THE SETTING:

Thor and Tsunami ended up playing for the tourney title. The rules were simple. Thor picked the map for Game 1, Tsunami picked the map for Game 2, and Lost Temple was the map should there be a need for a 3rd game.

GAME ONE SYNOPSIS:

Thor's build order focused on a classic Corsair/Reaver build. When executed properly, this combination can be deadly to any zerg player no matter what build order is chosen. Tsunami chose a muta build. As most Zerg players know, its very difficult to get those first six mutas out before the Corsairs arrive and this game was no exception. Thor sent one sair north and one sair east. The sair that went east found Tsunami's second scouting overlord and killed it. By the time the sairs reached the empty mains in the southeast and the northwest, a third had warped in. The three Corsairs met over Tsunami's base not more than five seconds after Tsunami's Spire finished its morph. The Corsairs were able to kill one Overlord and seriously injure two more before 4 scourge hatched from their larvae. Tsunami microed his scourge well killing 2 of the 3 corsairs. 4 mutas finished the 3rd corsair but Tsunami was hurting from losing a total of 3 overlords in the early game.

Tsunami's mutas end up sparring with 3 more sairs from Thor. The mutas are triumphant, however, the sairs prove to be a decoy as Thor sneaks a reaver into Tsunami's mineral line. Tsunami lost more than half of his drones before his mutas can come to the rescue. With such devastating losses to supply and economy so early in the game, Tsunami did not have much of a chance, and it wasn't long before Thor overpowered him. Good games were exchanged and Tsunami hoped to redeem himself in Game two.

The game lasts 10:26 with Thor outscoring Tsunami by a mere 2000 points.

GAME TWO SYNOPSIS:

Tsunami churned out zerglings and had about about 3 control sitting in the middle. Meanwhile, Thor had finished a factory and had about 18 mixed infantry and a tank sitting in his natural. We wondered how Tsunami was going to manage to put any hurt on Thor and he shows us when suddenly, his zerglings run over to the valley in between 6 and 9 o'clock. Waiting for them there are 4 overlords. They don't have speed upgrade, but they have transport and the elevator maneuver effectively lands 3 control of lings in Thor's defenseless main. The lings cause a lot of havoc destroying 4 supply depots, the academy, and some SCVs before Thor's troops are able to scramble up from his natural and quell the threat.

Thor was able to fight off the attack, but Tsunami would not allow him to rest. More zerglings and 4 lurkers charged into his natural while he was busy fighting off the zergling threat in his main. A lot of SCVs died but Thor managed to fight off this assault as well.

By now Tsunami had his mineral only online. He got up his Hive and then started working on a Defiler Mound and an Ultralisk cavern. He also expanded to the 3 o'clock natural. Thor had science vessel tech and he built up a force of infantry, 3-4 tanks, and a couple of science vessls. This force wass grouped outside his natural when once again, Tsunami drops 4 overlords full of zerglings into Thor's main. Instead of trying to salvage his main, Thor countered Tsunami and managed to kill his mineral only. However, when he tried to break into Tsunami's natural he ran into a couple of lurkers and 8 sunkens. It looked like the choke of a BGHer. Thor decided to retreat his remaining troops and returns in time to salvage some of the buildings in his main. However, Tsunami lowered the final crushing blow when he charged into Thor's natural with a lot of lings, lurkers, and the cover of dark swarm. With the fall of his natural, Thor concedes and the series is tied at one game apiece.

The game lasts 18:08 with Tsunami outscoring Thor by 23,000 points.

GAME 3 (THIS ONE'S FOR THE MARBLES):

The map that Mr.Tourney chose is called Blast Furnace. Its an interesting map with a strange construction. One of the most interesting points to note is that Thor's starting position has a ramp choke while Tsunami's starting spot sits on the lower ground. Both players have mineral/gas naturals and the fact that this is a 192x192 six player map leaves the game open for plenty of expanding. What's interesting to note is that neither player seems to know the map very well.

AND THEY'RE OFF:

Thor goes on to say that Tsunami would have to show how well he could adapt to this new map.

