GSL November - Jjakji's route to the finals

Killer v Jjakji (Calm before the Storm)
In a big macro game, both players go for an expansion first on the new map (and biggest map) in the map pool. They get up to three bases very quickly, with double forge with Colossus for Killer, standard bio plus Vikings and Ghosts for Jjakji. Eventually both get max upgrades but eventually Killer wears him down with a frightening unit mix of HT, Archons, Colossus and a smattering of gateway units. Protoss has the strongest max upgraded army, and it showed, as Killer eventually wore down Jjakji, who had stuck with mainly bio as the bulk of his army.
Personally I find it very annoying that top level Terrans don’t transition away from a mainly bio army in the late game against Protoss, as the splash damage from the high tech Protoss units just demolishes them. ANYWAYS moving on...

Supernova v Jjakji (Bel’Shir Beach)
Amusingly both players proxy Marauder rush each other. Both players have their Marauders enter the opponents base unchallenged, in this wonky situation Jjakji lifts his main to fly to Supernovas main (and transfers all his remaining SCV’s), whereas Supernova leaves his base to mine as much as possible and builds an extra barracks in base. In the superior situation, Supernova should win; however, he attempted to break the bunker entrance that Jjakji had set up in Supernovas old main

Wouldn’t advise attempting to break this

While he killed most of Jjakji's SCVs, enough remained and when Jjakji found the hidden second barracks it was GG.

Virus v Jjakji (Tal’Darim Altar)
Both players open non-cloaked banshees, but Virus with reactor hellions and with some nice hellion micro Virus was ahead slightly in the early game. When both had their naturals up and running Virus pushed with more siege tanks but no medivacs (compared to Jjakji’s two). Virus’s siege-mode and stim were almost finished when Jjakji caught all three tanks with a big stim when they were exposed

All those blue units aren’t long for this game

A nice drop by Virus caused a lot of damage, but not enough, as Jjakji wins a crucial engagement at the foot of Virus’s natural.GG

All those blue units aren’t long for this game

Jjakji should have been eliminated by Supernova, but he got a bit lucky, Supernova bungled a winning position in their game and the NSHoSeo star advanced.

Jjakji again got very lucky and was in the group with a free win (due to Coca being withdrawn by his team for throwing a game, very sad considering how talented he is, but that is a whole other story). However his first game was against the consensus best player in the world.

MVP v Jjakji (Crossfire)
Jjakji went with your standard early Ghost academy plus Reapers, however MVP killed most of the Reapers in an early push while going for cloaked Banshees, whilst those didn’t do much initially due to Ghosts owning Banshees, MVP simply built up a decent force of Marines and Siege tanks (with siege-mode) and pushed the front while his remaining Banshee hit Jjakji’s main. Forcing Jjakji to lift his expansion, MVP simply contained Jjakji and denied his attempt to take a sneaky third

Spotted

Jjakji’s finally attempted to break out but got smashed and the game ended.

Coca v Jjakji



Gumiho v Jjakji (Dual Sight)
Jjakji opened with a Reaper expand into 3 Ghosts, Gumiho did a standard barracks expand. An early push for Gumiho was shut down hard by bunker just finishing followed by snipes. Throughout the game there was some cute EMP’s on medivacs by Jjakji, an interesting strategy, which, according to the evidence of this game, is fairly effective. Jjakji sniped the third of Gumiho easily, whereas Gumiho took loooots of damage sniping Jjakji’s third. The only other note-worthy moment was an amusing pull of SCVs for no particular reason by Gumiho

Where you guys off to?

In the end a superior tank count of Jjakji made up for his inferior upgrades, rolling over the towel Terran.

In the round of 8 Jjakji had to face Puzzle, a very apt name as is hard to figure out. He can be fantastic one game (e.g. code A run) and pathetic the next (getting supply blocked at 27 his first time in code S and going out 0-2). Not many gave Jjakji much of a chance however, with the voting public at least putting Puzzle as the big favourite

Terran imba?

