GSL Season 5 Round of 32 - Zerg edition

We just finished watching Life absolutely dominate the last RO 32 group of this GSL season.

Everyone is talking about the current Zerg dominance and this RO 32 certainly felt more zerg dominated than ever before, with three Zerg players winning their groups with a 4-0 score, and 8 Zergs moving on to the RO 16.

We took a quick look at the win rates of all the Zerg featured sets of this GSL RO 32.

In all the sets played, the Zerg players had a combined result of 37 wins and only 15 losses meaning a win percentage of 71 %

That's a pretty nasty overall win percentage for a race...

What we find most interesting though is that a lot of people are focusing on Infestors and Broodlords being Imba and therefore being the problem.

But if we actually take a look at the Zergs that dominated the most, Leenock and Life (arguably the two best zergs in the world right now as well) their play wasn't really that centered around Infestors or Broodlords.
In fact their play was heavily dominated by all kinds of other stuff like Mutalisk play, Roach pushes or Baneling busts.

So what is it exactly that makes Zerg players dominate so much right now?

Hard to say.
Perhaps it's just God's (or Nestea's) way of bringing more attention to the Zerg race and thus provide a natural transition to Heart of the Swam :)

Anyway, the following players moved on to the Round of 16

Zerg: Symbol, Curious, Soulkey, Hyun, DongRaeGu, Sniper, Leenock and Life

Terran: Polt, Hack, Yoda, MarineKing, Bogus and Ryung

Protoss: Parting and Creator

Group B, C and D of GSL Season 5 RO 32

Unfortunately we didn't have time to do a recap of this week's group B, C and D of the RO 32 of this GSL season.

We did however watch a lot of the games from the groups so here's our quick summary of how we experienced them

Group B (Symbol, Hack, RorO and Happy)

From what we saw of this group's games it seemed pretty one-sided in the sense that Symbol dominated   the group heavily.

Symbol defeated both RorO and Hack 2-0 and thus took first place in the group.

We got to see one set of each of these matches and in both of these sets Symbol looked clearly like the better player. It just felt like Symbol was better at dictating where the games ended up going, and that is generally something you see in a lot of Symbol's games, in our modest opinion.

We also got to see the entire last elimination series between Hack and RorO and that was actually a pretty close and cool series. Hack ended up taking it 2-1, but they were evenly matched and of this group's games, the sets between Hack and RorO definitely seemed the most enjoyable.

Symbol and Hack advanced to the RO 16

Group C (Curious, Soulkey, HerO and Maru)

Once again we experienced the group as being somewhat one-sided, with Curious this time being the one that was somewhat dominating. He defeated Maru 2-0 making it almost look easy and then took down HerO 2-1, in a much closer series though.

Generally what this group made us think the most about was that we felt sorry for HerO once again.

Maybe it's just because we've always liked his style, but it just feels like he's always so damn unlucky.

This time he started out by defeating Soulkey 2-0 in a series in which he clearly looked better. He then lost to Curious as mentioned, but the experienced zerg was on fire and Hero made a few strange mistakes so we were still optimistic about Hero's chances.

In the final elimination series Hero was then once again up again Soulkey.

The first set was on Daybreak and here he once again crushed Soulkey giving HerO the 1-0 lead and at this point we felt absolutely certain that he had it in the bag.

Then Broodlord/Infestor happened in set 2 and Soulkey ended up taking it after a long basetrade. But Hero had played fantastically all through the game until the basetrade. His harassment had been perfect and he had kept Soulkey on a few bases while expanding him self so all in all it reminded us a lot about his tragic loss to Leenock in the last season.

In the 3rd set Soulkey did a 6 pool that HerO didn't handle perfectly and this gave Soulkey a lead that eventually won him the game.

Curious and Soulkey advanced to the RO 16

Group D (YoDa, HyuN, GuMiho and Rain)

Before the group was played Rain naturally looked like the clear favorite coming directly from his OSL victory. Unfortunately for everyone Rain cancelled in the last minute due to him going to Dallas for the MLG championship instead.

