CherryPi - Stardust game
As you might guess from the CoG results, Stardust has gained strong new skills since last year. Against zerg in particular, one skill is that it uses corsairs heavily. Another is that it learned the forge expand opening. And yet it can still be defeated.
CherryPi is from 2017, but it shows how. The SSCAIT game Stardust v CherryPi is instructive (I kept the replay for when SSCAIT recycles it).
The recipe is:
1. Facing forge expand, play a greedy opening. CherryPi opened pool first (with a rare 13 pool) so that it could make zerglings if it needed to, but cannons were not going to walk across the map to attack, so it followed up with drones and hatcheries.
2. Fight efficiently in the middle game. CherryPi could not take any one-sided victories against such a tough opponent, but it traded well and cut the protoss army down to a safe size, where zerg could spawn enough defensive units in the time the protoss would take to cross the map.
3. With that breathing room, zerg could safely pull ahead in workers. Then it was just mass and smash.
See how easy it is? It’s a simple matter of being good at everything!
Of course it was only possible because Stardust showed weaknesses. One is that it was cautious and clumsy with its corsairs, and put on less counter-air pressure than it could have. First it kept them with the army, then it flew them over hydras.
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