I suppose I should just piggyback this write-up off of my previous one, I just got destroyed in 1v1 and I’m always up for more video watching.  As always, I’d like to put forward SC2gg.com’s SC101 training class.  Still in its infancy, it’s an excellent training program that takes new players and gives them a very solid foundation to build on as their Starcraft career goes on.  It’s a great program, and I recommend that everyone at least give it a look if you’re new to the game.  SC2gg also has many seasoned veterans who are willing to help you improve your game, and the community itself is very inviting.

Now onto the match!

Match Info:
GOMTV MSL S4: Group A
Match 2: Sea (T) < Blue Storm > ZerO (Z)

Here’s the second game of the tournament.  If you haven’t watched the first game yet, don’t worry, I won’t ruin it here.  We start off with Sea spawning in the 7 position, ZerO in the 2 position. ZerO’s first overlord scout makes a mind-numbingly slow beeline towards Sea’s base, and Sea has good luck with scouting as well, so any initial advantage to be gained by scouting is moot for both sides.  Both players go for the fast expansion, with Zero seeming to go for a 12 hatch build, quickly getting 3 hatcheries and his spawning pool up.  Seeing this, Sea quickly builds up his academy and engineering bay, getting firebat and medic support for his initial group of marines.

Sea pulls out his forces from the choke in what looks like a push towards ZerO’s base, and passes within a hair of seeing a group of lings that ZerO has run out and around the choke to go for Sea’s expo, which is defended by two lonely firebats.  Watching the video it seems like Sea saw the lings, but apparently it wasn’t the case and those two firebats are quickly dispatched by ZerO.  Sea isn’t too far away and can pull back his forces to defend the expo, but ZerO sends a pair of lings in to harass Sea’s main and does some damage.  While Sea is going for the pair in his base, ZerO sends the rest of the pack at Sea’s expansion, but they are tracked easily by Sea’s forces, and neither part of the attack has much effect on Sea’s progress.

While the harassment is going on, ZerO has pushed tech to spire, as well as pushing out for a second expansion at the 5 position.  Sea anticipates the muta harass, though he never got to scout it, and puts up a group of turrets at his expansion and completes them with little time to spare.  The mutas arrive in short order, but Sea has both sections of his base well protected.  In a not-so-stellar moment for his firebat corps, the mutaling push results in the loss of more marines than would have been expected had the firebats been paying attention.  I’m sure there will be some reprimands there.  Sea is teching quickly to science vessels, relying on his 3 rax build to keep him hanging on as the game advances.  ZerO has seen the tech, and responds with some scourges scattered across his forces, as well as expanding into position 3.  He gets slightly unlucky as his muta group, circling around Sea’s first marine group, runs into a reinforcing group of marines, who take out a few mutas before ZerO can pull them back.  ZerO makes up for it after a short amount of time, finding a gap in the air defenses of Sea’s main and pushing in to harass while Sea scrambles to pull a group of marines back to defend.  Fortunately for Sea, ZerO only manages to take out one SCV before retreating just as Sea’s science vessels come online.

At this point ZerO’s lurkers are known to Sea, but have yet to claim their first kills; ZerO seems to be more interested in quick tech at this point, moving very quickly to get his defiler mound onto the playing field.  Sea has gone for a 7 rak MnM push, supported by science vessels, though it’s interesting to note that he has left out producing tanks.  Sea gets an expansion up into position 9, and uses his large MnM army to try and push out the fairly sizable raiding party ZerO has roaming around the map.  Sea uses his newly teched irradiates to cut down ZerO’s lurkers, ignoring the stacked mutas, relying on his marines to handle that threat.  He quickly finds himself spread between two large forces of lurkers, one group was surrounded with overlords apparently prepping for a drop.  ZerO makes a huge dent in Sea’s marine forces, but loses most of his lurkers in the process.  In an interesting decision by Sea, he focuses on two lurker eggs instead of targeting the group of 6 overlords sitting idle over one of the battles, a huge opportunity lost.  ZerO makes another muta harass run, this time at Sea’s position 9 expansion, but Sea’s marines drive him out with only a few lost SCVs.

