[crAzerk]

MSS Cup Writeup - by crAzerk

The MSS Cup was a big event, with over 120 players taking part for a prize pool of $250!

Flash's very own Revz aka Revenant played hard and excelled in the tournament, reaching the grand finals! His opponent was the formidable iM'YoonYJ. Both players are ranked high in the GM league, with YoonYJ being constantly in the top 10.

FINALS (Best of 5)

+ [Game 1] +

Game 1 - FlashRevz vs YoonYJ on Metalopolis



Rev opened with a 15 hatch while Yoon did an unorthodox 2 rax build - he actually proxied his 2nd Barracks!


Rev did not expect this, and when he sent a Drone out and spotted the 2 marines coming with 2 SCVs, he quickly threw down a Spinecrawler in reaction.


Yoon managed to force 2 cancels on the Spine before Rev's zerglings popped and managed to push the marine/scv force away.

However, Yoon kept up the pressure like any good Terran will, while building his Command Centre (CC) in base.

Forcing more zerglings from Rev who did not put down any Spines.

With his 2 queens and good zergling control, Rev was able to hold off this push as well and clear all of Yoon's marines.

While Yoon transitioned to blue flame hellions, Rev had other plans of his own -

Eco baneling(bling) bust!

Rev hit a little earlier than expected, before Yoon had even transferred any SCVs to his expansion, so he just backed up into his main. However, Rev breached the Terran wall-in with his banelings, and his speedlings(slings) ran in

However, it seemed that Rev didn't have enough banelings, as Yoon pulled his SCVs and got the speedlings fighting in a bad line - perfect for Hellions to roast!


This was a bad decision by Rev in my opinion, as the hellions easily cleared all the lings with the SCVs tanking. Rev needed to surround the Hellions, but Yoon's good SCV and unit control prevented him from doing so. Also, because Rev had cut drones to go for that sling/bling push, he didn't even come out ahead in Drones after that engagement.

Yoon counter-attacked with his blue flame Hellions and actually dealt as much Drone damage as Rev's slings did to his SCVs, before Roaches popped to clear them up.

Then came the blunder that probably cost Rev the game -

He left ALL of his roaches at the Xel'Naga Watchtower, and Yoon's marine/marauder/tank push caught his army and cleared all his roaches

Yoon then began his slow push, and with some skillful marine splits he dodged baneling after baneling - and even dropped units on the high ground to divide his infantry further


Rev started to pump pure roaches to try to deal with this strong slow push, but Yoon's superior positioning of tanks and marines was too much to deal with.


A tank blows up a Roach, as well as Rev's chances of winning.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

I thought Rev was ahead for most of the game, until the 2 mistakes cost him - first losing about 30-40 lings to just about 4-6 hellions, then losing all his roaches at the Watchtower.

+ [Game 2] +

Game 2 - YoonYJ vs FlashRevz on XNC
Both players actually go gas first builds in this game. Not sure why Rev didn't go for a Fast Expand. He constantly steals Yoon's gas to try to delay any gas heavy rushes such as Banshees and whatnot, until Yoon got 3 Marines out. (3 marines outDPS an extractor's construction)

Rev, in the meantime, gets a 22 hatchery with a Roach Warren, and proceeds to pump out 5 Roaches! Yoon in the meantime was building a CC in his base while getting Siege tech. Yoon tries a Hellion harass but Rev's Roaches pushes that off easily.

Rev teches to Banelings and Roach Speed, while Yoon gets his standard Marine/Tank army. No screenshots because nothing is going on!

Then Yoon brings his Tanks and Marines and tries to be sneaky -

Sneaks around the tunnel to push from there... But Rev saw it coming!
With his Roach/Bling/Sling army, he was able to push this off easily as he managed to strike before the tanks sieged up.

Yoon moved forward again when his infantry upgrades were done, and Rev saw it and tried to move in to engage when he saw the tanks were unsieged

This proved to be a bad decision, however, as Yoon had far too many Marines, and Yoon cleaned up Rev's roaches.

Yoon followed up with constant pressure with marine/tank on Rev's 3rd, preventing him from mining from it. It was like the 2 players were trading armies - Yoon will throw a ball of marine/tank at Rev, and Rev will lose his army but with defender's advantage he pushes it off - but Yoon comes right back again with another pack of marine/tank.

One push caught Rev without Banelings:

Banelings morphing in- so close yet so far.
And the marines managed to snipe the Hatchery!

2 base Terran vs 2 base Zerg means the Zerg WILL lose eventually, and with Yoon rallying Marines/Tanks, Rev decided to basetrade, but Yoon easily cleaned out the small Roach force that hit his base and killed Rev's with a bigger Tank/Marine army. Rev had to tap out.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Rev was floating on ALOT of gas this game - he was at 1000 gas at the end of the game. He could've got some Infestors out and the Fungal Growth would have helped with the Marines and his Roaches can just A-Move in and clear up the tanks. He even had a Spire up - but never quite got the chance (or decided to) make Mutas. Yoon's constant aggression kept him on the back foot, and once the 3rd was taken down it was over.

