This played out as a fairly straightforward ZvZ series. Fortunately they more or less mirrored each other's builds in two of the three games, and in both cases, the better player won. Hydra showed us that his zerglings are just as dangerous as his mutalisks, and Modesty reminded us that he really shouldn't be this far in the OSL.

+ Show Spoiler [game by game recap] +


Killer Despite his loss, this series demonstrated how much better and more deserving of a semifinal appearance Killer is than soO. Killer got build order disadvantages in both real games and still nearly won 2-1. In game two Killer paused instead of typing “ppp,” and as a result KeSPA awarded the game to soO.

+ Show Spoiler [game by game recap] +

This week, I did something I hadn’t done since Stork was good: I watched the games live. All because of Flash vs… JangBi. Here’s my train of thought as I went into the RO8 games:

JangBi drew this match by beating Baby - one of my favourite players - with a DT rush into double expand into carriers despite being vastly inferior. Now that Jangbi has to beat Flash to advance, I'm not gonna pretend that there isn't a big banana grin on my face.

The tragedy here is that Baby actually has it in him to contend with Flash. Flash would still be the favourite because Flash is pretty much a byword for 'the favourite' at this point, but Baby is capable of some pretty stunning play too. Whereas if I were to make a list of players not as good as Flash, JangBi would be on it. Near the top. It'd probably be called the JangBi list. In short, he's going to lose and I'm glad.

Game One: Neo Bloody Ridge

Flash opened at 1 in blue while JangBi got brown at 7 on Neo Bloody Ridge. Flash, completely confident in his ability to win a standard game, opened by scouting for proxies and then proxied his rax to deal with a potential 13 nexus. After identifying that his opponent was playing straight up he simply lifted his rax back and did a normal expansion opening. JangBi responded with a fast expansion and things looked to be proceeding normally. However, where Flash would normally go for an academy, armoury and third command centre he instead threw down a third quick factory while getting both vulture upgrades, and snuck his army around the top of the map. On the other hand, JangBi played safely, with dragoons and observers clearing a path to his third base but not taking any unnecessary economic or tech risks.

Flash decided to go for the throat with uncharacteristic aggressive build order. Spider mines placed in key locations kept an eye on the movements of dragoons, which allowed him to quickly exploit Jangbi’s out of position dragoons. Flash struck, vultures pressing deep into JangBi's natural with aggressive mine placement while tanks backed them up.

However, as mentioned previously, JangBi had invested nothing into tech and had not yet taken his third. He had instead invested heavily in gateway units, and had a shuttle with zealots to help him defend. Because of this, things did not go all that badly though his dragoons were forced to race back to defend his base. His unit count was sufficient, and he was able to hold on to his natural.

Unfortunately, this momentary victory was deceptive, as it is often the case against Flash. Flash had already started his third command centre in his main while JangBi was pinned down, and had started his progression towards 3-3.

The game settled down into a terribly familiar pattern, and one that rarely results in a Protoss victory. Flash took his third, getting his upgrades and turtling while the Protoss rushed to four bases and headed for late game tech. He attempted to regain some initiative with a pair of speed shuttles - which I do like in theory - but Flash was on them in an instant. Floating buildings gave him a second’s warning on the incoming reavers, and the SCVs were already gone by the time the scarab arrived. Trying to harass wasn't the wrong decision, it's just that he was trying to harass Flash, and was thus was wasting his time. Settled down on his four bases JangBi prepared for the inevitable as best as he could, with a strong ground army comprised of dragoons, speedlots, storms in shuttles and a carrier tech switch in the works. Flash just sat on his three bases, upgraded his mech and dropped a money scan right on the stargates.

The moment finally came, and the Terran tank line came to life and pushed forwards, complete with a considerable escort of science vessels to counter the HT heavy army. NBR doesn't offer much in the way of open terrain to engage but still JangBi gave ground way too easily. His army was poised for a counterattack from the bottom path, but instead he backed off looking to engage Flash's main army. This was an extremely poor decision, as Flash's main army, complete with its upgrades and EMPs, was never going to lose on NBR. In a single push Flash was able to siege up on the high ground controlling JangBi's half of the map and tank the base at 11, completely unopposed. From then on it was just textbook tank leapfrogging.

Jangbi tried to fight the best he could, but he was facing EMPs and a very deep tank line. As soon as Jangbi stormed his way through the front lines, he was promptly annihilated by the forces waiting in reserve..

Capitalising on his victory Flash pushed into JangBi's natural where he could also hit the 9 base, and all three of JangBi's mining bases fell at roughly the same time. With the damage done Flash backed off, content to mess around with the carriers Jangbi had managed to squeeze out. Jangbi played pretty well for a guy with no income, but goliath missiles are unlimited and interceptors are not. When it became too futile, Jangbi GG’d out.




