[Thoughts/Review] KT vs SKT

So the Game begins, Canata spawns in white at 3 o clock, while Violet spawns in purple (heh...Violet in purple...heh) at 9 o clock. Canata hows to stir excitement in the crowd, as he sends an early SCV to build a barracks RIGHT INSIDE Violet’s main. Canata then sends a 2nd SCV sometime later out to make a supply depot in the middle of nowhere (even cancelling his initial supply depot to just to make it there.





Unfortunately for Canata, His SCV ventured too far out when building the rax, and Violet was just barely able to catch a glimpse of it. Violet sends a probe to make sure what he was seeign was right, and he finds the proxy rax and pulls probes to take it down, as well as any marines that pop. So when the first marine does pop out for Canata tries to protect it by going itno a corner and blocking it with an SCV, but the probe range just barely manages to kill it, forcing Canata into a tight position.




instead of cutting his losses and trying to get back in the game with standard play, Canata makes a 2nd barracks right outside violet’s natural, and walls his own choke with a supply depot, only furthering the confusion. After the in-base rax gets shut down, Canata is forced to lift it, and he makes a 3rd rax next to the 2nd one, but they are both scouted shortly after. Canata, having failed at both cheese attempts, fell way behind and decided to transition into standard play by getting his gas up follwoed by 1 factory. Violet, however, took advantage of the fact that Canata had nothing more than a bunker defending his base, so he camped outside Canata’s main’s choke while he built up his goons (while sneaking a zealot in for annoyance). Finally, once Violet built up his force, he pushed into Canata’s base. Violet’s picked off a couple of scv’s repairing Canata’s bunker, but then ran past the bunker and sniped the newly built siege tank. After losing the tank, Canata gg’d.

KT 1 - 0 SKT

As Violet leaves his booth, he starts dancing like he was a 3 year old attempting a headbang or something.




He promptly runs into the audience (with the KT Girls dancing behind him) and he goes to where Yellow is. Violet takes Yellow by the hand and tries to make him do a dance. Yellow, at first refuses, but when Violet turns his back, Yellow starts dancing.

Stats spawns in yellow at the top left while Bisu spawns in red at the bottom right. Both players open with the same build: core, zealot into early range upgrade, except Stats cancells his rnage after Bisu's scout is gone. Stats opts for a nexus right off of 1 gateway, whereas Bisu places a citadel followed by 2nd gateway, meaning dt tech -> fe with cannons. Luckily for Stats, he makes a robo facility right after the nexus followed by a 2nd gateway. After the robo facility comes up for stats, he places an observatory, meaning that he would be fine from any DT harass, as long as he doesn’t let them get up the ramp. Bisu’s dt’s came to stat’s nat, but stats had a wall of dragoons + 1 pylon, forcing Bisu to kill the dragoons, which only bought time for Stats to get his observer out. The observer did pop out, and the dt’s were forced to leave before they could do any damage, putting Bisu in a bit of a disadvantage.




Stats knew that since he blocked off the dts, and his expansion was faster, he was well ahead and had map control He used this map control to apply pressure to Bisu’s natural, forcing him to use both of his storms, and making Bisu lose a lot of dragoons early on. Because of this small skirmish, Stats was able to take his 3rd base at the double gas expansion without worry of any attack from Bisu, so this would only propel Stats’ lead.




From here, Bisu tried to catch up, but Stats’s economy was just so much stronger than Bisu’s. Eventually, Bisu was able to take his 3rd,but that was shortly followed by a massive engagement, where Stats’ units simply overwhelmed Bisu’s. Bisu gg’d shortly after.

KT 2 - 0 SKT

Stats takes some sort of shell-like thing that says “2nd place” in Korean, and smashes it with his foot.

Best spawns in blue at 6 o clock while ForGG spawns in orange at 3 o clock. Best opens up with 1 gate core into 2nd gateway with a normal expansion time. ForGG, on the other hand, went for an aggressive FD push, consisting of 8 marines and 2 tanks. As forGG went to push, best was already waiting outside of his natural with 4 dragoons and 1 zealot. A small micro battle ensues and best manages to snipe 7 marines and 1 tank while only losing 2 dragoons and 1 zealot. Luckily for ForGG, his vulture + miens completed, and Best was forced to back off. Failing to apply pressure early on, ForGG was behind and immediately threw down his CC. From there, the game continued down the standard path as Best added his robotics facility for observers and ForGG threw down his ebay for turrets, and a 2nd factory later. ForGg decides to take the economic route and make his 3rd CC in-base. Best scouts this and throws down his 3rd nexus in response.

