[crAzerk]

KoF #4 writeup - by crAzerk

Today was the last King of Fighters before the monthly tournament which features the winners of the previous 4. I noticed that team aLt has joined it so I decided to follow them through the tournament and see how far they get. (I'm assuming finals)

I'll only do full writeups for the finals! The earlier games are just boring text recaps read at your own risk.

POST EDIT : THE FINALS WERE AWESOME DO CHECK THEM OUT. Full of action, really exciting and entertaining games.. wow I hope I did them justice with my writeups.

Round 1
xcookieFD DelhiWarrior Lithium vs nirvAnA PiG iaguz

+ Show +

nirvAnA took the first 2 games playing Terran (kinda his offrace) against xcookieFD (P) (1st game) and DelhiWarrior (Z) (2nd game)
I didn't watch the games so I'll just post what they told me:

Game 1 and 2

Originally Posted by aLtnirvAnA

"First game i proxyed 2rax did some damage and it was downhill for the P from there
2nd game i did reaper harass which did more damage than intended and the game was done there"

Game 3
And 3rd game nirvana switched to Zerg for some reason, against Lithium (P). PiG gave me a recap for this one:

Originally Posted by aLtPiG

"nirvana, trying to annoy iaguz, who had raged at him earlier in the day over his risky off-race builds, tried to do the clunkiest nydus-build ive ever seen.
It failed abysmally against Lithium's forge fe, as nirvana put it in sight of the assimilator.
when most of the base wasnt covered by toss vision, nirvana managed to harass with mutas for the next 20 minutes until the supplies were equalised
eventually lithium cracked the !@#$s at the caster for lagging the game and attacked and won with superior army blinkstalker sentry vr phenix vs pure mutaling spine"

He should do my writeups for me lolol.

Game 4
And so next game was Lithium up against iaguz. And the wonderful recap by PiG again:

Originally Posted by aLtPiG

lithium did a 3gate expo but was late placing his expo
iaguz did a 2rax reactor tech lab safe opener into expansion
he didnt apply pressure however
lithium looked like he wanted to apply pressure
but seemed to realise his timing was off and he couldnt do damage
iaguz eventually pushed out with a bio army where lithium panicked and made an ff wall blocking his own zealots from engaging
whilst a marauder and 2 marines dropped into the mineral line of the natural and the main army simply won its engagemen
the collossus popped as the bio ran into the base
but with 0 army lithuium ggd

And so team aLt won 3-1! Surprise surprise

Round 2 (A.K.A. Semifinals)
nirvAnA PiG iaguz vs toonac Artist HaDeZ katsu
(aLt vs Gview)

+ Show +

Game 1 - aLtnirvAnA (Protoss) vs GviewArtist (Terran) on GSL Bel'Shir Beach
And so nirvAnA starts his team off again playing his main race Protoss against GviewArtist (Terran). I don't know much about Artist, only watched one TvZ of his in which he was really passive but still won because of a bad engagement by the Zerg.

Anyway, nirvana opens with 1 gate robo into 3 gate expand, while the Terran does a 1 rax into CC into more rax + medivacs.
Both players macro up but nirvana remains slightly ahead, and hits before Terran can get his Ghost tech out. With some well placed FFs, he decimated the Terran army and won the game soon after.

Game 2 - aLtnirvAnA (Terran) vs GviewHadez (Protoss) on Tal'darim Altar
nirVanA goes Terran this time, to avoid the boring and lame PvP matchup.
Both players settled into a macro game, with nirvana massing MMM /vikings and Hadez going gateway/colussus. Hadez sneaks a Nexus into the bottom left of the map, and was ahead for most of the game, both in harvestor count and army - until a really bad engagement in which his stalkers got separated from his 20 or so zealots which basically got kited by marauders to death. (no charge)
Also in that long sequence, nirvana's marauders managed to snipe hadez' expo.

From then on, nirvAnA 's neverending stream of marauders + better upgrades (hadez had 0/0 while nirvana had 2/1) won him the game.

