It was my first ever time in a clan matchup, GSTL all-kill style, so I was hyped. The PDCL team of TCP was just formed days ago, with virtually no practice whatsoever. We didn't even know about our game until the day of the event, when our noble leader Frogmite was scrambling to get the game arranged.
I volunteered to go first, because I wanted to go off asap - I had a test the next day, so I didn't want to stay around for too long.
TCP v ASG
Game 1 - TheGrayZerg vs AsGEman on Tal'Darim Altar
As luck would have it, we were not cross position, which while others say is better, I say it's not better simply because it's hard to take a 3rd in cross spawn. Whichever expansion you take, it's going to be very awkward to defend.
However, in these spawns, I could actually expand away, and for him to siege my 3rd would require him to put himself in a very vulnerable position for my rallied troops to intercept.
A diagram to slightly represent what I meant
I took an early 3rd as per normal, and tried to get some scouting done with an OL at 7:00~ but was denied by a Stalker. Lucky for me, I had flown another Overlord to the other side of his base, and proceeded to fly into his natural (Since if I flew into his main his Stalker would deny that too):
Ahah! No 2nd gas at natural.
I immediately checked off Stargate play or some +2 timing which I so hate. I made another round of Drones feeling safe, and I suspected 6 gate +1 timing, so I put down a Roach Warren. Indeed, my Zergling at the watchtower spotted him moving out. Mass production time.
At this point I was 14 Drones ahead, but I've a feeling my Droning wasn't streamlined/perfected yet so my Roach Warren wasn't up yet as he was moving out.
I was frantically making units now, spamming Roach/Ling as fast as I could while keeping up Injects. The next series of screenshots are basically the back and forth battles going on in a 1-2 minute span.
h4x Forcefield! This trapped my 3rd Queen somehow and she was spasming like a retard instead of fighting.
Transfuse!
Shit another warp in ! I threw these Roaches away
Finally, with the help of Speedlings, I repel his push.
I went for the counter-attack immediately, with the goal to deny his 3rd. I reached his 3rd and saw no expansion, so I hit his natural.
Would you have charged in?
I faced a tough decision here, and seeing his Immortal tucked behind his army, I decided NOT to engage here. Upon reviewing the replay, I was actually 50+ food ahead at this point, and MAY have won if I had forced the issue.
However, I decided to just snipe 2 pylons and back out.
I progressed up to Roach-Infestor, not going Hydras just because this map is so big that Hydras would take ages. After taking my 4th base and hitting 200/200 , I went in for another engagement.
It went horribly for me. Infestors were late so Fungal Growth was late, but he had decent FFs and his 2 Colussus just tore apart my army. I more or less lost the entire army there, but I had remacroed back up to 190ish and went in again - but this time I made a stupid error of leaving half my army behind and had to pull back, but managed to snipe one Colussus.
By this time, I had hit Greater Spire tech, so I began morphing in Broodlords. He was trying to take a 4th, so I split a small handful of Roaches to hit that base while sending my main army to hit his 3rd.
Note to self - get about 8 Broodlords before engaging.
I foolishly went in with just 4 Broodlords, and he dominated this fight, also because of my poor Corruptor control
I DID snipe all his Colussus, but also lost all my Broodlords
I remaxxed quickly and felt confident that my 5 base was stronger than his 3.5 base, so once again I pulled off a bunch of roaches to distract him to his 4th, while I hit his 3rd.
Caught a bunch of High Templar out of position, and my lings ran into his 3rd and killed almost half of the Probes there before he pulled off and his main army returned.
My next batch of Roaches streamed in, and he was mined out in both his main and natural with no real answer to my endless onslaught. He taps out.
We ended up cross spawn (Are there other spawn positions for this map??), and he got Terran.
I entered this game apprehensively, as :
1) I had NEVER played this map before (vetoed on Ladder)
2) He was Random
I sent out an early Drone scout to hopefully catch his race, but I scouted him last so I was forced to open the safe 14/14.
When I reached his base, I made a miscalculation when I saw his Refinery up - I thought it was Barracks -> Refinery when it was clearly Refinery -> Barracks.
Naturally, the latter means Reactor Hellions, and since I misread it, I was droning up happily when I first saw 4 Hellions sprinting to my base. Shit.
I block the ramp with my Queen, and my out-of-position Spine did nothing.
He did kill my Queen with his 6 Hellions, and proceeded to march up my ramp.
I did my best to Drone split, while shooting away with 2 Queens. My lings eventually popped and I cleaned up his Hellions, but not after losing 14 workers.
