Since I can't post this directly on the playlist, I guess I'll have to say it here. Why is it the playlist for the tournament so jumbled? Group B matches mixed with group A matches. Group C matches mixed with group D. There's even a Group B match between a group C and D match. Is it really that hard to properly organize a playlist?
The commentators talk about Dark but don't REALLY understand why he is superior. Dark is basically doing all the things I keep asking Zerg to do: 1) Late game, come over barriers with your brood lords. The problem with Terran late game right now is that their Thors are quite immobile. Dark is one of the few Zerg players who seems to understand this and abuses breaks, ledges, any kind of terrain that lets him hit and run with the Broods. I say the same thing about the Protoss Tempest which is even better at it since it can shoot air as well as ground, but this is about ZvT. 2) Dark uses his infestors correctly. One might ask, "Why not just make lots of vikings to handle the broods?" The issue is that Dark is great at using his infestors, and the Terran knows that all it takes is one fungal on the Vikings and it's all over for them. 3) Keep the ghost count low. You can see Dark is doing everything he can with ling/bane/ultra to kill the ghosts. The nerf to the ghost snipe helped him a lot, too. 4) Use your superior economy and keep spamming spores. Move them up as you gain ground. Dark seems to be one of the few Zerg who understands the positional game of static defenses late game. Other Zerg make them late game along with spines sometimes, but don't position them well and don't understand the key areas of the map that need a concentration of them, or they make a few and stop. Dark understands this, as would anyone who has ever played even a little bit of chess. Honestly, the strategic layer of SC II seems to be a weak point of A LOT of pros, who get where they got on the back of obscene APM and memorized build orders, but do not have Dark's ability to think on his feet. What's not to understand? Spores don't cost Army Supply. So what could Cure have done late game? 1) Not enough hellbats, honestly. He did not protect his tanks and ghosts sufficiently with hellbats, and was often seen throwing away hellbats on solo missions that didn't get much done. Cure doesn't seem to understand combined arms very well, or simply lacks the APM to keep up with Dark. If you see sufficient brood lords in the sky, you MUST have enough hellbats with your army at all times, and a few to defend staticly placed tanks. One late game hellbat can clean up a ridiculous number of zerglings and can tank banelings for the more expensive ghosts. But the worst thing Cure did was not position well with the Hellbats. He needs to plunge forward with the Thors with hellbats in front, and accept some losses to get on the brood lords without letting them hit and run so much. And if Zerg keeps falling back, then they have to give up the objective, like a forward mining base. 2) Not enough spell caster usage. Even one Raven can be great cost savings. It can be tempting to think, "I'll just get an iron bank up and running and I'll have scans for days." Well, if you clear up army supply by sacking workers, then you need those orbitals to call down mules, and we saw that quite a bit in this game. Plus, the ravens can pay for themselves over time by providing free turrets (dps) or interference matrix. But the costless detection is their real value, for clearing creep, spotting burrowed units, and casting spells. 3) But the REAL late game Terran spellcaster is the BattleCruiser. You should get a pack of at least 4, and Yamato has not been nerfed like Snipe. Free kills from Yamato over time is how you get obnoxiously efficient against the Zerg late game. Plus, Ultra / ling / bane is helpless against BC. It forces the Zerg to get Corruptors, which are wildy inefficient for one main reason: they can't shoot down. The Zerg player has to choose between broodlords which can't shoot up and corruptors which can't shoot down, which means late game Zerg sky are essentially half as efficient per army supply as the Terrans'. Finally, BCs can also abuse terrain just as well as any other flying unit (like brood lords or tempests) and so they have massive advantages over Thors. I understand, Neural Parasite makes BCs seem like a risky investment late game, but it's not like Thors are any less vulnerable to this problem, as we saw. At least BCs can teleport or fly away, abusing terrain. Plus, if it's a war of spellcasters you have the Ghost EMP which is the ultimate trump card in caster on caster battles. That, and the ghost is the only CLOAKED caster so he has an even greater advantage. If you have to go heavy with Thor late game, at least pick them up with medivacs to move quickly to where they are needed. Ultimately, despite the snipe nerfs, I think late game TvZ is pretty evenly matched, and Dark just demonstrated why he's superior. He does all the things I want late game Zerg to do, while Cure looked tired and worn out, either unable to keep up with the pace of the game or unable to think properly about counters, strategy, and map control. To see what I'm talking about, just look at any Maru game. Maru does late game Terran vs. Zerg properly.
I think Wardi might be my least favorite caster. He seems like a robot somebody programmed to never stop talking, and always try to sound like he's struggling to hold down a belch. His tone sounds like it's trying to be conversational, but actually it was written by ChatGPT.