Game 3 - aLtnirvAnA (Zerg) vs GviewToONaC (Terran) on Xel'Naga Caverns
An early bunker rush made nirvana get just a tad too many lings, but his spines at his expo held it off easily. At the same time, his lings ran for the Terran base and denied a building CC and killed a few marines/SCVs before the Terran brought all his marines back and saved it.

So Toonac goes for standard marine tank, while nirvana gets ling/bling/muta. After a bad engagement when nirvana loses most of his lings/blings, toonac makes a push into his expo and wins the game.

Game 4 - GviewToONaC (Terran) vs aLtiaguz (Terran) on Shakuras Plateau
The game was a standard TvT - Long (40 mins), siege tank warz, viking air control warz, infantry warz, drops everywhere, long (40 mins). Oh did I mention long?
Eventually iaguz' better decisions and more tanks and Battlecruisers (lol yes) won him the game.

FINALS (Bo7)
If you didn't bother reading anything, you have to read this. This is where the good stuff begins.

+ [THIS IS AWESOME] +

aLtnirvAnA aLtPiG aLtiaguz YoonYJ vs nGenMaFia, nGenLight, nGenMaster

So, because of the way the brackets were rigged, er i mean fixed, ER i meant.. randomly arranged, the finals proved to be a tantalizing affair between two top SEA clans - aLt and nGen.

+ [Game 1] +

Game 1 - Yoon (Terran) vs Mafia (Zerg) on GSL Bel'Shir Beach
Both players are well known players - Yoon is one of the top players on SEA ladder atm (rank 7 last I checked) and also played on KR ladder, Mafia is a well known strong Zerg, who as iaguz was saying 'I'm glad Yoon is playing this match. I just can't beat this guy'

This map is really odd though, and was the map selected to be the first map of all the series.


Besides having no Watchtowers, it has a cute cliff at your main which you can abuse, 3 entrances to your expo (1 'blocked' entrance.. but the rocks dont make a walloff (screenshot of this later!))

Yoon opened with a gas barracks opening, while Mafia 15 hatch 15 pool. Yoon came with a customary
bunker rush and Mafia wisely sends a Drone to check it though his OL didn't see the bunker building (out of range) He pulls enough drones to chase the SCV away, but he returns with a Marine


And somehow Mafia decides not to kill the SCV or marine with his drones, and starts a Spine
With that indecision, 2 more marines arrived and 4 drones just isn't enough to kill them and he even lost 2 drones to the marines and the bunker completed


Mafia had this well thought out though, and he uproots the spine to plant it in perfect range , just outranging the bunker, and Yoon salvages it and tries to kill a few more drones.

While all this was happening, Yoon has been transitioning into Reactor Hellions + an expansion! Ballsy.

With the first hellion, Yoon did an unnecessarily high amount of damage:


SEVEN kills from a single hellion?? That's just unacceptable. Mafia didn't seem to be microing his queen to snipe that hellion which just danced circles around his main's mineral line happily killing drones
When this Hellion finally got taken out by lings+ queen....


FOUR MORE ARRIVED. TOASTY DRONES
I must say the spinecrawler placement wasn't optimal by Mafia - against a hellion harass you need to have at least one spine in your mineral line. As you can see the spine couldn't even touch the hellions from where it was


more drones killed

Mafia seemed to be in a panic-mode, the natural state when a Terran does so much damage with Hellions. There was virtually no drone micro (which allowed for so many hellion kills.. if he had just used his drones to trap the hellions the 2 queens would be able to catch them and kill them instead of dying liket that)

Yoon continued the hellion harass, continually rallying hellions and all this while transiting into an infantry army with stim and combat shields, and saturating his expo. How he does all this at once is beyond me. But by the end of this harass, he had killed 24 drones. TWENTYFOUR.

As Mafia transitioned into ling/bling (and just starting his Spire), Yoon hit with a stim/combatshield timing push with a tank.


