HDH Invitational #1 Ro16

With five of the matches already played on April 26th, on April 28th was when the remaining three victors became clear. The eight contestants now have an additional week to fight out their way to the BO5 semifinals.

The awesome start of the HDH Invitational presented to our attention a large chunk of great matches, where we saw nearly every strat, unit composition and openings currently operational in the beta – proxy Void Rays, Hellion harassment, Thors and Infestors, mass Phoenixes, cheesy warp-ins, missed and grasped opportunities and even some frustrating miss-micro situations. Read on to take a dive in the torrent of epic games.

The results from the Ro16 are as follows:

HDH Invitational #1 Ro16
ret	2-1	LZgamer
CauthonLuck	2-0	KawaiiRice
Jinro	0-2	WhiteRa
Nazgul	2-0	InControl
NoNy	2-0	mOOnGLaDe
orb	1-2	IdrA
TheLittleOne	2-1	Artosis
Day[9]	1-2	Tasteless

With that being said, you can take a look below to read a more in-depth report of the played games as well as the Ro8 brackets.

ret vs Lzgamer
The tournament began with a powerful and hectic start, facing off the legendary European Zerg versus one of the top American Terrans at the moment. With first map being Lost Temple (which was always the case in the Ro16 matches), ret went for a standard macro play, building a late Spawning Pool, followed by a quick expo. LZ, however, threw the gamble dice and decided to go for a reaper rush with Rax and Gas before Supply Depot. ret managed to scout LZgamer on time but by some reason decided not to cancel his hatchery. It was when the scouting SCV started to build a bunker on ret's expo when things got heated up - unable to see the bunker due to building hatchery's low sight range, ret reaction was delayed, the reaper entered safety and the zerg lost all his Zerglings, the Queen and drones in attempt to stop the attack, but all in vain.
In the second game on Metalopolis the two players spawned on 6 and 1 o'clock and LZgamer decided to go once again with the same build order, but this time ret cleverly went speedlings after he scouted the early Rax, fended off the initial reapers and later broke LZ's ramp, obliterating a couple of Marauders, his M.U.L.Es and half of his SCVs. The american player was forced to GG out.
The final game developed much like the previous with LZ going reapers and ret teching to speedlings. The match, however, deviated when both players decided to macro up and tech with ret getting a ton of hydras, roaches and infestors, while the Terran player focusing only on Marauders and a few Thors. However, with one base behind, LZgamer fell behind in terms of macro and lost to ret's 200/200 push.

CauthonLuck vs KawaiiRice
The only TvT in the series walked pretty much the currently standard metagame path. This is especially true for the first game, when both players went for fast Starport but while KawaiiRice decided to go for Banshee harass, CauthonLuck sat defensively with dual Vikings in his base, managing to scan and snipe two of Rice's banshees without allowing any major damages on his mineral line. Put against the ropes, Kawaii needed a tech switch and he chose to go for HSM Ravens to counter Luck's mass Marauder/Viking army. However, KawaiiRice moved out a couple of seconds earlier and engaged without HSM being fully researched and he lost the game shortly after.
In game #2 on Steppes, KawaiiRice again went for the fast Starport, while CauthonLuck just got one Viking to counter any harass and immediately went for Siege Tanks. With the air dominance of Kawaii completely denied, his opponent comfortably marched on with a bunch of Marines and two Tanks, melted the defending bunkers and easily won the series.

WhiteRa vs Jinro
WhiteRa versus Jinro came out to be the quickest match in the Ro16 with the Ukrainian gosu dominating the Swedish player 2-0 just by the use of perfectly timed Void Rays. The first game on Lost Temple ended badly for Jinro when he moved his Marine/Tank force to the 9 o'clock WhiteRa in the worst moment possible - WhiteRa's Void Rays met no resistance at all, demolishing SCVs and tech buildings alike. By the time Jinro managed to fall back his main was already a mess and additional Protoss ground forces were now coming to reinforce the air terror.
The next game on Steppes of War Jinro went for more or less the same build, this time teching to Thor instead of Siege Tanks. Terran's push, however, failed easily when the Thor was little to no trouble for the combined forces of two Void Rays. Thus, in less than 15 minutes total, WhiteRa secured his place in the Ro8.

