Written by: Nydra
A god, a world champion, a young prodigy and a TvZ mastermind walk into a "Group of Death" (a great bar on the corner of Ro16 street).
Who makes it out alive?
Table of Contents
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Today's matches
[Match 1] Life vs PartinG
There it was, the next chapter of the Parting versus Life rivalry that, until this day, spanned across sixteen games in all sorts of premier tournaments. The coagulated excitement was tangible even before the show’s start and StarCraft fans were on the edge of their seats, eager to learn who will be the first to get a lead in this group.
The series opened on Bel’Shir vestige with a long probe dance from PartinG that severely delayed Life’s expansion. Once the nuisance was chased away, the Zerg went directly into a double evo speedlings into 3-base ultra, a build that Jaedong and Leenock popularized during the recent DreamHack Stockholm.
Scouting Life’s strategy with his phoenixes, PartinG landed a colossus tech and moved out around the 13th minute mark in attempt to severe Zerg’s head before ultras would pop out. A perfect force field/time warp control won the first serious clash and meeting no additional reinforcements, PartinG moved to take down Life’s third. Ultra tech popped out just in time to save the Zerg from total annihilation, however, and PartinG had to fall back.
With his hive tech now in play, Life quickly took control over the game. Slowly pushing out with ultras and queens, Life established a position east of PartinG’s natural, allowing him to take down his third with lings. PartinG was forced to transition into immortals seeing the large ultralisk count but Life was already one step ahead: the infestor tech was already under way and once the first fungals landed onto PartinG, the protoss was done for.
Life opted for the same strategy in game two on Akilon Wastes but stayed on two bases for a while longer, using speedlings to apply early pressure. Said pressure paid off marginally as Life kept finding cracks in PartinG’s wall, making him commit his army to defend his main and, consequently, delay the 2-base colossus push that dealt so much damage in game one.
After a few minutes of tug of war, the big push did finally come and PartinG found himself literally overrun. Life had delayed ultralisk tech in favor of many, many infestors and fungals were chained together while lings hit from the back, surrounded and cleaned everything. 2-0 for Life.
[Match 2] Flash vs Innovation
From the classic display PvZ the day transitioned into a TvT between Flash and Innovation, who too had grudge from previous encounters, namely MLG Winter. Readers will remember how very BroodWar-esque that series was and the one here made no exception.
Innovation opened with a double proxy rax on Red City but a lucky SCV passing by scouted it and forced Innovation to fly back and transition out of his disadvantage and into an economical posture.
After a brief moment of passivity came the moments of drop play madness, with Innovation using marines and Flash sticking to mech and hellbats. Once the smoke cleared, the counter showed more SCVs killed for Innovation but by the power of his signature triple CC, Flash was somehow in the lead!
As his enemy’s defenses tightened, Innovation had to forgo the drop strategy but Flash had no intention of slowing down whatsoever. Hellbats kept putting SCVs to the fire and Innovation was quickly brought to, essentially, a no-mining scenario. His only choice was a cross-map push but Flash was already prepared with tank defenses and Innovation ran headlong into death.
A much quicker game followed as Innovation chose Atlas and went for a 2-rax reaper, knowing this can be lethal against Flash’s traditionally greedy play. And lethal it was – the reapers came, sniped the diminutive marine count and made Flash GG out before the 6th minute.
Why entertaining to a large extent, none of the games so far could stand up to the entertainment value of what followed on Whirlwind. Innovation opened with a marine/widow mine drop at around the 7th minute and although Flash displayed a good crisis management, he still lost 11 SCVs.
In a “what you can do, I can do better” turn around, Flash took his own drops to Innovation’s face. Three medivacs unloaded hellbats onto Innovation’s SCVs and despite his third being a bit behind, Flash took the worker lead in a blink of an eye. “How did that happen?” likely crossed Innovation’s mind.
Nevertheless untilted by Flash’s counter attack, Innovation switched back to being the attacker. At that point, the game was a classic bio versus mech scenario so Innovation knew very well how to exploit Flash’s low mobility. Marauder drops and raids were launched all over the map to make Flash slalom between his bases and struggle to get a mech ball rolling. Major attacks were combined with subtle movements like a snipe on missile turrets so that a follow-up drop can do maximum damage and Flash slowly started to realize – he can’t stay on his side of the map anymore lest he be torn apart.
In a race against time, Flash loaded all his mech into medivacs to speed it up and sprinted as fast as he can towards Innovation’s lines. Several inches of ground were won almost immediately with Flash’s firepower but at one point he simply could not advance anymore as Innovation’s reinforcements were suffocating him. Helpless in every way, Flash had to gg out.
[Winners match] Life vs Innovation
In the winners match of the day, Life went on to face his own choice during the group drawings – STX’s Innovation – only to be taught the important lesson about things coming back to bite you in the butt.
