[nirvAnA]

10 ladder games Featuring nirvAnA!

As part of our "constantly updated" feature in The Grandmaster Manual, every week we will try to add new valuable content that will enhance our subscribers experience. This fifth instalment will feature TGM Author nirvAnA sharing his thoughts on his ladder games.

We hope you enjoy these reports but we would also like to give exclusivity to our premium TGM members so only the 5 first games will be displayed for all and the rest can be seen by subscribing! We hope everyone here will enjoy the new releases from our coaches/guest pros each week!

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#1 nirvAnA (P) vs FXOFilthy

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My thought process in the game: This is one of my absolute favourite builds at the moment, because blink stalkers are by far my favourite unit and its a super fun unorthodox strategy. Who would have thought blink would turn out to be a viable build vs all races, even Terran? The build revolves around the fact that a good terran almost always builds 3 bunkers after expanding as they have to prepare for a possible 6 gate build and aren't very mobile. Stalkers abuse the pathway between the main and natural and with good micro you can pick off stray units coming out of the barracks easily and be able to beat any engagement while reinforcing from 4 gates. Its very important to use blink with ramps especially when they pull scvs. Was pretty happy i managed to beat RedArchon with this build too and once i am able to beat whom i feel are the top terrans on SEA i officially declare the build viable and add it to my list of strategies!

Blink ramp abuse incoming!

What my opponent could have done better: The counter to this would be for Terrans to bunker up their ramp and do their best not to engage until they have built a stronger force. Multiple small skirmishes vs blink stalkers is a big nono as you leave yourself vulnerable to good blink micro, you have to be patient and beat the army in one decisive attack.

Game Rating: 9/10 Highly recommend to see the execution of this build.

Game Duration:12:15

#2 nirvAnA vs Maya

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My thought process in the game: If you're wondering about the chat.. well it was 2am and no one else was searching so i pestered Maya to search ladder. Maya is one of the up and coming Terrans of , like FaH. I believe both of them are pretty big RedArchon fan boys haha but they are both getting really good. Map spawns cross positions. Hmm.. I just did blink stalkers so this game i decide to DT rush cause i really hate playing standard PvT expand with 3 gates then sit in base for 20 mins then move out.. its really boring!

The Robo is so i don't instant lose to banshee builds. The APM is me showing off my 65 APM power.
(it actually ramps up as the game progresses but first 5 mins is always this low haha)

Lucky for me he does a 2 rax 1fac marine tank build as compared to a 1/1/1 build which i would have alot harder time stopping. I make him waste his scans on the DTs but still i'm unable to stop his push.

The key decision i made here which many lower league players would not make is I chose NOT to engage and hopelessly try to save my expansion which was going to die 100/100 times. I instead treated it as a sunk cost and let it die while i slowly sniped units with my DTs and cleaned up later with the army i saved, putting us even in the mid game.

Later in the game, building pylon spotters around the map as i recommended in TGM helped save me from 2 fully loaded drop ships, as well as severely turning the game in my favour. My final army composition is immortal/gateway units and templars, a combination i have been playing around with recently which is especially strong vs Terrans who instantly mass vikings when they see robotics.

What my opponent could have done better: He should have made ghosts earlier and vs this combo you don't want to make any marines, just mass marauders, ghosts and medivacs.

Game Rating: 8/10

Game Duration: 21:12

#3 nirvAnA duckie

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My thought process in the game: If you don't know duckie, he used to be a famous warcraft 3 player who 3-1ed grubby at the blizzard world wide invitational and finished #2 for a $15,000 prize. An extremely talented player who started 1v1ing less than 3 months ago and is now the best if not one of the best protoss players on SEA, probably even a better protoss than me. You will probably hear more about him soon as he makes more waves. And if you're wondering why i'm playing terran, i actually play TvP quite alot helping my clan mates duckie/sheepy/aaron train in custom games since last year. In fact this season my win % as Terran is probably higher than my win % as Protoss.

