The battle is played on brand new map, The scrapyard. Map has several interesting features like narrow bridge connecting players but it is blocked with destructible rocks, smoke vents blocking the view, couple of Xel’Naga watch towers and high yield yellow mineral field.
Gameplay is very interesting. Very early in game Protoss (David Kim) took initiative in exploring the map and really annoying Zerg (Yeon-Ho). One Protoss probe successfully stopped Zerg from starting another hatchery (about 2:30 min in game) and scouting entire Zerg base.
Through most of the game Protoss has used Xel’Naga watch towers to his advantage.
About 5 minutes in the video David is using new Protoss units, Nullifiers. They have a very powerfull (and really annoying) Force Field feature used to block terrain. David will use this very successfully during this game.
On the other hand Zerg is using smoke vents quite efficiently to hide Zerglings and other units.
In most cases Force Field is used as defensive method but David has used it to trap some Zerglings inside his own base and destroyed them with Probes (about 6:10 min).
Zerg found effective counter measure for Force Field – using Roach and their Burrow ability. Roaches are able to regenerate very quickly and therefore very efficient units.
In this example (8:05 min) Protoss has blocked Roaches with Force Field and in the same time forced Zerg’s Drones to burrow. This attack costed Zerg very much.
Now Zerg is taking offensive and attcking with large number of Roaches. Protoss is defending with Stalker units with Blink ability (teleport units over short distance). He was very successfull using Blink that Zerg had to retreat.
In counter attack Protoss did a very smart combo using Phoenix and Voidray. Zerg Queen was lifted in the air (where is is helpless) by Graviton Beam and then destroyed by Phoenix (11:00 min in game).
While Queen has been killed Zerg sent a large number of Zerglings to Protoss base and managed to morph four of them into Banelings. These Banelings managed to kill a large number of Protoss probes and two Photon Cannons and damaging his economy.
Protoss then took initiative and attacked the Zerg base. But here there is a surprise when Zerg used Infestor (burrowed in upper left in picture below) and it’s Neuro Paralyse ability (aka mind control) and he used it on Immortal to delete Protoss own Stalkers (about 14:18 min).
has another important ability, to move while burrowed.
This can be very important and effective weapon. In the same time Protoss is building couple of Colossus units that will pose real threat to Zerg. Luckily for Zerg Infestors did work and Colossus were under Zerg control and destroyed all attack force of Protoss. Once that was done Zerglings did a good job of destroying both Colossus.
But this move was just a small success because Protoss has attacked both Zerg expansions. That was the winning move for Protoss. Without expansions Zerg was unable to recover.
Of course, I didn't mention every move in the match so have a look at the video.
This was very interesting match and we saw how to play against Protoss and what may be the coming your way. Lets hope to see more battles and maybe longer ones too.
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