Starcraft 2 news » WCS Global Playoffs - Day 3 Recap
If Day 1 had been a day of expectations met, and Day 2 had been one of upsets, Day 3 was a mix of the two. Three hotly-tipped Koreans waltzed into the Round of 8—Dark, Zest, and TY—while the reigning GSL Champion ByuN fell to foreign star ShoWTimE.
Dark and Stats decided to open the series on New Gettysburg with a gentleman’s agreement to play slow and steady behind cautious builds and careful expansions. The two poked at each other through Warp Prism harass, Overlord drops and Zergling runbys without any decisive impact as both built up to their late game. Stats chose to go for the Skytoss Golden Armada while Dark opted for a mix of Brood Lords, Corruptors, Banelings and Ultralisks. After they had split the map, it was Stats who emerged the victor in the first big engagement, both in the air and on the ground. Dark’s posturing and run-bys were enough to keep Stats back as he remaxed, but that gamble turned out to be his undoing. His mass Corruptor army was confronted by a switch into Stalkers from Stats, which mowed their way through the Zerg units with ease, sending him into Game 2 with a 1-0 advantage.
Given the smaller size of Frozen Temple, both Stats and Dark chose to invest into more harass in Game 2. Stats tried to go for mid-game Adept pressure while taking a third, but his harass was wholly denied by Dark’s mass Zergling defence. The two of them exchanged blows but it was clear that the Protoss was taking the worse end of the trades. A two pronged attack near Stats’ fourth gave Dark the opening to swing into the natural and main, dealing crippling economic damage. Bloodied and bruised, Stats did not have enough left to mount a successful defense against the subsequent, Ultralisk-powered attack.
On Apotheosis, Stats decided to throw Dark a curveball in the form of an early gold expansion. The #1 ranked player in the world was prepared, however, as he scouted and correctly deduced that Stats was overextending himself on one Gateway. Dark’s response was simple but brilliant: an Overlord drop in the main in order to pull Stats out of position and a Baneling bust at the front. Dark infiltrated the main and dealt massive damage, and though Stats played an entertaining game of whack-a-mole in his base, nothing could stop the rot. A desperate counterattack from the Protoss player was met with a surround, and he had no choice but to tap out.
In a rematch from KeSPA Cup Group A, Neeblet and Zest once again met in the winners’ match to decide who would reach the Ro8. In their previous encounter, Neeblet earned a hard-fought 2-0 win on the way to the title. Zest, however, surely wanted some payback. On Galactic Process, both players opened with standard double Gateway and gas before expanding. Zest was the more adventurous with his first Adept, and while he failed to accomplish much, he followed up with a proxy Dark Shrine. It appeared to be ill-advised as Neeblet’s safe Robotics build popped out an Observer in time, but Zest still found damage by splitting the main and natural. Behind his small lead, Zest doubled down on his Gateway pressure. The axe then fell soon after as Zest’s mass of Stalkers, Archons and Immortals overwhelmed his American counterpart.
On King Sejong Station, the two Protoss players took us to the late game. Despite losing his mothership core early during a scouting mission, Neeb settled into the mid-game, going toe to toe with Zest in a Stalker dance-off. Even after reaching Disruptors, both players continued to trade evenly. The first significant attack came from Neeb, pushing right into Zest’s natural, but Zest cut off his retreat, wiping out the entire army. The situation looked grim, but he found himself on even ground when Zest too walked into a defensive position to donate a chunk of his army. Smelling blood, Neeb once again tried to end the game with an attack on Zest’s natural, but a poorly split army was easy pickings for the burly Protoss. By this time, Zest had realised that he required further tech, transitioning into Tempests first. Neeb’s superior economy though allowed him to start triple Tempest production, soon overtaking his opponent. Peppered from range without the ability to reply, Zest realized that he was outgunned and tapped out.