Puzzle v Jjakji – Game one (Daybreak)
Puzzle opened DT expand against Jjakji’s cloaked Banshee build (a build order loss for Protoss if ever I saw one..). Interestingly, after expanding, Jjakji threw down an armoury, to begin Thor production. Despite the obvious disadvantage of having no detection when the Banshees first hit, Puzzle managed to do a lot of damage with the DTs and traded about evenly, in worker kills, with the Banshees before a Raven came out to clean them up. After a frenetic opening the game stabilises with Jjakji pumping Thors, Banshees and Marines off two base. Before long Jjakji had a significant lead, on the same number of bases + mules = 137 supply, compared to 103 for toss. Puzzle did scout Jjakji’s unusual unit composition and went for Colossus and Void rays to counter. However he didn’t get enough anti-air (or detection!) to pick off the Terran air.


Thors tanked the damage, the Raven picked off the Obs, and then the Banshees cleaned up, simples.
This was our first real viewing of Jjakji’s creativity; he had a carefully prepared build for the map and executed it clinically.

Game two (Calm before the Storm)
Both participants go expansion first (no surprises...) on the humungous map, Jjakji again goes for an unorthodox follow up, with lots of reactor barracks plus siege tanks. Puzzle on the other hand went robotics for a quick observer and a double forge, already a proven build against Jjakji on this map in GSL November, however this time Jjakji had changed up his game, again giving us another glimpse of his creative mind-set. A sick Observer snipe with excellent turret placement (one example of excellent planning from the Terran) kept the Protoss in the dark about Jjakji’s intentions. He Pushed out, close to 100 supply, to contain the toss (a further sign of his excellent planning was a proxy barracks to give him high ground vision). Puzzle cancels his building third and starts DTs. Jjakji got up 6 plus bunkers in the contain

How do you break out of this one?

Luckily for Jjakji the double forge built close to edge of Puzzles base, to avoid being scanned, but got taken out by tank fire. To counter, Puzzle attempted warp prism harass but was shut down by a few units and excellent turret placement. At this stage Jjakji looked so in-control of the game and was staying a step ahead of everything Puzzle was trying. Jjakji advanced some turrets and bunkers into the Protoss main while Puzzle attempted to warp Zealots in and attack the front of the Terran base. Jjakji simply raised his depots and shuts it down hard. Jjakji didn’t try to get his third too early, he knew he had Puzzle contained to 2 bases, so took his time and bunkered up his front to prevent counter attacks.

Bunker fetish

Puzzle did eventually break the contain nicely, with Zealots flanking from the back (Prism warp ins). But Terran has been a base up for too long. Excellent double pronged drop harass snipes the double forges again and the newly built third nexus, all this while building up 9 ghosts… GG

Game three (Bel’Shir Beach)
A 1 rax expand from Jjakji was countered by a four gate from Puzzle. In a pretty terrible game, Puzzle did a lot of damage and the worker count was 19-5 in his favour by the time Jjakji held and he is ahead 21-16 in food but still GG’s (channelling some inner Idra).

Very impressive series from Jjakji, showed very well thought out builds, with the details perfected. Clearly a very creative Terran, willing to branch out and try unusual strategies against Puzzle

Jjakji was up against a PvT machine in Oz, with a 75% win rate against Terran in the GSL, Oz having showed excellent Templar play all through his time in code S against Terrans. AGAIN the view poll shows no-one gave Jjakji a chance; surely after his demolition of Puzzle in the previous round he had gained a small measure of respect?

No chance

Game one (Daybreak)
Jjakji opened up the semi-finals with a 1 rax expand, Oz went for 1 gate into stargate, Oz started pumping out a few Phoenix for scouting and minor harass, which did almost nothing, Oz then expanded while getting a robotics, forge and a twilight council. Both players macro up and both go for a third as well, however with all this greediness in teching from Oz it should come as no surprise that a simple push into the third of the Wizardtoss, just before storm finished, killed Oz fairly easily

Can’t get too greedy now...

Game two (Calm before the Storm)
No surprises as both players go for expansion first on the monster macro map of the map pool, Jjakji goes for quick third CC (built in-base), while Oz goes Robotics off his two bases. Despite a lucky/gosu SCV scouting the Warp Prism leaving Oz’s base, Jjakji couldn’t hold the incoming attack from Oz.

Special tactics detected

In fact the scouting might actually have hurt him, because he pulled units to his back expansion to defend a possible drop there, while Oz simply went in the front door. Oz displayed some very nice force field traps at the Terran front while his Immortal smashed down the wall-in buildings to take the win.


