[crAzerk]

The SEACL semifinals kicked off with a clash of two of the top SEA clans, TA and nGen!
There'll just be the scores for the series, and one detailed recap of the match of the series!

+ [Match of the Series] +

nGenJazBaz (Zerg) vs TARossi (Terran) recap by crAzerk
Jazbaz has consistently remained in the top tier of the GM league, while Rossi is no pushover either, a top GM Terran and regarded as a fearful opponent to meet in tournaments
These two duke it out on GSL GSTL Terminus SE:


Jazbaz opened up with a 15 hatch, while Rossi went with a gas opening instead of a 2 Rax pressure, both logical decisions given this map is pretty big, and the rush distance is long, especially in cross spawns like these.

Rossi opens with 2 Reapers to scout/harass while expanding at the same time.

Apart from sniping a Creep Tumor, Rossi was rather passive with his Reapers, choosing to just control the watchtowers while macroing up.
This allowed Jazbaz to get an early 2nd expansion (to be on 3 bases) which is quite easy to do on this map, given how close the 3 bases are.
Both players chose to move out with a small force to do some scouting, but Jazbaz wasn't paying attention this zerglings!

Lost about 8 lings here! ;(

Apart from this, both players seem content sitting back and playing the macro game.

At about 10:00, Rossi moved out for a stim timing push with a pack of marines and a lone marauder.

Jazbaz, however, was well-prepared for this, and his Roach/ling/bling forced Rossi to load up his infantry and back out of the sure-lose engagement.

Rossi tried some fancy drop play around Jazbaz's 3rd but couldn't do much damage and had to back out. Following this, Jazbaz massed up a big ball of lings/blings and decided to attempt to bust Rossi!



Jazbaz didn't have the best of baneling micro in this engagement, and accidentally blew up most of them on tanks, leaving only his Zerg remains over the Terran base.

Rossi's superb macro (I was watching the production tab, I don't think he ever stopped making SCVs for the first 10-12 minutes of the game, resulting in him being ahead of Jazbaz in SCVs for quite a while)allowed him to mass up a solid ball of MMM with tanks despite losing quite a few marines in that bling bust, and he goes for yet another timing push when his 1/1 infantry upgrades were done.




Kiting banelings into tank line!


Rossi using the terrain to his advantage


Banelings hit their mark this time, cleaning up the infantry ball as well as tanks.

Jazbaz followed this up with some multi prong muta-ling attacks, but couldn't do much apart from killing 1-2 addons, with Rossi splitting up his army perfectly. Both players settle back into macromode again, with Rossi grabbing 2 bases while Jazbaz establishes his 5th.
Jazbaz maxxes out first on muta/bling/ling (25 mutas to be exact) while Rossi had a huge marine ball with tanks and a Thor as well for good measure.

They engaged at Rossi's 5th, and with Jazbaz hitting Hive tech, it looks like he should be able to remax quickly after the clash with some Tier 3.. ........ but wait, he has no Tier 3 buildings.
As for the engagement...






BAD MISCLICK WTF.
My little Zerg heart skipped a beat when I saw this


Not sure what made Jazbaz do this - he basically decided to sac his banelings and lings onto that CC that just landed there, and flew his entire flock of mutas into 129837123 marines.



Oh wait ok I know why.


He GGs out immediately after.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

The game went fairly evenly throughout, heavy macro game from both players apart from that attempted bling bust and the timing pushes from Terran, which are standard. Rossi's macro was superb this game though, and that allowed him to keep up with Jazbaz's economy.
It was rather unfortunate that Jazbaz threw that final battle because of lag, but to be honest, I would think Rossi would have came out on top that battle with decent control from both players, and Jazbaz would have needed to remax with some Tier 3 units. However, he did not have any T3 tech besides his Hive, so reinforcing ling/bling probably wouldn't have been able to stop the advance of the Terran army.

In case you were wondering, the series didn't have any particularly interesting match (many ZvZs) so I just took a random game to write up on. I assume most people are bored of ZvZs or dislike it, so i chose this one.

+ [How the series went] +

nGen vs TA
nGenLight > TAdeth (nGen 1:0 TA)
nGenLight < TARossi (nGen 1:1 TA)
nGenJazBas < TARossi (nGen 1:2 TA)
nGenMaster > TARossi (nGen 2:2 TA)
nGenMaster > TASanchez (nGen 3:2 TA)
nGenMaster < TAEdge (nGen 3:3 TA)
Pringles < TAEdge (nGen 3:4 TA) !

TA wins 4-3 in a nailbitingly close series! They move on to the finals to face the winner of aLt vs inFi!