Replay of the Week: TLO vs Destiny

This game is between two ultimate community favourites - TheLittleOne and Destiny - duking it out on Xel'Naga Caverns. In this tense 40-minute long game, the two enemies force themselves to play a really scrappy, low-econ game throughout almost the whole time. But despite the poor incomes, both Destiny and TLO find way to make their expensive army compositions work and constantly hunt each other's bases to keep the tempo unabating.



TLO spawns north as the red terran while Destiny gets the south position as the yellow zerg. Both players open very standard with TLO going for a forward barracks into bunker rush, while Destiny gets his fast second hatchery but he gets his lings out fast enough to suffer no damage from TLO's pressure. Our terran player than falls back to transition into double factory and starts building a very flexible army.

At the 10th minute mark comes the second timing attack from TLO, just as stim is finished and three tanks have been built to make this a scary push. However, the low-tech play of Destiny has given him the advantage of having a large enough army to deal with that easily and a zergling surround wipes the entirety of TLO's army along with the follow-up attempts for preigniter harass.

As the game progresses, we see a tech difference in Destiny's play as compared to other more traditional zerg in their ZvT. Instead of going mutas in order to keep the terran at bay, Destiny puts down an infestation pit, followed by pathogenic glands and few infestors. Only then, at 12:20, does the spire get put down, timed perfectly with the initiation of a hive tech. As evolution completes, Destiny immediately begins morphing a greater spire, deciding to skip mutalisks altogether in favour of a faster brood lord tech, which, combined with the infestors he already had, would be a great trouble for the terran.

Meanwhile, TLO himself had built quite the diverse army of tanks, thors, hellions, marines and even some banshees and thus moves south to take the gold, getting a strong position at the centre, making it possible to launch an attack at Destiny's third and at 17:50 it gets down under tank/marine/thor fire. Moments later TLO spots zerg's fourth at the centre left and at 21:40 it is cleaned up as well, putting Destiny in a very rough economic position.


In less than four minutes of time, Destiny loses two of his mining bases

Thinking he has an unbeatable advantage, TLO pushes south through the centre but finds Destiny a tougher nut than he expected. Despite having almost no economy, the Zerg has a stupid amount of infestors with plenty of stocked up energy. Suddenly, the terran finds himself outnumbered as infested terrans and zerglings clean up battlefield, equalling the supply previously far in TLO's favour. To further even out the odds, Destiny does one of those moves that his fans adore so much and a black ops squad of infestors sneak upon TLO's low-ground expo and destroy it with the help of even more infested terrans.

TLO, however, is quick to retaliate and uses his air advantage to deny yet another base of Destiny. With his infestors almost empy and almost no flying units, Destiny loses his 3 o'clock to a few cloaked banshees and some vikings.


Destiny cleans up TLO's army but is once again pinned down economy-wise as banshees and vikings clean up his 3 o'clock

By the 30th minute mark the game reaches a bizarre phase of low extremes. Both players are constantly below 100 supply and their income barely passed the 600 mark. Destiny now find himself in a tough position as he cannot utilize the brood lord tech he was sprinting to. All he has are his lings and some infetors, their powers now diminishing. Thus, TLO starts making the best of his army, knowing that when calculated with precision, his banshee/thor attacks can do way more damage and his planetary fortress (the last remaining one) will take quite a beating before it falls to infestors. Destiny keeps losing base after base and soon he is forced to distant mine just to get a hatchery up. Knowing that this is not the way to victory, Destiny attempts one last burrow infestor play but as a scan by TLO reveals his casters, he understands the game is over and GGs.


The final struggles of Destiny



I hope you enjoy our pick for this week and that you will be just as excited with our second choice which will come shortly. Don't forget to speak up in the comments about everything that is ROTW, including replays you want to see, improvements, critics, etc.