Game Two: Pathfinder

JangBi spawned at 12 on Pathfinder in brown while Flash took 8 in yellow. JangBi sent out a probe on six but scouted incorrectly and was unable to steal a fast gas. It could have been pretty nice for Jangbi if he had succeeded, as Flash didn't do his predictable rax cc or cc first and instead opted for a more standard factory first opening. JangBi headed straight for dragoons with range and a robo while Flash went for factory - machine shop - CC in main; a very defensive build. JangBi followed his first two dragoons with a quick nexus, sensing that Flash would expand fast as well.

JangBi then added a second gateway and took a quick third nexus off of observer tech to ensure he knew exactly what Flash was doing. Interestingly he didn't immediately tech towards the late game but instead threw down four gateways and pumped dragoons, looking to establish mid-game map control and secure his quick third. When an observer scouted Flash's ambitions towards taking a third himself, JangBi instantly laid off the ground army focus and responded by teching towards arbiters and taking a fourth base for himself.

A high gateway count gave JangBi the flexibility to respond to threats set him up for late game macro, but he did not actually build units from every gateway constantly. Pathfinder is an incredibly resource laden map, and a Protoss can spread across it very easily if not pressured. JangBi's army size remained small as he took a fourth at the mineral only, got upgrades, storms, arbiters, and everything else he needed to be strong in the late game.

With an army equipped with an arbiter, storms in shuttles and speedzealots JangBi assumed he had sufficient map control and entered a second investment phase. He double expanded to the main and natural at 5 while building a LOT of gateways there. Flash had been doing his usual ridiculously passive thing, and didn’t seem to give a damn. After a minor distraction from a suicidal recall, Flash made his first move at 190 supply - a full fifteen minutes into the game on three bases. By comparison JangBi was maxed out and looking to take his seventh base. Flash charged straight down the middle of the map, ignoring the narrow corridors down the left hand side where a slow push could establish itself safely and pressure into JangBi's natural and third in favour of the brute force hammer approach. With his OSL life at stake, JangBi attempted a pushbreak.

It's a simple enough thing to write out a sequence of events, but you can’t really capture the fight in words. The arbiter came in from the flank with a nice stasis, the speedlots ran down the right hand side and hit the tanks from a good angle, the storms from the shuttles scythed through the tank line and in a matter of seconds Flash's army was reduced by seventy supply. However, Flash held. As the remaining tanks cut down his dragoons JangBi disengaged but it was too late to save the dragoon heart of his army. Flash's gamble had succeeded, he'd faced a maxed out Protoss late game in open terrain and won, opening a path for him to push straight into the heart of his opponent’s territory, contain their unit production and win. Normally in this situation the Protoss will macro back faster but the Terran will have an extreme positional advantage by being able to turtle right outside production sites, while smaller forces can go around and destroy the Protoss expansions. However, JangBi had been busy.

Twenty five!!! gateways surged into life, divided into thirteen in his main at 12 and twelve more in his expansion main at 5. The game would be decided by whether or not Flash fully established a strong foothold outside Jangbi’s base, so Jangbi charged his troops into the fray. The first clash went evenly, Flash losing many of his tanks while JangBi lost the last of his arbiters and dragoons. Tanks were able to besiege JangBi's natural and third, but Protoss units managed to slip out and join the main force. Amazingly JangBi was on seven bases, one hundred and ten supply and his total resources (minerals plus gas) were below five hundred. Flash's macro was equally good even though he'd just taken his fourth. At just over one hundred supply each, JangBi broke out of his natural. Flash's vultures laid mines on the path between JangBi's two main bases but it was too late, map control went back to JangBi.

Without having to send his units into a constant meat grinder, Jangbi was forty supply ahead just seconds later. Flash was able to snipe the expansion at 2 but his ambitions to push up the right hand side choke (now you see the chokes on this map Flash?) was met by a maxed out Protoss with a sixty supply advantage. JangBi closed on him like a pincer, smashing through the middle of the map and fighting sieged tank lines with just dragoons. About two hundred supply worth of units died in a few seconds as JangBi pushed into Flash's third, the last few survivors making it into the mineral line and obliterated the SCVs with storm. Flash miraculously stayed alive, but that was only until JangBi's next wave of production kicked. Another fifty supply of Protoss blitzed into Flash’s territory to collect the GG.