Nazgul vs InControl
The game between Nazgul and InControl proved in black and white how fragile this particular match up can be. Both players opened standardly for Lost Temple, going for 1 Gate/Cybernetics tech. The pace picked up when the first Zealot of Nazgul entered InControl's main and started raining havoc over his probes. Desperately trying to deflect the persistent Zealot and his annoying buddy that joined him in short time, the American Protoss fell greatly behind in terms of economy losing six precious probes for the price of one fallen Zealot. However, InControl was still not dead yet as the shoutcasters pinpoint our attention to his scouting probe, sitting idle and, more importantly, unseen by Nazgul due to the whole harassment action. InControl grasped this opportunity, dropping a pylon and warping six Sentries in Nazgul's main. Unfortunately, the sneaky American managed to pull out a horrible micro, killing absolutely useless thins such as a Cybernetics Core and only two probes. As Nazgul drew his forces back he met little resistance, crushing InControl's warped in units and later pushing in for the kill.
The next game commenced on Kulas Ravine, InControl's map of choice, where he had the chance to come back to this game and keep his chances of advancing to the Ro8. However, as the game progressed, it slipped more and more from the hands of the talented Protoss, as Nazgul's probe managed to stay obscenely long in Control's base, providing all the necessary inteligence, preparing the Dutch as best as possible for his inevitable signature mass Sentry push. With some perfect Force Fields, splitting InControl's army in half and destroying his two immortals, Nazgul easily sealed the win.

NonY vs mOOnGLaDe
The first game between Nony and mOOnGLaDe was also the first to deviate from the standard playstyle so far. Deciding to show his unorthodox thinking, NonY decided to go for mass Phoenixes as opposed to mOOnGLaDe's muta tech. After loosing quite a bit of his air forces during the first clash, NonY stuck with his strategy nonetheless and accumulated a huge army of Phoenixes and began to torture mOOnGLaDe's mineral lines. In a matter of minutes almost every single Queen, Drone and Overlord has been killed and mOOnGLaDe, struggling in the huge disadvantage in the macro battle lost to the enormous ground army of the American. When the chance for revenge on Metalopolis came, mOOnGLaDe overcommitted to his turtle play and the wall of Spine Crawlers was easily demolished by a well microed Zealot/Sentry push.



orb vs IdrA
The first match on the second day of casting proved to be probably the most exciting with nearly 40 minutes of ZvP action in which IdrA barely managed to snatch the win out of orb's hands.
Insufficient scouting prevented the Protoss to win the first game on Lost Temple, when after failing his Zealot rush, orb missed IdrA's hydra tech and both his front door and mass Gateway units were no challenge for the massive Hydralisk swarm.
Picking Blistering Sands as his map of choice, orb once again decided to pressure IdrA in the early game. Throwing 2 Gateways at his natural choke and chronoboosting his Zealots, orb's rush was extremely successful and pretty much sealed the deal for the Protoss. The unending stream of Zealots managed to kill IdrA's Queen, a ton of Zerglings, lots of Drones and most importantly - cancelled the fast expansion... twice! With all that damaged done, IdrA was denied the macro play he likes so much and that felt strongly when his Roach/Zergling army was significantly smaller than orb's Stalker ball of death. Blinking his units out of trouble, orb dealt a huge blow on Greg, forcing him to leave the game without calling GG.
In the third game on Metalopolis, IdrA spawns at 6 o'clock and his opponent, spawning at the relatively close 9 o'clock position, yet again threw up a Zealot rush but the Zerglings, guarding IdrA's fast expo had no trouble fending it off and the two players comfortably sat down and started macroing up. Around the seven minute mark, however, was when the turning point of the match occured. Sending a probe to the 3 o'clock natural, orb put a Pylon, warped in a Stargate and chronoboosted a Void Ray, attempting to strike IdrA in his Achilles' heel. The Zerg player, however, either by pure luck or some divine sense rallied two of his Zerglings across several positions on the map, eventually spotting orb's Stargate and immediately building a Hydralisk Den. Being forced to abandon his proxy strat, orb tried to strengthen his ground army of Gateway units, but with all those resources poured into the Void Ray he was unable to do so effectively and lost the game, similarly to the first match.