So we suddenly had a group of three very lucky players.

We only watched a few of the sets and from what we saw we made the following conclusions.

Yoda is better than we thought, and HyuN is worse than we thought and GuMiho is just as unstable as we thought.

We watched one of the sets between Yoda and HyuN and in that set Yoda had HyuN's game totally figured out and was able to defeat him easily even though HyuN got up to Broodlord tech.

We also watched a few of the sets from the final series between HyuN and GuMiho and in those games neither player looked particularly good.

GuMiho made some strange decisions and HyuN made some very poor engagements and threw away units in weird ways a couple of times.

But Hyun was able to take the series in the final set and thus move on, but we fell pretty certain that he would have had a harder time if Rain had been present.

YoDa and HyuN advanced to the RO 16

GSL RO 8 - Rain vs. Hero and Mvp vs. Symbol - RECAP

Rain vs. Hero (Best of 5)

Set 1 - Entombed Valley (Rain in bottom right and Hero in top right)

Hero went for early DTs and was able to take out Rain's natural expansion while getting his own up. The game transitioned into a longer game where both players got up to three bases and went for Colossi tech with 2 robos each. Hero tried some more DT harass, but not with great success.

In general Rain's robos were faster though and his production slightly ahead of Hero's and when they finally engaged, Rain had 1 more Colossus and 3-4 more Immortals than Hero. 
In the engagement Rain simply positioned and controlled his army much better and by attacking from two angles he was able to comfortably win the engagement and take the set. 1 - 0

Set 2 - Abyssal City (Rain to the right and Hero to the left)

Both focused on blink Stalkers in the early game on and then transitioned into robo tech. Rain was able to blink into Hero's main and take out his robo once again gaining a lead in the robo production.
Eventually they both went up to double robo and three bases as well.
At some point Hero managed to take a small revenge and blink into Rain's main and take out one of his robos.

This game also went late game (two PvP macrogames in a row!!!) and they both got their fourth base up with Rain though being ahead on his, as well as on upgrades. After the game went a bit back and forth for a while the game in the end came down to a big final engagement around the 32-minute mark. This time Rain had 3 more Colossi and 1-2 more Immortals than Hero and once again Rain looked a lot better in the engagement, controlling his Immortals and Colossi fantastically and he took the set. 2 - 0

Set 3 - Daybreak (Rain in the top right and Hero in bottom left)

Hero went for some early 3-gate stalker pressure into robo whereas Rain went directly for early Robo meaning that his robo was once again ahead of Hero's.
Hero's 3-gate pressure was pretty much a failure as Rain trapped his stalkers with forcefields and took them out with his immortal supported army.

They both expanded and went for robotics support bay, but once again Rain was ahead on both things.
Around the 12-minute mark when Rain's first Colossus was finished he pushed out and Hero tried to defend by using immortal/warp prism micro, but it backfired as he lost the warp prism with an Immortal in it, and eventually Rain rolled him over and claimed the set as well as the series in dominating fashion. 3 - 0

General thoughts on Rain vs. Hero

All in all a really cool and unique PvP series that showed us that the best Protoss players in the world are finally figuring the matchup out. Especially the two first sets that gave us some heavy late-game PvP action.

The series was however pretty one-sided with Rain clearly looking better in all the engagements and with regards to the build orders as well.

Hero made some small mistakes here and there, which might have been due to his infamous nerve-issues, but in the end there was no doubt about who the better player was today.

Rain lived up the hype and he definitely has a good shot at becoming the next GSL champion!

