The Lost Games - TL's Best Games, September 2018

September 2018

Creator vs TY on Lost and Found - VOD - 2018 Afreeca TV GSL Super Tournament 2 - Ro16

Cool guys don't look at explosions.

There's a very good argument that this game wasn't even the best game of this series. The first map had everyone on the edge of their seats. Can Creator really beat TY?! - we marvelled. This one was more like Did Creator really let him max out on battlecruisers?. Nevertheless, it did have battlecruiers. It doesn't matter that for the 60 minutes of this game, 30 was just waiting around. It doesn't matter that Creator sloppily lost what seemed to be at least a guaranteed draw. All that matters is Tae Yang finally got to transition to mass battlecruisers in an offline match.
And they cleaned the house.

Neeb vs TY on 16-bit - VOD - 2018 GSL Season 3 - Ro4

It really was.
Even though that Neeb advanced to GSL semifinals, something not done by a foreigner since Jinro's back to back runs in 2010, few people gave him a shot against TY. The Splyce Terran was crushing it left and right, easily beating sOs and Stats in his ro16 group and reverse sweeping Classic in bo7 the day before. In fact, at 1-2 and losing 37 workers to an adept attack in game 4, the Terran was on the ropes.
Nevertheless, it was a Korean Terran. And a comeback was only a matter of pressing buttons fast enough to make your opponent dizzy.

Maru vs TY on Lost and Found - VOD - 2018 GSL Season 3 - Grand Finals

Would you believe me if I told you that from here, there's 27 minutes with battlecruisers and ghosts left to this game?

The memorable game 4 against Maru had to make this list, completing TY's hat trick. And somehow, 2 parts of his hat trick involve battlecruisers. It has to be magic at this point. Either way, this game on Lost and Found started bog standard, with Maru proxying TY for the 4th game in a row of the GSL Grand Finals and TY hanging on. However, exclusively for this game, neither player can find a real window to kill the other before late game. And then late game turns to super late game, and super late game turns into a massive air war. Eventually, it became a question of what would win out - TY's superior base count, or Maru's superior efficiency?

Classic vs Creator on Acid Plant - VOD - 2018 Afreeca TV GSL Super Tournament 2 - Ro8

Our numbers will darken the sky of every world.

Ladies and gentlemen, this one is a first. We've featured a lot of games in the past few months. But never have we actually highlighted a game of the Protoss mirror match-up. So what exactly did Classic and Creator do here that made the difference? Well, for starters they built a lot of phoenixes. But unlike the average phoenix war, this game did not just end with either player snowballing out of control because their opponent got themselves a single poor engagement. Instead, these two just kept on going, until eventually, they deviated. Creator opted for the mighty carriers, while Classic tried his luck with archons. This game went down to the wire, a testament to the level both of these guys brought for the Super Tournament.

Serral vs Reynor on Cerulean Fall - VOD - 2018 WCS Montreal - Grand Finals

I don't think this is what the start of a comeback normally looks like.

Looking back at things, the WCS Circuit this year could be reduced to one word, one person: Serral. After all, he won every WCS stop and even GSL vs the World. It is easy to think of him as peerless in the world of foreigners, someone who stands on the same level as all the top Koreans. But would we do WCS justice with this simplification? Denied from competing in 2 out of 4 WCS stops because of his young age, Reynor immediately made some waves once he was allowed in. It took the 16-year-old all of two attempts to reach the finals. And watching this game, we cannot help but feel that it should have taken him all of two attempts to become a WCS champion. In this incredible 32 minute ZvZ slugfest, Reynor comes the closest to beating Serral in the finals that anyone has been all year. And maybe if he did, Serral wouldn't be the only talk of WCS town at the Global Finals.

THE HAS AWARD FOR INDESCRIBABLY WEIRD GAMES
TIME vs Has on Cerulean Fall - VOD - 2018 WCS Montreal - Ro16

Would be a shame if someone repowered this stargate you left there, eh TIME?

It has finally happened. The Has award of the month goes to... Has! We sure have kept you waiting with the leader of the Hasian Republic receiving his own award, and this may or may not have upset some people. Regardless, this game is well worth the wait. This game is actually in many ways reminiscent of a series Has played way back in 2016 against the one we now call the greatest Terran in the world, Maru, in the qualifiers for IEM Ggyeongi. Multiple games of said series, to be precise. There's both a very strange basetrade, and... Has blowing an absolutely astonishing advantage in seconds, for no reason whatsoever. Now, you might say "Never base race a Terran!", but it doesn't seem like anyone ever taught this to Has. Or maybe someone did and he just doesn't care because he's Has. Either way, this type of game is what we all look forward to whenever Has plays.

Recommended games of September:
TY vs Creator on Acid Plant - VOD
Stats vs Trap on Dreamcatcher - VOD
Bunny vs Dark on Dreamcatcher - VOD
Rogue vs GuMiho on Lost and Found - VOD
DnS vs Hellraiser on Acid Plant - VOD
Dark vs Trap Full Series - VOD