For many, the most important conflict of this SSL has already been resolved. As dramatic and hard-fought as this tournament has been, there are precious few eventualities that could have incited so vocal a response as when it was announced that the Blizzard had, just in time for the finals, decided to take an interest in the proceedings.

I reference this not to paint an image of Blizzard as a villainous corporate entity, nor to introduce (as so many have) the idea that Sonic has been remiss in his organisation. Instead, I bring it up this because it was in that moment that I was struck with the realisation of what SSL has come to mean to those of us who have followed Brood War all these years.

I woke that morning last week to the stomach-clenching news that the SSL final had been cancelled. I remember the lurching feeling that accompanied the news, hitting me stronger than I could have expected.



At first, I didn't believe it. I refused to believe it; 2Pacalypse was lying to me, that's how he is, haha, that 2Pacalypse, what a joker. I think that lasted a two minutes, until I saw the hail of other comments on the whole debacle. That disbelief turned to a sort of targetless outrage. Who were they to do this to us?

That rage stuck around for about a half hour, before giving way to a sort of grasping need to do something about this new problem. Sure, I'm just some nobody, but there must have been something we could do, collectively. It wasn't until I recognised the futility of that reasoning that I lapsed into dispondancy. What was the point, I reasoned, in getting so wound up about these things? Sometimes, the things you care about are taken from you. I suppose, in its own way, that's a kind of acceptance.

Later, I would read that all would proceed as normal. It wasn't until then that I realised how straightforward my five-stages-of-grieving response had been.

It was then that I realised what had happened; in spite of all the, "Brood War is dying," talk, I had never actually thought it was the case. For me, there was always an amateur league to follow. I suppose, for that short time, I thought that this thing I had loved might really be gone, and so I grieved for it.

Now, it has risen again. Reanimated in a way that has come to feel inevitable.





The first semi-final of the night between Larva and Sky was a tense struggle to the very end. After the first two games the score is even. As expected, the games had been decided through the contest between Larva's management oriented defensive style and Sky's aggression. Going into the third game, more of the same seemed to be on the cards. The players though had other plans.

Sky warps in at the top right and Larva spawns in the top left corner. The first overlord heads the wrong way. Wind and Cloud, being a new map, is somewhat of an unknown quantity. It never featured in any professional league and it looks like an unpredictable mix between Sniper Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge. Perhaps that is the reason why Sky starts off proceedings by warping in a gateway in his main base. Larva decides that a 12-hatch opening is the best choice.



Naturally Sky's build order involves a fast assimilator, in order to get his hands on some very fast tech. Just before Larva's scouting drone enters the protoss base, the overmind compels him to plant a third hatchery at his natural expansion. The drone spots the stargate. At the same time the scouting probe uses its VIP pass to have a comprehensive look around the zerg base.

Larva morphs a few zerglings, takes his main gas and adds a hydralisk den to get ready for the impending corsairs. Sky sends a single dragoon to scout the bottom left, warps in a second gateway and continues down the tech path to dark templars. The first hydralisk hatches just before the first corsair reaches the zerg base. Nevertheless, the corsair kills a stray overlord. Larva morphs more hydralisks. Surprisingly Sky continues to build additional corsairs. Larva attempts a hydralisk attack supported by slow overlords. He ends up looking somewhat foolish when his detection runs out half-way across the map.

The nexus at the natural expansion is complete and two dark templars chase off the essentially blind hydralisks. Corsairs sail across the map, hunting for more overlords. Larva continues with his original plan and sends more and more hydralisks and overlords across the map. Two control groups of hydralisks hit the protoss natural, but two photon cannons and two high templars with storms are ready. Most of the hydralisks die, but the zerg wisely uses this opportunity to establish a third mining base at 9 o'clock.



Apparently encouraged by his previous attack Larva produces several more rounds of hydralisks and sends them across the map. Sky, also encouraged by the previous engagement, begins warping in five additional gateways. He soon realises that unfinished production buildings are a poor substitute for finished cannons. His army dies, his photon cannons get destroyed and a lot of probes are sacrificed to buy time for a round of zealot production.

The fight at the protoss natural goes on for some time. Eventually the hydralisks finish off the nexus, just before they get driven off by zealots. As a small consolation, Sky's corsairs have been killing several overlords. Several smaller skirmishes happen between zealots and templars on one side and hydralisks on the other. The protoss army wins out and heads across the map. A lone dark templar nearly becomes a hero, but his cover gets blown after killing five drones.

Larva's army catches up in size and Sky is forced to fall back to his natural expansion, where a nexus is just warping in. At this point there are virtually no minerals left in the protoss main base. Handicapped by the lack of pneumatized carapace (that is indeed the name of the speed upgrade), overlords continue to die effortlessly to corsairs and archons.



