To Code S we go: July
VS Happy on Crossfire
What people should know about July is that he spent a great deal of his pro-gaming life killing marines with drones as any BroodWar zerg does. The God of War was kind enough to teach Happy that lesson twice: once during his double proxy rax rush and then again during the follow-up BitByBit SCV attack.
I guess drones are really that good.
VS Boxer on Cloud Kingdom
Nerdgasm. Do you know it? It's spelled with "July" and "Boxer" with "micromadness" in the middle. Two absolute BroodWar legends met in Group E to bark at each other for our pleasure.
It was not a long ZvT but their playstyle would not suggest otherwise. Boxer took a humongous early lead after putting close to twenty drones to hellion fire, transitioning to mass reactor marine/medivac army behind it. Although July was in grim position, he drew strength from his adamantium decisiveness, tempered during his years as a SC2 God of War.
July knew that his only chance was to strike now, and hard. He cut full drone production and invested everything into zerglings and a baneling nest, going for his very signature low-econ baneling bust. And it worked. Boxer needed some time before his tech could kick in but he simply wasn't awarded such.
VS Supernova on Belshir Beach
By July's third game, my expectations were once again completely adjusted to his playstyle. I was waiting for the next 2-base attack to follow and it was not hard to see it coming.
The question is, however, if we all know how July is going to play, why don't his opponents? Why not get an additional bunker or simply wall off with a barracks. Because if you refuse to do so, you are forcing a certain eSports editor to fabricate more sentences than necessary only to cover for a relatively boring game in which a terran dies to a roach/baneling bust.
VS Creator on Crossfire
At that point I was utterly convinced that it is July's eternal destiny to keep playing a 2-base zerg. Even when he tries to get a quick third, as in this game versus Creator, there is always some 4-gate expansion build there to kill your party.
If you look at that game from the viewpoint of an egoistic StarCraft 2 fan, you would actually rejoice as we finally got a July game that was, in its entirity, truly enjoyable. Despite losing his third, July made use of Creator's lack of wall-off to equalize the economies and later used sick ling micro to destroy the blink stalker attack that followed.
Creator's final move would bring him much more success, though, as he chose to bypass the spines at July's natural and hit the main directly by going through the backdoor. July, who was hiding lings on the map in anticipation of an easy prey, was suddenlty out of position, with base trade being his only option. While his main was dying, the zerg sprinted down to the protoss natural, brought it to ashes and then decided to turn around and face the protoss army directly. As it would seem, this was a most wrong decision by July and he found out that his DPS was not high enough to bring him the victory.
A small disappointment, of course, as he was already a Code S player.
To Code S we go: Supernova
VS Creator on Daybreak
Supernova's first game was really short and straight-forward. The terran cut SCVs to go for a double proxy rax which, to Creator's bad luck, ended up unscouted. Whatever plans the protoss had for the mid game remained undiscovered as he just died in a matter of secods.
VS Happy on Dual Sight
Supernova made use of his earlier siege tech and higher tank count to pressure Happy's natural and make him repair it for dear life. What it really accomplished, however, was scare the crap out of Happy, especially when Supernova attacked times and times again, despite now having that large of an advantage.
"Bullied" was a word used by the caster duo and that was exactly the case. Happy had raven, banshee, tanks to match Supernova's and thus a good overall composition to engage in equally beneficial direct fights but Supernova had damaged him mentality so hard that Happy could not summon the courage needed to oppose his enemy properly. Supernova kept trading boldly marines for tanks until eventually he did achieve that army advantage he more or less pretended to have all game.
VS Boxer on Metropolis
The theme of this group obviously was "as short games as possible" so there was really no reason why the final game should have been different. Boxer made an early mistake by losing a full medivac to Supernova's marines but that was the least of his troubles as, similar to what Happy experienced earlier, he found himself under SUpernova's siege. The earlier siege tech of the oGs terran won him yet another game.