With the appearance of defilers on the field, the game has quickly moved into the late stage, very impressive at just over thirteen minutes.  ZerO has attempted to expand into the 6 position, but the expo is spotted by Sea before the hatchery can go up.  We begin to see swarms popping up all over the map, and Sea unluckily loses three science vessels in quick succession to a band of marauding scourges.  At this point in the game, Sea has a 2-2 to 1-1 upgrade advantage on ZerO.  Sea has expanded up into the 11 position, and ZerO has expanded up into the 12 position and tried to move back into the 6 position, but is spotted again by Sea and loses the hatchery before he can cancel it.  ZerO takes a large group of forces down into the area to punish Sea’s small force, and quickly wipes them out.

In another mid-map push by ZerO, Sea’s tanks finally make their appearance, but ZerO’s defilers take a large bite out of their effectiveness, and they go down with their marine and firebat escorts before Sea’s reinforcements can get there.  Sea, with marines within range if they stimmed, carelessly loses another science vessel to scourges.  While the standoff in the middle is progressing, Sea brings a small band of marines up against ZerO’s position 12 expansion, and is immediately harassed by about 8-10 lings, which have been upgraded with adrenal glands by this point.  Sea fights them off and continues onto the expo, but more lings are on their way and he pulls his full force out of the middle to take out the expo.  In retaliation, ZerO attempts to bring 4 lurkers up into Sea’s position 11 expansion, but two get irradiated and Sea’s marines deal with them easily before they can get into position.  ZerO amazingly manages to get a force of lings into Sea’s (who has jumped to 9 raks) main and runs around wreaking havoc.  ZerO almost managed to take out Sea’s academy, but his raks pump out enough marines to take out the lings before they can finish the job.  Sea retaliates by taking out ZerO’s position 6 expansion and continues to pump out an extraordinary number of marines and firebats.

ZerO has teched ultralisks, and brings a sizable ultraling force down the middle, supported with a defiler.  The defiler fires off a plague that basically signs the death certificate of the entire force of marines.  Sea manages to irradiate one of the ultralisks and the defiler, and nearly loses his science vessels to scourges in the process, but this skirmish goes to ZerO, who only loses one of the two ultralisks.  ZerO brings another ultraling force down the middle, this time with 3 ultralisks, but Sea dispatches it rather easily.  Unfortunately for Sea, ZerO’s defiler gets off a plague before it is killed, bringing all of Sea’s science vessels down to 1 hitpoint and his medics frantically trying to heal his force of marines.  ZerO makes another attempt to expand into position 6, but Sea has a science facility camped over it and takes out the drone.  At the same time, ZerO sends a third ultraling force down the middle, which Sea handles with relative ease between his marines, firebats, and siege tanks with some irradiating help from the science vessels.  Sea is basically pumping out a solid stream of marines, firebats, and medics from his 9 racks, and on the other side Zer0 is sending out waves of ultralings.  Neither player has really broken the stalemate, and it seems like the only thing to break the deadlock will be a careless move from either player. Sea has been doing an excellent job of containing ZerO’s expansion; if you’ve been keeping track, he’s taken out the position 6 expo about 5 times and the position 12 expo about 4 times.  As a result, both players are pretty much dead even resource-wise, and both players have settled with 2-2 upgrades.

With the fourth wave of ultralings, Sea makes a careless mistake and lets the lings come right up to his group of 4 siege tanks, completely without marine support, and loses them in seconds.  He has taken a gamble and left his position 11 expansion completely undefended, and an ultralisk breaks through and makes its way in.  Watching the video it is unclear how much damage the ultralisk does, but we do see a small force of marines and tanks heading to reinforce the expansion.  At the same time, ZerO sends yet another ultraling wave at Sea’s main, whose forces are too spread out to initially prevent the push.  Sea brilliantly manages to hold the choke long enough for a small group of 4 marines to come up and slaughter over a dozen lings.

ZerO next few waves of ultralings are met with pretty stiff resistance, both sides taking out their fair share of units.  A few of the ultralisks take out a huge number of units before they are put down, but Sea’s constant flood of ground units is enough to make up for the losses.  ZerO makes another attempt at expanding into the 6 position, but the science facility is still hovering and it’s just a matter of time before Sea brings down forces to destroy it.  ZerO seems more focused on throwing all the units he can at Sea than expanding, but it seems as if he’s running out of resources to do so.

Sure enough, after Sea finishes off another ultraling wave, ZerO out of the blue ggs and surrenders the match.

Youtube video:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: