pullarius1 Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 508 Posts Last Edited: 2011-07-25 17:44:06 #1



IMNesTea v HongUnPrime.WE

http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors4/vod/65792

Nestea has had something of an odd tournament. He was in a group with a bye in the first round, and two of the three opponents he has faced have been zergs with some of the worst mirror match chops in Code S. As a result, he has not dropped a single game, or really even lost a single battle all tournament. Even Ensnare, his toughest opponent so far, rolled over to Nestea's amazing macro and game sense.

HongUn has had a much more interesting road to the semifinals. He 2-1'd out of his all-terran group in the RO32 by beating SuperNova, no TvP slouch, in two games with a loss to Nada in between. He handled Zenio fairly well, and then went on to wins his first three PvPs ever... against MC. After going 0-7 in his first set of mirror matches, HongUn somehow managed to outplay a PvP expert to spoil everyone's hope of a MC/Nestea semifinals. HongUn has been a constant bane of liquibets, but always seems to lose the round immediately after beating a popular player (Clide – Open 1, FruitDealer – Open 3, Jinro – Code S March).

Despite HongUn seeming to be a huge underdog, this could end up being a closely contested match. HongUn has a 60% win rate against zergs, and always seems to pull crazy build out of nowhere to beat a "better" player. Also, with this most recent semifinals showing, HongUn is actually tied for the second most quarter-final appearances at 4- a feat matched only by MarineKing and Nada. However, Nestea is first in that category with 5 quarter-final-or-better finishes, and is 15-2 against protoss. In fact, Nestea has never lost a BOx to a protoss, ever, and it is quite a stretch of the imagination to see him starting now.



Game 1:

+ Show Spoiler + Dual Site

HongUn forge expands. Nestea gets his pool, and quickly double expands before gas with just four zerglings on the field. HongUn quickly techs to two stargates for a void ray and, eventually, a dozen phoenix, which are initially repelled by queens and spore crawlers. Nestea gets his roach warren and a lair. HongUn starts +1 ground weapons and makes five additional gateways as his now huge phoenix fleet does significant damage to Nestea's mineral lines and overlord count. Nestea counter-attacks with roaches and kills a fair amount of probes at HongUn's natural as he starts building a roach hydra army.

Despite being up against 12+ phoenix, Nestea senses that the real danger is the protoss ground army, and makes several spine crawlers at his third. HongUn attacks Nestea's natural at 13' with around a dozen each of stalkers and phoenix with five sentries mixed in for force fields and guardian shield. But Nestea is able to relocate his spine crawlers and lure the phoenixes into the spore crawlers while his huge roach/hydra army finishes spawning. Nestea controls the battle so well that HongUn is left down almost 100 supply, and has to concede soon after to Nestea's wave of hydralisks as he does not have any unit that does splash damage.



Something to note: at the 9' mark, Nestea had just three zerglings, three roaches and SIXTY drones. His response to the first phoenix attack, which killed 1000 resources worth of units for free, was to counterattack with the essentially all the roaches he had, leaving the worker count at 75-50 and Nestea with two roaches and seven zerglings in his name against the 50-supply army of HongUn. But Nestea somehow knows exactly when to build units and completely crushed HongUn's attack with hydralisks still dripping with the ooze of the eggs they hatched from.



Nestea 1-0

+ Show Spoiler + Metalopolis, cross positions

HongUn again forge expands. Nestea goes pool/gas/speed/hatch. HongUn again techs to stargate; Nestea again takes a quick third and gets up an evolution chamber for spore crawlers and +1 melee attack. HongUn sticks to one stargate this time, making four gateways much earlier than before. Nestea techs to a baneling nests, a spire, and an infestation pit. HongUn gets a robotics facility, a third base, a twilight council, and a templar archives. Nestea makes a bunch of zerglings for a poke, but most of them get frozen in forcefields at HIGHLIGHT 7:55, minimizing the damage to some probe losses at his natural and a lot of the health of his third nexus.

HongUn uses his first round of templar to make archons as he researches +2 weapons, psionic storm, and charge all at the same time. Nestea takes a fourth and starts +2 air attacks despite having just a single corruptor on the field, and researches burrowing claws for just a handful of roaches. Nestea attacks with x-ling/infestor into HongUn's templar/archon/army. HongUn gets off some good force-fields and very solid feedbacks on Nestea's infestors, but Nestea's banelings demolish the majority of HongUn's zealots as his zerglings kill HongUn's third nexus and run into the main for some devastating probe kills. Nestea ends up fifty supply and two bases ahead, and from there Nestea just masses roaches and banelings, rolling over his protoss opponent.