I realized I had overproduced Zerglings so I ran them over to his base to check out what was happening.
Lo and behold, his Bunker wasn't even up! And his Marines were busy trying to snipe my Overlord which had just flown in from the back and saw his hidden Armory. I gladly killed the Hellions, and managed to kill 6 marines and 3 SCVs before my Zerglings fell to his Marines.
The next 9+ minutes or so was a lull - Me droning up and taking a 3rd while he continues unit production. With the Armory, I naturally assumed Thors / Mech play, so I was massing Roaches. My Overseer confirmed this when I saw 2 Factories with Tech Labs, so I teched up to Neural Parasite and got my 3rd base saturated.
He tried to do some harass with his 10 Hellions, but I had a pack of 20 Roaches out which fended him away. My creep had extended to the middle of the map so I had good vision of what he was doing. I kept macroing up an army of Roach / Infestors, and when I hit 200, I went in for the fight.
Upon watching the replay, I realized we were BOTH maxxed out.
The first 2 seconds was bad - My concave was horrible and my Infestors were being retards squirming at the back.
I composed myself, and move commanded forward to give my Infestors range, and ... BAM.
All your Thors are belong to us.
With about 4 Thors being Neural Parasited at any one point throughout the whole fight, it was fairly one-sided. My army smashed his, and I continued to march on to victory.
I was never quite comfortable with ZvZ, as it's such a guessing game, and I am pretty bad at mid-late game ZvZ.
Regardless, I checked his Match History and knew he liked to speedling expand, so I decided to do the same build (I double checked, and saw him pull Drones off gas at 100 gas) Both of us went for Banelings, but somehow he wasn't droning very well at the start, and I was 5 Drones ahead for quite a while.
Runby!
He was morphing a bunch of banelings at his natural's entrance, so I ran straight in for the Queen. After sniping it, I made another handful of lings before throwing down a Roach Warren!
I had just played Mafia the day before and he had a cool build of ling/bane pressure, droning up hard behind this, before a sudden tech switch to Roaches, and he makes a timing/all-in attack once he has a critical mass of Roaches with Roach/Ling/Bane.
I had this in mind, as I moved out with ling/banes - and he proceeds to blunder a whole pack of lings into my banelings
I pressed the issue, and managed to take out most of his lings as well as lower a Spine to red HP.
By this time, I had about 14 Roaches, so I began to march to his base.
Caught him just before his Roach production kicked in, and with my non-stop ling/Roach reinforcements, he repeatedly used his Drones to defend and lost alot of them.
I kept up the pressure, and eventually he had to tap out.
I am suddenly uber tired so I'm just going to give a text recap of the next few games. Recaps are tiring!
TheGrayZerg vs AsGSedZ on MLG Metalopolis
I opened with a hatch first build while he went a speedling expand build. We exchanged some blows in early ling/bane skirmishes and I got a good bunch of banelings into his main but didn't kill that many Drones.
Both of us progressed to Roaches while droning up, and he hit a random Roach/bane timing which I held off with Spines + Roaches (I had overdroned! Needed Spines) He did get a good hit with his Banelings though, killing about 10 Drones.
It went into the Droning-Roaching game, and he hit 200/200 before me but because of a ling runby into his 3rd he couldn't attack when he wanted. We eventually engaged with him having 15 Roaches more than me (I miscalculated and thought I would win because I had 2-2 while he was only 2-1) , and he won with a better concave and higher Roach count.
[IMG][/IMG]
As with ZvZs, once you lose a battle like that, you more or less lost the game. He pressed on with his Roach/Infestor army and after some futile attempts I tapped out.
SedZ went for a pool into a hatch, while Huk did a 2 Gate expand. Huk techs up into DTs but his harass only kills about 5 drones, as SedZ had a Spore up prepared in his natural and only lost drones at his 3rd.
Sedz went for a Roach Infestor army while Huk had a Gateway heavy Immortal build, and gets a quick 3rd base. Sedz pushes out with his Roach /Infestor army and manages to snipe the 3rd of Sedz! They trade armies there and Sedz goes up to 4 base behind this.
Sedz hits a timing with a Roach-based army, and Huk's small Gateway ball with 2 Colussus just wasn't enough to repel it. GG.
Durrr goes for a 1 base immortal timing and hits with a Zealot-centric Gateway army with 1 Immortal. SedZ tries to hold with just lings, but the Zealots just tear apart the weaker lings. Durrr continues to stream in reinforcements, and SedZ, caught with his pants down, has to tap out.
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