time, while Leenock responds again with roach-hydra. In the first game of the series, Alicia safely bridged the gap towards colossi on the constricted passageways of Crossfire, while Leenock was stuck with the sub-optimal roach-hydra. In the second game, on the more dynamic terran of Xel'Naga Caverns, Leenock committed heavily to a roach-hydra mix, which was foiled by Alicia's smart mass gateway midgame, only to succeed moments later as Alicia tried to sneak colossi into his army. In the third game, on the wide open Bel'Shir Beach, Leenock again chose roach-hydra, this time on probably the best roach-hydra map because of it's openness. Alicia however, made a proper adjustment, this time carrying through with his mass gateway all the way towards blink to secure his third before then transitioning to colossi for the late game. In essence, after two previous games of sub-optimal composition choices, both Alicia and Leenock were playing with excellent compositions in the final set.After the volitility of the opening minutes, both players seem to be itching for a proper fight, especially for Leenock who quickly maxes out and takes his fourth. Alicia takes the bait, but Leenock dodges his force fields and counter attacks, sniping the robo support bay which has just begun thermal lance. Alicia's cannot cancel his colossus, so he is forced to wait while Leenock effectively buys time and forces Alicia to run all over his base with one observer, clearing out a handful of burrowed roaches. Now Alicia tries to draw a fight, but is called back as Leenock drops his third, pressures his natural, and unburrows a few remaining roaches in the main, again delaying the protoss.Leenock is supplementing his army smartly as his harass is cleaned up, substituting the supply-inefficient roaches with banelings and infestors, however when Alicia finally provokes a fight, he is able to force field off Leenock's main army and reduce the impact of the zerg special forces. He returns moments later, and Leenock is badly out of position, having moved to counter attack the protoss natural. Alicia trades that for Leenock's gold base, and then corners Leenock's army, however Leenock replaces it and gets broodlords.This becomes the critical part of the game, as Leenock moves out to take Alicia's fourth, the protoss pivots and removes the zerg third, where a lot of critical tech has actually been built. Leenock moves his entire roach force against the protoss third, while sending his broodlords and several banelings back to hold the line at his natural. This is his fatal mistake, as Alicia is able to blink under the broods and easily eliminate them. Had Leenock instead sent his broodlords against the third protoss base while moving his roaches back and morphing more broods at home, he would've likely held. Even splitting half of his roaches to support his air force, while suiciding his task force at the protoss third, Leenock would've emerged in the favorable position that generally accompanies a huge broodlord force. Instead, by losing his heavy artillary cheaply, Leenock concedes his natural and main. Both players take opposite expansions on the side map, but Alicia kills off his opponent's stuff faster and so Leenock is forced to pull back and defend, which against mass stalker colossus, his roaches simply cannot do. Leenock taps out, having lost a close series 2-1.