Nestea is consistently staying one step ahead of HongUn. His drone production has been off the charts; and every attacking unit he makes has a purpose and a place. The fact that he had +2 air attack done before making almost any air units compels me to believe that he has each game planned out to the 101st minute.



Nestea 2-0

+ Show Spoiler + Crossfire

Nestea again goes pool/gas/expand. HongUn three-gate expands. Nestea gets a roach warren, a third, and a lair. HongUn techs to blink, gets +1 attack and builds up to six gates. HIGHLIGHT drone hug at 11:20. HongUn attacks Nestea's third with his gateway army. Nestea decides to try to hold with spine crawlers and counterattack HongUn's natural with fifteen roaches while teching to spire. Nestea loses his third, but kills HongUn's natural and retreats with his roaches to wipe out HongUn's attacking army. Yet again, HongUn is left down sixty supply and is stuck on just one base. HongUn gg's as soon as he sees Nestea's first eight mutalisks.



Nestea goes to his third GSL finals, dominating HongUn, and not having lost a single game the whole tournament. The last time a player made it to a GSL finals without losing a game, it was the second Open tournament, and Nestea was on his way to his first GSL championship.



Nestea wins 3-0

+ Show Spoiler + HongUn, yet again, a potentially great match, just to get swept in the next round.



+ Show Spoiler + HongUn got Nesteabagged.



Match 2: IMLosira v ZeNEXByun

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Ever since TvT'ing his way through the first season of Code A, Byun has had a difficulty making a name for himself. He has fallen out at the round of 32 in every GSL since, including a 4-10 slump leading up to the SuperTournament. So we were very surprised to see him get out of a tough group that included MVP, SC, and Zenio to make it to his first RO16, where he pulled off a solid 2-0 against Nada. And we were surprised again when Byun came back from an 0-2 deficit to beat terran phenom Bomber and give the ZeNEX team its first semifinals appearance since San's unlikely run back in March. Perhaps he can surprise us again today with a revenge win over the player that all-killed his team back in GSTL-March.

Losira started off his GSL career by losing to TLO in the very first Open tournament. Losira wasn't on anyone's radar after that until he tore through the second Code A tournament, 2-0'ing fan-favorites Huk and Leenock in the process. He followed it up with an all-kill of ZeNEX in the team league and a strong finals run at MLG Columbus. He made the RO8 in his Code S debut, where he fell to SC, and then lost to Polt, the eventual champion, in the first round of the SuperTournment. ZvT is by far his worst matchup at 41% compared to 70% and 80% in his other two match-ups. But in this tournament he managed to clutch out close wins over MarineKing and Top, so perhaps his vT game is on the upswing.



Game 1:

+ Show Spoiler + Crossfire

Losira immediately builds a hatchery at his gold expansion. Byun knows something is up after spotting the drones transferring over, but doesn't immediately commit to attacking the sneaky hatch, instead building up a larger force of marines to do maximum damage after a light poke, which lets Losira knows that the gig is up. This gives Losira enough time to make a warren and thirteen quick roaches, which catch and kill all of Byun's marines en route to the gold for a killing blow. These roaches then easily break into Byun's base, which has just a handful of marines and a single banshee to defend, as Byun has been teching fairly hard. Byun eventually kills the roaches with the banshee, but is left with just 10 scvs to Losira's 30 drones. Losira plays it safe, and the game actually goes on for quite a bit longer. Byun is able to put up a valiant defense, using the the architecture of the map to hold on to two bases, but Byun doesn't even manage to get within forty food of his opponent, and never really has a chance despite some sloppy play on Losira's part.



A strong roach all-in from Losira that turned into a much longer game.



Losira 1-0

+ Show Spoiler + Xel'Naga Fortress, Byun clockwise

Losira hatches first. Byun uncharacteristically two-raxes and cleverly bunkers the bottom of Losira's ramp with strong scv support. Losira gives up his expansion hatchery and patiently makes zerglings to cut off any reinforcements and prevent the belligerent scvs and marines from making it home. Losira's patience pays off as he intercepts all of Byun's marines and forward scvs, leaving the game state at four marines and 14 scvs to 18 zerglings and 18 drones! Byun does have a second command center, but Losira's zerglings keep it in Byun's main and allow Losira to re-expand. Losira gets a baneling nest, perhaps planning to get aggressive. Byun scans the baneling nest, builds a third barracks, and techs to starport. But the threat alone of banelings is enough for Losira, so he takes a third and techs to roaches and a lair while his opponent is afraid to leave his base.

Byun as finally manages to expand behind a marine drop and a reaper, which put him 800 resources ahead in the units lost tab. But he is still down by 25 workers, as Losira has been droning quite a bit. Byun is fine staying on marine/2-fact-tank/medivac as he takes a third. Losira techs to mutalisks and takes two more bases. When Losira maxes, he has 21 mutalisks, 44 zerglings and 7 roaches. Byun is still on 170 supply, which is mostly marines supported by 7 tanks, and 3 medivacs with thors on the way.

