StarTale vs fOu
Match 1: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v GuMihofOu R
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
After a quick regame and a pause, the game finally gets underway with Gumiho rolling terran. Gumiho two-barracks expands. Squirtle two-gate expands. Gumiho techs to starport for marine/tank/medivac. Squirtle adds on three more gateways while getting a lot of sentries. Gumiho's first marine/tank force gets sandwiched between sentries and stalkers, is completely wiped out. Squirtle uses his advantage to attack Gumiho's natural. Gumiho is forced to pull scvs and loses a bunch of them, but a sieged tank in his main eventually repels the attack.
Squirtle techs up to dark templar as Gumiho sieges up just beyond his back door rocks and starts raining shells into his base. Three dark templar walk into Squirtle's base before the attack comes. They do a lot of damage, stripping at least twenty scvs from Gumiho's economy. After dealing with the DTs, Gumiho finally breaks down the rock and attacks into the back of Squirtle's base just before charge finishes. But dark templar appear at both the front line and Gumiho's front door, forcing him to retreat as he gets a raven for detection. Squirtle expands to his vertical third. A bunch of strange base-trady engagements follow, but ultimately the damage done to Gumiho's economy manifests itself as Gumiho's army falls further and further behind in strength, eventually forcing him to gg without a final, deciding battle.
This seemed like a fairly typical Code A game. One thing to note is that Gumiho never got stim, nor did he get combat shields despite relying on marines well into the mid-game. Either he's gained a unique perspective on the cost/benefit analysis from playing random and seeing things from all different sides, or he just forgot because this is just one of six match-ups he has to know. After conferring for a bit, the fOu team sends out the terran sC as their next player, and chooses Crossfire as the next map.
StarTale 1 – 0 For Our Utopia
Game 2: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v sCfOu T
Crossfire
Essy gets a fast two barracks with shells and stim. Squirtle techs to dark templar and handily deals with Essy's first units. The protoss expands behind his templar, which kill nine scvs. Essy gets an engineering bay for turrets, brings his barracks count up to three(TTR), and builds another command center. Squirtle gets a total of seven gateways. Squirtle macros for a bit, and then attacks. Despite some incredibly poor micro, Squirtle is able to steamroll through Essy's army by virtue of his far superior economy.
Well, it didn't take very long for a CodeA>CodeS victory then. It's hard to emphasize, though, how bad of a mistake it was for Squirtle to have almost every single zealot stuck behind the lines of that last battle. Even after retreating to let reinforcements catch up, the only zealots that did any damage were the ones that just happened to be near the sides of the front. Essy's team sends out TheBest and picks TalDarim Altar to try to take a game off of Squirtle.
StarTale 2-0 ForOurUtopia
Game 3: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v TheBestfOu T
Tal'Darim Altar- close-positions, Squirtle clock
TheBest gets two barracks (TR) and a reaper to scout. Squirtle four-gates into a nexus. TheBest expands and builds up to five barracks. Squirtle techs to colossus, and then two stargates for phoenix. TheBest techs to starport for medivacs. TheBest starts applying fairly constant pressure to Squirtle's front. Squirtle defends, but not without some serious mismanagement. 16:00
And Fou sends out... Nuclear? The map is Metalopolis for the days fourth TvP
Game 4: ST_GgoBooGie (Squirtle) P v NuClearfOu T
Metalopolis- close positions
Nuclear gets a barracks with a quick reactor, then expands. Squirtle immediately techs to stargate for a voidray. Nuclear transitiions to six barracks(TTRRxx) before flying his extra orbital down to his expansion. Squirtle's poor void ray control means his first void ray does not do anything at all. By the time Nuclear finally floats his orbital down, Squirtle has built up to five void rays, enabling him to easily take out the expansion. Squirtle tries to keep pressuring with his units, but eventually his attacks peters out, and Squirtle settles for containing his opponents at his ramp.
After a while of containing his opponent, Squirtle finally expands. From there, Squirtle is quite content to continually forcefield Nuclear's ramp as he macros off of two bases, keeping up void ray production. Nuclear tries to stim down the ramp a couple times, even sending his scvs AFTER his infantry once. But there is nothing Nuclear can do, and once he has zero supple, he finally gg's.
Strangely enough, the first GTSL team match is an all-kill by a Code A player against two Code S players and two Code B players. Squirtle's PvT is obsiously pretty solid, but his unit-management seemed pretty off, a fact that he recognizes in his interview. The fact that he mentions it makes me think that it might have been nerves that hurt him. Squirtle, I think, has a good chance to make it to Code S, but I wouldn't expect any more all-kills, as the remaining teams will all have very competent players.
