ESL

The ESL Go4SC2 SEA Cup #1 was the first of hopefully a looong series of tournaments and with a prize pool of $75, you can bet it attracted the top players from SEA!


Anyway, I spotted mOOnGLaDe in the brackets so I dropped him a PM to follow him through his games, but I'll only do a full write-up (with fancy pictures) for the semifinals/finals! Let's go.


OH wait wait, before we start,

I must say Glade is a pretty good mannered person? I just PMed him (he was on FXO account which is only Masters so yay I can PM him ) (You can't PM GMs) to ask if I could follow his games cos I will be writing up on finals, and he said sure and invited me along for all the games without me reminding! You would think someone like him, being a big time top player and all, would not bother with random people like me ha. 


EDIT: And he forgets about me in Finals Game 1... LOL. Spoke too soon. 

SEMIFinals

Game 1 - FXOmOOnGLaDe vs cArn on XNC

Carn knocked out some strong players like Rossi and Jump on  his way to the semis, and now his biggest challenge would be MOONGLADE. How will he fare? 

Apparently Carn and Glade trained alot when they were in Korea, so they must be quite familiar with each other's styles.

Glade tries to take a 14 hatch, but carn shows some nice SCV movement queuing:

He actually manages to delay Glade's expo till 16 supply! And Glade was floating 400 minerals before finally managing to put it down too

Glade sneaks a Drone into Carn's base and tries to gas steal, but Carn blocks this attempt quickly with a Refinery (Which he canceled after he killed the Drone)

As Glade drones up, cArn moves out with a small marine force to try to do some damage.

Forces a cancel on a Spine, and kills 2 lings and a drone, before the 2 Queens of Glade clears it up

In the meantime, cArn himself was making a fast expansion, and gets 2 Factories to back it up with. With a TechLab and Reactor on each, it looked like it was going to be blue flame Hellions!

Glade sacs an OL from the top and sees everything, and puts down a Roach Warren in response.

Once 8 Hellions were out, carn moved out with his Blue Flame Hellions, and tries to be sneaky by splitting up his Hellions - 3 moving in from the front and 5 from the tunnel entrance to the right!

Unfortunately for him, Glade had his defence perfectly planned out:

Queen blocks ramp, with perfectly placed Spines

While Roaches form a wall at the back! Glade knew this was coming thanks to his well-placed Overlord at his 3rd!

Carn ran all his Hellions in though, which was cleaned up by Glade after they killed some Drones. 

Carn killed 12 Drones in this harass, losing all 7/8 Hellions.. not a very good exchange for him.

Glade was droning up so heavily - he was 15 drones ahead in a few minutes, and while Lair was done he started +1 attack, roach speed, OL Speed /drop all together, with a Baneling Nest.

Carn, on the other hand, was making Thors and Hellions - with his Hellions being very mobile and scouting around the map for Glade's 3rd - which Glade actually hid on the left side! Carn only found this after it was done, and he couldn't take it down before Glades' Roaches came to push him away.

After making a round of 19 Drones at once, Glade then tries something fancy - 

Roach Drop!

Glade probably decided to do this as he saw that Carn was going mech, which is fairly immobile. Carn did get back in time though, and Glade quickly ferries his roaches out without any losses, but without doing any damage either (almost kills a Factory!)

When cArn moved his army to clear his gold rocks, Glade drops his roaches into the base of cArn once again  - and Carn decides not to defend it! BASE TRADE!
 

March of the Mech.


And this little decision here by Glade was rather smart :
He had a sizable group of roaches in his base when Carn reached it , apart from the dropped Roaches:

However, after one volley from the Roaches, Glade actually decides to pull all these roaches away to join his roaches at Carn's base!

Now remember, Roaches will probably not win a base race against Terran for simple logical reasons - Buildings can lift off, and roaches can't shoot air
However, Glade has a 3rd base fully mining all this time, so he constantly rallies Roaches to join his big roach ball, while Carn has absolutely no more mining and production while Glade clears up his buildings.


This mean that while Carn's mech army is big and scary, it was static in size, while Glade's Roach count was growing.!
When Carn finally hit Glade's 3rd base, the roach count was at 65  Vs 5 Thors, 5 Hellions and 6 Tanks. Even though he should win in a straight up battle, Glade pulls one more trick out of his bag - I'll let the pictures tell the story:

[spoiler=Thoughts about the game]
Glade's superior macro this game won him the game - his army was just so much bigger, and I think even without the drops, his roach army should still have beat the mech heavy army of Carn. Glade handled the Hellion harasses perfectly, macroed well, and just showed his mettle as a solid macro player (on top of his WC3 micro skillz)[/spoiler]


Game 2 - FXOmOOnGLaDe vs cArn on Tal'Darim Altar

Terrans seem to be picking this map alot against Zergs, probably due to the fact you can abuse that cliff at the natural quite easily with a siege line.


