Elfi vs Daisy

I don't care for mirror matchups much, but this was an interesting game, my comments, with spoilers below the VOD.





I am a fan of Phoenix openings, but I think they are best suited to large maps, the larger the better, that is because IMO in the early game Phoenix are best used for scouting and harassing mineral line.

They are a mana/spell unit, so when mana is out they are much weaker till it regenerates, and in the early game you can have very many Phoenix, so they will not be able to lift many units.

Also you will only be able to kill low HP light units, like Workers (SCV/Drone/Probe), efficiently until you build up to a critical number of Phoenix.

Elfi defended the first push fairly well, but Daisy timed it very well, and Elfi had not made an Immortal (I think Immortal would have allowed Elfi to defend the first push easily, 3 Phoenix can't really do much to Immortal other than lift it, which would leave Sentry/Stalkers to keep fighting) and was relying on Sentry + Forcefields to defend, and the Phoenix + Gateway unit mix was designed to hard counter a Sentry defense.

If Daisy would have expanded or teched after winning the first engagement he probably would have won the game, but he didn't and Elfi managed an impressive come back.

I need to watch this game a few more times to understand exactly when & why the balance tipped in Elfi's favor, I think it was the fact that he had higher or better tech with the Twilight Council into Blink, while Daisy didn't transition out of Phoenix + Gateway at all, he didn't take his Natural or Tech or anything, just kept doing more of the same.

But flash has been buggy for me since last update this week, and VOD keeps crashing on me T_T so it might be a while before I can watch this game in enough detail to be sure.