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| Sync vs ForU - Challenge League match 02/24 | | | Author: | | | IP: | px1wh.vcXXXX | | Date: | 02/24/04 08:02 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for Napoleic: 8.0000 |  | Foru vs Sync on Namja Iyagi
This is an Ongamenet Challenge League game, played on February 24th. For more info on the challenge league format, please visit www.teamliquid.net
First an introduction to our players. Sync is a rather streaky terran user who has been on the scene for a number of years now. He had a breakout year in 2002 when he won an Ongamenet Starleague, but since then has done little to distinguish himself as a progamer. He has been on a tear in the challenge league recently though, winning his last few games convincingly. By all appearances Sync looks to be on the way to making a good run at his 2002 achievement.
ForU is a relatively new school player, known as a terran killer. His pvp and pvz are weak however, preventing him from having any tournament success, even if he has been known to lay a whupping on such terran greats as Nada and Boxer. ForU is looking to break into the big leagues for the first time and needs to get through the challenge league to do it. With the abundance of terrans in this years challenge league, ForU may finally get that chance.
The map, Namja Iyagi is a new Ongamenet map. The map features 4 corners mains with low ground naturals leading to a high ground center. The center is wide open and very large. There are also 6 island expansions - 1 behind each main and 1 each at 9 and 3. The main island expansions are very intelligently done. In order to balance terran being able to float a cc there for a free expansion at the beginning of the game, the designers actually used a single mineral patch with 8 minerals on it to block a cc from being able to land. You have to build a dropship and land a worker to pick up the mineral patch before any expansion can be started, giving terran no more chance to take the island early than any other race.
ForU gets the top right position at 2, while Sync drew the bottom left spot, 7. These positions favour ForU because of the amount of distance between the mains. The center of the map is huge and flat, perfect conditions for Toss to fight terran. However, once you get close the mains, there is elevation changes and ramps, which are heavily in favour of Terran. By maximising the distance between the mains, these start spots maximise the amount of favourable terrain that ForU has to work with.
Sync opens with three rines then goes for a Fac CC fast expansion. It's the perfect opening for this map because ForU will have a very hard time double fast expanding and holding, and an even harder time attacking. Toss really does not have a strong counter in this situation.
ForU scouts the fast expansion and harasses lightly with his first four goons, but does little damage. In order to attack Sync, he needs to travel down a ramp through tank fire. He fires on an outlying ebay, doing light damage, but loses a goon for his troubles.
ForU is really in a quandary but picks the least of all evils with a second expansion to 12. 12 is very open and exposed, but in the case of toss vs terran that actually makes it a more defensible base than a closed in one. The only real drawbacks to the open 12 and 6 expansions are vulture harassment and cliffs behind them that can be exploited with dropship/tank.
Sync begins to move his tanks up a bit, forcing ForU's containing goons away from his ramp, then springs loose a vulture raiding party. The vultures head right into ForU's natural and kill a few probes, but ForU had troops there to fight them off. The vultures headed on to the 12 base once ForU's zealots and goons started to hit them, and got a couple more probes before getting trapped and killed. All in all he lost more vultures than he killed probes.
The real purpose behind the raid was soon made clear though, when the sound of sieging tanks could be heard on the high ground above ForU's natural. ForU was induced to sacrifice several screens worth of favourable terrain by a few mere vultures, which could have disastrous consequences. In order to attack the tanks, ForU needs to either climb up a ramp or head through a high ground passageway which Sync was even now fortifying with mines. Worse yet, the tanks can reach ForU's natural mineral line, removing his economic edge with ease. ForU splits up the miners, sending half to 12 and half back to his main, saving most of them from tank fire, but still slowing his mining significantly.
ForU is in big danger now, because he is behind economically and doesn't look like he has the forces to break the push. After a few more seconds of buildup, ForU makes his desperation ploy. Sending in goons and zealots from the north with a flanking zealot platoon climbing up the ramp to the east, ForU attacks with everything he's got to break the push. Amazingly, with some excellent micro and a whole lotta luck, he breaks Sync's push with dragged mines and starts to rebuild his natural nexus.
In addition he had made a shuttle to help in breaking the push and uses it now to take the low ground island behind his main. Sync had not been idle either and has taken the 6 oclock base for himself, and, with his push rebuffed, begins fortifying the position.