Fou's strategy seemed odd, sending mediocre terran after mediocre terran to their deaths.
MVP: ST_Squirtle
Prime v Team SCV Life
Game 1: HongUnPrime.WE P v TSL_Trickster (Kisu) P
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
HongUn goes Gate/Core/Robo/Gate/Gate. Kisu four gates. HongUn gets colossus-tech. Kisu gets his own robo, followed by a robotics bay. Kisu expands to his natural. HongUn starts breaking through the backdoor rocks. Kisu spots it. HongUn's attack gets through Kisu's backdoor with thermal lance just before Kisu's thermal lance finishes. They have pretty equal forces. Their zealots neutralize. The stalkers neutralize, leaving three colossi for HongUn against two colossi and a lone immortal of Kisu. Despite some solid, tense micro on HongUn's part, the immortal turns the tide and forces HongUn back to his base. HongUn makes another attack, but, being one base behind, he quickly has to retreat again. Kisu follows quickly thereafter, and wins the game.
HongUn's colossus micro seemed very good, but Kisu handled his rush perfectly. It's hard to see how, considering that his build seemed almost strictly behind his opponent's for a lot of the game, but Kisu held the attack with the absolute perfect amount of units to put him ahead a base. Prime sends out freshly CodeS'ed Polt to play on Lost Temple
TSL 1-0 Prime
Game 2: TSL_Trickster (Kisu) P v PoltPrime.WE T
Lost Temple, close-by-air positions
Polt goes for a reactored barracks, then expands. Kisu expands after his first gateway. Polt adds on two barracks (TRR), followed by shields/stim. Kisu get three more gateways. Then two more. Kisu catches a few of Polt's units in the middle of the map before shields and stim finish. They die. This slight lead allows Kisu to attack Polt's natural. He forces a lift on the orbital command, and kills all of Polt's army and a lot of his scvs, ending up twenty-five workers ahead. Kisu smells blood and keep attacking. But he is sending in zealots and stalker only in groups of four, which do terribly against stimmed marine/marauder. Kisu wastes a lot of units, allowing Polt's army to grow fairly large. So large, in fact, that Polt is able to counter-attack and force Kisu to pull his workers. Kisu continues to throw zealot/stalker against marine/marauder with stim. Suddenly, Kisu is down by forty food, and is forced to gg.
Kisu manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He seemed to get a little bit of tunnel vision there. He was so ahead, but instead of securing his lead, he went for the throat. Props to Polt, though, for doing what it took to stay in the game. TSL chooses alive to make Polt play a TvT on metalopolis.
Prime 1-1 TSL
Game 3: PoltPrime.WE T v TSL_Alive T
Metalopolis, cross positions
Alive expands behind marine/tank. Alive gets a very fast raven, then expands. Polt moves out first, but Alive has the early vikings, and manages to siege up on a cliff out of Alive's vision, killing a couple tanks and hitting a lot of marines. Alive goes on the offensive. His air advantage lets him creep forward towards Polt's natural. After some clever auto-turrets, Alive is up in every unit count, letting him siege up outside Polt's natural, ending the game.
Polt got handled pretty easily this game. Alive's build looked very clean. He seemed to know exactly where he wanted his build to go. Prime sends out the first zerg of the league to fight alive on Tal'Darim Altar.
TSL 2-1
Game 4: TSL_Alive T v CheckPrime.WE Z
Tal'Darim Altar
:-(
Alive wins. Check sends out MarineKing on Scrap Station.
TSL 3-1
Game 5: TSL_Alive T v MarineKingPrime.WE T
Scrap Station
Both players expand after their first barracks. MarineKing follows up with four more barracks with no add-ons. Alive techs up to starport for marine/tank/medivac. MarineKing attacks through the middle rocks and into Alive's expansion with his first marine force, but Alive hs spotted it and long since floated the orbital command to safety. Meanwhile, the detour has allowed Alive to get up some bunkers at the top of his ramp, so when MarineKing attacks up, he loses everything without doing quite enough damage. Alive equalizes the scvs counts with a drop into MarineKing's main.