+ [Game 3] +

Game 3 on Shattered Temple
With Yoon up 2-0, he is in a commanding position. The chance of attempting some cheesy all-in is high. Will he do it?


Rev goes for a 15 hatch once again, and Yoon goes for what seems to be his most common build - marine/tank. He gets 2 early Factories and 2 Barracks though, instead of the early CC like the previous game.
Rev, on the other hand, rushes Roaches, and tries to poke at Yoon's front door


Yoon's tank forces him away.

Yoon seems to want to end the game quickly, as he sends out his marine/tank/hellion army. Rev sees the tank unsieged and engages -

but his Zergling speed wasn't done yet and loses this small army

Yoon begins his siege -

While he kills one spine with his siege tank, Rev pulls his drones and with his 8 or so Roaches popping from his 2 Hatcheries, he manages to drive this force of Yoon back, clearing up the marines and tanks.

For some reason unbeknownst(Is there such a word?) to me, Yoon pulls over half his SCVs in what seems to be an all-in

After Rev's Roach/Ling army clears this up, Yoon calls the GG.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Not quite sure Yoon decided to pull SCVs for that last push - Both were fairly even after the initial few exchanges. Perhaps he felt he was too far behind after he tried to catch Rev off-guard with the early push.

+ [Game 4] +

Game 4- on Tal'darim Altar


Rev opened with a standard Hatch first, while Yoon went for a Barracks into TWO gas! I was scratching my head wondering what he was up to when I saw this:


Proxy Factory!!

And it gets better....


Starport with tech lab!! It's going to be Banshees!

In case you're wondering why he's doing this, by proxy-ing his Starport, the rush distance for his Banshee is greatly reduced as compared to if he had to rally his Banshee from his base.

In the meantime, Rev was oblivious to this, and was making speedlings and droning up. When the Banshee hit, he had nothing but 2 queens, and the Banshees killed a total of 9 drones before Rev got an Overseer and enough Queens to hold them off.

Yoon tried to expand off this -

But Revz' lings denied this.

Luckily for Yoon, he also had the backing of 4 Barracks in his base and the Marines flooded out of his base and pushed the Zerglings off.

Rev transitions into Muta /Bling/Sling, while Yoon seemed contented massing up a Banshee heavy, Marine army.

Yoon then pushes out with this force.


His marines caught the retreating Mutalisks off-guard,
while:


His Banshees flew ahead to clear Banelings!

With good Mutalisk/Overseer control, Rev was able to clear the cloaked Banshees , but Yoon had other plans:


Mass marines rallying forward!
Yoon: "Banelings? Bah! I'll just marine split them to pieces!"

True enough, he kills off a whole bunch of speedlings and some banelings, and pushes into Rev's base.


The marines took out 2 spinecrawlers and a handful of mutalisks before being cleared - But another wave of marines had rallied near Rev's base!

However, Rev had just too many speedlings/blings, and even manages to use his Mutas to catch an attempted drop by Yoon! Rev's army became too big to handle, and Yoon had to stop rallying Marines forward as they were just getting picked off. He backed up and got Siege tech and cleared the rocks for his 3rd.

After getting his 3rd, Yoon pushed out once again with a Marine Tank army, but Rev took the chance when Yoon's army was out of position and took out his 3rd with his Mutalisks!
Rev also engaged Yoon's army in the middle of the map with his ling/bling force at home:

Clearing out most of Yoon's army.

By this point, Rev had Hive tech, and got both an Ultralisk Cavern and a Greater Spire. With his Infestor's fungal growth, he was able to push off Yoon's attempted marine push with his leftover forces at his 3rd easily.

Rev didn't seem to be spending his resources well though, and he was actually MINERAL blocked, an odd situation for a Zerg to be in (usually Gas is the limiting factor). He needed to spread out his drones better to his newer expansions, but Yoon was sending out blue flame hellions to harass those expansions as well.


The 2 armies spotted each other in the middle of the map, both actually relatively equal in food count! Rev had to be very careful about engaging this, as if he enters at a bad position the tanks will tear up his army.


They finally engage somewhere in the middle:

A decent fungal growth catches half the marines - but the other half behind runs havoc on the ultralisks and blings. Seriously, upgraded Marines are ridiculously strong.

However, Rev now had a decent sized ultralisk/ling force, and when Yoon moved out a little too ambitiously instead of leapfrogging tanks, Rev swooped in for the kill.

Marines outpowered, GG.

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

The early marine aggression seemed quite a waste from Yoon - he should have grabbed a 3rd then do that behind saturating his 3rd. Rev reacted well and got sufficient units to fend him off, and just out-macroed Yoon significantly this game.

+ [Game 5] +

Game 5 on Xel'Naga Caverns
It's back to XNC, and the momentum seems to have swung in Rev's favour after Rev going 2-0, tying the score at 2-2 now.

Rev gets the fast expand this time (15 hatch/15pool), while Yoon once again proxies a 2nd barracks.