Sync is now in a critical position. In terms of economy, he probably caught up to or even passed ForU during his push, but he is now most definately behind again. It is possible for terran to come back in this condition because of their potential to win fights they should not and their excellent harassment capabilities, but Sync would have play brilliantly from here on out. The first thing he tries is another vulture raid into 12. This raid is a little more successful, and Sync got his money's worth out of his vultures.
Following the pattern, Sync follows up the vuture raid with a second big center push, but ForU was ready for it this time. With a superiour force of goons and zealots, ForU destroys many tanks and forces Sync almost all the way back to 6. Because of the superiourity of tanks in defending ramps, and some studiously placed depots, ForU has no chance of pushing into Sync's natural.
Instead, ForU takes the 10 oclock natural, continuing to respect the mass/power equation by using his superiour mass to create superiour (or in this case even more superiour) power. Sync is only getting more behind as time goes on. Another vulture raiding party spots the 10 oclock natural base, and attempts to harass it, but ForU had not sent probes yet so the vults cannot do any real damage before being chased off by dragoons.
ForU is happily controlling the center while continuing to power up. Sync's dominant defensive position prevents ForU from taking him out for now, but ForU's mass and power are more than enough to keep Sync under control. As Sync tries again to push up, ForU again slaps him down with his larger center force. This time Sync bit off way more than he could chew, as ForU's ensuing counter attack suceeds in getting to the 6 base and almost forces Sync to lift the cc and run away his scvs. Sync's reinforcements arrive in time though, vultures tangling with goons. With some nice micro ForU holds the vults off for a while, but when Sync's tanks arrive, ForU's goons discover they have no escape route with mines surrounding them, and are all slaughtered. With that, Sync takes his own low ground island natural expansion and starts mining from 6 again.
ForU is now in a more delicate position, having sacrificed his army to deal only superficial damage to Sync. Whereas a westerner toss would have been very tempted to expand more, ForU elected instead to rebuild his army. Not trusting his current mass, ForU is playing very safe.
Meanwhile, Sync uses his expansion dropship to try to harass ForU. At this stage of the game this is very hard to do and I'm not sure why Sync bothered. ForU will have way too many goons for 2 tanks to be a problem, and even if the tanks manage to stop mining at a base and take out a few probes, when you have 4 mining bases that's a very minor concern. Even if he completely wiped out an expansion's probes, it would only be equivalent to taking out about 4 probes near the beginning of the game. He finally settled on trying to take out 12 by dropping 1 tank on it's cliff, but ForU ran away his probes in plenty of time and then took the tank out with a shuttle full of zealots, losing nothing. Next, Sync took his other tank with his ship to ForU's natural and gets off 1 seige mode shot, killing a few of the tightly bunched probes, then picks it up right away and flees in the face of uncoming zealots. He then took his dropship to the other side of 12 and landed his second tank there. At this point the goons kill the dropship, and then the zealots in the shuttle reload and kill the tank again, but 6 has been stopped from mining for some time now, and a couple of probes got killed. Most importantly, Sync forced ForU to waste just as much time as he did, the biggest drawback to drop harassment at this stage.
While this was going on, Sync attempts to vulture harass into the center of the map, laying mines around ForU's army, but the damage incurred could be called cosmetic at best.
In all the confusion, Sync is able to heavily fortify the 6 base, securing his position a little better. Seeing that, ForU takes the 10 main in response, knowing that he cannot successfully clear Sync out of 6 at this stage.
Sync feels that he has scrabbled back into the game sufficiently to try another center push. Although he keeps getting slapped down, he knows he has to keep trying. All it takes is one mistake by toss to lose many troops doing nothing, and then he can get right back into it. If he just stays passive though, he will never even have a shot to get back into the game.
By now the forces are getting very large, which is to terran's advantage. Arclite cannons and mines are splash, so as more units are involved in a given battle, terran's total damage output increases exponentially. Even though, proportionately speaking, ForU's army is just as superiour as it's always been, he is forced to retreat due to nature of the increased returns upon terran ground units.
Sync continues to move up through the center of the map while ForU gives ground slowly, buying time. He wants to let his power superiourity translate into as big a mass advantage as possible before having to commit to a center fight. Sync, meanwhile, knows the clock is against him and wants to get into a fight as soon as possible, while not getting careless and losing said fight through poor micro or decision making.
