soO, Maru stand atop OSL Ro32 Group C

Written by: Nydra

In Group C of OSL Ro32, a young eSF Terran found himself in the company of KeSPA wolves but barely survived, eliminating Season 1 runner-up sOs.

Although With the Round of 32 played in a best of one format, cheeses were bound to happen and sOs was the first to jump on the bandwagon today. With a probe and a pylon in hands, the Woongjin Stars Protoss cannon rushed Effort's hatchery, sniped it down and make him relocate to his third... only to cannon that up as well.

Although in all sorts of trouble, Effort was not entirely lost, at least not right then and there. A lucky zergling run-by caught a crack in sOs' wall and became a nuisance for longer than the Protoss would've wanted but, to Effort's bad luck, this was way insufficient. Not able to return in kind the economy damage he had suffered, Effort experienced the full strength of a Protoss army which consisted of more than just a handful of impotent units.

While not entirely exciting or thrilling, the second game of Group C was a clear statement of what do Zergs do when they've had enough of hellbat and hellion harassment.

soO was the appointed speaker in this particular case and had to endure a few rounds of drone blazing before he was allowed to make his move. Usually known for his cheesy play, the SKT Zerg went for a simple and brutal roach/baneling ramming, a sort of a "you tickle me, I break your legs" play which brought the young Terran to his knees for the sheer audacity of building hellbats.

Having won their opening matches with ease, the three-letter nicknames met each other in the winners match of Group C, only to produce quite the underwhelming game. In a desire to do everything at once, sOs opened phoenixes and opted for a greedy third while teching to colossi, which triggered a ling pressure from soO which hurt the Protoss immensely.

Having established some degree of supremacy over his opponent, soO continued to pressure with hydras in the mid game while teching to hive and creeping the entire map. Soon enough, all sorts of static defenses and Zerg waves established presence on sOs' side of the map and wihtout a stable economy to support his army, sOs could only watch himself slowly die of asphyxiation.

 

In the losers match, EffOrt met Maru in what was the weirdest, yet most entertaining game of the group. It started with a roach attack and a marine drop simultaneously raiding the opposing bases but upon their clearing up, the game transitioned into a stable macro scenario.

This wouldn't bar EffOrt and Maru from playing it out in unorthodox manner, however, as they threw at each other armies most uncharacteristic of the match-up. Forgoing the standard bio/mine mix, Maru had gone for a very WoL-esque marine/tank composition, while EffOrt's answer was in the form of swarm host/viper centric play with hydras as the meat, something rarely seen outside modern ZvP.

As a result, all the engagements were just as bizarre. Maru was trying to push the mobility of its composition to its limits in order to hunt down the bases of Effort but the Zerg was often there before him, surviving the marine/tank firepower through enwrapping it in blinding clouds and DPSin it down with hydras. The weird stalemate went on for minutes until Effort gave up a large chunk of his swarm hosts for free, triggering a deeper push from Maru, which eventually prompted a GG out of the Zerg.

Once again, sOs loved to get a faster third than anybody would allow (and on Bel'Shir Vestige to that) and once again he ended up paying for it dearly. A 2-base bio/medivac guerilla party hit the extra nexus of sOs, sniped it down, flew over to the natural, destroyed a robo facility and flew away, leaving the Protoss looking helplessly towards the horizon.

Exploiting the need for the colossus-centric army to stay together, Maru continued to pressure everywhere and make sOs work really hard to stay alive. Not until the zealot count got big enough so survive the initial shell barrage and high templars were added to the mix could sOs engage Maru head on but even then it was near impossible to come out ahead. Dancing around the psi storms and focusing down the robo units with lethal precision, Maru won the bigger part of the engagements to survive the KeSPA-infested Group C and follow soO to the Ro16