After the usual interviews but sadly without the Kpop the 10-11 Proleague finals got underway with the relatively unexpected matchup of Perfective against Fantasy. Fantasy has complained about Beltway ever since it was introduced, and Perfective is more of a ZvP sniper than anything else, so seeing either of them out on this terran favoured map was strange. The SKT coach obviously won the battle here as it seems like the KT coach expected a protoss to come out to snipe flash and attempted to counter snipe with Perfective, which didn’t end well. The game itself was a fairly silly affair. Perfective attempted an extremely all in 2 hatch mutalisk strategy, morphing a ton of lings before his mutas and attempting to bust Fantasy to limit his marine and turret count. This almost worked, but by making about 6000 turrets and defending well with his bio units Fantasy hung on. Once his Valkyrie popped out the game was swiftly over with Perfective calling the GG and giving SKT an early lead in the series. Fantasy’s hair also deserves a mention for being spectacular and horrible at the same time.

Once again the KT coach out outpicked by SKT. Bisu managed to get his favourite matchup against Crazy-Hydra, who if you recall attempted to proxy hatch in the last match they played together on this map. One would probably expect Crazy-Hydra to cheese again, fearing Bisu’s insane vsZ stats this season and the easy to take third making this map fairly good for protoss. Not to let us down Crazy-Hydra did just that. He managed to deny Bisu’s probe scout in the early game while he got his lair up and a hydra den, and then began his assault as Bisu’s first corsair got a good look as to what was going on. Bisu, in the meantime, was teching to sair-reaver while cutting a lot of probes to get 4 gateways up in an attempt to survive the rush. Crazy-hydra then attempted to implement a bunch of hydra and lurker drops without attempting to add more drones or expanding. He was relatively unsuccessful for the most part (killing a fair few probes at one point), but Bisu’s infrastructure and multitasking was too strong. Even after he accidentally suicided his shuttle while moving out to finish Crazy-Hydra off, it didn’t matter, and he easily overran the KT zerg with zealots and goons to clinch the second set, putting SKT up 2-0.


Surprisingly this was the only ZvZ to feature in the final, despite the large number of zerg players on both lineups. Once again it was seen as a win for the SKT coach; with S2 having successfully sniped zergs like Jaedong before, and Hoejja excelling mostly at ZvP (with some flashes of ZvT brilliance over the season), the cards were stacked in SKT's favor. Hoejja came out with a really interesting build, 12 hatching at his third to trick S2 into holding back his early lings and playing defensive. S2 went for overgas-pool into a quick lair before speed while holding lings back at the choke to his main to defend what he assumed was a 9 or 12 pool until it was far too late. With this early economic advantage, Hoejja quickly got up his lair before speed, and attempted a half hearted ling bust while S2 was morphing his mutalisks. Even though this failed, Hoejja managed to get his scourge and mutas out in time, and displayed some really excellent micro to stave off S2’s timing attack. Once his second gas kicked in, he was easily able to overwhelm S2’s remaining mutas and take the game for KT, bringing the score back to 2-1.


Finally the KT coach got a lineup-picking victory, putting up Action against By.Sun, the rookie of the year. Action attempted an extremely greedy build, going for 4 bases and skipping everything but zerglings on his way up to a hive. Sun, seeing Action's greed, dropped about 7 gateways and pumped out some goons to support his zealots and templar. Using the goons to batter down the outside of Action’s walls he was able to flood his zealots in and completely break Action's natural. In the meantime Action was massing up sunkens at his third and getting ensnare, which he hilariously used on 4 goons before his queen died. Defilers came out far too late to do anything and Action lost his main. After taking a third and a bit of posturing Sun sent his army up to Actions third and finished the game, breaking through the 10 or so sunkens Action had built to try and stay alive. With this upset Sun brought SKT to within spitting distance of victory, putting his team up 3-1.


And so, the match everyone was waiting for finally happened. All season long Best had given Flash a hard time, beating him 3 times and only losing once. Unfortunately the one time Best lost was on Fortress, the very same map he had to play here, on at the biggest stage. Best decided to use a 1 goon expand strategy and was quickly contained by Flash’s mines from his FD opening. After dropping his command center, Flash quickly got another factory and a third up soon after and before Best could even clear all the mines outside his base Flash was setting up a siege contain. The brilliant part of Flash’s build wasn’t so much the speed with which the contain came, but the amount of marines he brought to support it. Constantly setting up bunkers meant that even when Best would mange to knock out the tanks with some zealot bombs or goon busts, the bunkers would live and force him back. After barely saving his natural nexus, Best lost it soon after and attempted to come back in the game with some cute DT drops... but Flash was having none of it. In terminator mode, to save his team from a 4-1 defeat, Flash never looked like he considered losing an option. Finally, Best typed out, bringing the scores back to 3-2 in favour of SKT.


Stats has seemed to struggle with his PvZ all season, losing some horrendous games. However, at the very end of the season, when it really matters Stats came through, winning not only his game against Soo in style but also toppling Zero and Hydra to bring his team to the final in the first place. The game itself started out eerily similar to Sun vs Action. Soo attempted the 4 base hive with no units build, and unlike Sun, Stats decided to go for the macro game, using his zealots and corsairs to great effect while getting up a really quick third. The corsairs were the real feature of the game, massacring overlords while Soo refused to make more than 1 spore and 3 hydras. After gaining a huge lead through just expanding and containing while flying around with corsairs, Soo finally attempted some aggression, but he was too far behind. Stats was sitting on a cool 5 bases to Soo’s 4, and after he got pushed back to his main a couple of times, his impeccable storms and great economy let him roll over Soo’s third and fourth to secure the win. An impressive display from the ever clutch Stats.


Flash was given the chance by his team to show why he was the greatest of all time and he did it easily, crushing his midseason nemesis Best again this time in a long macro game. Flash took 4 bases really early on after effectly a little vulture harassment. After getting his 2/1 upgrades he pushed out, and caught best with his pants down and only one arbiter. Easily able to EMP it, Best had no answer to Flash’s giant mass of tanks, and he slowly pushed across the map while all Best could do was feign at attempting to kill it. Without any real spells apart from a couple of storms Flash easily overran Bests diminishing forces, and after Best had expended all his options to come back, he typed out and Flash earned his team a second Proleague title, in a row. A compelling series that was expertly guided by the clutch KT players to bring them to victory. While I was sad that my team had lost, I think that it’s hard to be genuinely sad, when you see emotion like this on the face of the coach.

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