I elect to do a two rax expand into ghost into reactored starport and I designed it such that i could carry out a timing attack with EMP / medivacs before he had too many collosi. Since i play protoss i make it a point to do all the stuff i find annoying when playing against terran including:

1. I float my factory to his base to get a good view of his army composition
2. I constantly scout carefully around my base to kill stray pylons which would deter any 6 gating attempts or reinforcements
3. I constantly do multi prong attacks and basically one dropship flies around the whole game doing immense damage

Saving units for later as as recommended in TGM as one of the key subtle things that separate GMs from everyone else turns out to be instrumental in this match. First follow the dropship action closely and at the very last battle the subtle action of moving my army to the very back of the minerals at my base to stall as much time as possible for my reinforcements to arrive. If there is just one game you should watch, it is this one. Its the best game of this 10 game series.

Not looking good

What my opponent could have done better: PvT is a pretty hard matchup imo. Because if a single drop gets thru and does damage that could cause you the game. duckie played well in stopping the drops but not perfect and in this matchup you need perfection. Imba Terrans!!

Game Rating: 10/10

Game Duration:19.00

#4 nirvAnA vs Roz #1

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RUN FOR YOUR LIVES + fail macro spotted

My thought process in the game: I start the game by researching stim first instead of concussive shells, FML! I played Roz TvP on ladder quite a few times today, usually doing the same type of ghost into medivac/viking timing attacks.

What i learnt from this loss: My mechanics mid game was pretty fail, but so was Roz's lol! Two big scouting reminders I need to note:

1. Scan my army for observers before loading them into medivacs
2. Scan his army late game to see if his unit composition has changed

It was pretty even the whole game till i was caught off guard by his collosi production, had no vikings and that lost me the game. I also feel that Terran have quite an advantage over Protoss from beginning to mid game, but if you allow them to get a Collosi/Templar combination and you have not done enough damage and you have even resources/food counts you are pretty much dead.

Game Rating: 7/10

Game Duration: 29.33

#5 nirvAnA vs MaFia #1

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My thought process in the game: MaFia is an extremely strong mechanical zerg who finished #3 at WCG Sydney. It is for this reason i very seldom try to play long macro games with either mafia or jazbas because im not a young and sexy korean musical conductor but an old man with 5 grandchildren and an Apm of 70. Fighting a head on mechanical game is just a silly decision to make. Whenever i play the two of them i almost always try to execute very different timing attacks at different times of the game or use unorthodox strategies to try and confuse their drone/unit production so i end up with some sort of advantage when i hit the mid game.

This is a variation of the build i saw in a replay from Yonghwa and wanted to try out. SKY toss! Instead of mass phoenix i opted to go 4 chronoed voidrays before making 15 phoenixes and transitioning into carrier mothership while massing cannons at my expansions. If you're thinking holy shit that sounds ridiculous, yes you are right, it does sound that way! But you have to see the execution of it to witness its power! I haven't done it to mafia before so he was really caught off-guard.

ty for the inspiration yonghwa

What my opponent could have done better: Quite sure 2 hatch straight hydra will be the hard counter for this build but thats very uneconomical especially when a protoss fast expands. Mafia needed to improve his decision making with the queens/spores and just stall till his hydras were out but its really hard to stop if its the first time you're encountering such a weird build/

Game Rating: 7/10

Game Duration:15:47

+ [Games 6 to 10] +

Available to all TGM subscribers here! (You will get an error message if you're not a subscriber)

#6 nirvAnA vs techtron

#7 nirvAnA vs MaFia #2

#8 nirvAnA vs NeoRedArchon

#9 nirvAnA (P) vs FXOFilthy #2

#10 nirvAnA vs Roz #2

Some of the games were the result of the Critical Analysis exercise template i had done earlier as shown below.


TGM members will be able to download the template and use it yourself here!

Download the replay pack of the first 5 games here.

Check out the other 10 game ladder Analysis series below.

Series 1: Featuring PiG!
Series 2: Featuring JessE!
Series 3: Featuring iaguz!
Series 4: Featuring OxygeN!
Series 5: Featuring nirvAnA!

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Such a great job. This is the sort of good analysis that makes this forum that interesting.