He followed up with the typical bunker rush, but Rev responded instantly with a Spine and pulled his Drones.

Yoon puts 2 bunkers down and rallied more Marines to support this rush.
While 1 bunker did manage to finish, Rev's spinecrawler was able to deter it and prevent Yoon from doing any damage.

Rev slightly overproduced lings, so he sent all his lings towards Yoon's base to do some scouting/pressure. This proved to be a mistake as Yoon was being sneaky:

He ran in from the back tunnel with a pack of marines and killed about 6 drones ! He prevented mining from there for awhile until Rev could get his zerglings back to clear them up.

All this while, Yoon transitioned into an expand with blue flame hellions. He then made a strong marine/hellion push -

But Rev's banelings/roaches/speedlings cleared this out relatively easily. Just in time too! The banelings just morphed in when Yoon's army was pushing in.

All this aggression allowed Yoon to be actually ahead of SCVs since Rev had to keep producing units. Rev knew he had to try something, so he managed to sneak his Roaches past Yoon's defence to snipe some SCVs:


However, the big pack of marines from Yoon scooted over and cleared out the entire roach force. Yoon followed up by wanting to slowpush from the middle into Rev's 3rd - only to find that Rev didn't yet have a 3rd.
Instead, Rev tried to sneak an expansion on the left expansion:

However, Yoon managed to scout it and sent a small marine force to clear it while sieging up in the middle. Rev takes this opportunity to engage:

Yoon's marines proved to be too much though, and drove Rev back.

Yoon's non-stop pressure denied Rev a 3rd at any other location and he finally decided to try to get the gold expo, while Yoon also grabbed his gold expo himself.

While Yoon sieged up towards the right side:

Rev runs his roaches up towards the gold and sniped the CC before it could complete into a Planetary Fortress!

Yoon responds with a counterattack on Rev's gold, but this was actually a bait, and Rev bites:

In attempting to chase the marines with his banelings, his roaches run into a big siege line!

Rev had to pull back to avoid further losses, and his inability to get a 3rd secured was hurting his economy badly - his resources were low and it was not because of his excellent macro either.

Yoon catches Rev's army offguard and scoots in with a small force of marines

Killing some drones and denying mining at the 3rd once again.

By now, Yoon had sieged up in a superior position

It's almost impossible to break this unless you have a larger army, and because of his lack of a 3rd, Rev was unable to muster up such an army. In fact, Yoon's army was considerably bigger.

Yoon's tanks began encroaching on Rev's gold hatchery, so he had to engage.

Roaches clear out the first line, but the back line of tanks and marines are just too much.

At the same time, Yoon had also established his gold expo, and so was able to stream in more reinforcements. After he took out Rev's hatch, Rev called GG.

And Yoon wins the series 3-2!

+ [Thoughts about the game] +

Yoon must have been upset about his lost to nGenMaster the previous day in the KoF tournament (When Master beat him TWICE), when Master's superior aggression won him the games.
Today, he exhibited great aggression and pressure and never quite let Rev get back into the games in which Yoon won. The final game was just textbook stuff - deny a Zerg's 3rd while you get your own, and it's an easy win for you.

That's all folks!
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!

[ddengster]

Nice to see someone else having the time to do writeups!
Heres some advice: Brush up on your formatting with tags and tags for quoting out of context

[Paroxysm]

Solid effort! Again I am impressed by your writing style Keep up the good effort!

[crAzerk]

Originally Posted by ddengster

Brush up on your formatting with tags and tags for quoting out of context

Sorry I don't quite get that. Care to explain this?

[ddengster]

oops i meant to say [ i ]tags and [ center ] tags,

example

Eco baneling(bling) bust!

it looks much better this way imo
if you want more info, you can always hit the quote button and check out how some posts are formatted the way they are

[crAzerk]

ooh haha.
Yea I thought of doing the italics initially but with the amount of pictures I have in each post I got lazy and decided not to lol! I will include it in future ones I guess.

Do you know of a way to resize photos with code? Like when I upload via photobucket the default size seems a little too big for my liking when posted here.

[ddengster]

uploading pictures into your album automatically resizes your pictures. not sure if you can do it via code though

[nirvAnA]

i use a program called image light resizer. basically it lets you take a mass bunch of pics and resize them instantly with a click of a button. Just have to specify either width or height and untick the other dimension in the event ur pics arent all the same size. You can also do stuff like sharpening/adding borders instantly, great program

[crAzerk]

Currently I'm using Blogger to write the post, and they have a couple of resizing options

Anyway, I experimented with (Center) tags and didn't like it, so I'm sticking with Left alignment

[jason]

well written once again.
im just wondering is yoonyj in incredible miracle?
u saidimyoonyj
and whats the mss cup? cheers

[crAzerk]

Hey jason,
I'm not sure if he is :s

And MSS Cup is this
http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=1385

Thanks for the comments!

[nirvAnA]

Yoon is in Team immunity, a CS pro team & glade's old team