The semi-finals for the KotN: Probots tournament were played yesterday. Let’s look at the games that were played! If you are a subscriber to the ESChamp twitch channel you can watch the cast here. Otherwise you will have to wait a bit until the games are uploaded to the youtube channel.
AviloBot vs 5minBot
This matchup was the first to give us some nice macro games. AviloBot uses a mech strategy with lots of tanks and some hellions/hellbats. 5minBot plays mostly bio with tanks and medivacs for support.
Game one, both bots go up to three bases fairly quickly. 5minBot tries to do an attack at the third, but despite very little defense from AviloBot, he pulls back before doing any real damage. Next, 5minBot tries to do some drops, but the medivacs get cleaned up easily and 5minBot loses quite a few units in the process. A couple of hellbats sneak into one of the bases of 5minBot and take out a good chunk of SCVs. The army for 5minBot returns home to defend. 5minBot is rather indecisive about attacking, although whenever the armies do meet, it always seems on top. AviloBot never manages to build up a large force. Eventually 5minBot makes a decisive push and destroys the remaining bases of AviloBot.
Game two, AviloBot makes cloacked banshees. It gets quite a few SVCs, but 5minBot makes turrets at its mineral line. The banshees know to stay away form the turrets, however, they keep flying barely inside of range, and slowly get killed. When 5minBot adds vikings the banshees don’t stand a chance anymore. This game, AviloBot does manage to get up a sizable army of tanks. When it pushes out, it dominates the bio forces of 5minBot. It has very little anti-air though, so the vikings of 5minBot stay alive, but they don’t know to land and just fly around uselessly. AviloBot takes the second game and takes the score to 1-1.
Game three, 5minBot starts with an attack at the front and mixes it up with some medivac drops. It does a reasonable amount of damage. Eventually it commits better to its attack and takes out two of the bases for AviloBot. Like game one, AviloBot struggles to get an army up. Eventually the pressure from 5minBot is simply too much and AviloBot gets defeated. 5minBot wins the series 2-1.
HjaxAI vs CreepyBot
CreepyBot is a macro bot that likes to spread creep a lot. HjaxAI, normally also plays a macro style, but for these games he decided to use a different strategy to take CreepyBot off guard. It does a twelve pool, makes a couple of lings and then attacks, taking all its drones with the attack. CreepyBot is totally unprepared for this kind of cheese. The worker defense is weak and it doesn’t manage to get any spine crawlers up. Only game two is somewhat interesting. CreepyBot expands to a distant base and HjaxAI doesn’t manage to scout it. The game ends in a draw and another game has to be played. HjaxAI wins that game as easily as the first and takes the series 2-0.
Next week will be the finals with 5minBot vs HjaxAI. The final wil be a best of 5. I am very much looking forward to what we get to see from these bots. Both bots get a chance to make adjustments for their final match, so we will have to wait to see what they come up with!
Tyr 