Rain vs. Hero = 3 - 0

Mvp vs. Symbol (Best of 5)

Set 1 - Abyssal City (Mvp to the right and Symbol to the left)

Their opening builds were something like this:

Symbol: Hatch first > Pool > Gas > Zerglingspeed > 3rd Hatch > Roach Warren > Roach-production
Mvp: CC first> Rax > Factory > Starport > Techlab > Bunker > 3rd CC > Cloak > Banshee-production

Mvp tried different kinds of Banshee+Hellion harass some of which worked pretty well with him for instance killing Symbol's roach warren and around 10 drones.
The game transitioned into mid and late game with both of them taking additional bases and Mvp going heavy mech and Symbol aiming for a broodlord/infestor composition.
Meanwhile they both did different kinds of harass like Mvp killing overlords with vikings and Symbol doing effective zergling run-by into Mvp's third.

Eventually Mvp grabbed a fourth base and then pushed and took out Symbol's fifth. Symbol retook the fifth while Mvp took his sixth.
Symbol used burrowed Infestors to take out Mvp's sixth with infested terrans, but at the same time Mvp pushed and took out the fifth and fourth of Symbol.

Symbol tried to retake some bases, but Mvp denied all his attempts and eventually starved Symbol out forcing him to a final engagement just before the 30-minute mark. Symbol though had no way of breaking the scary fully upgraded mech army with his inferior remaining forces which consisted of mainly Infestors, so Mvp took the set. 1 - 0

Set 2 - Daybreak  (Mvp in top right and Symbol in bottom left)

Symbol went hatch first again and this time Mvp tried some bunker aggression at his natural. Symbol scouted it and pulled lots of drones though and denied the aggression, and from there both focused a bit on their economy. Symbol went up to three hatcheries and Mvp took his natural while getting a third CC in his main.

This game Mvp went for bio+hellions with double e-bay and Symbol geared up for a heavy early/mid-game all-in with Roaches/Banelings/Zerglings.
Around the 9-minute mark Mvp evacuated his natural after scouting Symbol's incoming attack. Mvp tried getting bunkers up in his main, but Symbol broke open the wall with banelings and eventually overran Mvp's main with zerglings and roaches winning Symbol the second set. 1 - 1

Set 3 - Antiga Shipyard (Mvp in bottom left and Symbol in top right)

Symbol went hatch first, zergling-speed, 3rd hatch and then a roach warren whereas Mvp went CC first and from there went for reactor'd hellions + banshees and eventually a 3rd CC as well.

They both tried harassing each other in different ways as the game transitioned into mid-game with Mvp trying a number drops, most of which were deflected immediately by Symbol, who on the other tried a few run-bys with zerglings which Mvp deflected as well.

Eventually Mvp pushed across the map with a Marine/Tank force, but Symbol defended well in the center with nice fungals followed by banelings. About a minute later though he threw away 4 Infestors for nothing when he tried to do a counter-attack.

Mvp then pulled of a quick and effective push that took out Symbol's third, while wisely adding 2 extra starports anticipating that Symbol was going for quick Broodlords.
Symbol took a fourth the top left corner and a fifth in the bottom right corner, but when Mvp finally pushed towards Symbol's main the poor Zerg player was far behind in supply and didn't really stand a chance.
He had a few broodlords and landed some good fungals, but that was nowhere near enough and Mvp took the set. 2 - 1

Set 4 - Ohana (Mvp in top left and Symbol in bottom right)

Symbol went for some semi early 2-base 9 roach aggression that could have potentially dealt a lot of damage as Mvp quickly had taken his natural as well as built a 3rd CC in his main. Mvp however scouted it just in time to lift up his natural and get a bunker down on top of the ramp to his main.
Symbol's roaches fried some of the repairing SCVs, but eventually got cleaned up.
A short while later Mvp went for a counterattack with around 7 hellions and he killed some drones, but neither of their initial attacks had done that much damage.

From there they both took their third bases with Mvp though clearly being in control of the game.
Mvp simply showed great macro skills and while they were both on three bases he quickly got ahead of Symbol in supply. Mvp also did some annoying drops while eventually pushing with Tanks/Marines and taking out Symbol's third. Symbol retook it, but in the meantime Mvp already had his fourth up and running.