Game three (Dual sight)
In a short game, Jjakji took out Oz (who early expanded) with a cloaked Banshee 1-1-1 build. Only really interesting for Oz trying to counter all-in into a 1-1-1 army after Banshees killed most of his probes.


Game four (Tal’Darim Altar)



GG

Game five (Bel’Shir Beach)
After a couple of crazy games, both players decided for a macro game. With a 1 barracks expand from Jjakji against a 1 gate expand (after an annoying engineering bay delay) from Oz. Oz wanted to put on a bit of early pressure, but backed up after seeing the bunkers at the Terran front. Oz then transitioned into double forge play while teching to both kinds of Templars; meanwhile Jjakji went standard bio play. Jjakji barely denied a DT access to his base with a depot lift and again got lucky as one of his (full) harassing drop ships escaped some pursuing Stalkers with 12 hp! After all his investment in tech, Oz was down by 30 supply, Jjakji took advantage of his army lead and pushed with about 6 Ghosts towards the newly created Protoss third. Jjakji managed to engage the Protoss army just before storm finished researching and caught all the sentries clumped up ready for his EMPs

No more force-fields

2-2 upgrades were simply not enough for Oz and he was forced to GG.

After the brilliance of his series against Puzzle, Jjakji looked a lot more vulnerable against Oz, though looking at Oz’s record against Terran that was no real surprise. Whilst the series was by no means a classic, with a lot of cheesy play and all-ins, it was nice to see both players attempt a straight up game when it was all on the line in game 5.

Going into the finals, once again, no-one thought Jjakji had a chance


That point of view can be well understood after Leenocks victory at MLG Providence and his defeat of MVP in the semi-finals (before you read any more of this, do yourself a favour and go watch that series RIGHT NOW, one of the best BO5 series in Starcraft 2 so far, done? Excellent, now we can continue). For a good example of the expectation on Leenock check out the Team Liquid code S finals preview, where there is a conversation between the writer and his friend that I think is very symptomatic of how most Starcraft fans were feeling before the finals (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=291049).

Well those kinds of odds don’t seem to have affected Jjakji much so far... Also bear in mind that this was Jjakji’s first vZ match of the season, so it gave Leenock less games to observe Jjakji’s recent style against Zerg. Clearly a huge advantage for the NSHoSeo player.

Pride comes before a fall

Finally, hopes weren’t too high given the curse of the GSL finals so far, with only 2 finals that haven’t been 4-0 or 4-1 blow outs. However given both Leenock and Jjakji’s creative play so far I carried a faint hope of an epic final series for my favourite tournament.


Game one (Tal’Darim Altar)
Jjakji begun the finals with a reactor Hellion expand, while Leenock went hatch first. The first meaningful action was a beautifully planned overlord snipe by Jjakji with his first two marines – a sign of things to come. Nice Sim-city at Leenocks front prevented Hellions from doing any meaningful damage; however they do trap the Zerg in his base. Jjakji takes advantage by building a sneaky third


After some macroing up, Jjakji sent out a big push with his first 3 tanks towards Leenock. After forcing a lot of units from Leenock, Jjakji simply returned home (cue Artosis nerd chills), Leenock double expanded himself, but Jjakji was about to get his fourth as well. Leenock showed his creative spark by creating double spires for double air upgrades; a superb choice on such a big map, in which Mutalisk harass is so effective. With the economic edge, but with his hidden base starting to mine out, Jjakji shut down Leenocks fifth with siege tanks and marines on the overlooking high ground. In return Leenock sniped the Terran fifth with his Muta flock. Multiple burrowed Baneling bombs were excellent in thinning out the Marine numbers for Leenock, however the essentially excellent play from Leenock was masking the fact that he was fundamentally behind and eventually (despite 3-3 upgraded air and ground melee) the engagements in the middle began to turn in the Terrans favour. Finally, after 33 minutes, Leenock scouted the hidden base, yet by that stage it was nearly mined out. Multiple drops kept Leenock occupied, but both were having trouble keeping new bases up, with multiple trades. Unfortunately for the Zerg a fail manual Baneling detonation killed about 25 banes for nothing

Possible game changing mistake

Finally Jjakji upgraded cloak for Ghosts, caught the Infestors with an EMP and then had free reign to snipe away at Leenocks Broodlords while the rest of his army cleans up everything else

No overseers in sight

A well thought out and brilliantly executed build from Jjakji took the first set. Not a bad start to the finals then…

Game two (Crossfire)
Just to be original, Jjakji opened with reactor Hellions, against a hatch first from Leenock. Again Jjakji attempted to find the first overlord in the early game with his first 2 marines (unsuccessfully this time round), however, instead of expanding, Jjakji added two more barracks to go for an all-in. With his Hellions out on the map denying scouting, Leenock didn’t see it coming and got caught droning too hard.

