GSL World Championship Day 1 - Report

After a somewhat easy win for NesTea on Scrap Station, DIMAGA did not look as he would be able to get his revenge from yesterday's Team League defeat. But the Ukrainian would come back and win on Xel'Naga Caverns and Terminus RE to move into top 8.

Guessing and surely hoping NesTea would go for a fast expansion, DIMAGA went for a 10-pool on Xel'Naga Caverns. Deciding to go all-in, he sent all his drones along with the first six zerglings towards NesTea. NesTea spotted the attack with his scouting overlord, and canceled his hatchery. But with spawning pool too late, DIMAGA can run into NesTea's base. He puts down a spine crawler to support the zerglings in the attack.

Having evened out the score, DIMAGA went into the third and deciding game with newfound confidence. And throughout the game he kept on the pressure on the Korean "Zerg King". Killing off an off-creep Queen in the beginning of the game, DIMAGA felt ahead throughout the game. Filipchuk managed to kill off a heap of zerglings pounding at the back rocks, which gave him a huge army lead. With the game progressing, DIMAGA ended up ahead in upgrades, and his eventual hydralisk and roach army on three-base was too large for NesTea to hold, despite the many Spine Crawlers defending his only expansion at the natural.


The rest of the foreigners failed to advance in the earlier matches. Chris "HuK" Loranger lost to Jong Hyun "mvp" Jeong in a rather lackluster series ending 2-1 for the Korean. Sung Jun "July" Park defeated his old StarCraft: Brood War rival Yun Yeol "NaDa" Lee in a very convincing fashion, 2-0.

Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk won his first game against Cho Won "san" Kang with a two-base colossus, stalker, zealot army against san's one-base ditto on Terminus RE. san went to attack at the 17 minute mark, but White-Ra could fend it off and eventually have more colossus than his opponent.

The second and third game was won by "san" with the four warp gate strategy. Both players showcased excellent micro, but san's pressure in the second game was too rough for the Ukrainian to recover from. san could eventually send our Void Rays to accompany his warp gate mix and defeat White-Ra's lone immortal and colossus.

In the third game, on Xel'Naga Caverns, san succeeded with his four warp gate rush, overthrowing the 30-year-old Protoss with too many units.



Tomorrow's matches will kick off at 11:00 CET with MarineKing taking on SEn.