In this game Symbol had once again gone for a pretty quick hive this time though going for a Infestor/Ulralisk composition. Once again Mvp denied Symbol's attempts to get a fourth or fifth base while Mvp himself got an insane amount of production facilities.
Symbol was eventually forced to do a big engagement in the center and he did clean up Mvp's forces, but Mvp already had a new army in production whereas Symbol himself could in no way keep up with the production.

In the end Mvp practically just kept sending units towards Symbol's base and Symbol could not withstand and was forced to GG. 3 - 1

General thoughts on Mvp vs. Symbol

In general this series was rather one-sided as well. And even though there were a lot of times were Mvp wasn't exactly dominating, you still never got the chance that Mvp was truly threatened. Especially since Symbol's only win came with his baneling bust.

Watching the series it was very apparent just how much more experienced Mvp is. At least in the sense that he just always looked so damn well-prepared when he plays the GSL, and that is pretty important in a tournament where players always have time to prepare.

In conclusion Mvp doesn't seem to be tired of winning and the semifinal between him and Rain will probably be the toughest series that has ever been played in SC2.

Mvp vs. Symbol = 3 - 1

Recommended games of the day:

Set 2 between Rain and Hero 

Set 1 between Mvp and Symbol



Finally for some light humor in the end.

Between the two series Artosis made the joke that he thought Matrix 2 was better than Matrix 1! Tasteless didn't get that it was a joke instantly and we'll leave you with the bewildered look on Tasteless' face as he for a second or two thought that his best friend was actually a complete retard...

GSL code S round of 8 predictions

Today the first two quarterfinals of season 4, GSL code S, will be played and they are potentially both some pretty epic matches.

The first one is SKtelecom_Rain vs. Liquid_Hero and the second one is LG-IM_Mvp vs. TSL_Symbol.

With regards to predictions, most people we've talked to (and teamliquid.net as well) expect Rain to win the first match and Mvp to win the second.

This is quite understandable since Rain without a doubt reigns as the most hyped korean right now with him so rapidly improving that it's actually insane.
And when it comes to Mvp, well he is just Mvp. And you never really feel like betting against him do you?

However, we at the The Starcraft Stalker are going to go with our hearts today and say that we think/hope that Hero and Symbol advances.

It will be hard for sure, but we dreamt that Hero were to become the champion of the next 7 GSLs so of course he will make it.
And Symbol?
Well he is just a symbol, and a symbol cannot be defeated. Go watch Batman if you don't believe us...

GSL Season 4 - Round of 16 - Group D

Well maybe yesterday's group was the RO16 group of death, but today's group was pretty damn sick as well.

IM_Seed (reigning GSL champion), StarTale_Life (best playing zerg in this season's GSL so far), IM_Happy (very deadly Terran who won his group easily in the RO32) and TSL_Symbol (one of the absolute most scary zergs throughout the last 6 months).

Seed and Symbol were probably the favorites but that didn't mean it would be an easy task for them.


The first series of the day was between Seed and Symbol.

First set was on Cloud Kingdom and Seed tried to do a big 2 base push with a voidray/sentry based army.
Symbol however was able to snipe Seed's single forward pylon and Seed decided to take his third instead. So it ended up going very late game, with Symbol eventually taking the victory after using neutral parasite on Seed's mothership. This enabled him to use a vortex on half of Seed's army and thus pick the two halves apart one at a time winning Symbol the set.

Second set was on entombed valley and Seed did a big push with a lot of blink stalkers and sentries and was able to take the game with superb blink micro and force fields.

Third and deciding set was on daybreak. Seed used good phoenix play to harras and eventually when they had a big engagement around the 20-minute mark Seed threw down perfect force fields and took care of Symbol's infestors with his phoenixes and from there on his army was much bigger and he took the game and the series.

Seed vs. Symbol = 2-1


Second series was between Happy and Life.

