Air Force Ace Drop 8th Straight

[s]korea[/s]

A showdown between Boxer and maGma versus the likes of Nal_rA and JulyZerg in the ProLeague.

Looking for it's first win of the season the Republic of Korea Air Force team started off strong winning almost their first ace match against eStro, a team recently making headlines outside of Korea. The ace matches came to a showdown between the legendary Boxer and maGma, a player who had already beaten players such as Nal_rA and JulyZerg.

This match was a quick game and the Emperor wasted no time to show that today was going to be a match won by the Air Force team. Boxer, taking advantage of the large distance between both his and MinGu's, base elects to tech to vultures as MinGu fast expands to his expansion and a second one. Finally as Boxer makes his way out with his vultures upgraded with speed he is met with a small force of zerglings. These lings are no match for Boxer's vultures and are slowly hunted down and slain by the Terran Emperor. When Boxer's vultures reach the doorstep of MinGu's base he is blocked off by two sunkens, but that is no problem because Boxer has a dropship in the pipe, five by five and on the way.

Dropping his vultures into MinGu's base, Boxer lays mines in between MinGu's main and his expansion while killing off drones. As MinGu retaliates with a few hydralisks, Boxer picks up two vultures and drops them behind the mineral line in MinGu's first expansion, luckily for Boxer the sunkens at MinGu's expansion cannot reach his vultures. This forces MinGu to run his drones to his second expansion at 9'oclock. Noticing that all of MinGu's drones were gone, Boxer sends a few vultures in various directions and eventually discover's MinGu's third base. With his second base discovered, MinGu runs his drones back to his first expansion but is eventually met with two dropships full of marines and medics. GG.

ACE 1 - 0 eStro

With the Terran Emperor taking the first game in a fairly quick and easy fashion, it was time for Clon to step up and set a tone for the ACE team. The game starts off with both players expanding quickly, Tester expands once while Clon expands a second time. Tester discovers his second expansion and decides to harass with a single zealot at first which is joined later by another zealot. While his zealots harass a StarGate warps in for Tester and begins warping in a corsair. The zealots are killed, doing minimal damage to Clon's economy, and the corsair begins to harass, but is met with hydralisks that Clon had began to pump out. Eventually Tester's corsair was destroyed, cutting short his harass.

While Tester was warping in his corsair he had also begun to build a Templar Archives. After his corsair was made two dark templars were warped in shortly after. As Tester moved out with his dark templars to harass, they were met up with overlords which had gotten speed upgrades and the dark templars were pushed back by a fairly large hydralisk force. All that was defending Tester's base at this time were 2 cannons, a dragoon, and a shield battery. Clon attacks with around 12 hyrdalisks and attacks. Both players commit huge blunders in this attack. Tester's blunder was that he had sent out a high templar right into Clon's army of hydralisks, and Clon's blunder was that he didn't kill that high templar. This no doubt costed Clon the battle as one of two psi storms had decimated a handful of Clon's hydralisks later in the battle. With his forces dwindling a bit Clon retreats.

The final battle is a spark of ingenuity. Clon morphs in lurkers and prepares to attack with a large force of hydralisks. While waiting for his lurkers to morph in Clon fakes a drop into the back of Tester's base where Tester's expansion was, seeing this Tester quickly moved his army to the back. Clon doesn't actually have anything in his overlords so he quickly retreats, then he takes this opportunity to rush to the front of Tester's base and attacks. The distance isn't too far for Tester to go back, but because his forces were not stationed there already this gives Clon an advantage in moving his lurkers in closer. Eventually Tester's wall breaks and with more hydralisks rushing to the battle, Tester types out.
GG.

ACE 2 - 0 eStro

Clon had set the tone for this match and ACE was just one game away from winning their first match of the season and an ace match as well. With victory at the door step H.O.T-Forever and Sunny went in for the kill.

Early on Sunny provided pressure by pushing with marines and medics backed up by a tank. He destroyed SangHo's cannon and Gateway wall, but was eventually chased back by an army of mutalisks from Cool[fOu] and a dark templar that SangHo had warped in. Constant harass was done by both Zerg players with mutalisks being the key to this match as well as devastating high templar drops and dark templar harasses by SangHo.
In some weird attempt to gain ground, Sunny drops a large army of marines, medics, and a few tanks into the center of the map trying to gain an advantage. This is easily destroyed by Cool's mutalisks and SangHo's psi storms. Eventually the ACE pair was forced to submit to Cool's force of mutalisks control which had dominated the entire game.

ACE 2 - 1 eStro

ACE's chance of winning an all-kill match was gone, but ACE was still in this. This hope quickly dwindled for ACE as OversKy was going to have his world turned upside down. UpMagiC wasted no time in finding OversKy's expansion in the top lane of Monty Hall. Seeing this UpMagiC mines away a mineral chunk blocking from the top lane mineral wall and sends in fully upgraded vultures to harass. Mines are laid and drones are destroyed one by one. OversKy pumps out a few hydras in response and kills off a few vultures, but OversKy hops two more vultures over the mineral wall in the middle lane of Monty Hall by landing a barrack on them. UpMagiC continues to harass with these two vultures and expands once to the bottom lane.

Finally OversKy pops out a few mutalisks and quickly eliminates the vulture threat, but it was too late. UpMagiC had already set up a turret perimeter around his main as well as several turrets at his expansion. Eventually UpMagic would take two more expansions and pump out an immense goliath army that would topple OversKy's hydralisk army. There was just no way for OversKy's economy to catch up to UpMagiC's and it was over.

Ace 2 - 2 eStro

And it came down to a final match between the Terran Emperor and maGma. All odds were for siding for Boxer on this match, the legendary Terran could win the first match of the season for ACE, but sadly pressure had fallen upon him.

Boxer, showing prowess and a bit of his old self, decided to build a proxy barrack near the middle of the map just at the top of one side of the ramps. Taking a lot of care by using an SCV to distract a drone, he is able to stop the drone from finding this barrack. However maGma's overlord eventually flies within range of the barrack and discovers Boxer's proxy. The overlord was eventually shot down by two of Boxer's marines and the marines eventually made their way to maGma's base, this is where it turned bad.

Call it choking, hesitation, or whatever you want. It was clear from Boxer's micro that he was holding back. Several times he could have attacked but played it safe and never did the kind of damage that his proxy marines were meant to do. When he had reached maGma's base he had three marines and an SCV while maGma was still incubating his zerglings. Boxer tried to harass several times but never took out any drones, and rather than pushing in a bit closer to shoot at the drones he decided to retreat and bunker up in maGma's choke. maGma would then put up a sunken colony and the game was over. maGma finished his zergling upgrades and like water through a hole riddled with holes, the zerglings slipped through the bunker wall and straight to Boxer's undefended base. Boxer would retreat the marines at the wall back to his base in a desperate attempt to save the game, but it was too late.

ACE 2 - 3 eStro

Links
YaoYuan - Stream of Games
Teamliquid.net - Background Info