Photo by: Leveltory
The Swarm triumphed once again on GSL soil as RorO and Losira marched in to take the 5/6th place relegation bracket and made their way into the WCS Seasonal finals.
Rushing, macroing and frantic base-racing as RorO 3-1's PartinG
A very aggressive speedling opening gave RorO the opening win shortly after the 6th minute mark after his units found a crack in PartinG's wall after the Protoss had moved out on the map. That was, however, the only match of the series that ended early and starting with the second game on Bel'Shir Vestige, no shorter than 20-minute games were played.
RorO kept the rage going and played around with a plethora of speedling raids that led up to the expected ultralisk late-game transition but PartinG was, for all intents and purposes unbreakable. Seeing that bashing the Protoss from the ground would yield little to no results, RorO initiated a massive mutalisk transition and for a short while it seemed to be working well for him. The mobility of his flock combined with the sheer raw power of the ultralisk stampede allowed RorO to trade bases somewhat efficiently (losing his fourth but taking down PartinG's third and natural and forcing a recall) but this would not go for much longer.
With his mind set on killing every single Zerg mining base, PartinG moved out with a hammering punch of a deathball towards RorO's fifth, the last source of income for the Samsung Zerg. RorO tried to fight it off by bringing home the sky-darkening mutalisk/corruptor cloud but only ended up clustering them all and gift-wrapping them for PartinG's archons. The score was tied 1-1.
RorO got back on track with the third game on Red City. After defending PartinG's initial zealot +1 warp-in attack directed at his third, RorO went into full macro mode, building towards a very WoL-esque roach/infestor/corrutor army and hit the protoss with a maxed out forces around the 17th minute mark. PartinG lost his fourth and took a defensive position so he can at least save his third but a crippling fungal wounded him badly enough so that the brood lord follow-up can bring the score to 2-1 in Zerg's favor.
Yet nothing that thus far could match the oozing titillation of the final game. Put in a do or die situation, PartinG opened with a safe, defensive third base into colossi, which helped him repel the roach aggression coming from RorO and safely get his tech up.
Not that RorO had the slightest intention of fighting said tech head on. Going for a full mutalisk transition, the Zerg circulated around PartinG's army for what seemed like forever, picking casualties here and there until PartinG was finally forced to move out, initiating the well-expected base race. Both players were quickly reduced to minimal economies but not until the 28th minute mark was there a real engagement. When such fight finally broke out, RorO was the one to get the first advantage by cleaning up crucial stalkers and colossi. It was a few minutes later, however, that the real show happened as some archons, templars and phoenixes went head-to-head with the mutalisk/corruptor leftovers, making for the most intensive micro fight of the day. To RorO's luck, he was once again allowed to prevail and advanced to the seasonal finals with a 3-1.
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Losira flawless against Bomber for the complete Swarm triumph
In the second series of the day, IM's Losira took on the famous for his macro ST_Bomber and delivered him a crushing 3-0 loss, throwing him out of the seasonal finals.
Losira's onslaught began on Star Station on the back of a faked double evo play, which was later cancelled in favor a a huge baneling ram-in that left Bomber's base a pile of smoking cinders. Bomber tried to put things back to equal on Daybreak and a devastating hellion harass into full bio/marine transition was certainly the right approach, in the early to mid game at least.
Building up on the economy lead he had secured for himself earlier, Bomber was not missing a beat and Losira had more than a hard time keeping up with the macro of the Terran and Losira actually entered the mid-game with a huge supply disadvantage. The only thing that kept Losira in the game was his immaculate creep spread, perfect larvae injects and, last but not least, Bomber's overconfidence during the first major engagement.
It was then that Bomber first paid dearly for underestimating Losira's army strength. Facing the thundering wave of banelings and mutalisks, Bomber chose focus on fighting then on splitting and his positions were swept away by the Zerg. From there, Losira got back on the even footing, grew his army even more enormous, spread his creep even further and collapsed onto Bomber without a shred of mercy. 2-0 in Losira's favor.
Now in a comfortable position, Losira was well aware he is allowed to take a few risks and even make few mistakes and so a 1-base roach all-in became the name of the game on Akilon Wastes. A timely reaction on the repair combined with the bad rallying of Losira won Bomber a few minutes of life but a sloppy drop on a supply depot became Bomber's own undoing. With the doors opened wide, Losira marched in to take the last WCS Seasonal Final spot.
WCS SEASONAL FINALS: GSL REPRESENTATIVES
Innovation
sOs
Soulkey
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Losira
RorO
