Starcraft 2 news » WCS Global Playoffs - Day 1 Recap
Day 1 of the Global Finals played almost exactly to expectations as the favourites in Dark, Stats, Neeb and Zest muscled their way to the Winners Matches on Saturday. Snute and TRUE were our two players unfortunately eliminated on Day 1, while PtitDrogo and Patience will fight on in their Final Matches on Sunday.
We kicked off with the biggest mismatch on paper in this tournament. While Dark’s had his spot sealed since early April - granted a direct seed to the competition after his win in the SSL Season 1 Finals - PtitDrogo was only drafted into the tournament at the final hour following Hydra and Polt’s forfeits.
All the pressure was on the Korean to deliver, and deliver he did. Dark ran riot over PtitDrogo in a dominant 2-0 showing, starting with an elegant snipe of PtitDrogo’s preferred opening on Frozen Temple. The Frenchman is notorious for Resonating Glaives Adept openings, and Dark’s decision to opt for a quick Burrowed Roach attack along with an Overlord elevator drop took advantage of the Protoss’ lack of detection. This allowed him to leverage a massive advantage in the midgame, rolling over PtitDrogo’s Chargelot Archon composition with a huge Zergling / Roach / Ravager force while ransacking the Protoss third with a Baneling run-by.
Game 2 progressed in much the same way with PtitDrogo making small mistakes that Dark punished ruthlessly. Losing an early Warp Prism full of Dark Templar was a grave blow to the Protoss’ map control and harassment possibilities; at the same time, he was effectively forced all-in by another mass Baneling run-by that wiped out his economy at the third. Sticking to his standard Chargelot Archon composition once more, PtitDrogo was suddenly confronted by the sight of Ultralisks and Brood Lords out on the map. Forced to tap out, the Frenchman dropped to the Losers Match.
On the other side of the Group A bracket, Liquid`Snute was matched against newly-teamless Stats. We’ve seen how the size of Apotheosis makes it a daunting map in PvZ, and Snute gave us a display of Macro Zerg 101. Scouting Stats’ extremely greedy Nexus first opener at the gold base, Snute decided to one-up him, quickly droning up to over 70 workers. His incredible economy allowed him to fund an enormous Ling / Bane army, catching Stats as he was attempting to tech up, still limited to a basic Stalker army with only a handful of High Templar for AOE damage. After baiting out Stats’ Storms, the Zerg’s follow-up push rolled straight through the Protoss army.
Stats mixed up the tempo on Frozen Temple, opting for Archon drop harassment that transitioned into a full 7-gate Chargelot Archon attack. Snute seemed to misread the situation completely, droning up while taking a fourth base, and only scouted the lack of a Nexus at the Protoss third seconds before the push came.
With the series tied up at 1-1, the stakes were high on New Gettysburg. Some greedy play from Snute left him in a great position economically, sitting pretty on four bases while Stats’ third was still building. It was down to the Protoss to reset that advantage and he did so with a single Warp Prism attack, warping in masses of unscouted Adepts that ravaged all of the Zerg bases. Follow-up pressure took out the fourth, and with the Zerg’s economy stunted, Snute was forced to counter. Initial signs seemed promising, as a mass Ling attack wiped out an entire mineral line, but Stats caught him out on the retreat. Storms blanketed the Zerg army as Stats marched on to the Winners Match.
With the opening pair of matches concluded in Group A, we turned our attention to the second group of the day and to the great hope of the foreign scene: Neeblet. Clean play here showed all the upsides to his game that we’ve been accustomed to seeing recently—consistent upgrades, solid micro, but most of all, unparalleled decision making. After a tense opening to game 1, Patience made a single crucial mistake that lost him the game—he attempted to Blink onto a pair of Neeblet’s Disruptors. The first went down, but the second managed to get a shot off just before it exploded, obliterating a large chunk of Patience’s army. Now up on army supply and Disruptor count, Neeblet gave us a clinic in how to play out an advantage in a PvP, shaving off unit after unit from Patience’s army until one final catastrophic engagement proved too much for the Afreeca Protoss.
