GSL Semifinals - RECAP

Mvp vs. Rain

Set 1 - Whirlwind - Mvp in top left and Rain in bottom left

Rain went for relatively quick expand. Mvp went for reactor'd hellions and medivac. Rain defended pretty well against the hellions, but still lost 9 probes.
Mvp expanded from here while sending a banshee to harass. The banshee did pretty well, but when
Rain counter-pushed with a big 2-base sentry/immortal based army, Mvp was forced to lift up his orbital at the natural and retreat to his main.

This gave Rain a big lead in economy, but their army supply was somewhat similar.
Rain also got pretty ahead in tech and when they finally engaged Rain also caught Mvp's tanks slightly unsieged and his colossi tore Mvp's army apart winning him the first set.

Mvp vs. Rain = 0 - 1

After killing Mvp's tanks Rain could easily feast on Mvp's poor troops

Set 2 - Abyssal City - Mvp to the left and Rain to the right

Both players played pretty safe and they each got up to three bases without taking any damage.
Mvp focused on ghosts anticipating that Rain would go for high templars which he did.
Rain tried some warp prism/templar harass in Mvp's main, but Mvp had placed two vikings in probable drop locations and he managed to take the warp prism out while Rain was spawning units from it. Rain did however manage to storm and take out almost all of Mvp's workers in the main.

At the same time though, Mvp pushed with his massive bio/medivac + ghost army and he landed some very good EMP's and even though Rain threw down a few good storms and forcefields, they weren't enough to save him and Mvp rolled him over and took the set.

Mvp vs. Rain = 1 - 1

Mvp used his ghosts effectively and no forcefields could save Rain

Set 3 - Entombed Valley - Rain in the top left and Mvp in bottom right

They both got up to 2 bases unharassed.
From there Mvp went for a pretty quick 2-base medivac/marine push, but Rain deflected it with an immortal/sentry based army and Mvp retreated.
A short while later Rain took his third and this caused Mvp to pull most of his SCVs and go for a big 2-base push that was aimed to hit just before the first colossus was out.

Rain reacted perfectly though and cancelled his third and walled of with force fields and was able to delay the attack until his colossus got out and Mvp was forced to retreat again.
Rain took his third again while getting some colussi out and also getting high templars. Mvp stayed on 2 bases and finally went for an all-in push with all his SCVs and a bunch of vikings. Rain however had too much and was able to defend with good storms and Mvp was forced to GG.

Mvp vs. Rain = 1 - 2

In the final engagement Rain knew Mvp was all-in so he threw
down some cannons and defended the all-in beautifully

Set 4 - Antiga Shipyard - Mvp in the top left and Rain in the bottom right

Mvp took his natural and built a third CC in his main quickly whereas Rain stayed a bit longer on 2 bases while going up to colossus tech.
He tricked Mvp into thinking he was focusing heavily on collosi and Mvp overproduced vikings a bit before realising Rain has switched to templar tech.

Rain took his third and Mvp went for a big push. Rain had an upgrade advantage, but Mvp had a more army supply and he was able to do lots of damage with the push, with Rain being forced to use probes to defend.
So from here Mvp was ahead in economy and he built to extra bases and started dropping different places to keep Rain in his base. The drops weren't that damaging, but they did keep Rain in his base and when they finally engaged Mvp was ahead in army supply once again and he also managed to catch half of Rain's army that had been split up and Mvp simply crushed him and took the set.

Mvp vs. Rain = 2 - 2

For a brief moment it looked like Rain could come back,
but Mvp simply had the economy to outproduce Rain

Set 5 - Cloud Kingdom - Rain in the top right and Mvp in the bottom left

Mvp went rax>CC (natural)>CC (main) while also delaying Rain's natural with an ebay block.
Rain on the other hand did his already infamous quick DT into expand built that went something like this:
gateway>gas>Cybernetics>gas>twilight>Nexus>dark shrine.

Rain built two DTs, but Mvp had a bunker in front of his natural and was building a turret so Rain pulled them back and for a long while he instead used the DTs with drops in the main and to delay Mvp's third and so forth. All in all Rain did built quite a lot of DTs all of which he of course lost so he spent quite a lot of money on them.