In the third game, Zest placed his Ro8 spot on the line with a 4 Gate. The heavy pressure pushed Neeb back into his main, denying the natural while Zest took his own unopposed. Neeblet was forced to take drastic action, gambling with a Dark Shine that was narrowly unscouted. Chaos reigned as adepts ransacked Neeb’s probe line while DTs did the same to Zest’s. Thinking that an opportunity had surfaced, Neeb tried to finish the game with Immortals and Gateway units, but he was caught off-guard by Zest’s Phoenix transition. Zest slowly began to take incremental advantages through harassment, and it gave the Korean Protoss a window to hit a timing. As Neeb gathered his forces and grew his Disruptor count, Zest swooped in, lifting Neeb’s precious AOE units and systematically destroyed the American’s army in order to claim his vengeance.
The reigning GSL champion was up next against the WCS Spring Circuit Champion, and the match did not disappoint.
The series started uneventfully with ByuN and ShoWTimE choosing safe early expansions after their Barracks and Gateway, respectively. Macro was the name of the game on Frozen Temple, and both players were content to sit back and attempt to deal damage with Medivac and Warp Prism harassment. Though they both poked and prodded, neither player could find a chink in the other’s armor resulting in a late game slugfest. What played was a traditional TvP: ByuN traded parts of his army for expensive units, infrastructure or probes, while ShoWTimE danced around the map trying to catch the Terran army. The cuts and bruises to ShoWTimE’s economy appeared to have taken its toll as outlying bases fell along with his natural, but the German Protoss still had his menacing force. ByuN bided his time as best he could but eventually, the two armies collided, and ShoWTimE’s control proved supreme. The Protoss erased ByuN’s battalion from the map and marched into the Terran natural to claim checkmate and a 1-0 lead.
The second game started similarly—cautious and defensive. This time, however, ByuN chose to be more proactive with his early units. The Korean Terran tried his best to deal damage and halt the Protoss economy, and he found some success with runbys at the third expansion and distractions in the main base. Still, ShoWTimE’s defense was remarkable, ensuring that ByuN’s investment was for naught. The Terran had fallen behind on bases due to his commitment to aggression, and he had to close the gap somehow. A desperate attack on the third base was ByuN’s answer. Unfortunately for him, his opponent was up to the task, swatting him away with ease. ByuN was not even done picking up the pieces of his army when a crippling Dark Templar and Adept drop soon warped into his main. Try as he might ByuN could not amass a large enough army to confront ShoWTimE head-on so, out of options, ByuN flipped the base trade switch hoping that his mobility would save the day. Once again, ShoWTimE proved up to the task, with a final storm on ByuN’s last handful of units sealing the series on New Gettysburg.
After getting the jump on Solar on Day 2, Elazer had high hopes of knocking TY off his perch and becoming the second European to reach the Ro8 at the first time of asking. On King Sejong Station, Elazer decided to get the ball rolling with an old fashioned classic: a Zergling / Roach bust. The rush hit hard and fast, but TY’s defensive build order lined up perfectly to push Elazer back. The Korean Terran was able to churn out two Medivacs just in time to save his Marines in the natural expansion, and he took the difficult decision to abandon the low ground and take a defensive posture atop his ramp. With exquisite micro, he was able to crush Elazer’s Ravagers and Zerglings as they tried to squeeze their way through his chokehold.
Unfazed by the previous game, Elazer opted for an even more exotic cheese: a proxy Hatchery on Dasan Station’s gold natural expansion. TY had to improvise as his wall caught a glimpse of the creep oozing out of the completed Hatchery, because there were already 3 Spine Crawlers building. Fortunately for TY, he had opened with 3-Rax Reaper. Things looked grim as the Spine Crawlers completed, but TY’s presence of mind prevailed. He continued building Reapers, knowing that they would offer better maneuverability and survivability than Marines, and he erected a Bunker at a safe distance. Elazer then ventured up into the main as the creep expanded, yet TY again proved unflappable as he microed his SCVs in order to delay the Spines from burrowing, holding off his second Polish Zerg in order to clinch his spot in the Ro8.
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