EPTI was like what the hell. An old school Terran? Nice. To top it off, he's playing an up and coming protoss in Flying. It was perfect. I just had to watch it. I look down and see the timing on the game was like 8 minutes. I was like what the hell, 8 minutes. I figured Nada would try something and fail... boy was I wrong
Nada doesn't open 1 fact CC off siege expand like most would... he doesn't try to 14/15 CC off his rax and hold it with a bunker praying he can get a tank out in time before he dies... he doesn't cheese with proxy rax or even rush into anything. He goes 2 fact.
Him simply going 2 fact isn't what was "mind games" to me, though. It's how he did it. There is a build called a "fake double" or "fd" if you are not that familiar with SC. I am sure most of you know what it is. It is 5 marines and a tank, and it was popular as hell around 2004-2006 somewhere in there iirc.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/FD
It is basically a 1 fact build in which you imitate a strong 2 fact push like a Joyo or V-Gundam rush, except with a lot less units, and you rely on spidermines. (you make a tank and research mines while making a vult after your first tank... it usually ends up being 5 marine 1 tank and a vult or two when you engage). Nada did a good job of denying the probe scout with his first few marines, and he didn't rush into making his 2nd fact. If you follow the Joyo build order, for instance, your 2nd fact will be done like right around or right as you start building your first tank (when your first machine shop addon is done) so you end up making your 2nd and 3rd tank at the same time. His 2nd fact was delayed to the exact timing that he knew gosi[flying] would expand based upon scouting an FD. Instead of fake doubling, he fake fake doubled. He faked that he was faking a double and actually doubled. Flying kept trying to see when his command center was going to be made, made a robotics before his 2nd gate, etc. He was completely thrown off his game.
What enabled Nada to do this, you ask... Well, the best reason is that Nada was the best terran around the time when this build was widely used (FD not FFD), so it gave or lent it credibility. On top of that, to flying, everything in front of his face was screaming one thing, while it was exactly the opposite. His 1 gate was not enough to hold the strong delayed 2 fact push. Hell, Nada even hid his 2nd tank for about 20 seconds. VERY good mind games. If Nada can maintain such a mental level of play that would make up for his lowered stamina and reaction time of simply being older than young bucks like Baby, I wouldn't be surprised if he got some more PT in the proleague.
Excellent play. I just had to blog about this.
If you haven't seen this, check this out. Seriously.
http://www.teamliquid.net/vods/?event=565
