MBC is a team which has been completely gutted of all it's former glory. In the 08-09 season they also lost their old head coach, and a new guy took over. Pusan and Saint dominated Round 1, while Pusan and Sea took the reigns mostly for Round 2, the entire team collectively sucked in Round 3, then Light emerged as the only half decent player on MBC in both Rounds 4 and 5. As a result of this disasterous season, the new head coach got fired and Coach Ha, the old coach, was reinstated.

The job for MBC over the next six months is not to place first in Proleague, nor is it to place in the top six. They need to rebuild and refocus themselves. MBC lack a senior player for other players to gather behind and support. Light is not this player, he is simply the player on MBC who isn't slumping at the moment. They need a truly good player to make Starleagues and a bunch of good new players to start replacing the last generation of MBC player. MBC have already showcased some new talent in Ace and we know there is some potential within Air as well. How MBC develop these rookies is going to define how they do over the next few seasons - if they turn out like Jaehoons well then MBC is fucked. But if they all turn out into a bunch of mini-Sea[Shield]'s then MBC is back in business.

The old coach ran the team into the ground by destroying MBC's practice environment. With Coach Ha's return I have high hopes for the old healthy practice environment to make a comeback; and from there the results will flow.

The game begins on outsider with Leta spawning at the top position, and Stork on the left. Both players stick to standard builds with Leta walling and opening fac port, against Stork's 1gate ob expo. The first confrontation takes place as Leta's drop of 2 tanks lands behind Stork's warping mineral only expo, and from behind the minerals, proceed to lay waste to the freshly built nexus.



Although Stork makes the initial mistake of not cancelling the nexus, he otherwise responds pretty well to the drop, not wasting units trying to take out the Terran units, instead waiting for the tanks' departure to retake the expansion, accepting the 400 minerals as lost. Following his successful drop, Leta opts for a double expand to put him firmly ahead economically, and Stork, having scouted this with his observer, follows suite, taking his nat as well.

Some minor harass now commences, and both players begin teching up and adding more production facilities, Stork moving towards arbiter tech with 4 gates and a 4th base in the bottom right main and Leta adding more factories for a total of 7. A calculated, risky move by Stork here, teching and expanding with few units, but vs Leta's late factories, it looks like to be a successful gambit, pulling Stork back from his economic deficit.

Shortly after the completion of his factories and a couple of production rounds, Leta pushes out of his choke with a significant army of tank/vult, but Stork has a pretty big army. Instead of pushing aggressively and potentially losing his army, Leta chooses to sit in the centre of the map with his tanks and send his vultures out to harass. 4 vultures make their way to Stork's nat, where they net a few probe kills, and force Stork to chase them with fresh zealots out of his gateways. Thanks to some poor micro from Stork, he loses a number of those zealots to mines, making Leta's harass all the more cost effective.



Following this, Leta moves out with yet another group of vultures, this time failing to do significant probe damage at Stork's bottom right expansion, his units falling to Stork's army and defending cannons. With an arbiter out, Stork now goes in for the kill, his army swooping in on Leta's defensive tank line in the centre of the map. Without vulture support, Leta's tanks fell quickly once Stork's army made it past the minefield, a stasis on 4 of his tanks simply rubbing salt into the wound. Stork's army, however, is not without casualties, and he is forced to retreat before destroying the 4 tanks in stasis.



Having temporarily taken out the threat of a push from Leta, Stork quickly begins an expansion at the bottom right nat, which is immediately found by a roving group of vultures. Stork, once again, is too impatient to wait for observers, and ends up suiciding a bunch of units to mines. Despite this, Stork still looks to be in a pretty commanding position, with 3 additional mining bases coming up, and arbiter tech, which has proven to be very strong on this map. Leta on the other hand, has a good sized army, +2 weapons upgrades, and a decent number of bases that Stork, somewhat ineffectively, tries to harass.

As the harass is taken care off, both players return to joustling for position on the map, Leta pushing his army down towards Stork's bottom right expos, and Stork running around to counter at Leta's nat. This eventually culminates in a battle that results in most of Stork's army melting before the power of Terran metal, some unfortunately late stasis, and poor angle of attack possibly contributing to its demise.



Having won a major battle, Leta fearlessly pushes into Stork's bottom right bases, taking down the bottom right nat, and lots of probes at the bottom right main. Stork, however, has been macroing diligently, and with a freshly rebuilt army, takes out Leta's unsupported tanks. A rather poor decision from Leta to push so quickly, as a couple of production rounds from his factories would've provided enough vultures for a potentially game ending attack. Regardless, the damage done was not insigificant.

Now, in a long game like this where expoes come up, get destroyed, mine out, it gets pretty confusing, but a basic base count excluding worker saturation puts both players at 4. Unfortunately for Stork, Leta's vultures arrive at his "outside" mineral only before his cannon warps in, and swiftly, they lay waste to all the probes. Leta then follows this up by dropping a tank behind the minerals of another of Stork's expansions, forcing Stork to pull his probes and taking down the nexus. Stork, joining in on the expo-killing fun, retaliates with a recall at one of Leta's expansions where the SCVs are pulled to fight, and eventually lost.

After taking potshots at each other's expansions, both players seem to be itching for a large clash. Leta moves out with a big +3 weapons ugpraded army, and Stork engages with a sizable army reinforced by a couple of arbiters. Stasis immediately goes off on the vessels, and with Leta's tanks slightly clumped up, it seemed a second stasis could put Leta in a difficult position. Unfortunately, either due to greed or the lack of energy, Stork does not stasis, and with the arrival of more vultures from Leta, Stork pulls back, but most of his army has been reduced to rumble.



As Leta's army now heads down to finally take out Stork's bottom right base (and the associated "inside" mineral only), Stork musters up a small army and makes a guerilla attack on one of Leta's expoes. Expo counts at the moment put Stork at 5 mineral patches, and Leta at 2 quickly depleting bases. Despite this, Stork, by some miracle, has somehow managed to pull a huge army out of thin air, and sends it charging into Leta's choke, taking out some defending units. Hoping to catch Leta's returning army out of position, Stork immediately pulls back out to the centre of the map, where he finds Leta's tanks already sieged up. He engages anyway, and emerges victorious with a good goon spread to reduce splash damage.



Stork, now with map control, retakes the bottom right nat, while Leta mines from the other side of Stork's abandoned mineral-only for 2 bases that are dangerously dry. In a half hearted attempt to harass Leta's right side expo, Stork recalls a small group of dragoons, but a couple of defending tanks handle the incursion with the help of mines and defensive matrix. Having held th dragoons, and with a number of tanks fresh off the production lines, Leta begins to push out, establishing another base at his outside mineral only, sieging his tanks defensively and planting lots of mines. His vultures then proceed south to Stork's newly taken bottom right expo, and although there is a group of dragoons defending, he deals a tonne of damage, killing probes and dragoons before Stork's main army arrives.

Following this, Stork gravely underestimates the size of the defending Terran army, and gives the command for his soldiers to attack Leta's new expo. The well set up tanks rain fire on the Protoss units, and although Stork manages to take out command centre, he loses the majority of his army. Leta then simply unsieges the remainder of his tanks, and heads for Stork's final mining base, where Stork tries his best to stop him, but fails, typing in the GG.



Overall a very entertaining game, although Stork's insistence on engaging the Terran army head on, while providing some huge and intense battles, was not exactly a very wise choice. Ultimately what caused him the game was his inflexibility and refusal to abuse arbiters on this recall friendly map. Leta on the other hand was well acquainted with the idea of terrain abuse and came out on top due to his harass.