MarineKing takes the gold as he techs to starport himself. Alive gets blue flames for his hellions as he techs to heavy mechanical play. A hellion drop does a lot of damage to MarineKing's scv count, Alive is still down by a gold base. Alive rolls across the middle of the map with a battalion of tanks and sieges right in the middle of MarineKing's main, prompting MarineKing to run around and take out Alive's natural. It looks like we might see another MarineKing base-race, but Alive gets enough out in his main to hold it off. Meanwhile, Alive's tanks have destroyed MarineKing's main and natural. MarineKing has floated off all his barracks to his gold, giving him SIXTEEN barracks off just a single gold base to Alive's full production capacity off of an almost mine-out main. Alive slowly inches into MarineKing's new base with siege tanks. MarineKing tries another counter-attack as he starts taking Alive's third. There is nothing for him to do against Alive's massive army though. Nonetheless, he doesn't gg until he has exactly 0 supply, and looks pretty upset as his losing streak is extended to five games.
This was really the day of the Code A players as they went 5-0 against Code S players.
MVP: TSL_Alive
DAY 2:
OldGenerationStarcrafters v Incredible Miracle
Game 1: oGsEnsnare T v IMSeed P
Shakuras Plateau, close positions
Ensnare expands after his first barracks. Seed four-gates off one gas. Ensnare doesn't pull his scvs in time, allowinf Seed into the natural. Seed then runs past the bunkers guarding the main right into Ensnare's mineral line. Ensnare gg's.
A good first showing by Seed. OGS sends out Top.
IM 1-0 oGs
Game 2: IMSeed P v oGsTOP T
Metalopolis, close-by-air positions
Top goes for a blue flame hellion drop. Seed gets two gateways and a robo. The first drop is squelched after an observer sees it coming. Seed builds two more gatways and a stargate. Top builds up a marine/marauder/hellion army as he expands. Seed starts getting immortals and void rays. Top techs to ghosts. Two hellions get into Seed's mineral line and tear it up. When Seed attacks at around 13:00 he has about a dozen each of stalkers and zealots, two sentries, two immortals, and three void rays against marines, marauders, hellions, and vikings. Seed's army smashes Top's, losing only around twenty food and bringing Top to twelve. Top gg's.
Seed continues to impress with a unique one-base style. Any four of those six building would tax one base's worth of economy to the max, but I guess Seed had a very specific timing and unit composition in mind, and it worked very well for him. From 8:00 to right before he attacked at 13:00, Seed only produced out of his stargate and robotics facility. Tech switching off one-base is a pretty strange-sounding idea, but it worked this game for Seed. OGS sends out a third terran, Hyperdub, to take out this unconventional protoss, meaning that only one of Nada and MC will play this match.
IM 2-0 OGS
Game 3: IMSeed P v oGsHyperdub T
Lost Temple, close positions
Hyperdub expands after his first barracks. Seed sees it and expands to the close-by-air main. Seed researches hallucination right after warp gates finish. Hyper builds up to four barracks (Txxx). Seed hallucinates an immortal, and fakes a bust at Hyperdub's front door. Hyperdub takes the bait and pulls all the scvs at his natural to repair. Seed just backs off and expands to his natural. Hyperdub sees a hallucinted phoenix fly over his base and knows something is up; he gets a ghost academy and techs to starport for medivacs. Seed, meanwhile, has been growing his gateway count and teching to Dark Templar. Hyperdub stims into the middle of the map and catches Seed's army off guard, killing all the sentries and sending the survivors all the way back to Seed's main. Hyper destroys the nexus at Seed's natural and retreats.
The first four dark templar make it into Hyperdub's bases and majorly disrupt his econnomy. Hyperdub calmly minimizes the damage and gets both an engineering bay and a raven. Hyperdub moves out and take Seed's natural. Seed decides just to counter-attack with most of his army! Seed sacs his natural and starts forcefielding his ramp against the huge bio ball trying to get in. Seed has built up to almost ten warpgates by this point, so is building an army in his base as quickly as he can. But Hyperdub gets off an emp right in the middle of Seed's sentries! Hyperdub has had to float all the buildings in both his bases as he muscles into Seed's main. Seed starts to bring his arm home from wrecking Hyperdub's main. Hyperdub kills all of Seed's warpgates but two before Seed's army comes back and decimates his forces. When the dust settles, neither player has much production capacity or economy, but Seed's army is huge, and Hyperdub gg's, putting OGS down three games to none.
Yet another unique build from this impressive up-and-comer. Seed seems to be dictating exactly how these games are playing out. OGS is forced to send out their trump card in MC to try to reverse all-kill ST.
