EPT
Edit: I probably should have said this earlier, but.... this article is two fold. Firstly is an angry fanboy upset that Flash lost the final doing dumb shit that he hasn't done in years. Secondly, is that Effort is still not "good" in the grand scheme of things despite winning a Starleague. He won this league through luck, not through skill.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/JvFMSL_Finals/EffOrtKissing1.jpg)
Alright, rewind.
I have weird way of respecting Zergs. For me to respect you you need to be creative or innovative in some way. For a long time I despised Jaedong
But you also have the complete opposite, those who have raw aggression and break you down with waves upon waves of attacks. The player I have in mind here is obviously Kwanro. No, he'll never win a Starleague, but his "cheeses" are not just your run of the mill cheese. They don't rely on your opponent to fuck up, they work because he's Kwanro and he's honed his attacking skills to a point where its an art form. You can read up all about why I love Kwanro so much in this thread.
But then there is the dark side of Zerg. The dark, evil, cheesy, skill-less side which rears it's ugly head every so often. This beast can consume some of the greatest Zerg players and leave potentially epic series in ruins. They are a plague on the Starcraft scene.
My first encounter with such a Zerg was actually July. Now July is great and awesome and I love him to bits, but OGN devised such a map pool to fuck protoss over, that Pusan vs July from Shinhan 2005 was the worst semifinal ever played. Worse than July vs Backho - yes, that bad.
You can try to watch the series over on pandora.tv (here) but I doubt it will work and it is certainly not worth your time. I recommend you read this battle report by Mani instead, it makes the games at least 322% better.
July defeated Pusan in under 30 minutes after Pusan had proclaimed a 90% PvZ winrate in practice (I don't doubt this claim, the POS house is where Corsair play in PvZ was developed). The series could have been incredible, but it wasn't because July (and Pusan) had to exploit the maps and cheese their way through the semifinal. It was utterly depressing. The game did not reflect the talent of either player and the series did not do either of them justice. Furthermore, July crumpled against Oov in the final trying to pull similar tactics - perhaps if the map pool was better Pusan would have been in the final instead. (or at least July would have played better).
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Manifesto7/JulyPusanBankSemi/game21.jpg)
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
The ditry-zerg style had left a bitter taste in my mouth, and my resent for this style grew and grew. If there was one Zerg who encapsulated this style it was Silver. The Zerg who hydra rushed every single ZvP and somehow fluked his way into an MSL final. Silver had no real talent, he wasn't going to be around next season. And indeed, he was eliminated rather promptly. But at what cost? He eliminated the following Protoss from the MSL: Pusan, Nal_ra (lucky Boxer retired), Kingdom and Daezang. All of whom were better players than him and could have made that season of the MSL soooo much better.
The temptation to play dirty-zerg as a style is a strong one. In this age where greed defines all three races, a cleverly hidden cheese can easily net you a quick victory. When you're up against players who are better than you and there's money on the line - this becomes a very luring temptation which many Zergs decide to follow. With that said, Zergs who liked to employ this style a lot (such as Yarnc and hero and whatnot) invariably get eliminated by better players later on and really are just a waste of space.
![[image loading]](http://media.photobucket.com/image/yarnc/KnightOfNi17/yarnc.jpg)
Dirty-zerg has one other temptation which lures players in, and it is this kind which pisses me off more than anything else. When a Zerg has his back against the wall with nothing to lose and is CLEARLY outclassed in every way, cheese and hope for the best. This attitude towards the game just ruins what is left of a series and just leaves you feeling like someone took a dump in your stomach.
The prime example of this is Jaedong during Batoo OSL. This is an OSL that Jaedong did not deserve to win. Since this is a fairly recent series, the VODs are in the spoilers below:
+ Show Spoiler [game 1] +
+ Show Spoiler [game 2] +
+ Show Spoiler [game 3] +
+ Show Spoiler [game 4] +
+ Show Spoiler [game 5] +
Once Jaedong went down 0-2, something clicked in his head and he must have thought "oh well, mayaswell 2hatch muta to have some fun and make the most of things" and then won the next three games because of it. Yes I understand 2 hatch muta is a legitimate strategy, but it was the easy way out and games 3-4-5 sucked because of it. Fantasy played a better tournament throughout and had the series in the bag, but Jaedong resorted to dirty-zerg to weasel Fantasy out of an OSL victory.
Jaedong may be the better player any other day of the week, and he is certainly the better player today. But on the night of that final, Fantasy was the superior player and when Jaedong was backed against the wall he resorted to the lowest tricks in the book to win. As a small aside, it frustrates me that Terran and Protoss do not have this opportunity against Zerg - so if a Zerg has a bad day he can still cheese his way to a win, but if a Terran has a bad day he gets 0-3'd.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/Batoo_Final/jaedong.png)
Destroying players by any means necessary
And that brings us to Effort vs Flash and why Effort still sucks. Once again we have a valiant Terran player who played a far better tournament than the Zerg, who went on to play better games than the Zerg in the final, only to get lamed out of the final by a skill-less Zerg.
Okay, Flash made mistakes in the final - but because of the style that Effort played in those games (dirty-zerg) those mistakes were game deciding as opposed to game influencing like the usually are. Games 3 and 4 were basically Flash moving out against Effort (who is preparing an all-in attack) and getting caught out of position twice and losing. While game 5 is speedling lameness. You cannot seriously sit down and assess all 5 games and tell me that Flash was the inferior player during the series, not by a long shot.
What pisses me off the most, is that the OSL final lasted for hours but the last three games took a combined total time of about 30mins. Just like Pusan vs July. What an utter slap in the face to all the SC fans out there wanting to see an amazing 3rd, 4th or even a 5th game. Just one of those going into a late game where Effort won would have legitimized his victory by so much (but hey, he wouldn't have won anyway lol). Playing the dirty-zerg style is an insult to anyone who loves this game.
Even further, Effort did not even deserve to be in the final!! Recall the night of horrific regames? Effort looked so so soooo bad during that night. He hasn't even looked much better since to be perfectly honest, he just keeps keep using dirty tactics and getting lucky. Seriously, Effort is the worst kind of Zerg there is and him and all others like him should just retire and play SC2 (it's probably more suited to their talents, or lack of).
Expect Effort to drop out of the next OSL in the Ro16 0-3. He doesn't deserve anything else.
----- ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF SC LAND -----
Jaedong has completely evolved into well rounded Zerg. His preparation for BoX series recently has been phenomenal. Just look at the builds he prepared for his last final - he prepared super greedy builds which deep tactical insight. He's not preparing cheap all in builds with no care for the quality of the game he produces, he's doing builds which make for excellent games (assuming his opponent keeps up).
Flash on the other hand is still the best (just) progamer in the universe. So he lost to some cheesy Zerg through some uncharacteristic mistakes, big deal. He's still going to play utterly amazing games and Flash vs Jaedong is going to be the final that we all wanted and dreamed about. Even if the games are 5 cheeses, I have faith that they won't be mindless cheeses and instead deep and tactical.
He subliminally likes Kwanro because he'll never take away a championship from one of the T/Ps.
