EPTOkay, after having my ears nearly bleed out listening to Tastosis attempt to GSL Group D on August 9th, I felt compelled to write up addressing a lot of problems I have with Tastosis casting. I’m doing this because Tastosis is a highly regarded brand name amongst foreigners, and their attempts at analysis often accepted without question by the community, despite the fact their casting is riddled with bias and errors. I understand that there are a lot of fans amongst the community who love Tastosis, not in the least because they provide “entertaining commentary” (which is subjective, so I won’t dwell upon that too much), and will dismiss this criticism out of hand. After all, Tastosis is theoretically good for ESPORTS, and hating on them is just uncool, or something. However, I feel as if blind acceptance of Tastosis casting, especially as flawed as it is, is a detriment to both the development of their improvement as casters and good analytical English casting as a whole, and so feel the need to detail the issues with their analysis.
First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
Inb4 tl;dr, YOU’RE RUINING ESPORTS, etc.
