[TCPLemminks]

Well I’m back with, wait you guys didn’t get to read the first one unless you ninja’d your way into our secret hangout…ok nevermind then, another BSG Open finals. This is the BSG #25…Hey it was either cover this or the BSG Cup #2 which is way more important but I can’t do both at the same time.

Anyway after a gruelling tournament (I’m going to assume it was gruelling since I didn’t watch any of it) we come down to our two finalist.

Duan VS Lipton

Well I have nothing more to say so let’s just get right into it. Actually Lipton is in Silver so nicely done to him, and I keep reading Lipton as Layton who is awesome.

+ [GAME 1] +

Xel Naga Caverns, GL HF’s, nothing really happened in the beginning. Lipton sends his overlord to the left base on XNC…Kinda a mistake by him. He then goes for an extractor trick to get that extra drone out, which according to liquidpedia isn’t the best economical opening but if it floats your boat go ahead.

Lipton then goes for a 15 hatch and sends out a scouting drone. Meanwhile in Duan’s base he is pretty much standard, except for a really late scout which he sends at 18 supply. He still scouts the hatch and pool with gas though.

After this he tries to hide a forge in the north of his base. However it is scouted by the drone that Lipton sent earlier. Despite this Duan seems eager to be a douche and attempts to cannon Lipton’s natural, HOWEVER



Lipton easily puts the smackdown on it and Duan loses a few minerals.

Duan then transitions into a 4 gate, However Lipton has other plans and morphs in 16 zerglings despite knowing that Duan may have cannons at his front. Unfortunately Duan doesn’t and Lipton a moves Duan’s front. Despite the heroics of bob the ramp blocker, Duan doesn’t wall off with another zealot, nor does he build a blocking pylon until the lings are his in base.

Zerglings in your base…worse than ants on your …face?

Scouting the 4 warp gates, Duan throws down 4 spines at his natural, but kills the Artosis pylon. Fortunately in an attempt to protect his mineral line Duan has two pylons warping, but they only manage to power two of the warpgates. Lipton meanwhile makes the mistake of not going after Duan’s probes with his 12 or so zerglings, and exventually gets cleaned up after Duan warps two zealots and brings some probes along for the party.

They then decide to make a congo line of lings, lots and probes around Duan’s base but lings are too fast and ruin the whole thing. Did I mention they didn’t have speed yet?

Lipton meanwhile drones up after his lings are repelled and sends a drone to nija an expo on the left. Duan, being behind and protoss, goes for DT’s, while Lipton get 4 gysers and starts a spire followed by a baneling nest.

After a few minutes of nothing, Duan get his natural going while warping two dts, who immediately go to the left expansion and spot the ninja expo, which only had a queen in it. The poor queen gets killed and the dt’s begin to work on the hatch, prompting Lipton to build 3 overseers 0_o and then sit at his natural while his third dies.

Duan retreats with his dt’s, and Lipton decides to move out with 20ish lings, 7 banes and 7 mutas.

However since ling speed ruins everyone’s fun they arrive at Duan’s natural first and get slaughtered, after which the mutalisks decide that that was a brilliant idea and go in by themselves, fortunately Lipton was wise enough to pull away his mutalisk before any of them died.



Things were looking bleak for Lipton but then

BANELINGS BANELINGS BANELINGS OHHHHHHHHH

Yep they finally show up to the party and promptly kill a large chunk of Duan’s zealots as well as 2 dt’s. Lipton then gets the gold base and a 4th while Duan goes for blink stalkers.

Duan finally moves out from his natural with 4 sentries and some stalkers and manages to deny the gold, but a clutch cancel from Lipton, the hatchery was 1 second away from being completed, saves him some minerals.

Atfter getting a large amount of zerglings and 21 mutas, Lipton moves out and, thanks to not-the-worlds-best force fields and no guardian shield is able to kill Duan’s army and take game 1

+ [GAME 2] +

Tal’darim Altar…BSG players playing macro???? I kid (then again I did 4 gate my way into gold). Duan spawns in the bottom left while Lipton spawns in the top right.

No GL or HF from Duan, which makes me a sad panda T_T. Lipton once again goes for the extractor trick, then proceeds to go 13gas 13pool, while Duan goes for a forge fe. He gets his Nexus down at 14, but has FULL ENERGY ON HIS NEXUS. Anyway Lipton makes a slight mistake of mining for than 100 gas, but that’s not as bad as Duan trying to wall off the natural with pylons.



This however is easily scouted and Lipton morphs 6 zerglings and sends 4 drones to deal with it. However he then cancels his hatchery as Duan places 2 cannon at the wall off. With the 6 lings and drones Lipton breaks through the wall and kills one cannon before it can finish. The second cannon does complete and manages to kill 2 drones and 3 lings before going down.
Lipton then builds a hatchery using his scouting worker, meaning that it has to come back from all the way across the map. Because of this he doesn’t get his hatchery until 26 supply, and supply blocks himself too, always a fun thing to do. Despite this he is still even on harvestors with Duan because

Anyway Duan puts down two Stargates and finally begins to chrono some probes and the two voidray before putting down a…third…stargate…

Well he doesn’t have a ground army so this can only mean MASS VOIDS…he probably has this strategy down since he’s diamond in 3v3.