The series opened on Daybreak with Innovation going for a trademark 3-base marine/medivac/mine aggression (with another CC building behind that), which eventually took down Life’s fourth and put him in all new sorts of troubles. Still, a silver lining was to be found on Life’s skyline and his brood lord tech finally made it into play, pushing Innovation back and giving his some room to breathe.
That greater spire tech forced the game into a very WoL-esque scenario and Innovation had to immediately get vikings out, knowing that widow mines will be with diminished potency from here on. Yet, going on the defensive was never Innovation’s intention and even during the tech switch he applied constant pressure to Life, hindering him from spreading over the entire map. Drops were unloaded everywhere to shoot down Life’s mining and the Zerg was forced into a do-or-die attack. And do he didn’t.
If we weren't already convinced of the absurdly good control of Innovation, game two on Whirlwind came in to convert all non-believers. Innovation opened with reactored hellions and vaporised the entire initial ling squad of Life without losing a single unit. Way behind right from the start, Life was in a dangerous situation. He knew that Innovation's marine/mine push would not lag behind and indeed at the 12th minute it came.
Over the next few moments the game came to closely resemble Flash's or Innovation's own TvZ's from the previous round where Zergs were treated to levels of macro that would make them hide their faces in shame. Two minutes after the start of the attacks, Innovation was already leading Life with 30 supply and it was visible how StarTale's champion had no answer whatsoever. Lings, mutas and banelings alike melted in front of marine/mine gunfire and Life had to admit defeat. 2-0 for Innovation who went on to the quarterfinals.
[Losers match] PartinG vs Flash
Thus, a bonjwa and a world champion found themselves one series away from elimination and the two came to realize the ramifications of drawing as they did during the ceremony.
Spawning on Daybreak, Flash opened with a bloodthirsty 3-base aggression and perma-rallied a stream of marauders down PartinG’s third while simultaneously expanded behind that. Archons were sniped, storms were dodged and zealots were kited to make for one very difficult for PartinG battle and at the end of it, the Protoss saw his third fall, putting him one base behind Flash.
But the famed perseverance of PartinG did not betray him and someway somehow, the world champion lived till a really big high templars and colossi and everything changed in a blink of an eye. Through psi storm chains, PartinG weighed Flash enough to push him back, retake his third and even secure a fifth, now that the Terran had given up on attacking. At the 25th minute, the map was split in half in an improvised cold war scenario and further late-game tech was initiated.
The next portion of hype was delivered through the production tab which indicated that an air transition was on the way for both players. BCs versus tempests were coming and although one cannot not get excited from sight of it, there was one player who didn’t welcome the scenario whole-heartedly. In this 200 supply scenario, Flash soon found out he simply can’t reach the backline of PartinG. As tempests bombarded him to dust, Flash had to give up the first series.
Unfortunately for all fans glued to the stream, game two could not live up to the grandeur of the first. Not particularly fond of how Flash is on the aggressive PartinG decided to just, well, go and kill him. A 2-base archon/zealot timing was set up and hit Flash like a shovel pushing him deep into his main and into a GG. Flash was out of GSL Code S.
[Final match] PartinG vs Life
Lings were everywhere in the final series of the day as Life decided to play a low econ game in the revenge match against Parting. The opening set on Star Station saw Life go for a one-base speedling opening which pushed back PartinG’s gateway expand and almost killed him there and then but the Protoss defense was otherworldly (actually, any sort of comparing the universal regality to PartinG’s sim city would be doing said sim city injustice). Staying behind a full wall of gateways and pylons, PartinG lived to see another day, push Life back and establish an expansion.
Once Life realized he can’t apply any more pressure, he had to come initiate some sort of transition and he chose to go for swarm hosts and his process of thinking was most reasonable – a sort of timing attack from PartinG was to be expected and the free locusts would be of precious help in these low economy moments.
A good idea no doubt but once again, PartinG would not give a damn. His 2-base gateway army barged in and a forcefield was immediately thrown to prevent locusts connecting to his units and the Protoss took the lead with ease.
Pressure was onto Life like never before and so StarTale’s ace fell back to less risky play. Opening with a 2-base economy, Life started pouring lings down PartinG way and eventually sniped his natural to put him severely behind. Third base was promptly put down by Life and he prepared to commence the standard double evo speedling into 3-base ultralisk.
Once again, none of that had the chance to bloom into fruition. Aware that he has very little time to do anything, PartinG pushed out and ended up producing one of the most flawless force fields, rendering the entire speedling sea of Life impotent. Life tried pulling drones, microing queens and going for surrounds but none of those did anything – PartinG kicked down the door and entered the quarter finals with a calm gait.
Final standings
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Photo of PartinG by: Kevin Chang
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