Game Three: Gladiator
JangBi spawned at 7 in orange while Flash got white at 11 on Gladiator. JangBi went for an eleven nexus eleven gateway opener which personally I'm not a fan of. That's cutting probes incredibly hard but it does let you throw down a core the moment the gateway finished for a very quick dragoon. By cutting probes as hard as he did he allow himself to skip the second pylon and use the nexus, giving himself some extra money for a zealot at 15/17 supply. This build incredibly under-saturates the expansion, and it simply doesn't pay off in extra minerals mined compared to one gate dragoon range expansion builds because you don't have the probes to decently mine one base, let alone two, and you can't afford to pump probes from two nexuses while doing more than one gate dragoons. The only asset of the build is an incredibly fast dragoon range compared to a standard FE build, although it's still considerably slower than a normal gate core range opener.

Meanwhile Flash went for a standard rax cc bunker build and was macroing up considerably more quickly. Dragoon range completed and JangBi laid siege to the bunker but was pushed back by sieged tanks without forcing too much repair. JangBi sent a probe to 6 to expand and was delayed by an scv sent out by Flash to build an ebay there. Although he cleaned it up JangBi still didn't immediately expand, instead opting for more gateways and a robo while walling 6 in to prevent further scouting. Then, about a minute later, he took 6. Now this is weird, really, really weird. If he felt he was safe to take 6 then he should have taken it immediately because he'd already shown Flash his intent to take it. Equally if he felt it was unsafe or was just trying to confuse Flash then he shouldn't have taken it. What JangBi did here is make Flash think he was going to do something but instead do that thing badly.

Flash responded by taking his mineral only third but in his haste he neglected turrets, overgrouped his tanks and didn't make a bunker or float his ebay or rax to mess with dragoon AI. There's a word for this and unfortunately for Flash that word is “bad.” JangBi's observer saw everything and he promptly bulldogged it. With no floating buildings, turrets or anything else the tightly grouped tanks could only die.

Although Flash was able to stabilize, JangBi's third was up and mining and he was laying down gateways, getting zealot speed and teching to arbiters. Flash attempted to take his third mineral only again and got bulldogged again and combined with the tank losses from before he lacked a critical mass to defend it. He didn't have a single spider mine and the zealots again tanked the tanks while dragoons move fired into them. As speedlots were pumped from seven gateways the mineless, vultureless tank line broke. Flash GGed.

Lee Young Ho.

Do you remember when this guy was a cheesy KT newbie who could only do dumb stuff like this?

Not many of you do, but the player he evolved into over time makes me almost wish he stayed that way. Flash, in essence, killed Broodwar. No, I'm not talking about conspiracy theories. Flash destroyed Broodwar with the 14cc/1rax FE. This is not to say that he pioneered those builds. Oh, no, nothing as ground breaking as that. He just used them ad infinitum ad nauseam, and in the process squeezed any semblance of beauty, creativity and grace from all Terran matchups.

In fact, the effect he had on how we play Broodwar is so profound that I've taken a moment here to analyse the intricacies of his TvP build.

+ Show Spoiler [Super secret Flash bonjwa build] +
Last week, Jangbi destroyed Flash. Oh but riptide, you say, destroy is such a strong word. Couldn't it be that Flash just had a bad day? It very well could be, but that doesn't change the fact that the Samsung KHAN Protoss straight up embarrassed the reigning bonjwa, completely over running him in Game 2 and then adding salt to the wound with a beautiful 12 (11?) nex into bulldog beatdown. It was glorious, friends. It was truly glorious.

In reality however, he wasn't just beating flash. He was beating, even for a moment, the trend of mindless macro pioneered by KT's Terran powerhouse. In an age where we equate winning a ton of games with greatness and high ELO with legendary play, it's fantastic that a dark horse arose to not only reduce the much hailed king of Broodwar to a pile of rubble, but do so in a manner that made us rise to our feet.

As much as you'd like to think it, I'm not a Flash anti-fan. I certainly do not deny his success. Like I said, he has been very successful, successful in making every game he plays about as interesting as watching paint dry.

But now, to the matter at hand. It is the Fall and Heo Yeong Moo is in his first OSL Semi Finals. Everyone knows I'm a SKT fan, and as much as I'd like Fantasy to win his second title, I want Jangbi to win even more. He deserves it. Not only because of his STOOOOORMSSSS and not just because he is one of my favourite Protoss on the scene today. Not only because we love to root for the underdog, or because it would be nice for Samsung to catch a break.

I want Jangbi to win this OSL because he did the unthinkable, the impossible.

He smashed Flash. In the face.

In doing so, he also removed, even for just one OSL, the mind numbingly boring style of play that has invaded this beautiful game. I look forward to him beating soO and meeting Fantasy in the finals. I know it's an uphill battle for our young Protoss hero. I know his PvZ isn't great. Then again, he did just destroy the much revered king of the game in style, and indeed, it is the Fall.