In the following sequence Yoon ran into the narrow choke with his infantry first, and his tank lagging behind, which caused the lings to get funneled and had to attack the tank first. This allowed the infantry to go to work with stim and scoot and shoot micro and killed ALOT of lings (that whole batch, in fact)
I thought it was a good trade but actually Zerg came out ahead, probably because of the lost of the tank and lings being so cheap.

While Mafia now got some mutas out, Yoon stuck with marine tank, and with perfect timings threw down his defensive missile turrets just as Mafia's mutas began flying out.

Yoon then went for a drop in Mafia's main which killed 6 drones and some lings


This little bit of marine split had the spectactors in awe - the moment he saw banelings rolling in, Yoon left ONE marine in the small choke that led to behind the mineral patches and split the rest of his marines backwards. This way he managed to get 1 baneling to kill only 1 marine (while the marines killed the other baneling)
The mutas came back to clean this up, but by now Yoon was 40 food ahead. He began moving out as his +1 weapons was nearing completion, and sieged up outside Mafia's expo.


How is this map not imba for Terran? These rocks provide an excellent source to begin slow push from, tanks can just siege from behind them and marines at either choke


Banelings rolled in, but Mafia made a blunder here and blew up all his banelings on 2 TANKS. As you can see the marines are comfortably at the back
This mistake allowed Yoon to clear out Mafia's 3rd AND expo, and was even able to waste Mafia's next batch of banelings with some awesome marine splits:


marines every where

Oh ok you know what I'm such a noob even when watching this again I missed out on some stuff. It's not my fault, Yoon is doing too many things at once lolol.
Even a :


M.U.L.E. drop >< BM much.
This led to some taunting and stuff later on in the next few matches between Light/Yoon, but I think they worked it out. I think
Anyway, just mere seconds before this marine split, Yoon simultaneously did a drop in Mafia's main!


This went unnoticed obviously as the baneling /marine fight was going on.
At the end of the game, Yoon had killed 59 drones. wow.
Mafia tapped out after this sequence.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Yoon's hellion harass did way too much damage than it should, and Mafia never quite recovered from it. He had a slight chance of holding off the game-ending push, but that baneling mis-micro made the outcome clear.

+ [Game 2] +

Game 2 - Yoon (Terran) vs Light (Protoss) on Xel'Naga Caverns
Yoon is looking real solid after that decisive win over Mafia, as we begin Game 2 against nGen's next player, nGenLight, currently ranked #2 on SEA ladder only behind mOONgLaDe.

Ok I'm only going to put a minimap screenshot when it's not a 2 player map, to show the spawn locations. Yoon spawned top right and Light spawned bottom left for this.

Standard gas barracks opener for Terran and, but Yoon actually gets out a REAPER first, while Light chronoboosts out his first Stalker, after his first Zealot. The Reaper doesn't do much though, besides scouting a Nexus after a 3gate, while Yoon actually had an earlier CC building straight after his 1st Barracks.


Light tries to apply some pressure and deny the expansion, but Yoon had enough Marauders to fend off the small Protoss aggression and set up his expo.
After this, Light transitions into colussus while Yoon sticks with MMM


With his first colussus out, Light tries to force an engagement with some FFs but Yoon wisely stims and backs off, even sniping some zealots with some turnaround shots.



With Thermal Lance done, Light tries to chase down Yoon's army while both players do a dance around the centre hole. They finally engage:


Yoon does some excellent unit micro here - they actually initiated head on, but right after the stim he microed half of his army forward to form a right angle kind of concave around the protoss ball, so even the FFs couldn't do much.
With reinforcing marauders/marines, Yoon was able to drive off Light's army. It also helped that he had +1 attack while Light seems to have ignored upgrades this game (no Forge)

Yoon decided to push in at this point when his first 2 vikings popped, knowing that Light's colussus number had been reset after the previous engagement.
This proved to be a good move, as Light just had no answer for the stronger MMM army with vikings+some wise Focusfiring taking out his 2 new colussus.