Meanwhile, the early game plays out with Tsunami sending his first overlord off to the west. Interestingly enough, he goes with a four hatch build mixing a spawning pool in between the 2nd and the 3rd hatchery. He places his 4th hatchery at the starting position to the north of his main. However, Thor's, scouting peon stumbles onto the early expansion and he sends his first two zealots across the map. The zealots arrive in Tsunami's early expansion and run into no resistance. The hatchery only had one larvae available since two had been used on drone's and the spawning pool was just finishing completion at Tsunami's main. The zealots are able to beat down the hatchery before any help can arrive. Eventually, Tsunami sends some zerglings from his main to kill the zealots, but they can die peacefully knowing that they did their part for Auir.

Tsunami takes the loss in stride and begins to morph another hatchery way off in the bottom left corner of the map. The expansion is actually closer to Thor's main. However, Thor hasn't been slouching either. He doesn't have an expansion yet, however, he does have 4 zealots on hold at his ramp and reaver tech. He pops a reaver into a shuttle and heads across the map towards Tsunami's main. At about the same time, Tsunami decides that he has enough zerglings to attempt an assault on Thor's main. The shuttle actually flies over the zerglings but neither the shuttle, nor the zerglings alter their course.

The zealots on hold at Thor's ramp easily hold off the two control groups of zerglings. Meanwhile, Thor's reaver experiences much more success. The main reason for this is Tsunami's lack of tech. His only buildings are his four hatcheries and his spawing pool. His hydra den has been started but it is not yet finished. Upon seeing the shuttle in the middle of the map, Tsunami does manage to get three creep colonies down but the reaver arrives before sunkens are able to be morphed. By the time the reaver lands, most of the drones have hightailed it out and are heading to the obscure expansion over in the bottom left corner of the map. Thor's reaver hangs around taking potshots at random buildings until the sunkens finish their morph, then it hops back into the shuttle and moves out of range. He drops the reaver back down out of sunken range and then moves the reaver to attack the sunken using its superior range. However, its a well known fact that reaver pathing is not what it used to be. The reaver moves into range of two sunkens and gets obliterated. This gives Tsunami the freedom to begin morphing more drones from his 3 hatcheries.

As Thor's reaver met its maker, a second wave of zerglings were arriving at his front door. This time, he has 5 zealots, 4 goons, and 1 reaver however, they are not on hold at his ramp. Tsunami's 24 zerglings charged madly up Thor's ramp and a couple even made it into his peon line. But anyone who plays Starcraft knows how brutally reavers treat zerglings and needless to say, this second assault by Tsunami is also less than successful.

NO EARLY GAME BEATDOWN PLEASE:

Thor started an expansion above his main while sending an attack force towards Tsunami's main. The attack force consisted of 6 zealots, 6 goons, and a reaver in a shuttle. When they arive at Tsunami's main, Tsunami has 9 hydras and 3 sunkens for defense. Thor has the reaver out in front of the rest of his troops. The hydras charge in and attack the reaver, then run away. A volley from the reaver kills 4 of the hydras, but then the reaver moves into sunken range by following the quickly retreating hydras. The reaver is too far from its shuttle to be saved and the zealots and goons are left to finish the job of levelling Tsunami's main. Tsunami's remaining hydras run back behind the sunkens to wait reinforce- ments in the form of 18 morphing zerglings. This leaves Thor to do what he will for a few seconds. He lets the zealots attack move and they each choose a sunken colony to beat on. During the the attack, a Spire finishes its morph so Thor takes his 6 goons and focuses fire on that building. They manage to level the evil zerg building before the zerglings can hatch. Knowing they can't accomplish anything more, Thor retreats his three remaining goons across the map with ravenous zerglings nibbling at their heels.