Meanwhile Lipton, despite not scouting, has put down a spire and saves enough gas for 8 mutas plus a third expo. Meanwhile he sees the 3 initial voidrays as they come over the tower and manages to clean up the first air attack with his mutas while only losing 1 queen.
Duan decides to stay mass voids while Lipton continues to pump mass Muta, with both of them going for +1 air. And then Duan get +1 shields just cause…as well as his first ground units in 4 stalkers.

Both players then procees to sit back and macro out an army. Then Lipton moves out with 28 mutas and a handful of lings. They’re goin up against 16 voids and some stalkers. Duan’s voids now have 1/1/1, while Lipton’s mutas only have 1/0 with +2 on the way. They engage at Duan’s ramp.

However Duan easily holds it off when Lipton decides to retreat with his mutas, picking off some probes on his way out. Duan then ninjas an expansion in the bottom right while destroying his third rocks. After sitting back and macroing another army, this time Lipton decides to go for roaches, lings and mutas. After some muta harrass, killing Duan’s third and getting his 4th expo up, Lipton moves out with 25 roaches, 29 mutas with +2 and some lings, while Duran has his 19 1/1/1 voids and 18 1/0 stalkers. The result?



Man mass voidrays are good.

Duan then decides to move out. However Lipton produces 24 mutas and lings and runs past Duan army and into his main,
taking out 1 stargate before losing all his army again…

Lipton follows this up by getting his 5th and producing 33 hydras, however with no creep spread he loses his 5th and 4th to the voids. He then makes a decent roach, hydra, ling army and engages at Duan’s third.



However mass voids being mass void, Duan wins this engagement easily. On a plus note for Lipton he finally finds the hidden expo and destroys it with a few lings.

Meanwhile Duran finally moves out with his mass void + gateway + plus a random phoenix because phoenixes get you laid. Lipton then does another tech switch and starts getting 4 infestors out while they engage and his new 4th.



This obviously doesn’t work and Lipton gg’s to tie the game out at 1-1

+ [GAME 3] +

Metapolis, the only ladder map that has a cafe that your marines can stop by in and get high off caffeine, pfft as if stim wasn’t imba enough. Anyway Duan spawns at the 9 o’clock while Lipton spawns at the 3 o’clock.

Early game is best summarised by this screenie:

Other than that Lipton decides to step it up and goes for a DOUBLE extractor trick this time. Meanwhile Duan decides to not spend chrono on probes again, my opinion on which was expressed in the last game. Both of them then proceed to send relatively late scouts. Despite that they both still get in each other’s base.

Duan then decides to go for a 4 gate, throwing down the 4th gateway with Lipton’s drone in his base. Obviously Lipton sees it and produces lings and 3 spines.

Then things take a twist as Duan throws down a nexus after killing the scouting drone, while Lipton continues to produce lings for the impeding 4gate attack while getting his own natural. Duan then transitions into getting his second geyser and putting 4 guys in it, a mistake which he doesn’t correct throughout the match. Anyway as a result

Oh indirect damage T_T

Duan then places a twilight council and get blink as well as placing his third while Lipton has only started his lair and roaches. Lipton then sends his lings over to try and deny Duan’s third expansion. However is only able to snipe a few pylons before Duan’s army arrives. However Lipton just sends his lings into Duan’s main and into the mineral resulting in



And with that he evens up the worker count, even going into the natural to snipe 2 probes resulting in approx. 22 probes killed. All the while getting his own 3rd. He then macros up an army of 24 roaches and 24 lings, then moves to Duan’s 3rd , However Duan moves his army to his third right before the attack happens (MAP HACK) and Lipton retreats after losing all his zerglings. This was followed by two very very very late ff’s from Duan…now premature force fields may be embarrassing and you have to apologise for them, but late force fields, after their entire army has gone, that’s just weird.

Anyway both players sit back and macro off their 3 bases. Lipton goes for an infestation pit, and Duan begins to move out to pressure Lipton’s third with his 37 stalkers and a few sentries.

He moves in and kills the third, while Lipton is researching burrow and tunnelling claws. Lipton then mistimes his infestors and builds 4 of them before pathogen glands can finish. However while Duan is busy killing his larvae he sees that three of those infestors are morphing at his destroyed third and he does a clutch cancel on all of them.

After this he moves in with his roach army to try and clean out Duan’s army. However with sentries cutting the roaches in half and no burrow micro despite the fact that Duan had no observers since he was still on blink tech, Duan lost all of his roaches. Although he had 4 infestor with fungals, he was unable to hold off the blink stalkers and, after they blinked on top of his remaining roaches and destroyed them, he calls the GG


As System would say: That’s all she wrote for that. Meaning that Duan takes the series and BSG #25 against Lipton 2-1.

So that's that for BSG 25. Any complaints should be sent to crAzerk as he is head writer