GSL Ro32 Group H Recap



To the incredulous surprise of absolutely no one, INnoVation waltzed through Group H without breaking a sweat. Besides bungling the game-deciding fight in his first game against Super, he looked blatantly superior to all his foes. Despite certain misgivings over his Proleague performance, Solar admirably bounced back from a bad winners’ match to take second place.

The day began with a messy, entertaining series between Solar and Heart. Heart immediately tried to get a quick jab in with a hellbat/SCV push, but the bad engagement was mopped up by zerglings and queens. The second hellbat attack fared just as poorly and Solar’s mutas sealed the deal. Heart found considerably better success with a switch into mech, which forced his opponent to rely on counterattacks to stop a dedicated attack. It worked up until Heart decided enough was enough, and Solar found out that banshees work well when there’s nothing to hit them. With such success, it was a questionable choice to return to timing attacks for Game 3. This time the Axiom Terran controlled his marauder/hellion force with more finesse, but came up short against a baneling flank from behind. Just like Game 1 Heart couldn’t establish a third base against retaliatory strikes. Mutas denied any drop attempts, signaling the end of Heart’s chances.

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The second series also oscillated between butt-clenching maneuvering and curt fights. At first it seemed like the vaunted INnoVation had underestimated his opponent. An overly optimistic engagement quickly turned into disaster as he killed the colossi at the cost of his whole army, leaving Super to push back for the win. The Terran scaled back his aggression in Game 2, attempting to pull the Protoss apart with drops instead. Super defended each drop attempt beautifully yet botched the big fight, losing everything. His desperation attack was way too small to ever work, and Super had to concede. By this point INnoVation had figured out Super’s build inflexibility and subsequently abused it on KSS. He countered the Protoss’ standard opening with some widow mine drops, killing 31 probes. A flustered Super was ill-equipped to deal with the follow-up attack, which sniped his robotics bay. Stuck on 2 colossi with a devastated economy, Super could only watch as INnoVation’s maxed-out army swamped him like a tidal wave.

After seeing INnoVation’s triple reaper opening, Solar makes an informed gamble and goes for a roach/baneling all-in. Although the SKT Terran prepares well with three bunkers, Solar still forces him out of his natural and kills a lot of SCVs. This comes at the expense of upgrades and army size, and Solar is forced to continue rallying until his assault peters out. Thereafter Solar chose to forgo early attacks in favor of macro play, producing the best game of the night.

Game 2

King Sejong Station

RATING:

This game was remarkably placid for one with nonstop fighting past the 10 minute mark. Due to a pair of greedy opening builds and a well-timed overlord scout, INnoVation found no openings with his early medivac drops. Once he established his third base, INno switched up strategies and went for a 3 base rally push at Solar’s fourth. For the next 10 minutes the two battled it out in a series of intense skirmishes, punctuated by small drops from and zergling runbys. Solar preserved his fourth base but lost many more units than he killed, sacrificing hive tech and a saturated fifth base. Desperate for a reprieve Solar tried turning another rebuff into a solid counterattack, only to be stopped cold at INnoVation’s newly mining fifth.

SKT.INnoVation T5 RATING:

Death by mosquito bites isn’t INnoVation’s typical style, and it’s not a surprise that he looked visibly human when trying to execute it. He neither hewed down Solar’s economy as much as he desired, nor constricted his opponent’s movement to the point where he could dictate the site of the engagements. However, his incredible macromanagement made these issues seem moot. While he didn’t decisively win a fight until the 20th minute, he traded units so well that Solar never maximized the value of his fourth base.

Z11 Samsung SolarRATING:

It’s the rare instance where a Zerg player defends a push properly and still loses. Solar wrote out the textbook on how to hold Terran pressure at the fourth: keep constant sight of medivacs, split off pack of zerglings to eat widow mine hits, flank from multiple sides. His commitment to punishing that aggression never manifested though, which allowed INnoVation to take his fourth and fifth bases uncontested. His small ploys at a counterattack failed and by the time he performed a large assault, he was too far behind in supply to take a loss in battle.



In a series where both players were expected to pull no punches, Super prevailed by not changing a damn thing. Opening with the same build he used against INnoVation, he gingerly rebuffed a 5 rax doom drop on KSS at the expense of his robo. Heart pulled his SCVs for the second push but couldn’t break Super’s defense. Game 2 featured a failed bluff as the Terran attempted faster, earlier pressure with a proxy factory. From that point he never stopped attacking. Heart delivered constant drops to Super’s main and third in hopes of fracturing his concentration. Yet killing the main nexus and doing significant damage at the third proved insufficient to establish a lead. Instead, he found himself down 50 supply as Super charged across the map with a better army. The ensuring base trade went in Super’s favor too, and Heart was eliminated from Code S.

Game 1

Overgrowth

RATING:

Overgrowth can be hard for both participants in PvZ, as swarmhosts kick off a brutal cycle of counterattacks and skirmishes. Solar vetoed the lategame option early on as he sought to crush Super with a massive roach/speedling commitment. Drawing on the resources of the gold base, he quickly surpassed Super by 40-50 supply before crossing the map. Super was well-prepared for the attack though and showcased stellar defense with sentries and blink stalkers. By the time Solar successfully took out Super’s third, Super had 3 colossi in tow. He met minimal resistance as he bullied around Solar’s army at the Zerg fourth, and Solar’s final fraught attack was too weak to beat Super’s better composition.

Invasion Super P7 RATING:

The key to defeating Solar’s lemming strategy is patience, and Super had heaps to spare in this game. Looking like a doppelgänger of Zest at times, he eluded any confrontation that didn’t give him a positioning advantage. He bought enough time with force fields and blink that when his third finally fell, Solar was at a distinct disadvantage in army composition. The final thrust was excellent executed and the slight sloppiness at the end was compensated by acute colossus micro.

Z1 Samsung SolarRATING:

A roach/speedling flood off 4 bases doesn’t have the most flexible transitions. With this particular strategy, Solar had to either cripple Super’s economy or trade armies in order to tech up to a better composition. Despite his best attempts to draw out Super’s army, Solar could never get the one amazing engagement needed to capitalize off his gold base. He traded too many units for too little profit during the midgame, leaving him barbecued by the unfeeling touch of alien death rays.



After a great kickoff to the series, Games 2 and 3 turned out to be closer to turds than cliffhangers. Similar to his loss against INnoVation, Super was done in by poor control at critical points. Solar’s risky 2 base roach all-in on Foxtrot perfectly parried Super’s 4 gate MSC pressure, arriving at Super’s ramp while the latter’s zealot force was still stuck in the middle of the map. 2 slightly askew forcefields allowed the roaches to break the wall-in and run rampant in the natural. The build orders were far more even on Catallena, where Super got away with a fast third base. His sentry/immortal force should have been able to deflect Solar’s swell of roaches, but once again Super’s focus was lacking. A momentary lapse in concentration let Solar dart in and get next to the sentries at the third. From that point the game was effectively over. Super’s nominal army was too small and lacked the anti-air capabilities to fight once the muta transition was complete.