And that, class, is how you dissect a Zerg. Any questions?

On the last day of the round of 16, the up and coming Khan terran Reality enters the booth wearing a surgical mask and in need of two consecutive wins against the undisputed master of ZvT in order to advance. Out of the four TvZs played on Monte Cristo, the first map Reality must win on, zerg has won every match so far. He gets the yellow command center in the bottom right corner of the map while Jaedong spawns as the red hatchery in the upper left.Reality sets the tempo of the game right off the bat with a proxy 8 rax on the northern route to Jaedong’s natural, very cleverly placed in a blind spot between the scouting paths of Jaedong’s drone scout and first overlord. Jaedong, who opened 12 hatch, doesn’t see what’s going on until his drone arrives at Reality’s base to find nothing but a supply depot and half-finished refinery.Jaedong delays his pool to continue drone production, deciding that they will serve him better both defensively and economically against Reality’s early aggression. He pulls three drones to chase the SCV out of his base and down the ramp where it joins up with the first marine. With four drones ready at the ramp and four more on the way, JD pushes out to engage as the second marine pops for Reality.JD surrounds the SCV and two marines behind the barracks with six drones while the last two camp outside the barracks to intercept the building marine.Reality micros decently, but only manages to get three drone kills before all three marines are focused down. Jaedong finally starts his spawning pool as the returning drones start mining at the natural.Reality still has the barracks landed and flashing however, and thanks to JD’s late pool manages to force a few drones off mining to deal with the SCV and pairs of marines twice more, netting a total of four drone kills in exchange for the first SCV and two marines.Between skirmishes, Reality’s first factory finishes, actually a few seconds earlier than Jaedong’s spawning pool. After immediately starting a vulture Reality places his starport just a few seconds later, all before JD even has an extractor. Jaedong starts a creep colony at the front of his natural as soon as the pool finishes.As JD finally gets his extractor up and starts mining gas, Reality attempts a run by with his first two vultures, using two more marines and an SCV to distract the sunken colony. JD pulls all the drones from the natural to try to block the vultures, but one gets through to the main.Jaedong is forced to pull all the drones there now, but at least manages to deal with it fairly quickly. Both vultures go down without a single drone kill while the sunken cleans up both marines and the SCV.Reality, however, has already moved on to bigger and better things. His first wraith finishes at the end of the attack and kills an overlord hanging around his natural before heading over to Jaedong’s side of the map. Reality adds a control tower after the first wraith while researching spider mines at his newly completed machine shop.His lair still morphing, Jaedong throws down a hydra den to deal with the wraith. He loses another two overlords over his natural before the first hydras finish to chase the wraith away. As soon as his lair completes he places his spire.Completely in the dark about Reality's next move, Jaedong tries slipping out a scouting zergling but it is immediately killed outside his natural by a vulture.As the wraith is chased out Reality starts his natural command center and cloak for wraiths while sending a just finished dropship in the direction of Jaedong's base. After scouting JD’s hydralisk positioning with his wraith, he loads four waiting vultures into the dropship and drops them off in a corner of JD’s main. He lays mines between the main and natural to catch any reinforcements before going for the main mineral line. With his overlords huddled around his hydralisks for protection, JD sees nothing until the vultures are already attacking his drones.Reality gets at least seven drone kills during this drop, plus a couple hydralisks from mines. Vulture speed finishes halfway through the attack, which allows Reality to keep his last vulture alive long enough to see the first mutalisks pop. As soon as the mutalisks hatch they head straight to Reality’s base, accompanied by a pair of scourge and hungry for revenge.With three wraiths ready and cloak done however, Jaedong is playing right into Reality’s hands. Before the mutalisks can do any real damage, the cloaked wraiths are right on top of them.The first two mutalisks and both scourge are shot down in the retreat, while the rest are forced to flee back to Jaedong’s natural, where Reality loses a wraith trying to harass the mineral line.Reality has now added a couple barracks in his main and started constructing both an armory and academy. Jaedong, very much on the back foot, sends out two drones to double expand at the 9 o’clock and bottom left base. The drone headed for the 9 o’clock makes it safely, but a vulture catches the other on the way to the bottom left.While the mutalisks are south of Jaedong’s natural, Reality drops another three vultures in his main and slays another half control group of drones before the mutalisks can catch them. The dropship gets scourged down before it can escape.Jaedong finally expands to the bottom left and picks off a couple SCVs at the natural expansion despite the turrets in place. Reality goes up to five barracks while researching stim and range for his MnM. With his armory finished, he adds a valkyrie to his wraith group.When Reality moves out along the southern route to Jaedong’s third with a medic heavy infantry squad and air support, Jaedong is not ready for it. The severe economic damage he’s suffered shows itself clearly in his low unit count. Furthermore, his army composition of muta hydra, which Reality forced him into with his vulture and wraith harass, is not at all suited to fighting MnM with so much anti air support.Jaedong catches the valkyrie with scourge as Reality’s army makes its way towards Jaedong’s third. Cloaked wraiths ahead of the marines force the mutalisks back to an overlord stationed just past the creep from JD’s 9 o’clock hatchery. Ovie speed is not done yet, and the mutas are not enough to defend the overlord against both wraiths and MnM, especially with a fresh valkyrie joining the force.Jaedong rallies his forces north of his third as the small but potent terran army charges into the abandoned zerg base. JD engages Reality’s force and manages to pick off all the wraiths, but the MnM and valkyrie easily outmatch the handful of hydras and mutalisk stack.The third goes down. With no way to defend his fourth, or to catch up economically or militarily, Jaedong concedes.Jaedong fans might not like it, but Reality has to be commended for pulling off such a daring and intricate build. It was a beautiful strategy, forcing JD to spend the whole game reacting to a constant string of harassment, each step of it setting up for the next while leading all the way up the tech tree. A less obvious aspect of the build, but no less important, is how well Reality controlled information. Reality’s constant aggression gave him almost constant vision of what Jaedong was up to, while his loose contain and air dominance kept Jaedong almost completely in the dark about what was coming next until it arrived. A build that relies so much on forcing the right reaction from the zerg with a minimum of both units and capacity to defend is also very fragile, of course, but Reality played it brilliantly. Keep an eye on this kid, ladies and gentlemen.It’s hard to say what Jaedong should have done differently in this match given how well Reality dictated the pace of the game. He could have snuck a drone out after fending off the 8 rax, which could potentially have got him some extremely valuable information on Reality's build. Also, had Jaedong gotten overlord speed when his lair finished, he could probably have caught Reality a little bit over reliant on cloaked wraiths for defense with a just slightly delayed mutalisk attack. I don't particularly fault him for these mistakes though - seeing through this strategy on the first try would have required nothing short of clairvoyance.