welcome-banner
All News
article-headline
StarCraft14 years agoMarius "LML" Z

Replay Analysis - White-Ra vs KKangSOJu

The infamous White-Ra, also known as Gameitoss, which he uses in this game, starts on the left side of the map as the brown protoss, while his opponent, the yellow Zerg player, KKangSOJu starts on the right. Beware of SPOILERS.

EARLY GAME

Both player open up with pretty standard strategies, as the Protoss goes for the fast expansion, while the Zerg plays a safe overpool map, to deny any proxy gates which can be very effective on two player maps, but also to prevent his 12 hatch being blocked by the scouting probe of the Protoss.
White-Ra enters the Zerg's main base with his scouting probe, as KKangSOJu moves his drone out to take his natural expansion, attacking the probe on its way there, to inflict damage, hoping to kill it and to throw down a hatchery, unblocked. As his drone gets low on health, he returns it and the second drone comes just in time to keep fighting the probe. While the probe dodges the drone, the drone manages to pull off that hatchery however, and the probe returns to scouting the mainbase.
In the meanwhile the Ukrainian Protoss opens a riff for his nexus, followed by two cannons, to hold off eventual zergling waves. But as the Zerg only spawned four zerglings, the Protoss base in no danger at all and the zerglings are simply used to block the entry to the mainbase.



Both players continue to play very standardly, as White-Ra goes for the stargate and the citadel of adun, while KKangSOJu takes his third base, morphs his main hatchery to a lair and puts down a spire at his natural, as well as his fourth hatchery, and the fifth to be placed on his third.

MID GAME

As the first corsair pops out, it goes on to kill an overlord, trying to get an insight on White-Ra's base, immediately.
The Zerg remakes that overlord, however, and makes scourges to counter the corsair, just while throwing down a creep colony at his natural and two more at his third, well placed in his mineral line, An evolution chamber to round up the block against early speed zealot attacks with plus one damage upgrade is also placed on the zerg's third base, while two corsairs hunt down another overlord at that base, just while three dark templars are being build in the three gateways of White-Ra, to hit that base invisible and undecteted. But as the corsairs have to return, to dodge the scourges, which just finished, a new overlord is already morphed to deny and invisible harm that could be inflicted to that base.
Meanwhile a hydralisk den was added, to round up another effective wall at the natural expansion of KKangSOJu, two sunken colonies just behind it.
As the Grandpatoss starts to research the storm upgrade and makes high templars, his dark templars just finished and move out together with a couple of zealots and a dragoon, moving straight to the natural of the Zerg, where the units there have to retreat immediately, facing the effective wall, the two sunken colonies and a bunch of zerglings. White-Ra, however, keeps his three dark templars around, killing a morphing evolution chamber, right on top of the first one, at the third base of KKangSOJu. The other evolution chamber just started to research missile attack for the Zerg ground units. The sunken colonies, combined with the vision of overlords, manage to fight off the dark templars though, who immediately return after taking out the drone of the canceled evolution chamber.



More gates are warped in, the plus one attack upgrade is running in the forge and a robotics facility riff is also opened, while the dark templars moved to White-Ra's third, which he didn't take quite yet, to kill a zergling, placed to see whenever the Protoss might expand again.
As the range upgrade for the hydralisks is about to finish, the Protoss forces move out, facing a bunch of scourges, which are still able to take out one corsair, while several goons and the corsairs attack the scourges.
Also the mineral only at twelve o'clock is taken by the Zerg and protected by just four hydralisks and an overlord.
Now another bunch of scourges is sent towards the Protoss forces to take out the corsairs, and again only one of them is taken out, as the dragoons manage to kill most of the scourges, before they can do any damage.
Just now the lurker upgrade is started, and simultaneously the third base is taken by White-Ra, protected by his rather small group of units, a couple of dragoons, some high and dark templars and some zealots, followed up by the two remaining corsairs.
KKangSOJu starts his hive in the 12th minute now, as well as morphing tons of hydralisks into lurkers, while also taking the top left expansion. Once the lurkers are done, they are moved to the ridge on the top left, to defend that position with some hydralisks and overlords, but the Protoss's forces are just coming there the moment the lurkers are, and while zerglings are trying to do some damage while the lurkers are placed, some storms take care of those zerglings while the Protoss army moves away from the ridge, just for the moment, as seconds later that same army comes back up the ridge to take off the lurker/zergling defense up there.
However, as the adrenalin upgrade is done already, the reinforcements of zerglings and lurkers manage to kill the rest of the Protoss army, which now went to the top left expansion to take off some economy, right before the zerglings comes to kill the last few dragoons and the high templar.




LATE GAME

That moment White-Ra takes down his mineral only expansion, as well, and his units arrive at that expansion just in time to storm the coming wave of zerglings, sent to take out this in warping nexus. Yet another wave of lings approaches, but is scared off by an archon and retreats to the bottom right, to take out the probe which probably was sent there to take that expansion, too.
The Zerg now tries to be all aggressive and take out some expansions, sending zerglings through the middle of the map, going for the third base of the Protoss, but meeting a high templar, together with a zealot and a couple dragoons in their way, eventually only taking out one of four cannons at that targeted base, while meanwhile another, smaller, group of zerglings is sent to White-Ra's mineral only, once again, also taken out by a storm, and the dragoons and cannons, put there to defend well.