Good hunting, Jangbi. It's time to add a gold to your medal collection.

JangBi, you’ve shattered everyone’s expectations by getting this far at all, but the hardest part of your journey is yet ahead of you (Editor’s note: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Our embattled Protoss survivor here in Flash’s place makes for a much harder series to predict than the one-sided slaughter that would have taken place otherwise.

The numbers still paint a fairly clear picture though, and it’s not one that most fans are going to like. soO has been slaying Protoss left and right since the end of Winner’s League, going 10-2 from then. In addition to his recent good record, soO is arguably the most consistent of the four semi-finalists. JangBi on the other hand is 4-6 in his last 10 PvZs, and his win over Calm in tiebreakers broke a 5 game losing streak in the matchup. The maps also favor soO, even more than they favor Fantasy over Hydra. Gladiator is the only one that seems fairly even. Their head to head? 2-0 in soO’s favor, and both of those games came from the prelims of this OSL where soO beat JangBi 2-0, knocking him into the wildcard tournament.

There is some hope for the legions of JangBi fans won over by his toppling of God in the quarterfinals. What JangBi has going for him is of a decidedly less tangible nature. The first thing to take note of is that JangBi lately has played poorly in some PvZs and quite well in others. Even though he lost, his game against Jaedong from not too long ago in SPL was very impressive and his game against Calm in tiebreakers elicited praise from even JangBi’s most vitriolic anti-fan. In other words, he's proven that he can PvZ formidably well. If JangBi brings that level of play to this series, he can beat soO.

And he just might do it. This entire tournament JangBi has been sliding to the brink of elimination only to turn around and dominate his way into the next round. JangBi’s got a lot more experience than soO in individual leagues (soO is a Royal Roader and has never entered MSL proper) and has some crazy momentum going. We got to see soO’s performance in a high stakes ZvP in the SPL finals: he played well but not above his usual standard, and lost.

I don’t expect JangBi to win this one. When all is said and done, he’s still a shaky PvZ player going into a BO5 against a strong ZvP player on unfavorable maps. Then again, no on expected him to beat Flash either.

My mind says: soO wins 3-1 or 3-2, with a minimum of one successful hydra bust.

My heart says: JangBi wins 3-2, with a breathtaking reverse sweep after barely holding on against a hydra bust in the third game.





I’ve been staring at a blank page for the last forty minutes, every now and then making a decision, writing out a couple sentences, and then changing my mind and starting from scratch. After much deliberation though, I have to give the edge to Fantasy, with some reservations.

As soon as the regular SPL season wrapped up, Fantasy started a still unbroken eight game winning streak. Part of this sudden improvement can be written off as the end of his lengthy post-OSL slump, but I think the bigger factor is that Fantasy just does better in an individual league setting. As has been pointed out plenty of times before, Fantasy's preparation, strategies, and excellent series planning are what make him such a dangerous individual league contender. Furthermore, Fantasy has far more experience both in individual leagues and series play than Hydra, who never made it as deep as the RO8 in the individual leagues until the PDPop MSL.

That isn’t to say Hydra doesn’t perform well in individual leagues. In fact, he’s proved quite the opposite in the last two MSLs. The difference between him and Fantasy though is that Hydra’s BOX performance doesn’t strike me as radically different from his performance in Proleague. In a random SPL match Hydra might be even with or even favored against Fantasy, but in a BO5 in the semifinals of the OSL, Fantasy is a lot more likely to step it up than Hydra.

Their head to head is 2:1 in Fantasy’s favor, and in the most recent and relevant of these games, Fantasy won with straight up bio in the Winner’s League playoffs. Furthermore, the maps are all statistically terran-favored.

So if everything seems to point in Fantasy’s direction, why all the reservations? I talked about how well Fantasy does in series. Do you know who his opponents were in his last three TvZ series? Hyuk, Calm, and Hyuk again. If ever there were a pair of fail prone Zergs, it was these two. Fantasy got the wins, but for the most part not in the most confidence inspiring manner possible. The best ZvT player he faced recently in individual leagues was Neo.G_Soulkey, who knocked him out of the last two MSLs in the group stages.

On the other side of the equation, Hydra’s ZvT is underrated a lot these days, perhaps because he faces Flash so often (5 of his last 10 ZvT’s were against the Ultimate Weapon, talk about a tough draw). Just looking at Hydra you can tell he's the kind of player doesn’t screw around. If Fantasy tries pulling the same crap he pulled against Calm and Hyuk, he'll be in for a rude awakening.

Prediction: Fantasy wins 3-2