SlayerS_MMA vs fnaticRCaLive

FXOGuMiho vs SlayerS_Puzzle

Notes and Comments


Shades of Polt

MMA's excellent GSL record has been based on his ability to prevent his opponents from playing the game they want, and taking well calculated risks (economic or military) to make sure he's always playing with some kind of advantage. Though MMA's good enough to beat people straight up, he knows that the easy, ugly win is as good as the hard fought, attractive win.

Naturally, I was surprised when Alive managed to trump him in this department, out-thinking (and out-lucking) MMA in three of four games. Alive has always looked more like a middle of the road, macro player, and I didn't expect his one base builds to screw with MMA in that fashion. There was no straight up mech vs bio duel where mid-late game ability was tested. Regardless of their length, all four games were mostly decided by the early game mind-games, with a player outright won or took a big economic advantage through their strategem.

It was reminiscent of MMA's series against Polt in the Super Tournament, where Polt took the air out of MMA's lungs and defeated him with better builds and strategies four games in a row. It was disappointing to fans looking forward to seeing an epic duel to the death, but you had to respect Polt's ability to plan for a series and exploit his opponent's weaknesses.

It's improved my opinion of aLive going forward, as the later rounds of the GSL are always a bit of a half-luck, half-intelligence based crapshoot of builds and strategies. If Alive can play that game as well against his semi-final opponent as he did against MMA, we may very well see him in the finals.


Feels good, brah

Watching Gumiho smack Puzzle upside the head was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in Starcraft II. I tend to take the side of whichever race is whining the most at a given time, so seeing this one-sided TvP beat-down was just marvelously fun.

In the first game, Puzzle decided to use Parting's triple expand into 8-gate 'imba' build that crushed Jjakji's soul last week, as if he thought Gumiho was some scrub who didn't watch games from the tournament he was in. I almost laughed when I saw Gumiho's perfectly tailored response, where he followed his FE with a cloaked banshee and siege tanks. What was going through Gumiho's head? I like to think it was 'B**** please, that s*** is soooooo last week.'

The banshees crippled Puzzle's economy while the tanks blew gateway units to smithereens from their high ground perch. Regardless of the race you support, you can't deny the beauty of seeing a strategy picked apart so perfectly.

The other awesome moment came with Gumiho's off-beat, two base 1/1/1/1 in game three. That strategy was pure three-step Puma:

1) Protoss: I think I know what my opponent is doing.
2) Protoss: I don't know what my opponent is doing.
3) Protoss: Oh, he's killing me.

Puzzle's 1-gate expansion path would have been perfect to stop a normal 1/1/1, but he ended up getting completely thrown off, and it showed in some of his clumsy troop movements. In truth, he probably could have won the game with good decision making and smart engagements, but Gumiho forced him into a tough spot where it was hard to make the right decisions on short notice. "Puma-esque!" we say. Gumiho deserves no lesser accolade. (Also, Gumiho made a two-tank drop actually work as a useful part of a strategy. How many players in the world can do that?)

Whether he faces DongRaeGu or Parting, Gumiho's semi-final series should be a blast.

And just like that, after an upset featuring Alive over MMA last night in the quarter-finals, only one former GSL champion remains. Two-time GSL winner SK_MC has his sights on tying Nestea and MVP at three championships, now having a road to the final that begins with his strongest match-up, PvP, and then a clash against the recently awakened monster Alive in the semifinals. It has been a year since MC was last in a GSL final, when he beat July in five games. If he can make it back this time around, he has the opportunity to show that the elections for President are just a sham, and he's the de facto dictator of this Protoss republic.

A few months ago, it looked like the President would be ousted in a coup. Falling from Code S down to Code A, MC's one and two base timing attacks stopped working. With how weak the Protoss race was at the time, especially against Terran, not even the only champion Aiur was able to stay afloat in the water. When it looked like it couldn't get any worse, in his first round match against Monster in Code A October, MC did the impossible and fell out of the GSL entirely, losing in three games to the unknown Zerg from the MVP team and reaching rock bottom in his career.

A lot of people thought it would be a hard road to get back. His timings weren't the same as they used to. Protoss, the race itself, was at its lowest point, having been almost completely wiped out from the GSL. With how deadly the Code A qualifiers were, housing some of the hungriest players in the world, it felt like it really could have been the last time we saw MC as a dominating force in Code S. If he was ever going to have at another shot at a title, it would have to come from a miracle.

Well, he got that miracle in the form of MLG Orlando. MC didn't win the tournament, his friend and housemate at the time Huk did, but he was able to get second place in the tournament, and as the highest non-Code S seeded player at the event, was given a straight seed back into Code S. What looked like a journey that could take months or even longer to complete, literally took MC less than a month to come back from. Right when he hit rock bottom, he rose to the occasion, beat his teammate TheStC in the semifinals of the tournament and was able to get a second chance.