At this point Sky has a sizeable army composed mostly of zealots with some templar and archon support. So far Larva has only shown us hydralisks. However, when the protoss army attempts to raid the 9 o'clock base Larva has lurkers ready. Without observers Sky is forced to retreat. On the way back to his natural he storms a few hydralisks just because he can. Both players still have no damage or armor upgrades. A probe idles at the 3 o'clock position, seemingly ready to warp in a nexus, but never does. The drone in the bottom left main base is more determined as it secretely morphs into a hatchery. Somehow Sky senses it and a single dark templar forces Larva to cancel the hatchery and then kills the drone.

A large engagement occurs around the ramps near the protoss natural expansion. Some good psi storms shift the momentum in favour of Sky, but Larva has a lot of reinforcements hurrying across the map. For a moment it looks as if the hydralisks have managed to outlast the templars' energy, but a small band of zealots and a dark templar turn the tide at the last moment. For some unfathomable reason Larva decided agianst bringing any of his painfully slow overlords along.

A momentary lapse in Sky's army control allows Larva to push into the 3 o'clock base. But all he finds is a single photon cannon, a pylon and an unconscious probe. The cannon falls, the probe gets away and dragoons chase away the lurkers. Some shuffling up and down ramps allows the templars to kill a few careless lurkers. As the protoss army comes up the ramp from the third the hydralisks charge forward. Despite some good storm dodging the swarm crumbles. And just as it looks as if Sky has the game in the bag the observer pans over to his natural base. While nobody was watching, three lurkers ran in and killed most of the mining probes.



The lurkers get cleaned up, but Sky is now in deep trouble. After the majority of his hydralisks have died Larva does what every zerg seems to do in this situation: he makes a lot of zerglings. Said zerglings tear down the static defences at the 9 o'clock base, pulling the main protoss army out of position. At that moment another swarm of zerglings runs into the natural base and picks off a cannon, an emerging archon and some probes. Larva is nearly mined out in his first two bases, but a hidden expansion at 6 o'clock will take care of that problem. He also sends a large hydralisk-zergling-lurker army across he map. The armies clash on the ramp near Sky's natural base. Precise psi storms electrocute a clump of lurkers and some hydralisks, but the bulk of Sky's army gets stuck out of position again. The remaining hydralisks and zerglings spot the gap, rush into the natural and kill a large number of probes. Having no economy left to speak of, Sky taps out.

GG.




Shortly after then end of the previous game, Sky could be seen thumping the table in apparent frustration. When we next saw him the jacket and the proverbial gloves were off. He smiled and licked his lips, anticipating the sweet taste of revenge. The fourth map is Fighting Spirit and like everyone else both Larva and Sky had probably played the map nearly to death. What happened in this game will probably have happened to hundreds of lesser zergs on the ladder.

Sky starts in the bottom left. Larva finds himself in the opposite corner. The first overlord heads in the correct direction. Intially the pylon at the natural expansion appears to be in an odd place. Before long Sky places two fast gateways and all makes sense. Larva opens with a standard 12-hatchery build. The scouting probe finds the zerg position seconds before the first zealot finishes warping in. The spawning pool is not yet complete and Larva still does not know what is about to hit him.



Several probes follow the first zealot into battle. An overlord spots them crossing the middle of the map. Larva decides to pull six probes to his natural expansion. Sky starts a pylon next to the hatchery, but cancels it shortly after the zerg building finishes morphing. As soon as there is some creep, Larva starts a colony, followed by another one as soon as minerals and space allow him to. The first zealot starts to whittle done the colony with the help of some probes. For some reason the drones slide back and forth behind the hatchery without attacking anything. After one of them starts on a third colony the remaining drones block the ramps.

Somewhat late, two zerglings arrive at the party. One creep colony falls apart in a burst of blood. A full round of zerglings arrive. Together with a few drones they engage the protoss vanguard. The probes do an excellent job shielding the zealots while zerglings do an excellent job dyeing the floor red, using their own blood. A sunken colony completes, but it was so low on health already that it is casually finished off by a single probe. Only one zergling survives the painting session, despite that fact that no zealot evaporated so far. The third colony gets taken down to low health while morphing. It dies after getting off just a single hit. Without zerglings or sunken colonies against five zealots hammering away at his natural hatchery Larva throws in the towel.

GG.

And thus Sky managed to drag the series to the deciding game. Despite looking distraught, Larva managed to pull himself together to make his way to the final.