IM 3-0 oGs
Game 4: IMSeed P v oGsMC P
Scrap Station
Seed proxies two gateways on the path to MC's natural. MC responds with a forge after his first gateway. The first set of of zealots equalizes the probe count. MC stabilizes with two cannons and some clever micro. Both players take their gases and get cybernetics cores. MC gets his second gateway. Both players start building stalkers. MC gets warpgate research, but Seed does not. From there MC can just produce more stalkers, and Seed quickly gg's.
A tense game, but MC's micro was just too much for the suprisingly good Seed. IM drops the hammer and sends out Mvp to try to finish the match.
oGs 1-3 IM
Game 5: oGsMC P v IMMvp T
Xel'Naga Caverns
Mvp expands behind a quick concussive shells. MC rushes for DTs. MC's first DT runs into a missile turret at Mvp's natural. The other two DTs warp an archon and MC sends all his units in to try a bust. Everything dies. Mvp responds by building three more warp gates and expanding. MC holds off a strong marine/marauder attack and warps in a templar archives. Mvp techs to medivacs and ghosts. By the time Mvp makes the final attack, he is 70 supply ahead. MC valiantly fends off the first wave, but is left with only ten supply, and gg's after Mvp's mules start stealing his few remaining minerals.
Mvp closes out a huge 4-1 IM win against Mvp. An even bigger story than the team's win, though, was seed's near all-kill of oGs. A lot of his builds were pretty crafty-he only went beyond his first nexus in one of his four game. But if he can combine his creativity and flexibility with solid macro play, he will certainly at least get far in Code A if he manages to qualify.
IM wins 4-1
MVP: IMSeed
Match 4: ZeNEX v SlayerS
Game 1: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_BoxeR T
Shakuras Plateau, cross positions
HyeJun gets two barracks(Tx) and expands. Boxer tech to a pre-ignited hellion drop. HyeJun pushes in with some marines and marauders, revealing his strategy. Boxer keeps poking with the hellions, though, and switches to cloaked banshees. The first banshee kills ten scvs before going down. Boxer transitions to marine/tank/medivac. But HyeJun attacks Boxer's natural with a huge ball of maraudered before Boxer has either stim or siege mode. All the scvs at the natural die, along with most of Boxer's army, leaving him fifty food behind by the time he manages to chase away HyeJun's units with some sweet tank/medivac micro and a banshee.
Boxer finally starts researching shields and stim at the sixteen minute mark., but remains forty food behind. HyeJun stays on bio; Boxer sticks to two-factory marine/tank. Boxer starts to creep back into the game after killing a full medivac and dropping successfully himself. HyeJun expands to his vertical third and loads up a doom drop. The drop dies, but only after taking out all of Boxer's tanks. More of Boxer's units die when some tanks get caught mid-siege by marauders. Boxer expands to his interior third. HyeJun expands to his vertical forth. As Boxer moves out to protect his third, HyeJun's marauders run in, kill his natural's orbital command, then take a chunk out of Boxer's production capacity. From there the game is essentially over, even Boxer stays in for a while exhausting his options.
Yet another Code B player takes out a big name. HyeJun looked very solid in defending against Boxer's cleverness. Slayers has to be pretty disheartened that their big name got knocked out in the first set. The Slayers team sends out Soul next.
ZeNEX 1-0 SlayerS
Game 2: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Soul T
Lost Temple, cross positions
Soul rushes for cloaked banshees. HyeJun opens with marine/tank/medivac. Soul's first banshees do little damage. He expands and starts getting tanks while keeping banshee production up. HyeJun takes out all of Soul's forces in the middle of the map while killing banshee after banshee. HyeJun uses his army advantage to set up a contain outside Soul's natural while expanding himself. A drop in Soul's main allows HyeJun to pick off a raven and some of Soul's vikings. Soul awkwardly tries to break the now-huge siege line outside of his base, but it all dies.
Soul does a good amount of damage with simultaneous drops at HyeJun's main and ledge. But HyeJun's contain doesn't budge. Soul tries to float his main's orbital to the close-by-air main. HyeJun spots it and kills it. Soul tries two more medivacs worth of drops. HyeJun sees them and kills them. Soul goes for one last bust of the tank line, but his forces get splashed to death, as he strangely tried to break the exact middle of the circle- meaning every single one of HyeJun's tanks could hit all of his units. Soul gg's.
More solid play by HyeJun. Soul did not seem up to snuff. The next Slayer to be sent out is the effeminately-named Alicia.
ZeNEX 2-0 SlayerS
Game 3: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Alicia P
Tal'Darim Altar, Alicia clockwise
Alicia battle decisions were terrible.