Light GGs, and Yoon goes up 2-0 for his team!

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

No significant mistakes from Light, just better micro and army control from Yoon in this game. The upgrades probably made the difference as well. Good game awareness by Yoon to make the final push to end the game.

+ [Game 3] +

Game 3 - Yoon (Terran) vs Master (Zerg) on Metalopolis

Next up for nGen was their leader, nGenMaster. Master is known to be a strong, aggressive-style Zerg, though he's not ranked on ladder this season for some reason.


Master opens with a typical 15 hatch, and what does Yoon do?

.
.
.


PROXY 2 RAX!

I don't think Master scouted the 2 rax, but when his scouting Drone saw nothing in the Terran base, he knew something was up.
He spotted the bunker that Yoon threw down near his expo, but before he could kill the SCV, because of the close proximity of the Barracks, 2 marines quickly reinforced it and forced the 3-4 drones back.


Ok this next bit of decision making astounds me and is probably why Master is at his level and I'll be stuck in diamond
He pulls ALL of his drones for this!

Firstly, in a normal bunker rush, you don't have to do this - your lings /queen will be out in time and you just need maybe 6-8 drones at most to push off the initial marines.
HOWEVER, because Master knew at the back of his mind that this was some kind of proxy, he decided to pull all his drones so as to reduce the marine number!
This is really important because once Terran has >4 marines, every 2 scoot and shoot kills 1 drone (i think) and it becomes increasingly hard to hold them off.


Master perfectly handles it - he uses about 4-5 drones to focus down the 2 SCVs there trying to build the bunker, and sends 6 drones to kill off the 2 marines. After killing these 2 marines, he pulled his drones back, as his lings were coming out.

Why I was amazed was because I would probably NEVER think of pulling ALL my drones just to handle a bunker rush, and I would probably have lost this kind of rush because of that. Good decision making by Master!

As Yoon quickly flew his proxy barracks back to his base after the failed rush, Master pressured with some lings. Lucky for Yoon, he completed his walloff back at base, and with repairing SCVs, he was able to stall until his barracks flew home:


And the Marines that popped could push off the lings.


At this point, Master transitioned into Banelings as Yoon built a second CC in his base. At the same time, Master grabbed a 3rd at his gold. When Yoon moved out his marines to grab his expo, Master saw the marine count was low and swooped in with his lings which he had pre-emptively produced.




While the speedlings cleared out the marine force, Yoon had 4 hellions out which easily pushed the lings away. Yoon naturally followed this up with a hellion harass, as Master reacted by throwing down a Roach Warren and a spine at his expo.

The 6 BLUEFLAME hellions did SO much damage when they hit -

Killed 18 drones in total

However, Master got a lucky break when his lings popped:

As the Hellions came down the ramp in pursuit of the fleeing drones, the lings popped and formed a sort of blockade. Being retarded, the hellions just spasmed in place not knowing how to run around (since they were on move command towards the drones). This allowed the spine + 2 queens + lings free shots and Master cleared up the Hellions

Masters immediately went for a counterattack at this point with mass roaches, along with a bunch of lings. Yoon was making more hellions and hence was not prepared for this aggression.


The roaches powered up the ramp and Yoon had to GG

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Risky play by Yoon, which would have paid off if not for the wise drone pull by Master. Yoon got unlucky with those hellions, they would have killed another 10 drones or so easily since the drones were all stacked at Master's expo.
Great decision to counterattack with those roaches by Master, and his aggressive mentality won him the game

+ [Game 4] +

Game 4 - nirvAnA (Protoss) vs Master (Zerg) on Delta Quadrant


It's a battle of the clan leaders, as nirvana takes on Master. Master opens with a 13 pool/13 gas , and takes his expo soon after, but does produce alot of lings to put some pressure on nirvana.


Master IS known to do baneling busts on Protoss, so nirvana actually does a complete wall off with early sentries, off his 3gate
And nirvana reveals his gameplan with a Stargate right after this!