First set was on Abyssal city. On of the great things about Life's play is his movement on the map with zerglings and once again he constantly moved around with them always posing a threat with potential run-bys and so forth.
Around the 20 minute mark Life sneaked a big bunch of banelings into the mineral-line of Happy's third and took out almost all of the SCVs.

This on top of some other good harassment gave Life the lead he needed to get the perfect Broodlord/Infestor composition that he adores so much. When he finally attacked, Happy's army was crushed and Life thus took the first set.

Second set was on Entombed valley. In many ways it was a lot like the first set and Life once again controlled the map and was able to get up to his infestors and broodlords.
Once again he crushed Happy in the big engagements and was finally able to push up Happy's ramp with broodlords and banelings/zerglings streaming in, and Life thus took the series in dominating fashion.

Life vs. Happy = 2-0


The third series was between the winners Seed and Life.

First set was on Antiga Shipyard. They both got up to three bases and then Life decided to push at Seed's third, after having lured out a lot of forcefields first. This attack dealt some damage but was in no way devastating

Seed then went for a big counterpush not really having lost that many units. Having already taking his fourth in the center, Life felt he had to engage and defend at the center.
For this engagement Life had a lot of Infestors, but not enough support for them, and Seed's Colossi melted the infested Terrans and Seed took the game.

Second set was Abyssal City.
Life went up to three bases and Seed went for a stargate and some 2 base aggression. He placed a pylon below Life's main and then flew in with a voidray, which enabled him to spawn zealots and sentries on the high ground in Life's main.

It was a really cool move that could have almost killed Life if Seed had been effective with his forcefields on the ramp. It was certainly his plan to forcefield the ramp and prevent Life's reinforcements from helping out, but he missed them and Life's was able to bring queens and roaches from the natural and deny Seed's agression.
Life then went for a big counterpush, which Seed could not defend against having invested too much in the attack. Life thus took the set.

Third and deciding set was on Entombed valley. Seed went for some early two stalker agression  at Life's natural while expanding, and we've seen Seed take out a queen or drones with this before but it didn't really do any damage in this game and he was forced to return home

Generally Life just has a cool way of always putting lots of different kinds of pressure on and in this game he did a ton of overlord drops. Seed was ready with stalkers most of the time though.

Life really loves building spines while getting his perfect infestor/broodlord force. Around the 19-minute mark Seed pushed at the spines, but Life's finished enough broods in time to defend and Seed was forced to retreat. On top of that all the roach drops had bought Life time to recharge energy on his infestors which is a pretty cool style of delaying the opponents push.

Instead Seed invested a lot in some warp prism-drops but Life was on top of things with his infestors and the drops didn't do much damage.

Life however was able do some very cool infestor drops which was a lot more succesful, with the infested terrans taking out tons of probes.

Eventually the game went into a basetrade scenario in which they both did massive damage at each other's bases. But Life had tons of spines everywhere and Seed used quite a lot of army supply dealing with them.
Having cleaned up most of Seed's buildings, Life then returned home to his base with his superior army and took care of Seed's army.
So Life ended up taking first place in the group and OMG that kid is nasty good.
And he is born in 1997! Crazy shit...

Life vs. Seed = 2-1


Fourth series was between the losers of the first two games, Symbol and Happy, fighting to avoid elimination. We weren't able to watch this series but Symbol took the series as most people had probably expected he would.

Symbol vs. Happy = 2-1


Last series of the day was between two of the most promising new players this year, Seed and Symbol and it was a fucking epic series with both of them battling their hearts out to stay in code S.

First set was on entombed valley and wasn't actually that great a set, and at this point we actually felt pretty sure that Seed knew exactly what he needed to do in order to take out Symbol.
Especially after having taken the first series of the day against him.
Anyway Seed looked quite dominating in this first set and was able to control it throughout. He eventually pushed at the exact moment before Symbol got his Broodlords out and Seed thus won the game.