ZeNEX 3-0 SlayerS
Game 4: ZeNEXHyeJun (Destination) T v SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T
Crossfire
HyeJun proxies a barracks in a sweet spot on the closest mesa to Jjob that doesn't get scouted. HyeJun proxies another barracks and pulls a bunch of scvs without getting his orbital. Jjob gets a bunker up! Jjob gets a reaper out and runs to HyeJun's base, but it gets intercepted. Jjob stabilizes with many more scvs than his opponent and an orbital. Jjob builds a second orbital and a couple more barracks. HyeJun makes one last attempt at an all-in with his marines and scvs, but he has less in both categories and gg's.
Team Slayers avoids a 4-0. Zenex sends out FFMon.
SlayerS 1-3 ZeNEX
Game 5: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T v ZeNEXPuzzle (FFMon?) P
Jjob gets two barracks (TR) and expands. Puzzle techs to robo, expands, then warps in two more gateways. Jjob pushes with a very intimidating force, but Puzzle's force field/probe control holds just long enough for an immortal to come out, pushing back the terran army with surprisingly minimal losses. Jjob stays on bio, getting shield/stim/shells. Puzzle techs to colossus. Puzzle gets the best of Jjob's army with some more fancy force fields. JJob techs to starport for medivacs. Jjob kills Puzzle's robotics facility with a drop after only one colossus has come out. Jjob techs to ghosts and switches over to viking production to deal with the colossi that are sure to come out. When the next battle comes, clutch emps and a high viking count leave Jjob up by thirty food, which allows him to safely expand to his gold. The next battle goes similarly for Puzzle's army, and he concedes.
Jjob is looking solid enough to make a reverse all-kill a possibility. The snipe of the robotics facility to buy time for viking-production was a really heads up play there, as Puzzle seemed to be getting the better of him tactically. One thing I liked about this game is that neither player made any big mistake, whereas a lot of these other CodeA/B games are won by whomever screws up less. ZeNEX sends out Byun to prevent a match set.
SlayerS 2-3 ZeNEX
Game 6: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) T v ZeNEXByun T
Metalopolis, close-by-air positions
After a quick pause, Byun goes barrack/reactor/expand/2xbarracks. Jjob goes for a marine drop in the back and hellions in the front. It does some damage, but not as much as it could have. Jjob double expands to both the close main and his natural. Byun stays on mostly marine/marauder while Jjob transitions to marine/tank/medivac. Byun takes his third. Jjob macro starts to slip as his minerals top 1000, as does Byun's. Jjob's tank count starts to get climb as he slowly creeps across the map. After many skirmishes, Jjob gets to Byun's natural with eleven tanks and fifty more supply while taking a forth. Byun leaves the game.
Jjob has managed to bring the match down to a hammer set in impressive fashion. In TvT bio vs marine/tank, it is so important to keep their tank numbers down. Otherwise that slow push is so deadly. ZeNEX sends out Nuke for the final showdown of the RO8.
Game 7: SlayerS_Jjob (CchapSeungEu) v ZeNEXNuke (ON)
Terminus RE, cross positions
Nuke one-barracks expands. Jjob goes for a fast uncloaked banshee and expands. Nuke builds two more barracks and send a squad of marines down to his opponent's base. The marines catch the first banshee! Then they waltz past Jjob's bunker and kill many, many scvs, leaving Jjob down 12 scvs to 27. Both players transition to marin/tank/medivac. Nuke expands to his third. Nuke is able to siege up outside Jjob's main. His tanks kills a couple of Jjob's barracks. While Jjob is distracted, Nuke rushes in, snipes Jjob's building third command center and his natural's orbital, then just retreats. Jjob desperately double-expands to his natural and third.
For a little while it looks like Jjob might come back into the game after Nuke suicides a group of units into Jjob's tanks while Jjob gets off two damaging drops to Nuke's main and third. But Nuke's economy is too far ahead of Jjob's, and he is able to eventually bulldoze his way into Jjob's base with sheer numbers after taking a fourth. Jjob stays in the game for quite a while trying to complete the reverse all-kill, but eventually has to leave.
Jjob is a player to look out for in this next Code A tournament. He didn't manage to pull it off, but he was one game away from all-killing a solid team.
MVP: HyeJun
Hye-Jun calls out Seed, predicting many manner mules.
Stats!
TvZ:1-0
ZvP:0-0
PvT
-3
SvA: 0-7
AvB: 4-1
BvS: 3-1
4wins 1
3wins 1111
2wins
1win 11111
0wins 1111111111111
Store
v IMJunwi 
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Nice to read the recap though, thanks a lot!
