[PL] Zero Hour

Some of the best and most exciting games ever are played on the map, Outsider. This week's featured game shows just why as we have Calm vs Justin in a zerg vs terran. Now, most ZvT's on Outsider are based on abusing the fact that Zerg can secure a ridiculous amount of gas with just one sunk line. The general trend is using guards to stop the huge mnm push at nat before the double gasses kick in. While that is going on, Zerg also started upgrading carapace and melee attack early in order to get ultralisks fully upgraded as soon as possible to just run over Terran.

Realizing this, Justin starts the game by making an 8rax at his natural while Calm 12hatches . His early game plan is to go barracks supply barracks while bunker rushing the Zerg. However, an overlord manages to spot this and pulls drones to defend. Calm stops it easily with only damage being done in terms of lost mining time. Calm then continues with his plan of going 2hatch as he remakes geyser he had to cancel in order to defend bunker rush.

Not wanting to just let up on the pressure just yet, Justin adds an academy to force Calm to make more sunks and delay his own spire timing while Justin expands himself. Before his own mutas pop, Calm expands to his top minonly expansion. Justin manages to intercept and kill a mutalisk on its way to Justin's base. Calm finds trouble trying to find any holes in Justin's defense. He also almost loses another mutalisk due to Justin being aggressive in middle with mnm and intercepting Calm's rally point. Calm then takes a double gas.



Continuing the theme of aggression, Justin still keeps managing to damage Calm's mutalisks in middle while rendering Calm's harass ineffective. Calm remains unperturbed as he also expands to one of the minerals next to double gas while also teching hive and starting to upgrade ground carapace. In order to make sure that his plan reaches fruition, Calm starts to add more sunks to prevent possibility of a sunk break. Greater Spire also starts morphing while another evolution chamber is thrown down for melee attack upgrades. Calm also starts a nydus canal at his double gas. Calm is clearly prepared for everything or so he thinks.

Knowing what's going on, Justin starts making wraiths out three starports in order to stop the guardians. He also manages to lay siege to Calm's natural as Greater Spire finishes. Desperately trying to buy more time, Calm makes more sunkens as he clearly believes that he just needs to survive this and game is surely his. Ultralisk Cavern and Defiler Mound are also made at this time. By this point, Justin has managed to kill most sunken colonies with siege tanks and wraiths have kept guards at bay for now. Not giving up so easily, Calm starts to morph mutalisks into devourers to hold back the wraiths from killing his own guardians. Justin eventually manages to kill the guards, hatchery, sunkens and nydus but gets driven back.



Expanding to minonly closest to Calm and teching to vessel are next two thoughts running through Justin's head. Needing that necessary fourth gas, Calm remakes the hatchery at his natural along with a nydus canal. As he clearly has not been aggressive enough already, Justin loads up three dropships that unfortunately managed to get spotted by a zergling. One dropship is taken down by muta/devourer but two still manage to land in his minonly. While Calm takes care of that, two more dropships land in Calm's main while another reinforces. This causes Calm to lose almost every one of his remaining guardians as well as his spawning pool. At this point, one of the few things going for him is that defilers are finally out.

Wanting to continue his advantage as well as establish a much needed third gas, Justin tries to expand to the other main but a ling spots and Justin has to cancel. Sadly for him, he expands to his other minonly while dismayed at the lack of gas. Continuing with the dropship play, Justin stops mining at 11. With his 3 starports, Justin managed to get an impressive vessel count out of nowhere. These vessels then proceed to irradiate anything and everything by Calm's ramp. However, Justin was a bit sloppy in losing a few to scourge/spore colonies. A massive mnm blob then goes in on Calm's nat while being sieged outside of it. While this is going on, Justin sent more marines to stop mining yet again at 11. They then manage to do so after killing the lone guard there.



Finally, Calm gets some dark swarm out and stops his natural from dying for now. Despite that, Justin dropped one tank and a few marines behind the minerals of Calm's other minonly and take it out. To make matters even worse, Justin mass irradiated Calm yet again and also kills every sunken colony along with the nydus colony. The only thing saving Calm at the moment is dark swarm. However, Justin has already started to mass produce firebats. These firebats kill the defiler while laughing at Calm's defense. Another defiler gets irradiated but only manages to get one swarm off before a tank snipes it. With this, Justin just runs past and destroys Calm's natural hatchery along with the drones there. Once mnm start entering and wrecking his main, Calm gg's.



Justin was clearly way ahead of his opponent today as he knew exactly what Calm would do and counters for everything that he would do. In addition, Justin showed that sometimes it is indeed better for a map to not favor your own race or you end up in a situation like Calm did today. Justin's build was really intelligent that showed some nice transitions while remaining one step ahead of Calm.