Second set was fucking insane and it was definitely the best game of the day in our opinion.
The game was on Daybreak and most players seemed keen on playing a long game from the start and they both got up to a good 4-base economy.
They both did try different kinds of harass though including a fantastic immortal drop by Seed that took out Symbol's greater spire (which was in the midst of an upgrade)

From here the game went into a classic split map situation. Seed tried engaging at different areas but was never really able to truly push on Symbol's infestor heavy army and was constantly forced to retreat again.

After having pushed Seed's army back a bit Symbol went for some big harassment with broodslords from the space attacking into Seed's main doing quite a lot of damage.

Seed then tried to counter harass by doing a really nice double warprism harass in Symbol's main which also did a lot of damage. (the double warp prisms were needed to get past Symbol's massive amounts of spores)

None of their harassment was game ending though and at this point Symbol had about 50 spines on the map. Seed decided to push at Symbol's base in the top left corner since Symbol only had around 9 spines there and Seed was able to snipe it. Symbol did retake it immediately afterwards though.

At some point Seed decided it was time for some real action and he pushed at Symbol's center base.

Symbol didn't like this at all so he decided to do a big counter attack with his brood lords once again into Seed's main.

Once again though their big attacks weren't gameending and both armies retreated after doing some damage. Around the 35- minute mark there was a constant threat of a big engagement between Symbol's infestor/broodlord army and Seed's carrier/mothership army, but none of them dared engaging entirely.

Instead Symbol went for another big push with broodslord into Seed's main, this time deciding to continue the attack and not retreat and he took out Seed's entire main easily.

Around the same time Seed decided to counter push with a big bunch of stalkers into Symbols' main which they were also able to take out rather easily.

Symbol had taken out Seed's main and headed for Seed's natural where Seed had been forced to return with his main army to try and defend.
This resulted in a really cool and big engagement that included a vortex that Symbol managed to avoid really well.

Symbol however, had placed a nydus in Seeds main and was therefore able to bring all of his infestors which allowed him to land superb chain fungals on Seeds army.

This meant Symbol came out on top of the engagement that left Seed with only two carriers while he himself still had around 15 broodlords.
This resulted in a small and cool broodlord chase by the two carriers.

They both had great economies though and Seed decided to to remax with voidrays/stalkers/zealots.
whereas Symbol remax'd with broodlord/corrupters and a TON of infestors.
When the final engagement finally arrived Symbol threw out an infinity of infested terrans that took out Seeds army completely and Symbol claimed an epic set that had been nearing the 50-minute mark.

The third and deciding set was on Cloud kingdom and a bit anticlimactic as it wasn't as exciting as the second, and included a few mistakes on both sides.
But at this point both players were probably somewhat exhausted.

Symbol did a big 3-base roach push at Seed's third while it was building. Seed had a lot of sentries and Symbol was able to take all of them and get Seed to cancel his third giving Symbol a big lead.

This allowed Symbol to take his fourth and get a lot of infestors out.
Seed retook his third and later as he tried securing a fourth he also went into a heavy carrier production.

He definitely must have wanted to show Blizzard that their choice to keep carriers in Heart of the Swarm after all isn't a bad idea.
At this point Symbol was at five bases and although Seed tried to deny symbols fifth with warp prisms he couldn't do it. Symbol controlled the map too well and when Seed instead tried to take his fifth Symbol denied it.
Symbol then went for a big broodlord push at Seeds natural, but Seed was able to chase away the broods with his carriers

From here they both got the exact composition they wanted, Symbol with a corrupter/broodlord/infestor army and Seed with a carrier/mothership/archon/templar army.
When they eventually engaged in one final battle Symbol just crushed Seed's army. Mainly because of a neural parasite on the mothership and chain fungals on all the carriers.
And with that Symbol had pulled off a massive comeback and knocked out the reigning GSL champion.

Symbol vs. Seed = 2-1

All in all an epic day with two zergs advancing, neither of whom will be stopped easily.
In fact we feel pretty sure that most players in the world would rather date Cthulhu for a year than face one of these two players right now.