Scouted too late to stop

Again a superbly thought out build (as the opening looked identical to game one) to take advantage of Leenocks natural tendency to drone very hard in the early game.

Game three (Daybreak)
Hatch first once again for Leenock and a reactor Hellion expand for Jjakji; again the Terran takes out Leenocks first overlord with two Marines by lifting his barracks to see the high ground where all Zergs hide an Ovie


Despite the Hellions poking around, Leenock took an early third, while Terran got his production up. Leenock was thinking long term and began double melee upgrades; meanwhile Jjakji dropped the Zerg main to draw Leenock away while he attacked the third. However Leenock delayed the push on the third with a Spine Crawler and flanked the Terran force with Zerglings to prevent the army from escaping and crushed it. To cap it off Leenock deflected the drop when it re-landed in his main with some sexy transfuses from two Queens. All this while 2-2 was on the way for ground melee as well. Jjakji got a third while Leenock took a fourth along with his spire and Infestor pit tech. Jjakji killed the Zerg fourth while Leenock killed the Terran third, but crucially, not many drones were lost for Leenock, while Jjakji lost a considerable number when he lost his third. Leenock then killed off the Terran push that had killed his last expansion after 2-2 was finished, putting him 30 supply ahead. Leenock was now miles ahead and teched to Broodlords and took a fifth while Jjakji was still on 2 bases. The nail in the coffin for Jjakji was a sick Baneling landmine that killed off 15 of 16 marines who were moving to harass the Zerg fourth. From there it was impossible for Jjakji to stop the macro of Leenock.
While clearly the plan was to distract the Zerg while killing his third, Jjakji didn’t execute perfectly, got flanked by Leenock and lost his push without killing off the base. This put him behind, and along with the quick upgrades of Leenock he couldn’t recover.

Game four (Bel’Shir Beach)
Both players opened up with the same builds as last map, with Jjakji unsuccessful in finding an early overlord this time round. Jjakji then threw down two starports with tech labs (+ cloak) while Leenock teched to lair. A supply block did delay the Banshees significantly for Jjakji, but he pushed with four (two in the main two in the natural) and hit as the Spire finished. Crucially however, he attacked some Lings with his Banshees before they got to Leenocks front, giving the Zerg crucial seconds to get up detection. Mutas popped and took out two of the Banshees before they got away and they had done almost no damage whatsoever (only two workers and one Queen went down). Leenock grabbed a third and fourth as he knew Jjakji couldn’t pressure him. After macroing up and some light Muta harass, Jjakji pushed out to kill the fourth while forcing the drones to evacuate the third with a banshee. Jjakji killed the fourth before circling back around the middle to advance towards the third. Unfortunately for the Terran, Leenock killed all of his tanks in the following engagement as the Banelings chased off the marines, leaving them exposed to the Mutalisks. Leenock re-took his fourth while Jjakji took his own third; again Jjakji pushed towards Leenocks third while the Zerg countered into the Terran natural, they trade bases putting Zerg on three, Terran on two. As Jjakji pushed out again a huge chunk of marines were taken out by a landmine – putting Leenock in a supply lead

A common sight in this series

Jjakji again killed the Zerg fourth (Leenock had re-made his third), but Leenock countered and killed off the Terran third, leaving him on just his main command centre, which was mined out


This he lifted to fly to his third but u burrowed ling couldn’t be detected as his only orbital was lifted


Intelligently, Jjakji killed the Ling with splash damage from his own tanks targeting a Marine. Jjakji then pushed towards a newly created top right base, as he did so Mutas sniped off his last orbital leaving him with no scans to detect Baneling mines. While Jjakji’s push killed both top right bases, leaving Zerg with no mining, Leenock was busy killing all the remaining buildings in the Terran main. Crucially Jjakji managed to get out a Raven before lifting all the buildings in his main and with his buildings now following him, Jjakji moved towards the Zerg main while Leenock took the 8 o clock expansion,


As Jjakji slow pushed into Leenocks main some newly acquired Infestors got off some huge fungals, the Raven got sniped, and the Infestors burrowed to escape. While Jjakji cleaned up the main Leenock set up numerous landmines on the path to his remaining base, but Jjakji elevatored out of Leenocks main to avoid them!

