Sea and Killer going up against each other has become the story of legends. The two current most dominating players have faced one another several times. It has always been down to the wire. Early microfests. Cheese. Amazing control. Huge late game army battles.
You name it. These two can bring out anything.
Are you ready for the best Brood War in the world?



The semifinals had the expected results of Sea and Killer facing each other in the grand final, and Shuttle and HiyA in the consolation match. What was upsetting was how dominating Sea and Killer looked. They both had lost to their respective opponents earlier in the tournament. But when it all mattered HiyA and Shuttle didn't just look bad, they got absolutely crushed. kerpal tells you about everything that happened in his recap of the semifinals. The recap is followed by the preview of the finals.

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The SOSPA scene has it's fair share of strong Terran players, and often it seems there is little to separate one from the next. Perhaps some are slightly more likely to beat Killer, perhaps some are a little more likely to die to mediocre Protoss play, but you could be forgiven for being confused as to who are the masters and who are the apprentices here. TvT is where such distinctions are made. Famed for it's tendency to produce brutal hour long battles of will, TvT is the crucible in which great players are tested.

The first game is decided by an uncharacteristic mistake from HiyA, who unsieges a large force and tries to move up on Sea's tank line. Sea defends perfectly, using vulture reinforcements as fodder he obliterates HiyA's bunched tanks with well directed fire. Having been handed the advantage so squarely, Sea unsieges and forces his way into HiyA's natural.

Sea takes the second game with great scouting, and perhaps a little luck, seeing HiyA's starport opening with a run-by of his initial vulture, he is able to add a second starport to his own build, doubling HiyA's wraith count and taking the came conclusively.

A cute little marine play to start game three might be evidence that HiyA was not out of the running yet, but in a strange moment, six initial vultures from both sides miss one another and find themselves in their enemies' bases. Sea had much better control, showing his class by dispatching HiyA's vultures well before HiyA was able to destroy those of Sea. Sea compounded the economic damage with a vulture goliath timing attack that could only be held with the loss of more of HiyA's SCVs. HiyA goes for broke with an aggressive push, but Sea is prepared and HiyA is defeated 3-0.

Sea showed us then why he is the best player in the world right now. HiyA has always been lauded for his TvT, but Sea made short work of him with better control, better decision making and better knowledge, controlling all their games from start to finish. HiyA will be rightfully disappointed by his showing here.




Shuttle opts to take it straight into a macro game on Neo Electric Circuit, opening with a super fast third base in the protected mineral only position. Killer seems happy enough with this and takes a fourth to match it and starts pumping mutalisks to punish the delayed corsairs. Someone once said of Jaedong's ZvP that he was able to kill people when they thought they were safe. Shuttle moves out to take a fourth, but Killer has hive tech ready, upgrades finished and a swarm of cracklings ready to demolish Shuttle's army and level his new base. Shuttle holds on and tries again, but momentum is in Killers favour and nothing but BisuDagger's blind faith is going Shuttle's way.

Game two is business as usual for Killer. He does everything that all Zerg players do, except that he does it faster and better. Shuttle loses corsairs at every turn, and Killer takes complete control of the map. Shuttle morphs a desperation dark archon but Killer spots it before it's upgrades are ready. Shuttle moves onto the map and secures a fourth, and defend it. A glimmer of hope appears in Protoss eyes, and indeed tears of joy are shed when Shuttle listens to Sayle's advice and builds a scout to counter a guardian attack. Killer expands to six bases, and Shuttle commits heavily to killing one in a corner main. Although Shuttle is successful, his army is sandwiched between nydus reinforcements and another force moving in behind Shuttle's army. Despite this Shuttle trades well against Killer's army, takes a fifth and defends it with reavers. Killer pulls out all the tricks to try to break it, including an army of guardians and a nydus canal snuck into the main behind the base. Finally he tries with a mass of defilers and ultralisks, but Shuttle has too many bases and too many archons and wins the second game.

Game three (for those who haven't realised by now that they should be watching the games, rather than reading my recap!) displays Shuttle's bravery if nothing else. Both games so far have shown that Killer is winning the battles of scourge vs corsairs, but now Shuttle opts of open with corsair reaver. Killer scouts this perfectly with a zergling run-by and he prepares a mutalisk and scourge force in reaction. Shuttle uses the fast robo to ferry a probe to the island expansion, trusting that he will have the air control to hold it. While defending with corsairs Shuttle attempts to attack one base with zealots while dropping reavers at the third. On all three fronts Killer outplays Shuttle. Warding off the zealots, killing most of the corsairs and many of the probes and scourging the shuttle with the reavers before they are even unloaded. Shuttle concedes soon after.