Artosis vs TheLittleOne
As the day grew late, excitement grew even harder. The game between the infamous community favourite Artosis and the rising star from the TeamLiquid Invitational TheLittleOne was anticipated with much anxiety and fortunately it didn't disappoint anyone. The action was tense right from the beginning, when TLO's pesky probe managed to delay for quite some time the fast expo of Artosis and indirectly dealt a huge blow to Zerg's macro. From that point on, however, TLO decided to turtle pretty hard, somewhat loosing map control and taking his gold expo really late. Leading the macro game with one base ahead, Artosis managed to accumulate a huge roach army, big enough to make TLO's Immortals mean nothing. In a desperate try to come forth, the German player tried to mass up High Templars but for some reason Psi Storm was not researched for quite a lot of time and the compact Protoss army easily died to the tough roach resistance, which later on marched on for the win.
The next game was a PvZ once again, this time on Blistering Sands and developed in a quite standard fashion. After harassing Artosis (who this time went for 1-base roach play) with Zealots, he comfortably warped a Robo Facility at his rocks and pushed ahead. Already behind in income and not able to do any significant harassment with his Zerglings, Artosis desperately tried to stop TLO's army but his numbers were just too high.
Third game was played on Metalopolis and when TLO spawned as Terran everybody shivered in delight, remembering his epic game against Nazgul on this very same map. And such it was with TLO lighting the flames early on with a beautiful Hellion harassment. Loosing every single drone on his expansion and a Queen during the first wave and another Queen during the second, Artosis is pressed down the bottom his mutalisks greatly delayed and unable to do any damage. In last attempts to step back on his feet, Artosis started to produce Roaches but every single combat unit of his collapsed under the metal fists of TLO's Thors and Marauders.



Day[9] vs Tasteless
The Ro16 concluded with another epic face off between The Brothers Plott, both playing random. With Nick spawning Terran at 6 o'clock and Sean spawning as Zerg at 14, both players having bad luck with their worst races, the game picked up a nice pace as Tasteless went for quick reapers teasing Sean's mineral lines as much as possible, but which eventually got fended off. In the mid-game, seeing that his Mutalisks won't be as usefull as he would've wanted, Day[9] switched to Banelings with Hydralisk support to counter his brother's large infantry army. After the first huge battle, Day[9] came on top and it was a slow defeat for Tasteless from that point on. Leading the Terran four bases to one and a half, Sean easily interrupted the Medivac drop that Tasteless executed on one of his expansions and his ground army moved in for the win.
On Blistering Sands, Tasteless got lucky, spawning as his race of choice - Protoss. The infamous shoutcaster is known for his affection for the race and this match proved precisely this. His devious plan began in an obvious fashion as a probe started warping in a Robo Facility right in front of Day[9]'s scouting drone's eyes. The drone of question even exited Tasteless' base and returned seconds after just to make sure that Nick is indeed going for a Robo timing attack. However, with a Stalker being produced and killing the scouting drone, Tasteless did indeed cancel his Robo tech (with the Facility being about 90% finished by the time) and quickly switched to Quad Warp Gates. Unprepared for this surpries, Day[9] force was insufficient (to say the least) to stop the Protoss push and Tasteless came back in the game, easily tieing the score.
Finally, we could say that the last game developed far from what everyone expected. With Tasteless spawning as Zerg and Day[9] as Terran, the latter's strat of choice was a Hellion opening, which was anything but adequate to counter Tasteless' 1-base roach play. Thus, trying to tech up to some counter units, Day[9] lifts his Rax with the intention to throw in a Tech Lab for some Marauders. When the Barracks lands, though, every single viewer probably gasped in surprise when a second Reactors started to build. This huge mistake by Day[9] (who post-game with a huge laugh on his throat honestly confessed that he intentionally did the stupidest thing possible) actually costed him the game, as the Roaches of his brother just trampled the useless resistance of Marines and Hellions.

Thus ended the epic 2-day stream event that was HDH Invitational Ro16. With the results being what they are, the Ro8 brackets look like that:



As you can see, the Ro8 has the potential to be even more thrilling than the Ro16. There are two really anticipated mirror matches, one of which will decide who will be the sole Zerg left in the tournament and the other will face Europe vs United States once again. The single Terran CauthonLuck will have to face the German machine TheLittleOne and he will have to put some great play on the table to defend his race's honour.

With the deadline of the games being May 4th, there should be some new information very soon. However, no stream dates are announced just yet so stay tuned to GosuGamers for any up to date data.

Links
TeamLiquid - HDH Invitational thread
GosuGamers.net - Ro16 VODs