While fortifying his center position to increase his chances of victory in the coming battle, Sync does his best to reduce the toss power that is working against him with a dropship raid to 10. By dropping behind the minerals onto 10's low ground island natural, Sync can safely stop ForU from mining there, however ForU already had loaded shuttles to prevent that move, and quickly neutralises Sync's threat. Sync picks up and tries to head to 12 again, but this time ForU had cannons up covering the cliff, and, as the dropship tries to unload, the cannons shoot it down, and then kill the 1 tank he did drop before it can do anything.
With that, ForU chooses that time to try to break Sync's push, and starts another center fight. The first thing he does is use his dragoons to clear some of the copius mines that Sync had laid. Sync's tanks are firing on the goons, but ForU had so many that there are still many left after the mines are cleared. Then ForU sends in his zealots with his goons to kill Sync's front line of tanks. Sync fights a running retreat across the center of the map, sieging tanks and laying mines, trying to slow ForU down, but ForU by this point had a way larger army.
ForU fights his way all the way down to 6 once again and since Sync has mined out his natural he really has no choice but to try to use his scvs to hold. There are no zealots left by now and Sync has a buttload of scvs coupled with reinforcing tanks and many vultures, so, unbelievably, Sync holds again, if just by the skin of his teeth.
ForU has clearly had enough of Sync's shenanigans and starts forking carriers. He slaps down 3 stargates to that end and continues to produce probes and a center army.
Emboldened by his last ditch defense, or more likely, in desperation, Sync grabs the 4 oclock natural just east of 6. This base too is easily defended due to the fact that it cannot be hit except by going down a ramp into tank fire. So, in response, ForU grabs the 3 oclock island. Now that he's committed to an airforce, there's no reason he should not be able to easily hold it.
Next, ForU gets together a raiding party of zealots and heads into the 4 natural. Although Sync's tanks and mines are cost effective in holding that position, ForU's numbers are overwhelming and Sync is forced to lift the cc and relinquish the base. In response, Sync drops the 3 oclock island with 2 more tanks, and prevents mining there. ForU uses a dropship of zealots to kill the tanks and hold the island, not wanting to give away his carrier fork too soon.
ForU tries a different strategy at this point, so, while seemingly beginning a center fight, which forces Sync to siege and lay mines, he then just runs past into Sync's natural with a decent zealot and dragoon force. Sync is caught off guard by the ploy, but the worth of the play is questionable, as ForU's forces are now trapped in Sync's base with the only avenue of escape being 2 ramps covered by numerous tanks and mines. ForU does kill some factory units that come out one by one, but Sync calmly pushes into his own main and removes the threat before serious damage is done.
ForU had the troops to spare though, while Sync did not. After forcing Sync to return to his main with the bulk of his units, ForU takes out the 6 oclock base yet again, the real reason for his run past move. Sync just retreats his scvs this time since he still has an army to reclaim the base later and doesn't want to waste any scvs pointlessly. It seems that ForU would have been able to take out 6 with a head on attack anyways had he not done that though, so I don't think it was a smart play in the final analysis. ForU would have been able to not only take 6 out, but also take out Sync's army and force him out of the game. However, it may be that I am wrong and ForU would have lost a direct fight. It's very hard to say.
Sync's army does come back to chase away ForU and he relands his cc and restarts mining there.
Sync now has a decent army going compared to ForU, since ForU split his forces in half and allowed them to each get destroyed piecemeal. ForU is not really at a point where he needs to worry overmuch though. Sync again pushes north, and the caution and good decision making that marked ForU's earlier play is out the window. Now he looks like he just wants the game to end already and throws whatever he's got at Sync. Sync calmly microes against the incoming toss army and actually rapes it pretty nicely, losing almost nothing. That's the kind of break Sync needed 15 minutes ago, but by now it's too late anyways. ForU's navy shows up on the scene, and Sync has only token anti air, in the form of a few goliaths and the odd turret. The carriers plow through that with ease, and Sync is forced to leave the game with a GG.
This whole game changed when ForU broke Sync's first push through some miracle. He should not have been able to win that fight, let alone so convincingly; he really caught a break on that one. From there he was able to keep the game flowing to his favour, control the conflicts and the action, and keep the battles in the center, fighting on favourable terrain.
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