Photo by: MLG.com
Johan "Naniwa" Lucchesi won a crucial victory yesterday, seizing the MLG Global Invitational gold by defeating IM's NesTea in the grand final. Naniwa walks out $2,000 richer and full of confidence for the upcoming weekend of MLG Providence action.
NesTea scored an early lead on Terminus by nullifying Naniwa's DT expand completely and counter-attacking with a roach burrow force and the crushing power of nearly 80 supply advantage. The Swede, however, was quick to retort, hitting a void ray/gateway timing attack just in the middle of huge dronage by NesTea. The zerg fought valiantly but the protoss army soon overwhelmed him to tie the score.
The third and final set was a real mind blower. NesTea opened with a bizarre 11-pool to counter-react to Naniwa's nexus first but everything got even more weird when NesTea pulled off a large portion of his drones to accompany his initial lings in the attack. Scared for his life, Naniwa cancelled his nexus and cannoned up his main but NesTea was already returning his drones - the protoss have been fooled completely.
To return the favor, Naniwa cannoned up NesTea's expo, forcing a lot of dead zerglings before the Korean could clean it all up and take his second hatchery. From that point on, the game slowly returned to a normal phase with NesTea taking his third soon thereafter and Naniwa safely going up to 4-gate before expanding himself.
The switch of warfare was turned off a couple of minutes later when in a questionable attempt to kill off Naniwa's sentries, NesTea lost all his lings triggering an attack by the protoss that almost spelled the end for the zerg maestro. Naniwa was dealing increasing amounts of damage by the second before finally retreating in the last perfect moment...
...But only to regroup and launch a follow-up blink attack right into NesTea's natural. The expansion hatchery vanished in a blink of an eye and the victory for Nani was sealed on his way back home when he caught all of NesTea's roaches way out of position. A few forcefields later, Naniwa exited the booth as an MLG Global Invitational champion, having beaten two IM top players in a row.
There is another huge challenge ahead of Naniwa, though, and that is the actual MLG national championship weekend in Providence. Nani enters as a top 4 seed but by the end of tomorrow we shall if he is worth it to bring home the $50,000.