Ultralisks are almost done now, and their plus two armor upgrade is also about to finish. Lurkers and sunken colonies still defend the top left, as well as the natural of KKangSOJu.
As the bottom right is cleaned from the zerglings, KKangSOJu prepares a drop with four overlords, filled with cracklings.
As if White-Ra had smelled that drop, cannons are being built in his main, one just finishing right before the drop occures, another one about to finish, a third one just barely started.
The zerglings manage to take out these cannons, as well as a robot support dock, denying White-Ra to make any more reavers, the first one had just finished. A couple of zealots and storms clean up the drop, however, and a lonely corsair goes for an overlord hunt, just managing to kill one, before scourges pop out and take it off.
On the other side of the map, a dark templar drop, including three dark templars, manage to take off the whole mainbase of the Zerg player, which, however, only included four buildings, the hive, the spawning pool, the queen's nest, and an extractor. Corsairs helt off overlords from entering the mainbase.
In the meanwhile the Zerg made another attempt to kill White-Ra's third base, again killing only one of the defending cannons, but now he sends a couple of ultralisks towards the natural of the Protoss. Those ultralisks are forced to retreat quickly, though, as the entry is blocked well enough and cannons, together with zealots and a bad placed storm, do too much damage to the Zerg's forces. Yet again some zerglings were sent to the bottom, facing some dragoons and a high templar, which manage to kill the zerglings.



The dark templars have no luck trying to enter the natural of the Zerg, where the spire, the hydralisk den and the currently still morphing spawning pool are located, and they back off into the main again, where they try to hide, successfully.
White-Ra managed to take the expansion in the bottom right, which puts these two players on the same amount of expansion, which is deffinetely not good for the Zerg.
A wave of ultralisks and zerglings now try to enter the natural of White-Ra, but as he has still units there, there is no chance for the Zerg to enter and so the direction of KKangSOJu's units changed to the mineral only expansion of the Grandpatoss, successfully killing it, but lossing most of the ultralisks in the process. As a counter to that, White-Ra manged to kill the top left expansion's hatchery and most of the drones at the mineral only expansion of KKangSOJu, while a corsair chases the overlords up there, and more corsairs are produced, being at a total of five corsairs already.



A drop with ultralisks and zerglings tries to take out the bottom right expansion, but fails, misserably, and besides all the ultralisks and zerglings being taken down, corsairs also take out all of the overlords, which were used for that drop.



Now a couple of zerglings come to take down the mineral only expansion, again, but as they weren't focus attacking the nexus, they get distracted by the comming units of White-Ra, whose natural and main are run over by ultralisks and zerglings, aswell, in the meanwhile.
As the Protoss forces are saving the, now gateless, main base and the techtree, which mainly stayed alive, the mineral only is eventually taken down by another group of zerglings and an ultralisk. That exact group of units then moves on to kill the bottom right expansion of the Protoss, which is barely defended, with only three cannons. But yet again, not focus attacking the nexus after taking down the cannons, enables White-Ra to defend this expansion, while his third base is about to be mined out.
The top left died, once again, in the meanwhile, and the Zerg had to rescue the economy of his mineral only, too.
Corsairs are attacking the top again, pressuring the overlords, barely missing out an overlord which is loaded with six zerglings, on its way to the main base of White-Ra, to do a little more damage, however, one lonely reaver is able to take out these zerglings which were focusing on the stargate, with three scarabs. Just seconds later more zerglings come through the front door of the main, try to take off that reavers, unsuccessfully, as the reavers survives with full health and 29 of his 80 shield points, leaving the reaver at 22 kills.
White-Ra sends most of his remaining units back to his main, while keeping a high templar and some zealots, together with warping cannons at his bottom right, just as another wave of zerglings moves towards his main, retreating when facing storms, dark templars and archons, though.
KKangSOJu tries another drop at the bottom right now, using his lurkers, which were used for camping for a long time, but the drop gets quickly killed off, by storming the lurkers, losing the zealots, a dark templar and two cannons, though.



The Zerg tries to regain the top left expansion at this point, while using some more of his lurkers, in combination with zerglings and an ultralisk. While the lurkers die to storms and dark templars, the zerglings and the ultrlisk manage to enter the main base of White-Ra and take out the stargate, as well as the templars archives.
Five dark templars are on their way to the top left now, to take out the last expansion of KKangSOJu, while a sunken colony is morphing and drones tries to defend the hatchery, but the dark templars are way too strong to be held off by those drones and still manage to kill some just morphed zerglings, the hatchery and all of the drones, right before the last surviving dark templar can flee.
After a last zergling was dropped into the Protoss's main base, the Zerg gently types out with a "gg".

White-Ra wins.



Summary
A pretty standardly opened game turned into an awesome match with alot of action from both players, including drops, ridge breaks, expansion sniping and much more.
If the Zerg had been more focusing on his attacks he could have taken out alot more nexi which would have made a huge difference, but that way the Protoss was just too easily able to keep his expansions and eventually keep the minerals he needed to defend from zergling waves and harrass the Zerg with his corsairs.
Maybe some defiler usage would have turned around alot of fights, especially the third base of the Protoss could have been taken out several times, that way, throwing the Protoss behind, just a little more.


My rating
This game was awesome and very entertaining for me, but it's not that easy to impress me, and that I gave a game a 10 out of 10 happened only a very few times, so far, but this game deffinetely deverses the 9, as it impressed me alot, maybe a little better decision making and unit control from both players, and this could have been an even more exciting game.
So my rating:
9/10


Go to the replay page by clicking on this text (you can download it there)!


Big thanks goes out to Masse for providing this replay!

All Esports

Entertainment

GosuBattles

Account