They both got a decent 3-base economy, but it felt like Mvp was a step ahead of Rain, perhaps because Rain had invested too much in DTs.
Rain had begun focusing on colossi, but Mvp had gone up the two starports relatively early so he had a lot of vikings.
Eventually Mvp pulled a lot of SCVs and went for a big push that was practically all-in. Rain had started templar achieves, but it wasn't done so he tried building defensive cannons once again.
But when Mvp arrived his vikings quickly took care of Rain's colossi and from there Rain had no way of defending so Mvp took the set and the series, and with that moved on to another GSL final

Mvp vs. Rain = 3 - 2

Vikings are pretty good against Colossi it seems

Life vs. TaeJa

Set 1 - Abyssal City - TaeJa to the left and Life to the right

TaeJa went for his classic heavy bio composition with double ebay.
Life went for some pretty quick 2-base muta aggression. He only built 6 mutas though and from there took his third. He harassed a bit in TaeJa's main with his mutas and then went for a big baneling bust up the ramp to TaeJa's main.

He killed a ton of SCVs and did a lot of damage with zergings and banelings in general. At the same time TaeJa counterattacked and managed to take out Life's natural.
Life was ahead in supply though and unfortunately TaeJa accidentally sent a lot of SCVs towards Life's main and lost them all to banelings in the middle of map.

From here Life had the economy to restart muta production and built a lot of banelings and eventually he just overran TaeJa and claimed the first set.

Life vs. TaeJa = 1 - 0

Life does what he does best and baneling busts TaeJa's main

Set 2 - Whirlwind - TaeJa in bottom right and Life in top right

TaeJa went command center first which he built in his main, and Life went 10-pool and a bunch of very quick zerglings.
TaeJa however used his CC to wall of and therefore it looked like Life's early aggression wouldn't do anything, but suddenly TaeJa accidentally lowered his depot and ended up losing 3-4 SCVs and a lot of mining time.
From here the game transitioned with both players taking three bases and TaeJa focusing a bit on reactor'd hellions.

But omg Life is fucking crazy and in this game Life really got to show his very own style of zerg to perfection. For the rest of the game there was just constant aggression from him.
He stayed so long on lair tech and with his baneling/zerglings/mutalisk force he just kept forcing TaeJa to stay at home and defend.

Although Life again and again threw away a lot of army supply, with every attack he also managed to take out so many SCVs.
At some point he was also able to take out TaeJas third base and had at this point killed more than 60 SCVs in the game.
Eventually Life safely got up to infestors as well with his economy at this point being far superior to TaeJa's.
TaeJa tried a final push, but was crushed by fungals and banelings.

Life vs. TaeJa = 2 - 0

TaeJa tries to get up a good defense outside his natural and third,
but Life does not mind attacking into sieged tanks

Set 3 - Entombed Valley - TaeJa in the bottom left and Life in the top right

A long and close macro game in which Life went up to three bases a bit quicker and TaeJa went for his double ebay bio style again.

In this game TaeJa was generally able to put on a bit more aggression, but once again Life showed that he just uses zerglings better than anyone in the world.
He constantly does run-bys and tries to take out workers or small parts of army.
Around the 11-minute mark Life did a very successful baneling attack at TaeJa's third killing almost 20 SCVs and at the same time he focused heavily on infestor production at home.

The game went back and forth for a while with a lot of fighting in the middle of the map while Life got some broodlords out and TaeJa got a bunch of vikings out.
There were some engagements that went either way, and in one of them TaeJa took out Life's broodlords, but lost his army while doing so and from there Life transitioned to Ultralisks again.

In the end though Life's constant agression was just too much for TaeJa. Especially when Life started sending burrowed infestors to all the bases of TaeJa and the infested terrans just tore TaeJa's economy apart.
With that Life took the series in impressive fashion and moved on the final in his first GSL ever.

Life vs. TaeJa = 3 - 0

One of TaeJa's almost desperate attempts to break Life

Recommended games of the day:
Set 4 of Mvp vs. Rain and Set 3 of TaeJa vs. Life