Traditionally the 3rd-4th playoff match is treated as nothing more than an amuse-bouche for the final itself, not even worthy of being called an hors d'oeuvr. The cold hard truth is that for most people this season is no exception. It is no Reach vs Yellow (Ever 2004) nor is it a Stork vs Flash (Daum), and well, it being a PvP certainly doesn't help either. So while on the surface this is a match which doesn't appear to offer anything to catch your interest, let me explain to you why I'm looking forward to this match more than the final.

For Pusan, this is very much familiar territory. By my count, this marks the fourth 3rd-4th playoff match that he has played in. The first being a 2-3 loss to Oov in So1 OSL (which I'm still bitter about, stupid map rotation), the second being a 3-0 trouncing of Casy in Shinhan 2005 OSL, and then this year he won against Ample in SSL6. Pusan was never known for his PvP but was never a push-over either. His strong mechanics serve him well in this matchup but he has always lacked that X-factor which has separated the good from the very best.



This contrasts greatly with Sky, who not long ago was arguably the best Brood War player on the planet after taking first place in SSL6 and going on an insane tear immediately following that. Failing in the semifinals as the defending champion must be a personal disappointment for Sky, but fans of Sky should be relieved that he has showed his trademark style throughout this tournament which hints at a return to form. Despite his counter-intuitive, slow and sometimes outright bizarre playstyle he continually proves that he is one of the best Protoss in the world.

While you could see this matchup as the classic mechanics vs strategy battle, the fact that this is a PvP throws in an interesting twist. PvP normally isn't a matchup which offers much variety outside of the gateway timings vs robo vs dark templar triangle (which usually is playable regardless of opening choice). But just because there normally isn't much variety doesn't mean there won't be variety. Things like proxy robo, hidden gateways and unsafely timed expansions could very well make an appearance in this series. Oddly enough Pusan and Sky have some tournament history as well. In SSL6 Sky defeated Pusan in the semifinals and not long after that Pusan exacted his revenge in a showmatch.

This matchup is a strange blend of asymmetry and symmetry. Their approaches to the game differ greatly, their progaming histories couldn't be more different however they play the same race and have an even record against each other. It is this unique blend of style and history that makes this matchup one that I won't be missing for the world.




Going into the final, this match-up feels a lot like most of Killers other series through-out the tournament. An opponent deserving credit to have made it this far and a resoundingly obvious result. In fact, Larva is probably even more of a journeyman opponent than those Killer has faced thus far. Coming through the Ro16, Ro8 and now the Ro4 by the skin of his teeth, Larva’s run to the final off the back of his exception ZvP management play is the story of the tournament.

Larva’s every series so far has been preceded by platitudes about how much effort he’s put in and how well he’s done given his experience as a progamer. At this point though, perhaps the best way to give credit to Larva is to examine this series objectively, as one between two ex-progamer Zergs who both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately for us, Larva has little pedigree when it comes to ZvZ. He does reasonably well in it on ladder and in other tournaments, but it trails far behind his ZvP and even managed to look a little bit suspect in the Ro16 against Saber. The things that make Larva’s ZvP so impressive, aside perhaps from his control, are not really strengths that you’d consider to be transferable between matchups.

In the other booth, we have Killer. The overwhelming favourite for the whole tournament since its outset some months ago, Killer is both the most recent retiree participating in this tournament and the player with the most impressive showings in the final years of Brood War competition. There’s little new information that we can glean about Killer’s ZvZ from his participation in this tournament, or his performances elsewhere on Afreeca.



Simply put, Killer is very good. He has the best control, the strongest multitasking and an understanding of the match-up which was passed down to him by the player who has come closest to solving it. Killer has a huge advantage against any opponent in any match-up, in ZvZ it becomes to appear almost unfair.

The possibility for Larva to turns risks into advantages and advantages into wins exists more in this series than in perhaps any other. One of Larva’s advantages throughout the tournament has been his diligence, looking especially well prepared in his quarter-final and semi-final appearances in stark contrast to Killer, who had not even played on Wind and Cloud prior to his Ro16 match on it.

ZvZ is generally regarded as being a volatile match-up, and one where it’s most difficult for the better player to transfer their skill into victory consistently. The exception to this rule comes when the gap between the two players is so large that disadvantages created by build order, normally insurmountable, can be overcome by sheer force of will. There have been numerous examples of this transcendence, most famously from Killer’s former mentor, Jaedong.

The difference between Killer and his every opponent so far in this tournament has been greater than in any of the other match-ups, every single series he has played has looked like a total mismatch. The final comes down to Killer’s ability to distinguish himself from Larva, to be better to such a degree that there is no luck, no good spawns or blind counters, just dominance.

---

WRITERS: kjwcj, Simplistik, Plexa, SirJolt
GRAPHICS: HawaiianPig
WITH HELP FROM: ArvickHero and the TL community