Patience bounced back quickly on Galactic Process though. A fast DT opener was completely rebuffed by Neeblet, who had opened with a Robo and Observers. Patience followed it up with an Immortal / Sentry push, and a clever DT distraction at the natural expansion drew the Mothership Core away from Neeblet’s main army. A rare Disruptor shot whiff from the American Protoss allowed Patience to Blink aggressively, catching out many of Neeblet’s expensive units and forcing a deciding game.
Frost was the battleground for map three, and it was Neeblet’s turn to reach for the aggression with a two base Immortal all-in. A lack of Pylons set up in between Patience’s natural and third meant that holding against a mass Gateway attack was too tough an ask. And although Patience did eventually stop the American Protoss’ push, it came at the cost of half his worker supply. Neeb simply rebuilt his army before returning to crush the remainder of Patience’s resistance.
From one of our longer series of the day, we turn to one of our shortest; where Neeblet and Patience played out a tense cat and mouse positionally-focused battle, Zest and TRUE gave us a no-holds-barred knife fight. Game 1 saw Zest execute one of the cleanest games of the day, transitioning straight from the same Archon drop style that we saw so many players attempt directly into a game-winning Stalker push.
On the other hand, game 2 was the opposite, as we saw a hint of the inflexible tendencies that have cost Zest dear in the past. Teching up for a fast DT drop might pass as standard on any other map, but on Dasan Station, with the number of aggressive options open to a gold-fuelled Zerg, it was a strategy asking to be punished. With a quick triplet of drop Overlords, Queens and Lings swarmed into Zest’s main. With no units to fend off the attack, it was another quick GG as we headed over to Galactic Process for the deciding game. Game 3 another short one as TRUE opted for a quick Ling flood, but Zest walled off with Pylons, holding off the horde with Overcharges and DTs with ruthless efficiency.
Right from the start, PtitDrogo has been the player everyone expected to drop out immediately, and his first match against Dark had done little to dispel those expectations. Meanwhile, Snute seemed to have come into his ZvP matches with a distinct plan—stay mobile with a Ling / Bane / Ravager force, trading off his army to leverage his superior economy. This worked as planned on Galactic Process, with PtitDrogo slowly bleeding out army and economy over time.
And when game 2 on Frost looked to be going the same way—the Frenchman pinned in his corner of the map by a massive Ling / Bane army—we all thought it was the end of his run. However, Snute didn’t pull the trigger, perfectly happy with starving him out. Slowly, PtitDrogo maxed out on a mass Archon composition, pushed out, and wiped the floor with Snute’s low-tech Ling / Bane / Muta force.
After being granted that reprieve, PtitDrogo made the most of it in game 3 on Frozen Temple, rushing out Adepts, DTs and Resonating Glaives before razing Snute’s mineral lines. After hamstringing the Zerg, it was only a matter of time; the Frenchman’s follow-up Sentry / Immortal push forced Snute to GG out of the competition.
After the disappointment of his trio of abrupt games against Zest, TRUE was determined to come into this series to show us a proper game. On Frozen Temple, he initially impressed with excellent defense against Patience’s Adepts in the early game. However, Patience’s aggression began to tell. DTs and Adepts repeatedly sniped the Zerg’s fourth base. TRUE began to leak workers as Patience began to trade units for economy using the economic advantage from his own fourth Nexus. Massing Archons against a Zerg in the midst of teching to Lurkers, Patience crushed his way through the army to take the first map.
They saved the best for last though as map 2 on Galactic Process was the game of the night. Needing a win to keep himself in the tournament, TRUE turned to what he knew best—aggression. Ling-Bane swarmed endlessly into Patience’s bases, repeatedly cancelling his third and wiping out the workers at the natural. Hopelessly behind, Patience gambled everything on one final push. Marshalling one final batch of Archons and Adepts, the Afreeca Protoss put on a spellbinding display of control. He cut a swathe through TRUE’s Ling / Bane / Queen composition, not losing a single Archon through impressive Warp Prism micro. From a game-winning position, TRUE could only watch as Patience wove his way through the Zerg forces, cutting them down until TRUE could only concede the match and his spot in the competition.
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