Carn goes for the exact same play, 1 Rax FE with BLue Flame Hellions. Glade goes the Baneling route this time - a pretty much blind response as Carn denies the sac OL scout with his well-placed Marines.

Carn's blue flame Hellions meets the roadblock of 3 Spines and2 queens - In my opinion he should have just ran these straight into Glade's Main, would probably have killed all the Drones there as Glade didn't have any units to defend these!

He instead chose to back out with the Hellions which continue roaming the map scouting for expansions -but somehow miss Glade's hidden 3rd :

Glade gets only Lings at this point as he techs to a Spire, and Carn swoops in with his Hellions onto Glade's 'natural 3rd' (the 3rd base on Glade's quadrant of the map) and starts picking at the Hatchery. With some good micro, the Hellions cleared all the lings that Glade threw at Carn, and ALMOST sniped the Hatchery, if not for:

11 Mutas popping just in time! 45 HP on the Hatch btw.

After running his hellions out, he makes a sneaky dart around and shoots the Hatchery down to 6 HP!!! Before a clutch Transfuse by Glade saves it, and the mutas takes out the Hellions.


However, all this while Carn has been staying on top of his macro, and makes a push immediately with a scary looking army of 2 Thors, 2 tanks, some hellions, and mainly marine/marauder

Glade had virtually nothing besides his Mutas, which he used to magic box and kill the 2 Thors.

As he lost all his lings earlier, he had nothing to make Banelings with, so Carn gladly took out Glade's natural expo and natural 3rd Hatcheries!
However, he was overeager and pushed further into Glade's base, but his over-stimmed marines fell easily to the Mutas, and Glade could easily clean up the marauders and tanks leftover.


Lucky for Glade, he still had his hidden 3rd expansion, (I guess it's not a 3rd now) so he wasn't out of the game just yet. As cArn takes his own 3rd expansion with a sizeable SCV lead..

Glade STRIKES with his giant flock of Mutas, and kills A LOT of SCVs.

Glade followed this up with a round of Drones, and he ended up 10+ Drones ahead!


However, Carn now moves out when his +2 infantry weapons were finished to make a strong timing push.

Banelings roll in - but Carn has such a big mech backbone behind too.


With some brilliant marine splits, Carn totally shuts down the baneling attack, and his thors with marines push off the Mutas. Glade seems to be in trouble now, with 6 Thors bearing down on him and he had nothing but Mutas

sorry about the chat in the past 2 screenshots lol. A friend asking for a game and just chatting with him

Anyway, Carn wisely pushes in before Glade has time to morph any banelings, and the marines engage the mutas and clear most of them. Glade is forced to throw banelings into the Thors in a desperate bid to take them out.
Glade constantly rallied lings in, and eventually managed to take out those Thors, but not after they cleared Glade's entire main base, including all his tech buildings! 


Glade desperately tried to macro up an army again, and gets an Infestation Pit. cArn never takes the foot off the pedal, as he pushes out yet again with a big marine/Thor ball.
Glade has to engage with his ling/bling army

But there was simply too much from cArn. Glade GGs out

[spoiler=Thoughts about the game]

The recent Zerg metagame shift has seen many Zergs begin to use roach/infestors more against Terran, but Glade seems to be against Infestors for some reason. The Mutalisks DID do a good job of harass and all, but I just feel that with Infestors, the marine splits and Thors wouldn't have been that successful (Assuming good Fungals and NP going off well) 

Carn played a solid macro game and powered through Glade this game with his strong pushes, and together with his good marine control, these won him the game.[/spoiler]

Game 3 - FXOmOOnGLaDe vs cArn on Metalopolis

If I'm not wrong, cArn was the first person to take a game off Glade in this tournament. I didn't catch Glade's first 3 rounds though, but assuming they were BO1, it has to be the case.


Glade must be feeling rather annoyed this game, after losing a game previously and getting close spawn! 
The problem with close spawn is it becomes harder to get a 3rd as Zerg - You have to hide it at the Gold on the opposite side which means it's quite vulnerable to a Terran harass (e.g. drops)


Anyway, cArn does the exact same 1 rax - CC - 2 Factory - reactor blue flame hellions build that he has been doing all series, while Glade throws down a Roach Warren and a Baneling Nest simultaneously!


The problem I find with cArn's build is that while it is more economical for him, it also means the Hellions hit much later, which means the Zerg can Drone really hard and get pretty far ahead.
This was the case, with Glade taking a 10 Drone lead and pumping out a good round of Roaches well in time for the blue flame attack.

