Battle Report: Sora vs Flash

Flash's ruler would also feature

Flash spawns in the top left of Bel'shir Vestige as the red Terran while Sora spawns in the bottom right as the blue Protoss.



The game starts off the only way Flash knows how, with a standard 1rax reaper expand from Flash and a similarly standard 1gate expand from Sora. However, Sora is quickly thrown a curveball as he discovers an ebay block at his natural expansion.



Successfully delaying his opponent's natural, Flash decides that while Sora's attention is elsewhere he'll attempt to disrupt his rhythm even further, he can show the world that he isn't all about completely standard play, constructing a factory and a starport at Sora's eventual fourth.



Unaware of the ominous constructions essentially at his doorstep, Sora flies across the map with his MSC in an attempt to delay Flash's CC somewhat. He manages to damage the constructing SCV but is pushed away by a group of marines. Meanwhile, a scouting Zealot finds the proxies - having already built two widow mines in preparation for a drop. With the intent of delaying the WM drop, Sora gets a little cute with his Zealot, going in for an attack and activating both mines, marginally delaying the attack at the cost of 100 minerals



Sora thus stops the attempted harassment before it can even begin, getting a cannon and an observer out to meet the medivac. Flash attempts to find an opening in Sora's defenses but finds none and decides that his window of oppurtunity has closed, lifting the buildings and flying them to his main. But as we've learned, it doesn't matter which Starcraft he's playing, Flash will always find a way to do this:



as quickly as possible. With a marginally faster third base, Flash looks to settle for a standard macro game, researching stim, combat shields and +1 weapons in response to Sora's construction of a twilight council, robotics bay and +1 armor. Knowing that his medivac production had been significantly delayed by his thwarted widow mine antics, Flash walks across the map with a small group of marauders and marines and a slightly out-of-place widow mine. His push is easily repelled by Sora's ground forces, however, and the game looks to go into the next stage as Flash begins researching 2-2 and Sora decides that he wants to change the world's opinion of Inca.


When anything, Dark Shrine

Both Sora and Flash know that the Protoss is significantly ahead in terms of tech and army value, and Sora successfully exorts map control while Flash is confined to his three bases, helpless to push the growing ball of Protoss power back any significant length. With this in mind, Sora decides that a Dark Shrine - unscouted and unprepared for, is the way to go. Hoping to further set Flash's game plan back, he supplements his beginning high templar production with a group of dark templars, sending the latter to ravage Flash's mining bases.


Flashian Greed, one of the seven mortal sins of Starcraft, here punished as is proper

With but a single scan available and no turrets yet constructed, Flash is unable to cope with Sora's DTs as they attack all his bases simultaneously, crippling his economy and forcing Flash's hand. At this point, Flash's army is superior to Sora's in terms of numbers and upgrades, but knowing that his damaged economy does not match up against Sora's, Flash moves out with the intent of inflicting serious damage of his own. And how does one maximise one's odds in a straight-up TvP engagement?


Knock knock, motherfucker!

Although Sora is well on his way to establishing a 4-base economy, he is visibly ill-prepared for the onslaught of Terran units, hesitating to engage an all-stimmed-up MMM army. Though Sora manages to incinerate 30 supply's worth of units, Flash's bio pushes through and takes out both the fully established third and the constructing fourth base while Sora is helpless to fight the opposing army.


Not pictured: Sora ravages another mineral line with zealots and supply blocks Flash by destroying a number of supply depots

Now finding himself on the back foot, Sora sends another zealot hit squad across the map but it is intercepted by Flash's bio. Down two bases to three, the only thing Sora has going for him is the tech advantage. Worried that Flash might get further ahead should he wait, Sora attempts a poke into the third base of Flash but is pushed back without killing a single unit.
At this point, the game begins to break down into the multi-pronged stage of PvT as yet another one of Sora's zealot hitsquads begins to work on Flash's natural and a 2-medivac drop hits Sora's main hard and fast while he is completely out of position.


While a drop tears Sora's main apart, the CJ Protoss suffers from a moment of indecisiveness and his army is left standing helplessly in the middle of the map

Taking out more than half of Sora's warp gates while he takes no damage in return, Flash decides that it is now time to establish a fourth base, while he has almost every advantage imaginable. Crippled by his own indecisiveness, Sora struggles to fend off yet more drops while initiating his switch to his own preferred late-game army, looking to start his tempest production immediately to stand even a small chance at fighting Flash's increasingly powerful MMMVG-army. Hoping to find additional weakness in Sora's armor, Flash sends a quadruple medivac drop across the map intending to inflict potentially game-ending damage to the Protoss.


NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

With a reactionary speed to match anyone, Sora pulls off two clutch feedbacks in rapid succession, taking out two medivacs' worth of units in a fraction of a second and sending the rest of the units running (flying) with their tails (boosters) between their legs (engines). Having now taken a 30 supply lead, Sora realises that he might never get a better chance and he moves out with his ball of units now consisting of tempest/colossi/HT/stalker/zealot, an army of unrivalled poke capacity. Although Sora soon takes a few careful steps toward Flash's army, picking off a ghost here and there, he remains unwilling to engage.


Pictured: two progamers' rendition of the Cold War

Exchanging tempest and viking fire, the two players move closer to their ultimate armies as they finish the last tweaks, Flash adding in ravens with corvid reactor research and Sora researching shield upgrades and getting the last air upgrades. Sora's zealot runbys continue to be a nuisance but the minor economic damage dealt by the Protoss takes the back seat as the first big engagement in a long time takes place.



Pushing Sora's army back and destroying a few of the retreating tempests with viking fire, Flash looks to be in a great position to finish the game and take the first victory for KT Rolster. Sora's storms push him back momentarily but the Protoss army sustains comparably heavy losses as colossi and tempests fall to viking fire. With a last-ditch push, Sora shoves the Terran army back up to the high ground. And there, Sora's tactical brilliance shines through as the trap activates:


Not pictured: a high templar moving in from the right, blanketing the Terran bio in psi storms

A templar flank, executed flawlessly, is a lethal weapon. Flash gets to experience this first-hand as storms rain down on his army from all sides, melting bio and ravaging the viking/medivac counts. Scrambling, Flash attempts to retreat but finds himself being chased by tempests and the remainder of Sora's still powerful army. He makes a last stand at his base but as zealots close in from the left flank and the army at the front decimates what little he has left, the Ultimate Weapon has to surrender both the battle and the game.



Having won his first official Proleague match ever at the age of 19 against the most formidable presence in the league, Sora indulges in the ever-so-rare mini-ceremony, fist-bumping, giving the camera thumbs-up and then doing whatever the fuck to conclude, overjoyed that he'd just secured the first and perhaps most important map of the series for CJ Entus.