Master must have guessed an early expo towards the back rocks of nirvana due to the complete wall off, as Master responded by grabbing an early 3rd at his gold! He also pre-emptively threw up Spore crawlers at both his bases despite not scouting the Stargate.

Nirvana hits Master's 3rd with 2 VRs and a phoenix, but with 3 queens and some transfuse Master was able to push this away easily.

After getting his 3rd, Nirvana pushes out with a small gateway army + phoenixes/VR


Master was able to hold off this first push with his roach/ling army despite some good FFs by nirvAnA, and nirvana pulls back.

At this point, Master began to pump mass Queens from all 3 Hatcheries, along with mass roaches. Nirvana tried some VR/phoenix harass but didn't manage to do much because of Spore crawlers.

Masters had transitioned into hydras at this point, and had some sick creep spread:


Master was 50 food ahead at this point, and tried to bust up the ramp of nirvana:


Forcefields prevented him from marching right up, so he just kept the contain on nirvana as he grabbed a 4th.

When Master let up the contain for just a brief moment, nirvana tried to sneak out and plant a few cannons to get out of his base. However, Master was quick to respond and pushed nirvana right back in



nirvana waited for thermal lance to finish, and moved out of his base when he did.


Some well -placed FFs gave nirvana a minor victory at this point, pushing back Master's army. However, Master was maxxed out and hence banking minerals, and immediately reproduced 22 hydralisks.

By his next push, however, nirvana had 3 colussus out, and Master complained about lag which seemed to be affecting him judging by his lack of Transfuse in his next push as compared to the previous push. However, the reinforcing hydralisks kept nirvana from chasing down his withered down army.

Masters transitioned to Corruptors at this point, as nirvana finally established his 3rd, while Master already had his 4th saturated and a 5th base up.

In the next clash, Master tried some hydra drops on top of nirvana's army:

Which didn't do much, because FFs kept Master's main army from engaging simultaneously!

After nirvana won this clash, he went for Master's 4th expo, and Master saw that his reproduced roach army was still smaller than nirvana's army so he went for the counterattack on nirvana's 3rd. nirvana took out Master's 4th and came back to defend, but Masters continually streamed his 2/1 Roaches in, and with the better economy and army, Masters took this game, making it 2-2!

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Master won with his superior macro, aggressively taking so many bases. He defended nirvana's stargate harass really well too, and played out the game superbly. I would say it was Master's superior macro this game that won him the entire game.

+ [Game 5] +

Game 5 - PiG (Zerg) vs Master (Zerg) on Shattered Temple


Close spawn

Master opens aggressively with a 10 pool, while PiG goes for a 14gas/14pool.


Very odd spine crawler placement by Master (this is Master in Pig's base)

Ordinarily you would want to place that spine in a hard-to-reach place, either at the edge of creep or maybe behind the minerals. This placement allows drones to get a quick and easy surround!

So Pig did some perfect drone micro and when his lings popped he was able to hold off Master's push easily, and went for a counterattack of his own. Master had placed a Spine in his own base though, so this drove Pig out.

Pig then went for a Baneling nest while Master got a Roach warren, and Pig kept up the speedling pressure


Master made a questionable decision to leave his queens so far out instead of fighting near his minerals where the spine crawler was.. maybe he wanted to spot banelings?
Anyway, this allowed Pig to clear out the 2 queens with his speedlings.


The follow up banelings killed about 5 drones to put both player equal on harvestors. (yes, Master was actually ahead as he droned up after his 10 pool while Pig produced lings)

Pig then tech switched to Roaches, while Master proceeded to throw down 129387 spine crawlers as he teched to lair and droned hard.


Probably a good decision seeing how Pig had been pumping roaches

During this time, Pig kept the contain on Master and set up his own expansion. Pig also morphed in about 20 banelings outside Master's base.

Now, when Master's Roach speed was done, he did an interesting manoeuver (i can never spell this word) :
He dashed his roaches out towards Pig's base, as if going for some sort of base trade.
However, this was a feint, as he turned right back when he saw Pig marching up his ramp.