As Byun starts to move across the map, Losira morphs a ton of banelings runs around the army into Byun's natural. The x-ling attack forces Byun's marines to retreat and defend. But, since his army is between Byun's forces and his vulnerable bases, Losira is able to pull off a pair of brilliant mid-battle baneling mines which decimate Byun's marines, leaving him with only the tanks. The mechanical component of the terran army is soon picked off by mutalisks and speedling, leaving Byung with no map presence at all. Losira starts rallying units into Byun's main and Byun, now down by sixty supply, is forced to gg.



That's the first time in a while I've seen a zerg come back from a lost expansion. Losira is looking really good. I think Byun overproduced marines that game, especially for someone who has been meching all tournament long.



Losira 2-0

+ Show Spoiler + Tal'Darim Altar, Byun clockwise

Byun gets a 16 CC. Losira hatches first with gas, and signals real baneling aggression this time with a baneling nest and 18 early zerglings. Byun gets a factory and the audience immediately knows that the game is over as Byun has a one-building wall and only a couple marines to defend. HIGHLIGHT nerd chorus 6:10 The banelings hit, and Byun soon leaves the game.



Three surprisingly short games considering the players. This win gives us the first Zerg mirror AND the first team-kill mirror in the finals of a GSL. Many people will complain, but I think the NesTea v Losira match ironically has the potential to be the best Finals yet. They both have such different styles of zerg- Losira is so aggressive and risky while Nestea is rock-solidly defensive and safe. Both players have an 80%+ win rate in the matchup, and I predict that they will give us a swarm-on-swarm battle to remember.



Losira wins 3-0

+ Show Spoiler + Losira? More like WINsira.

+ Show Spoiler + BullByun



GSL July 2011 Semifinals: Nestea v HongUn, Byun v LosiraNestea has had something of an odd tournament. He was in a group with a bye in the first round, and two of the three opponents he has faced have been zergs with some of the worst mirror match chops in Code S. As a result, he has not dropped a single game, or really even lost a single battle all tournament. Even Ensnare, his toughest opponent so far, rolled over to Nestea's amazing macro and game sense.HongUn has had a much more interesting road to the semifinals. He 2-1'd out of his all-terran group in the RO32 by beating SuperNova, no TvP slouch, in two games with a loss to Nada in between. He handled Zenio fairly well, and then went on to wins his first three PvPs ever... against MC. After going 0-7 in his first set of mirror matches, HongUn somehow managed to outplay a PvP expert to spoil everyone's hope of a MC/Nestea semifinals. HongUn has been a constant bane of liquibets, but always seems to lose the round immediately after beating a popular player (Clide – Open 1, FruitDealer – Open 3, Jinro – Code S March).Despite HongUn seeming to be a huge underdog, this could end up being a closely contested match. HongUn has a 60% win rate against zergs, and always seems to pull crazy build out of nowhere to beat a "better" player. Also, with this most recent semifinals showing, HongUn is actually tied for the second most quarter-final appearances at 4- a feat matched only by MarineKing and Nada. However, Nestea is first in that category with 5 quarter-final-or-better finishes, and is 15-2 against protoss. In fact, Nestea has never lost a BOx to a protoss, ever, and it is quite a stretch of the imagination to see him starting now.Game 1:Ever since TvT'ing his way through the first season of Code A, Byun has had a difficulty making a name for himself. He has fallen out at the round of 32 in every GSL since, including a 4-10 slump leading up to the SuperTournament. So we were very surprised to see him get out of a tough group that included MVP, SC, and Zenio to make it to his first RO16, where he pulled off a solid 2-0 against Nada. And we were surprised again when Byun came back from an 0-2 deficit to beat terran phenom Bomber and give the ZeNEX team its first semifinals appearance since San's unlikely run back in March. Perhaps he can surprise us again today with a revenge win over the player that all-killed his team back in GSTL-March.Losira started off his GSL career by losing to TLO in the very first Open tournament. Losira wasn't on anyone's radar after that until he tore through the second Code A tournament, 2-0'ing fan-favorites Huk and Leenock in the process. He followed it up with an all-kill of ZeNEX in the team league and a strong finals run at MLG Columbus. He made the RO8 in his Code S debut, where he fell to SC, and then lost to Polt, the eventual champion, in the first round of the SuperTournment. ZvT is by far his worst matchup at 41% compared to 70% and 80% in his other two match-ups. But in this tournament he managed to clutch out close wins over MarineKing and Top, so perhaps his vT game is on the upswing.Game 1: @pullarius1