Game four sees delayed mutalisks from Killer, but better control from Shuttle allows him to take a decisive lead in the mid game by securing a third for himself and sniping Killer's fourth. Finally Shuttle is looking like a player who can challenge for this series, and he needs to challenge here to force the ace match. Shuttle sacrifices his main to a mutalisk attack, but cannot make progress against Killer's well prepared lurker defense. Killer goes for a war on nexus (which is it's own plural, by the way). Having already sniped the main with his mutalisks, he snipes Shuttle's fourth with a counter attack, and then ploughs through a large dragoon army to bring down a third. Shuttle is slow to rebuild and Killer is quick to expand. Shuttle spends the rest of the game slowly dying and Killer quickly finds himself in the finals after a doom drop lands on Shuttle's gateways.

As expected, both Shuttle and HiyA lost to their opponents in the semifinals but the games were more one sided than expected. Shuttle managed to take one game off of Killer while HiyA was unable to get a single win. Deciding on who will win this match is so hard; this could be the hardest bet since this liquibet season started. According to the LR thread, 70% of people think that HiyA will win and to their credit HiyA's last encounter with Shuttle was a quite one-sided one. In SRT16 HiyA 2-0'd Shuttle in the opening match of their round of 16 group and 2-0'd him again in the final match. But before that encounter Shuttle won a best of three by going 2-1 in SRT11. Moreover, Shuttle has 67% win rate against Terran with recent wins against Sea and Ample. HiyA on the other hand only has a 52% win rate against Protoss, effectively making it his worst match-up, and he is notorious for having wild highs and lows against Protoss. This is quite evident in his recent losses against Hint and Olympus and just this tournament he was almost knocked out by both Hi and Lazy.



HiyA's TvP is very predictable and at the same time not so predictable. His recent signature play has been to move out and attack with just a few tanks, ranging from two to five. If Shuttle has been reading up on HiyA's play he is sure to have found weaknesses and holes in HiyA's play. Being that aggressive so early in TvP is very unconventional and there is a good reason why it is. A Protoss can easily crush the early move out if he has the proper army and doesn't let the Terran to get the position he wants. Shuttle is also a player who can go out of his comfort zone without any trouble, I'm sure he can adapt his play to HiyA's. To finish it off; Shuttle has both BisuDagger and the random number generator of a flipped coin's favour (yes I had someone flip a coin).

Shuttle 2-1 HiyA.



Here we are once again. For the fourth time Killer and Sea face each other in a tournament final, the third time in a SOSPA Ranking Tournament, and the second time in a row. Some seem to be getting sick of all the KvS but I sure am not. So far all of their finals have gone to the last and deciding map. Finishing 3-2 twice and 4-3 most recently. The best of five finals were absolutely amazing, every single game getting you to the edge of your seat, and we certainly should not to forget the level of play either, it was the best TvZ played since Brood War progaming ceased to exist in South Korea.

This is exactly how much I hyped last season's final. What happened that time? An unfortunate change to a best of seven format made both players more willing to finish of games quickly and not using a best of five specific strategy. The series first five games started out horribly; there was bad play, and they were short and cheesy. The series redeemed itself in game six and seven where we got to see some excellent play from both sides. While at times overshadowed by the blatant mistakes by the players, the series still always had you at the edge of your seat. Both players traded blow for blow, game for game. Killer was at match point for two games in a row for a third finals but still didn't manage to close it out. Sea pulled out another comeback with amazing play, making him a fourth time SRT champion.



So far Sea has won all of their encounters in the finals, all of them where Killer had match point for two games and then ended up losing. They have never faced each other elsewhere in an individual tournament, in event matches Sea is 3-1, making the total record fifteen wins against eight losses for Sea, ending up on 65.22%, just shy 7% from his overall TvZ win rate. With Sea improving his TvP to over 60% and having two match-ups over 70%, he is at the top of the ELO ranking with a huge lead over the rest of the field. Sea is nearing the status of what Flash and iloveoov had at their peaks, he is nothing but the best player in the world. Killer has even better win rates but always gets shut down by his ZvT, mostly due to Sea. Killer is 64% in ZvT but the win rate suddenly drops almost 20% against Sea. That's the Sea factor.

Killer almost got knocked out in the quarterfinals by Mong, other than him and Sea, Killer hasn't lost a single game in ZvT in over four months. Sea doesn't have the same impressive record in individual games won for such a long period. He has one thing going his way that trumps everything. Ever since Sea's debut in December last year, he hasn't lost a single series in TvZ. Not a single one. That's eleven months of being unbeaten in a match-up. I don't think it's quite time for Sea to lose just yet.

Killer 2-3 Sea.