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StarCraft 211 years agoRadoslav "Nydra" Kolev

Code S Ro16 Group D: And the group stage endeth 

 

Written by: Nydra


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Today's matches


 
[Match 1] Symbol vs soO
 
With three Zergs in the group, it was posed to be a quick playday and Symbol and soO hopped right on that train and slapped each other with early aggression.
 
soO was the first to raise hand and opened Star Station with a very early baneling nest to pressure Symbol’s hatch opening and started rallying lings down south. All he found, however, was Symbol’s relentless drones who chased them back and even surrounded a couple of them to repel the attack in the most efficient way possible.
 
After the sand had settled, Symbol retook his natural and transitioned into roaches knowing soO won’t have too capable of an army to trade cost efficiently. His first attack hitting from the front was surrounded on the ramp and cleaned by lings, queens and banelings but the second one came from a place soO did not expect. The nydus worm tech roared from within soO’s base and Symbol’s endless reinforcements took game one.
 
Symbol spawned on Whirlwind to open as soO did on Star Station in a “what you can do, I can do better” scenario (or, in SC2 language, “this is how you kill with early banelings”). soO reaction was not nearly as good as Symbol’s was and once he lost substantial amount of lings to baneling explosions, the KeSPA Zerg surrendered.
 


 Now that the reinforcement paths are equal, soO is in a ton of trouble

 
 [Match 2] Gumiho vs Losira
 
Having in mind the hour and something game Losira and Gumiho played the last time they met each other, GSL’s viewership was on its toes. Will the same situation reoccur and how epic can a Losira/Gumiho match can really become.
 
As it turns out – not much, at least not today. In both games, Gumiho went for slightly faster reactored hellions before CC which in turn elicited two completely different outcomes. On Bel’Shir Vestige, Losira ended up holding perfectly with sim city and early roaches and immediately counter-attacking, going full all-in by rallying roaches, lings and banelings across the map. Despite several good baneling connects, however, Gumiho’s economy remained largely untouched and through a simple drop in Losira’s main he made him tap out promptly.
 
Up 1-0, Gumiho played Atlas a tad more aggressively, following up the hellion opening with a hard marine/tank push which hit Losira before he could get a critical number of banelings and/or infestors. Upon melting everything that the Zerg had in seconds, Gumiho secured his first win for the day.
 


 Tanks, medivacs, marines, even turrets - way too much Terran for Losira's mutalisks to handle

 

[Winners match] Symbol vs Gumiho
 
Aggression was the name of the game over at the winners match as Gumiho and Symbol went for each other’s throats. Knowing how difficult it is to defend the ramp on Akilon Wastes, Symbol hit a very narrow roach bust timing just before Gumiho could get stim and +1 attack, ending him literally seconds before both upgrades could finish.
 
If the game on Akilon was quite one-direction, the Daybreak set was nothing but. An early roach attack came from Symbol but at the same time a drop was initiated by Gumiho and the two players had to multitask their hearts out to make the best out of those situations. Soon, the game translated into even more fronts and frontal attacks and hectic army maneuvering was added to the drop action.
 
After the opening punches, the question of where would Gumiho and Symbol go from here was raised and the Zerg certainly had the more interesting answer. Forgoing any sort of mutalisk play or tier three tech, Symbol went straight for a roach/hydra composition. Unluckily for him, this was as unsuccessful as it was unorthodox and Gumiho gladly accepted the meaty offering, engaging the roaches head on while dropping hellbats behind the hydras to fry Symbol away in seconds.
 


Symbol is between gunfire and hellbat flame

 
Recalling how he won the first series, Symbol was determined to put Gumiho to the nydus/roach culling as well. Symbol skipped taking this third and went immediately for a nydus worm straight into Gumiho’s main (who chose the worst possible moment to not pay attention to his base) and after a few acid spits into his face, the Terran was reduced to two SCVs and a couple of marines. His death was more than certain.

 

[Losers match] soO vs Losira
It looked like the third for blood from the winners match had infected the losers one as well as Losira opened game one with almost blind aggression. Hoping his perseverance would eventually break soO, Losira streamed an absurd amount of units up his enemy’s way and he almost broke him.
 
But almost never won any StarCraft 2 game and once he realized Losira has no intention of stopping, soO spined up as cost efficiently as he could, tech to spire and turned the game around shortly after his mutalisks popped up. Down one game, Losira had to play a perfect early game baneling aggression to tie the score on Whirlwind and go on to play the third and final game. A game that would seem extremely familiar…
 
In a complete reversal to the first game, soO opened with a massive speedling attack (packing north of 30 speedlings to Losira’s two lings and two banes) but someway somehow, the IM Zerg miraculously held. soO continued to ram his head against Losira riding a torrent of speedlings and banelings but Losira knew exactly how to defend against that. And, ironically enough, it was soO who showed him. Queens, banelings, static defenses and a spire tech were the response of Losira and he vengefully watched soO breaking his teeth without doing anything. As the first mutas of Losira flew over his head, soO gg-ed out.
 


 This small counter attack by Losira will make soO flip out, go onto the aggressive and lose

 
[Final match] Gumiho vs Losira
 
In their rematch of their rematch, Gumiho and Losira were once again determined to keep it simple and stuck to the ordinary “throw stuff at each other” strategy.
 
Gumiho took the first turn and opened with a 2-base hellbat drop into a hellbat/marauder/SCV push, attempted to break Losira before he can fully saturated his three bases. As the push came, Gumiho loaded a couple of his hellbats as to drop Losira’s main mineral line and although that looked like a good idea at the time, it only weakened up his main army. With the loss of many drones and by funneling the Terran army into an artificial choke point of evolution chambers, Losira not only held but was in the worker lead as well! Realizing he can’t play the catch up game, Gumiho re-attempted the push but it ended even more disastrously than before. 1-0 for the Zerg.
 


 Gumiho desperately tries to barrel through Losira's sim city but the Zerg would have none of that

 
The general feeling of the series did not change much with the next two games. Gumiho opened Daybreak with a standard reaper expand into third CC but ended up on the receiving end of a Zerg bust. This time, however, it was Losira who was unsuccessful as he found it hard to outmicro Gumiho who maneuvered behind his mineral line to dodge and mitigate the incoming damage.
 
Judging from all four games played today, it wasn’t hard to guess how the fifth one between Losira and Gumiho would end up being – short, explosive and one-sided. Spawning on Bel’Shir Vestige, Gumiho completely forwent any intentions of taking a third base and initiated a rather all-inish marine/mine attack in attempt to kill Losira on the spot but through pristine defense, the Zerg easily stabilized on three bases. From there, it was a matter of time before Losira could get out enough mutalisks and speedlings to drown Gumiho and get his revenge  

Final standings  
 
The playoff pairings
?
 

Photo of Losira by: Team Liquid

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