Master's Roaches: "Haha gotcha i'm coming back"

But the problem is, look at the number of banelings! He can probably wipe out all of Master's drones!

HOWEVER,

He blew up all his banelings on the spine crawlers!

He did ask later 'where did my banelings go?' so it seemed like a mismicro instead of a bad decision.. but still, it was a blunder. If he had sent those banelings to the mineral line, Master would have lost all his drones and had to go for some sort of all-in without any reinforcements.

So after pincering Pig's army in his base and clearing it, Master went for a counterattack, and Pig pulled drones to defend it. He lost way too many drones, and he GGed immediately.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

It wasn't a well-executed 10 pool, but Master transited well out of it. That baneling blunder may have cost Pig the game, though it is not DEFINITE that he would have won, just that Master wont be able to send any reinforcements after that losing his drones to banelings.

+ [Game 6] +

Game 6 - Yoon (Terran) vs Master (Zerg) on Delta Quadrant

(this screenshot was from the previous game but it's the same spawn! )
So aLt send Yoon to the do-or-die match, and Master must be feeling pretty confident after going 3-0.
Yoon goes for a 2rax, but Master actually opens pool first!

Seeing no hatchery, Yoon just places a bunker at the bottom of Master's ramp and moves up with his army

Master manages to delay long enough for his ROACHES to come out though, and pushes this little Terran army back

Knowing Master's aggressive play style, Yoon throws up a bunker quickly at his ramp behind his buildings


and this deters Master from pushing up.

This was not an all-in roach bust though, as Master is grabbing his expansion and pumping drones as he does this.


With a well-placed Overlord, Master was able to get vision of the high ground and snipe a few marines!

After this exchange, Yoon grabbed his expansion outside his base and transitioned to marine/tank, while master went for ling/bling.
True to his aggressive style, Master pumped lings instead of drones and launched another attack together with his remaining roaches!


Just before the bunker could go up

After losing his army, Master never stopped pumping lings - and he transited into a sort of eco baneling bust
He hit again with a strong force of banelings/speedlings:


A little bit of micro here that was really very clever - he sent just enough banelings to blow up the bunker at the top, then pulled these 3 banelings back to deal with the marines at the expo


Master never let up the aggression, and his next batch of blings blew up a lot of SCVs trying to mass repair the bunker that was being killed by lings


Lings kept streaming in, killing ALL of Yoon's tanks


SCVs running from Banelings which had speed upgrade done You can guess what happens in the next few seconds.

More lings kept streaming in, and Yoon was forced to tap out after losing just about all his SCVs.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Master once again gives a clinic on how to play Zerg aggressively. I'll definitely be trying out his roach/ling/bling early aggressive style more against Terran, and see how it works for me.

And just like that, Master takes out team aLt single-handedly, 4-0!
And team nGen wins the KoF#4 !

+ [Game 7] +

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.
She sells sea shells at the sea shore.

As as you can see
This is for me
to waste your time
with endless rhyme

Obviously, if you have read the previous 6 games, you will know that there was no game 7. This was just to prevent you from being spoilt of course!

Like what you've read and want me to cover a tournament? Feel free to drop me a PM, and if you are, please read

+ [this] +

Please provide/answer the following in your PM to hasten the process:

1) Date of tournament and when I'll be sent the replay(s)
2) Game(s) you want me to cover (Should be just finals if it's a tournament)
3) Are you ok with my style of writing? Because I can't really write in a objective 'reporter' style (read ddengster's awesome battle reports to know what I mean!), I find it too monotonous to write! Haha. My style is more blog-like, just refer to my 'Road to Masters' series to get an idea.
4) An attractive picture of yourself (males excluded)
5) I'm kidding about 4).

Also, please do support my weekly column 'My Road to Masters' that I will post every Thursday/Friday in the 'Blogs' section.
As always, feel free to message me in-game as well at crAzerk.187 for a chat or a game!

Thanks for reading!