Once ForGG got his 3rd saturated, he began adding on factories. Likewise, Best adds on gateways, and techs to arbiters after his 3rd base is up and saturated. Eventually, Best added his 4th base, meaning that he was going for the macro-style that we know oh so well. After a couple of minutes of both players massing, Best attacks ForGG’s 3rd base. In the following battle that ensued: ForGG made 1 huge mistake: He had 7 tanks in his nat that were out of position and unsieged. Because of this, Best was able to overwhelm ForGG’s 3rd base, taking out the CC, and even stasising 5 of the tanks as they were rushing to get into position.




Best was able to get as far as outside ForGG’s nat before he was forced to back off, but he did the damage he needed to with that push. ForGG lost a lot of units, as well as his 3rd base, setting him back quite a lot. Best took advantage of this by taking his 5th base, further solidifying his lead. ForGG tries to close the gap a bit by dropping 2 tanks at Best’s 4th base. Although Forgg managed to have a successful drop by taking out the 4th base, Best recalls into ForGG’s main, doing massive damage, while pushing with the remainder of his force into ForGG’s 3rd. From there, it all went downhill for ForGG because his 3rd base was destroyed almost immediately, and best was pounding on his natural CC with dragoons. As Best’s next wave of units streamed it, ForGG typed out.

KT 2 - 1 SKT

After Best leaves the booth, he takes off his shirt to reveal....another shirt! And with that shirt, he rips it off in a manly fashion, revealing.....his pseudo-muscular body.




As he returns to his team for high fives, he flexes his muscles and points to the SKT1 tattoo on his arm.

s2 spawns in yellow at the top left, while Tempest spawns in red at the bottom left. s2 opens with 12 hatch. Tempest scouts this and goes nexus after forge, while getting his gateway up before placing any cannons. s2 then makes a 3rd hatchery in the natural of the top right base. Things continued pretty standardly, until Tempest threw down 2 starports instead of 1, followed by a robotics facility meaning only 1 thing: sair/reaver. I’m unsure of whether or not s2 saw this, but he puts down a 4th hatchery in the top right main in response, meaning he’s going for a really economic build. Tempest builds up his corsair fleet and manages to kill off a lot of overlrods and scourge, putting s2 a little behind. Tempest takes advantage of this and puts a probe in the island expansion between their bases and expands there. From there, Tempest loads up his shuttle and begins to harass s2. luckily for Tempest, there were no sunkens/spores by the mineral line to prevent the harass, so Tempest took that opportunity to abuse the lack of defense by completely stopping mining in s2’s natural, and killing off a lot of s2’s early hydras.




Eventually, s2 was able to hold off the harass, but he suffered a lot of damage: drone kills and a loss of hydras. Because of this, s2 held off producing hydras for a little while so he could replenish his drones. Tempest get his 3rd up and running, and makes 8 gateways, as he transitions into a ground army. Tempest eventually masses a large ground force and attacks s2’s natural before hive tech comes up while getting his 4th base up.




s2 tries holding off the attack with whatever forces he had, but because Tempest harassed s2 so well, s2 didn’t have the forces to hold the attack, as he threw wave after wave of units at Tempest’s army. S2 did manage to get a small counter at Tempest’s 4th, killing it, but because of that, Tempest was able to march into s2’s natural and wipe it out. From there, Tempest’s army marched into s2’s main uncontested and took out all of the tech, which was the killing blow to s2. S2 did try to drag out the game, but as soon as Tempests units went up the ramp to the upper right main, s2 typed out.




KT 3 - 1 SKT

Tempest leaves his booth, and after high-five’ing his teammates, Tempest runs into the audience while removing his shirt, then throws his shirt into the audience.

Hoejja spawns in blue at the top right while Fantasy spawns in Red at the bottom left position. Hoejja opens up with 12 hatch, while Fantasy opens up with 1 rax cc. From there, Hoejja opts for a spire off 2 hatcheries while adding his 3rd at the mineral only and 4th at his 3rd gas, while Fantasy addds a 2nd rax, an academy, and a little later, an e-bay. After the spire finishes, Hoejja begins making mutalisks off 3 hatcheries while Fantasy makes turrets to defend from the inevitable mutalisk harass. When the mutalisks arrived, both players began playing “micro the mutalisks/marines” for roughly a minute. After said shenanigans, Fantasy moves out with his matine/medic force Hoejja into a defensive position with his mutalisks. More shenanigans occur as Fantasy tries to make is way to Hoejja’s high ground.