Hellions come in from the side and Drones evacuate nicely into a solid wall of Roaches

Glade then decided to do a Roach/Bane bust, and masses up an army and heads over ...

He busts through the wall-in!

However, cArn gets a perfect surround with all his SCVs, and his tanks shelled away safely from the outside, and cArn manages to clean this up!

Naturally, this did some severe economic damage, and Glade was 20 drones ahead. He chooses this time to get a hidden 3rd at the opposite gold expo, while maintaining his Drone lead. He could not push up Carn's ramp anymore as Siege Mode was done for cArn.


As Glade powers ahead in economy, cArn takes his expansion while his Hellion does some scouting:

I hope you can see the arrows - that was the Hellion scouting path! It was amusing to see that it basically scouted everywhere besides the gold, and only saw it when he took the watchtower

While Glade masses up a scary army of Roaches/Lings and Blings, cArn had other plans -

Takes a strong position at the watchtower, shelling away at Glade's gold

Glade had to engage , even though it's highly disadvantage to attack up that ramp against sieged Tanks.

Glade threw all his lings/blings at the infantry army, and his Roaches marches in and manages to clean this up

Not an equal trade for Glade, but it was a necessary one.


With his superior macro (and the gold), Glade managed to mass up another big ball of banelings/roaches and decides to throw them straight into cArn's siege line.

SWARRMM

Glade clears out cArn's expo, but is temporarily repelled by tanks on the high ground

Glade simply masses up even more Roaches, and makes another final push - and cArn taps out. Glade moves on to the finals!

[spoiler=Thoughts about the game]

That Roach/Baneling bust set cArn waaay too far back to catch up - he needed to do some Hellion harass or drop play to balance out the harvester count, but never quite managed it. Glade's subsequent superior economy gave him the easy win this game.[/spoiler]

Game 1 - FXOmOOnGLade vs inFiTarga on Shattered Temple
Both players open with standard Baneling openings, and the game went on for QUITE awhile with speedling/baneling micro wars as both players show off their prowess at micromanagement in a How-to-micro-banelings-speedlings clinic.
There wasn't really any clear winner, though it appeared that Glade had the upperhand as the engagements were forced just outside Targa's base. This went on until the 11:00 mark!! That's like over 8 minutes of micro wars! Wow.


This speedling/baneling war was brought to an end when Targa transitioned into Roaches amidst the high micro battles, but :

Glade catches 5 drones with 2 Banelings, putting him ahead.

The Units Lost tab also showed Glade ahead by about 300-400 resources.


Glade expands while getting Roaches for defence, and his slight drone lead lets him go ahead in food count. He maintains this lead when he cuts Drones as he masses up an army of Roaches/Lings to prepare for his all-in attack as he is fond of doing. (I really can't remember the last 'long macro' ZvZ that Glade played - he always aims to end it fast)


The reasoning for this is simple - if you hit early enough with an all-innish attack, you are forcing your opponent to either have pumped pure units to defend your attack, or you will basically win the game (or kill alot of drones if he pulls them, thus evening you out)


Glade moves out with a solid ball of Roaches, and he does a little micro trick which I thought was worth highlighting:

As the Roach ball moves close,

He pulls half the roaches UPwards

And this allows him to engage with a much quicker concave!


Glade had far too many Roaches - 26 to 15. Targa had to GG out.


[Spoiler= Thoughts about the game]
The first 10 minutes were SO intense - I'm personally not very good with sling/bling micro and don't really like bling wars (when I'm playing) because they can get so bloody close and you can lose the game in one split second's hesitation or mistake. 
Both players microed really well with Glade being slightly better and wasting some Banelings of Targa by running up 1 ling at a time. 
NOTE TO SELF: Put Banelings on Hold Position when stationary!
And when they transitioned out of this, Glade just made the earlier Drone pump and got the harvester lead - can't really blame Targa because he wouldn't have any idea if Glade was going to all-in again with Roaches or Drone up. 
This tiny lead snowballed into a big Roach lead, and by the time Targa caught up in harvesters, Glade had too big of an army and was knocking at his door.
[/spoiler]


Game 2 - FXOmOOnGLade vs inFiTarga 
mOOnGLade flicks his hair and uses his long manes to scare Targa away. 
Targa flees.


GG


Game 3 - FXOmOOnGLade vs inFiTarga
Ok sorry for that, Targa actually D/Cs after the 1st game ended, and never came back. After like 30 minutes of waiting, the tournament organizers finally decide to walkover him, and Glade wins the $75 cash prize!!

Look at Glade's happy face

That was rather anticlimatic. As you can see, I decided to write up on the semifinals instead because of this.. hope you enjoyed it nonetheless!