No mine detectors, no problem!

Unfortunately for the Terran Leenock had enough production left to kill off his dwindling forces to force the GG.

Superb countering by Leenock kept him ahead on bases and eventually forced Jjakji into an unfavourable base trade where the mobile Zerg is always going to be at an advantage. Already the best GSL finals so far, I thought Leenock might have broken Jjakji’s spirit. Reduced to a single BO3 the finals were heating up.

Game five (Dual Sight)
The game started pretty badly for Jjakji with Leenock catching his hidden barracks straight away (placed there to lift and kill the overlord on the cliff which eventually he did)


Leenock himself went hatch first. Jjakji decided to change things up a bit and go reactor hellion expand, after taking his expand Jjakji pushed out with his first two siege tanks to pressure the Zerg front. Leenock bungled the engagement by getting his Banelings trapped behind a spine crawler and a Queen

Not good positioning for a Zerg

Jjakji proceeded to target down the banes with his tanks and barely lose anything. From there Jjakji simply rallied re-enforcements to the Zerg front and battered down the front door (along with some BM mule drops), JjakGG

Sloppy game from Leenock but very well microed by Jjakji, such a simple (and common!) timing should never have done so much damage to Leenock. Jjakji was now one game away from glory..

Game six (Calm before the Storm)
Both players go expansion first (do you see a trend with this map?), with Leenock taking the front expansion; Jjakji followed up with reactor Hellions while Leenock went for his back third expansion. While building his own third CC Jjakji pushed out with Marines, Hellions and two Medivacs to pressure the Zerg front, however Leenock caught 3 hellions with his lings before the push hit to greatly reduce its effectiveness. While not doing much damage, Jjakji didn’t lose too much, as he just picked up the Marines when surrounded as Mutalisks weren’t yet out on the map. All this time Jjakji got his third up and starting producing Siege tanks, he advanced again with Tanks and Marines while Leenocks Zerglings were attacking the destructible rocks at his fourth. Jjakji’s push is cleaned up but they trade fairly evenly. Unfortunately for Jjakji the Zerg had total map control and lots of important upgrades finished (Bane-speed and burrow). Leenock clearly in a lead, both players macroed up while Leenock got his fourth while planting Baneling mines to slow Jjakji’s pushes. Following some dancing round the map for position, Jjakji gets a significant portion of his army to the Zerg front, then waited for the remainder (protecting his base) to join up. With the Terran set up near his front Leenock countered into the Terran third, forcing Jjakji to turn home with his army and still sniping the third CC before he had to leave

Houdini Mutas

From here I thought for sure Leenock had reached the tipping point where Zerg macro simply crushes through Terran with not enough bases, however, Jjakji calmly re-built his third and pushed out into Zerg territory. Leenock again countered with Lings and Mutas, however, Jjakji had left a significant force at home, crucially, Jjakji had 2-2 finished on his bio whereas Leenock only had 2-1 on his ground and 1-1 (2-2 not quite finished) on his Mutas. In that single engagement Leenock dropped 50 supply(compared to 10 for Jjakji) and his Muta count was crippled

The pivotal engagement of GSL November

Since Leenock hadn’t taken a fifth base far away when he had map control, Jjakji now had the simple task of pushing again towards the Zerg front with his maxed ball of Marines, Tanks and Thors, Leenock desperately scrambled to defend but a further Marine attack that killed off his fourth was too much and he was forced to GG.

One happy nerd champion

Themes of the series included constant first Overlord sniping from Jjakji, too many Baneling landmines to even count, as well as wonderful planning overall from Jjakji.
Jjakji and Leenock set the new standard by which further GSL finals must be judged, long macro games, mixed in with beautifully executed aggressive pushes. These finals had it all. GSL November was a long hard road for Jjakji and with a final record of 13-6 (not including his walkover against Coca) clearly he didn’t dominate like some previous winners, however his insightful builds that he implemented masterfully make him a worthy winner.

Here’s one for the underdogs!