Our first play-off match report is one between players that we haven't seen often, in fact I'd put money on it that these two players played eachother for the first time in a tournament setting. Both have a different story to that fact, with ForGG being a Korean who only just recently joined a foreign team to increase his foreign tournament attendance and VortiX being one of the very few Spanish players to be able to compete and get himself to these a few of these events. A match between two underdogs, this should be interesting..

In the first game both players were trying to probe each other in the early game. ForGG went for quite an expensive early build, taking a combination of hellions and banshees to time out an attack on VortiX's third base. The combination of units worked very well against VortiX's queens, picking off the crucial third base and delaying the economic progress of the Zerg immensely for early game standards.

When VortiX stabilized and fended off the attack he was able to catch ForGG off guard with a zergling run-by, while ForGG's first siege tanks were rolling out of the factory. These tanks, units which are very expensive and time-inefficient to make, are of pinnacle importance to the early Terran army, as losing them delays the entire attack's timing by a lot. ForGG managed to pick them up with a medivac and save them from the zerglings, but because he was distracted by the zerglings he totally missed VortiX's mutalisk tech, allowing VortiX to do a good amount of damage back to ForGG's economy, evening the balance back out.

The Spaniard VortiX used continuous aggression throughout the game, delaying ForGG's attack by loads, aided by ForGG's seeming absurd need to macro into the insane. Once the Terran attack finally came VortiX basically baneling-rolled ForGG back to his base. With ForGG on the back foot VortiX transitioned into ultralisk to do big damage to ForGG immobile tank army and production, utilizing great micro with his infestors to back the attack up. Then once VortiX also managed to get Brood Lords out on the map ForGG had no means left to fend off the zerg forces anymore. VortiX takes a somewhat surprising lead after a devastating opening by ForGG.

ForGG realized he messed up the last game after being very far ahead, so he tried the same early-game build again in game two. VortiX was a bit better prepared, with extra zerglings to fend off the hellions, but because of a lack of queens the hatchery went down once again, meaning once again the Spaniard was economically incapacitated for a while. ForGG responded very differently to his early success, gearing up for continuous follow-up attacks, while VortiX tried the same baneling counter-attack with mutalisk harass as he tried last game. The Terran last all his banshees and hellions to the zerg army, but at least this time he could fend off the Zerg's muta's, preventing the crippling damage that happened last game.

The problem with ForGG's new strategy though was his constant aggression without any real structure. He was losing medivacs, marines and hellions at the cost of almost nothing for the Zerg. Once again ForGG was caught with his pants down when the zerg attacked the main base, camped the infrastructure and crippled the terran's economy, who had almost nothing to defend once again.

ForGG could just taking the first plane back home? pic courtesy of scvrush.com

In the third game ForGG attempted a totally different build, going 2rax with one proxy and a bunker rush at the Zerg's natural. VortiX responded perfectly, pulling enough drones, planting a spine crawler instantly and microing his queen to hold off the aggression. With no damage done ForGG returned back home to play the economic catch-up game.

VortiX once again did the equal build, getting early zerglings and banelings to shut down the terran's early attacks, while buying time to tech up to Broods. With ForGG doing very little damage with his aggression he opted to go into a defensive Thor composition, a decent choice but not without some buffer to spread the damage out, other than hellions. VortiX rolled ForGG with his Brood Lords and infestors, meaning the Spaniard advanced to the round of 8 with an incredible 3-0 victory over the newest Millenium member.

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