EPT
sAviOr play), and loving YellOw's background story (yeah I do love losers <3), I decided to watch the final of the Coca-Cola OSL, between Hong Jin-Ho and Lim Ho Hwan, during a pretty long trip I had to do on the train.Despite the fact that the level of their play is not up to today's standard by any means, I Really fell for this match. The audience is incredible, each battle felt so tense, and most of the game are extremely back and forth. I can only urge every single person who has not yet watched this serie to do so (unless the only player you like to watch is Flash, in which case you will think those are C- scrubs...).
BoxeR took the first set on Neo Hall of Valhalla after an epic 30+min long game during wich he stayed all along on one mining base (he twice took a new expansion just before mining out) against an on average 4 base zerg who was never realy able to stabilize (more on that later), and who pretty much tried to take on turn every single expansion on the map during the game.During the second game on Jungle Story,
YellOw took the advantage with a quick lurker build and some annoying drops, reducing BoxeR to only a handful of scvs, but our favorite terran managed to drag the game for 25min, thanks to cliff abuse (tanks are imba, and every map favors terran in case you don't know).I'm a bit unfair there as at one point
BoxeR was clearly ahead, but YellOw took a hidden expand, managed to hold his main, and BoxeR chose to take his first expand at the 20min mark, which is no very smart on a normal map, so guardians could finich him up 2mins later (another good reason to watch this serie : guardians worked back then, and it's an amazing unit).Then came the 3rd game which is so important for the momentum and for the players mindset, they spawned in vertical positions on Neo Legacy of Char, a map that was apparently heavily zerg-favored, which I cannot really comprehend, because cliffs are imba, and that zerg's biggest advantage seems to be short air distance and that muta micro wasn't even invented back then.
The openings were more or less 2 hatch Lurker drop from
YellOw against 2-rax FE from BoxeR. The drop did quite a lot of damage and treated the viewers with very nice micro, but the game then pretty much switched to macro mode.Well if you call macro mode a terran sitting on two base with 4
Barracks during the whole game, but then again, we're talking about BoxeR in 2001, not a Terran version of Best.What it was was rather
YellOw taking many expos all over the map, BoxeR dropping them simulatenously, YellOw defending them as well as he could and trying to counter but more or less failing to do any real damage.In the end
BoxeR had to take a third because he was going to mine out, and everything revolved around a cliff shared by both players' third, which was dropped, counter-dropped, dark swarmed, and guardian abused many many times, but in the and BoxeR couldn't hold it and gged.Ok so there I was in the train so pumped I had almost forgot that I knew the results, and I was half in awe, half shocked thinking how
YellOw could have lost two game in a row at that point.Then I saw game 4. In that game,I had to witness the most retarded cheese ever, which more or less assmume your opponent won't scout and won't go for a factory : sunken rush half your opponents mineral line from the low ground, and get f***** burrow for your zerglings, staying on one base. So
BoxeR made a tank, his mining was disrupted during like 30sec, then he moved out with a pretty big force of mnm, tanks and FIREBATS, and as YellOw's "plan" at that point was to get two lurkers off one hatch to defend and stalling firebats with motherf***** BURROWED LINGS, well not even the best ling micro could not save him.And then I saw that the fifth game was again on Neo Hall of IHATETHISMAPSOMUCH. Now REALLY, one of the most epic finals ever had to be played on 4 completly imbalanced maps (according to TPLD), the only correct one being Jungle Story which
YellOw took, and 3 of them highly favoring BoxeR.And, well maybe I'm wrong there (looking at the TPLD I am) but... it seems to me that
YellOw choose to do this stupid cheese on the one which probably was the most manageable (it's only impossible to flank on Ragnarok, while it's impossible to win as Zerg on Neo Vallalha), so why Jin-Ho why... You could have won it goind standard I'm sure... Or by going 4 pool, or one hatch lurk, but not THAT...And so this last game is one of the saddest I have ever watched,
YellOw refusing to gg, trying desesperatly to stay in the game by building random hatcheries everywhere during 4 minutes after having lost his main.Honestly I was so pissed some people were even looking at me weirdly (why is that boy looking so angry at his laptop...).
To sum it up, one of the best final ever was completly flawed because the map pool sucked badly, and I experienced nerd rage 9 years after because the guy I felt was the more deserving player lost beacause of that, and could never get his gold after, and is considered as a choker, and...
I love you
YellOw, I know you are not just a choker, I hate you Neo Hall of Valhalla, and BoxeR, you're lucky you're so sexy otherwise, because I coud hate you based solely on that final.PS : sorry for the long wall of text and for the terrible English.