Finally, Fantasy makes it to Hoejja’s high ground, but not without suffering quite a few losses. When Fantasy tried to push into Hoejja’s third, Hoejja killed Fantasy’s initial force with a muta/ling surround. Because Fantasy lost a great deal of units, he was forced back into a defensive position while waiting for his science vessels to pop out. After the first 2 vessels pop out, Fantasy moves out with another force, but this time through his low ground to Hoejja’s 4th. Luckily for Hoejja, his lurkers popped out in time to defend, and he forces Fantasy to back off while only losing 1 lurker. Not satisfied with just holding off Fantasy’s 4th, Hoejja flanks Fantasy’s force with muta/ling on 1 side and lurkers on the other.




From here, Fantasy looked like he’d be in a bit of trouble, but no sooner than the observer going back to Fantasy’s natural do we see Fantasy loading up not 1, but 2 drop ships for a drop in Hoejja’s main. To ensure a successful drop, Fantasy even cleared the path with a small group of m and m. Hojjea, though, was sending his lurker/ling force to Fantasy’s 3rd base for a counter. Hoejja’s force makes it all the way to Fantasy’s 3rd, but with so many science vessels, and so much irradiate, the lurkers just melted like butter. At the same time, Fantasy’s drop loses 1 dropship full of units, but the other drop ship does manage to land its units, and Fantasy manages to take out the defiler’s mound with enough untis to spare to do a little harass on Hoejja’s main and natural mineral lines.




Holding off Hoejja’s push and managing to snipe the Defiler’s mound, Fantasy was now in a much better position than before. Fantasy starts pressuring Hoejja more with his force while takign his own 4th base, making it up to Hoejja’s high ground again. Hojjea, low on lurkers and defilers is forced to defend with pure lings. Fantasy, however, takes advantage of this and lures the lings all the way to the ramp of Hoejja’s 4th base, where he sets up a nice medic wall and kills most of the lings.




From here, Fantasy sends the remaining medic/marine force to kill off Hojjea’s 4th base, setting Hoejja back quite a bit. Fantasy sends another force to Hojjea’s natural to cause eve nmroe damage. Here, Fantasy does the eraser trick to all the drones in hojjea’s 3rd, nat, and main. Hoejja, in desperation, tries to coutner by dropping in Fantasy’s main, but Fantasy manages to clean the drop up without losing too much. When Fantasy’s force entered Hoejja’s main, Hoejja gg’d.

KT 3 - 2 SKT

Fantasy tries to do some fireworks ceremony, but it fails as Fantasy can't get it to work. Not worth posting pics, imo.

So Flash spawns in yellow at the bottom left, while Hyuk spawns in red at the bottom right. Flash, not wanting to lose this game to anything, opens with the usual 1 rax opening, but builds his buildings in a way that if Hyuk tries to 4pool, he can deal with it easier. Hyuk, not being cheesy, opens with a standard 12 hatch.




Flash then makes a factory, meaning only 1 thing: imbamech from Flash. After placing down the factory, Flash begins making a cc at his 2nd gas. Hyuk realizes this and techs to lair, while placing a hydra den down. After making a few hydras to fend off the vultures, Hyuk lays down a spire meaning he’s gonna try to fight Flash before Flash can get his imbamech army up and running. After Hyuk’s mutalisks pop, He tries to go for harassment on Flash’s economy, but Flash is too well prepared with goliaths and TURRETS! After Hyuk’s mutalisks become ineffective, Hyuk makes a 3rd hatchery at the 9 o clock expansion, following up his 2hatch muta with 3hatch hydra/muta. Flash, confident in his ability to defend, takes his mineral only to tie hyuk in bases again.

Hyuk tries to poke in with his mutalisks further, but was abruptly stopped by Flash’s TURRETS! Hyuk begins massing a force of mutas, and when he finally strikes with it, he manages to kill off a lot of flash’s units and stop Flash from mining at his 3rd, but it was mainly a mutalisk force and Flash held it off with a combination of goliaths and TURRETS.




Hyuk tries to follow up his mutalisk attack with a hydralisk attack, but Flash was able to defend with na ample amount of goliaths and tanks. From here, the KT Coach began celebrating because he knew that Flash won.







From here, it really was over for hyuk. He tried expanding to his 4th and getting back in economy, but he was too far behidn from that push to even come back. Eventually Flash just rolled in with his imbamech force and forced Hyuk to gg.

KT 4 > 2 SKT

Just your typical “HOLY SHIT WE JSUT WON THE FINALS” ceremony:





[cetner]Congrats to KT! You guys really deserve it! =)