At first the loss of the spire appeared devastating. However, I quickly noticed that Tsunami had started morphing a Spire at his expansion at almost exactly the same time that he had started the one at his main. Because of this foresight, he was able to start morphing mutas at about the time that the remnants from Thor's assault were still trying to fight off his zerglings. With two bases mining at full capacity, it didn't take long for Tsunami to produce a mixed force of lings, hydras, and mutas. This swarm charged Thor's base with vengeance in mind. The troop count was a control of lings, 4-5 hydras, and 6 mutas. Thor's troop count was not high at this point, mainly because he was still producing troops out of two gateways and 1 robotics facility. A templar archives had warped in only moments before the assault. He had 4-5 zealots, 5 goons, and a reaver for defense. Amazingly, Tsunami's lings break through and manage to knock out the reaver losing most of their number. With the reaver out, it then becomes a battle of brawn and Thor is barely able to hold off the attack with 2-3 goons to spare.

Unfortunately for Thor, that wasn't the end. He had no more than 20 seconds to breathe before another 12 mutas were over his main wreaking havoc. With only 3 goons and 3 cannons to protect his mineral line, Thor was hard pressed to hold off this second assault and loses all his defenses and a few probes. Only when an Archon is formed from Thor's brand new templar tech is he able to chase the remaining mutas away.

A WAR OF ATTRITION:

The main reason that Thor's shuttle full of reavers depicted in the status screen is flying around down there is mainly to escape the mutalisk assault that is occurring in his main. Most of you probably guessed that the shuttle does stumble onto Tsunami's expansion. When Thor sees it, he sends down 2 archons and 2 dark templars to support the reavers. Its interesting to note that this expansion not only contained a spire, but also Tsunami's hive. The expansion is protected by 2 sunkens and 1 mutalisk and the base gets pummeled. However, only the hive and the drones are destroyed. The spire, which is located behind the extractor, survives.

Instead of trying to save his expansion, Tsunami decides that he's going to make it a war of attrition. He has located Thor's second expansion near his own latest attempt and he sends a control group of mutalisks to take it out. When the mutalisks arrive, they are met by 3 defending cannons with two more warping in. Thor also has two gateways warped in there. The mutalisks tear into the the expansion knocking out the cannons losing only two of their number. The probes are knocked out next and two freshly warped goons are not enough to save the expansion. The game still hangs in a precarious balance leaving the observers to wonder who will be able to strike the decisive blow.

WHO WANTS IT?:

For ten minutes, the players spar striking at each other wherever they sense a weakness. But no decisive attack is managed by either player. Even when Tsunami destroys Thor's main with 3 control of cracklings, it doesn't really matter because Thor has most of his tech and a total of 10 gateways at two separate expansions.

Tsunami keeps Thor on his toes by continuing to pour cracklings at random places on the map and suddenly, it was like a lightbulb popped on in his head. We were thirty minutes into the game and there was one thing that we had not yet seen from Thor. No attempt at taking air superiority. Noting this, Tsunami makes his move. His vespian gas reserve was high due to his generous use of cracklings and he morphs 12 guardians in the middle of the map. This proves to be a very good decision because Thor had just elected to take one of the expansions in the middle and he was sending 20+ probes from the mined out expansion in the top left to this expansion when the guardians struck. The probes and the expansion attempt are smashed into oblivion. Having no real counter for the guardians, Thor does the only thing he can do, he sends out all his zealots and 2 archons to the top right and takes out the expansion there. However, Tsunami morphs more guardians on the right hand side of the map effectively ending the zealot threat.

TAKIN' IT HOME:

Tsunami doesn't know where Thor's final base is and Thor frantically throws up 3 stargates and starts pumping templar out of his 5 remaining gateways. Tsunami's guardians slowly move down the left edge of the map. When they reach Thor's remaining base, Thor had managed to scrounge together 3 scouts and 5 templar. At first, Thor has some success in his defense. However, it isn't long before reinforcing cracklings and mutas arrive on the scene and Thor is forced to concede making Tsunami the champion of the 16 man online tourney!

It was a hard fought match lasting a whopping 36:29 and what can you say but great game to both players.

FINAL SCORES:

PARTING SHOTS:

And that's it, Mr.Tourney's 16 man tourney seems to have been a great success with a lot of good matchups and a lot of good players. I must thank Mr.Tourney for inviting me to observe and report such a great matchup, even though some "Snork" guy claimed to have "dibs". You all have a nice day now, I must be off, I have a test in Political Science tonight... doh!

Cheers,