Flash played his first broadcasted game in GSL yesterday against Killer, and won as many had expected. With no experience with BW, I have no idea what’s the style of Flash. Apparently, his style is usually command centre first according to the comments on Team Liquid forum. He indeed often opens up with command centre first in TvP, and he again showed off his style of TvP against Killer yesterday.

Here is his build order in game 1 against Killer:

10 – supply depot
14 – command centre
14 – barrack (after cc)
16 – barrack
20 – orbital command x2

Constant SCV and marine production. Build 3rd command centre @400 mineral, then the 3rd barrack @150 mineral.

Build 2 refinery @150 next and drop a tech lab when it’s done. Build a bunker at approximately 40 supply, which can be built much much earlier depending on opponent’s build. Flash built another bunker after the first.

Research stim, then build a factory @100 gas. Build 2 more refinery, before building 2 engineering bay.

Build a starport when factory is done and drop a reactor on factory, then swap over when they’re completed (typical). Research +1/+1 on both engineering bay, and drop a tech lab and reactor on the other 2 barracks at the same time.

Research combat shield when the tech tab is built, and starts marauder production. Start medivac production after swapping the starport on factory’s reactor.

He has 2x medivac at 10:00.

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His build lines up really nicely with the +1/+1 and combat shield finishing at the same time. He can squeeze out the concussive shell when the stim is done, which should line up nicely as well.

Most importantly, he has more units, better upgrades, more scv, and more command centre by 11:00 than a standard 1 barrack fast expand. I was expecting he won’t have the medivac out as early as a normal 1 barrack fast expand, but I was wrong. He reaches the convergent point of 2 bases with 3 barracks, 1 reactor starport, 2 engineering bay without delay. Additionally, he has his 3rd command centre up much earlier.

Clearly, the trade off of this build is the risk of being overrun at the early stage of the game. But as long as opponent did expand, I think this is pretty safe as long as you’ve time to put down the bunkers with good scouting. If opponent is going for a bases attack timing, which Killer did in game 1, this build seems to be able to deal with it.

This is certainly a good build to have in my list of build choices in big maps.

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Flash’s interview after the game:

Looking at your recent matches, it seems that you like to start by taking expansions and dragging things out into a long game.

I think it’s my personal style. I think that in SC2, you have to prepare all sorts of builds, even those you aren’t comfortable with. I think I’ve memorized every build for SC2, so I can now freely focus on the games [in my own way].

He memorized every build?

The elephant is not slowing down.