Since then, MC hasn't let the opportunity slip away, getting to the semifinals of the Blizzard Cup before narrowly losing a five game series to DongRaeGu, and has now reached his first Code S quarterfinal in almost half a year. The timing attacks that weren't working three months ago are now firing on all cylinders, hitting at the perfect time and taking wins in the usual under twelve minute fashion that you come to expect when watching MC. That's not to say that MC can't play a long macro game, he can and will, but the Kratoss Protoss is his most dangerous when it comes to his timings. What happened when his six gate timings stopped working? He went up to eight gates. Whenever you play MC, you have to play safe or he will find the window to attack you.

His opponent shares a similar history from the past year. MVPGenius, to me, was always the Clide or Zenio of his race in the GSL. He would never be amazing or get to a semifinal or higher, but you could see him hanging around the top thirty two or round of sixteen every tournament, maybe taking a game or two, and then surviving the Up-and-Down matches to stay in Code S. It really hasn't been until this tournament when Genius', well, genius has really been able to shine through.

In the round of thirty two against his teammates DongRaeGu and sC, he put on an absolute clinic. You could tell that Genius knew how to read his teammates like the back of his hand, having the correct builds ready to defeat the best builds that his friends had to offer. When the four games against his comrades were over, Genius was the one standing in the end, his usual goofy grin on his face, celebrating like only he and MC can inside and outside the booth. Genius, who coming into the tournament might have looked like the weakest of the four MVP Code S members, was suddenly putting up the best results, crushing two players that the majority thought he would lose against.

Genius was able to win Blizzcon back in 2010, but wasn't able to follow that up with any major results in the GSL. He never did awful by any stretch of the imagination, but he never truly contended for the title. He was hyped in the early Open seasons as the Protoss to look out for and the one that players should fear to face, but before long that title was taken away from Genius and given to MC who was rolling through every player he was put up against in the third Open Season.

This series isn't only to see who will go to the semifinals, but to see which of these GSL veteran Protoss have what it takes to make good on their second chances in Code S. Both fell out of the tournament entirely, but they were both, in their own ways, able to get back and are on the verge to being one semifinal away from making it to where every player wants to be, the GSL Grand Finals. We all know about the Royal Roader Parting in the other quarterfinal, but this is a match between the two Protosses who have been considered the strongest since the early stages of GSL.

We all know that both these players love to celebrate after winning, but who will be the one laughing in the end? Can Genius continue to defy the odds? Twice in the round of sixteen, he was one game away from being eliminated from the tournament but was able to win two in a row against both MarineKing and Nestea to advance. But will that be enough to become the new President of Aiur?

At the end of the night, one will be slumped in his booth, devastated from defeat, while the other will be literally dancing his way to the semifinals.


Prediction: MC 3 - 1 Genius

It's never a pretty sight when two hype wagons collide head on. One will be derailed, strewing mangled fanboy parts all over the highway, while the broken chassis leaks bitter, toxic tears. The other wagon will hurtle on with even greater momentum, an even greater danger to those who are unfortunate to get caught underneath its wheels. Ladies and gentlemen, DongRaeGu vs Parting.

I mentioned previously that Protoss fans have arrived at a position where they don't just want their champion to win, they want him to win with style. Some follow their nostalgia and stay with MC, but many have been tempted by the newly arrived ST_Parting, a player who showed amazing late game PvT mastery in his games against Jjakji. Terran players joke that any game against Protoss that goes beyond 25 minutes is a lost cause anyway, but Parting transcended these recent complaints and made his victories truly about his own skill, and not just his race. 'This is the guy who should be the new President!' is the feeling in some quarters.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but his PvZ doesn't look like it will live up to the expectations. We got a big taste of his PvZ during the MLG Winter Arena Korea qualifiers, where nine of his games against IM Zergs Losira and Nestea were shown. The takeaway from those games? Parting's PvZ is... Puzzling. SlayerS_Puzzling, to hammer the point home. He plays safe, macros and micros well, puts down force-fields that are annoying as hell, but it's not remarkable.

It's a bit of a flawed and hasty analysis, because of the nature of those MLG games. They tended to be games that were decided in the mid-game depending on how Parting's all-in or semi-all-in builds played out. You can't blame a player for doing a 7-gate +2 all-in, because it's a proven strategy that works; it just doesn't tell you much about a player except his micro. There was really only one game that went very long and tested his abilities in that phase of the game, but he entered the late game with a disadvantage anyway, and it wasn't that great of a showing.

That's not to deny that he is very good, as the results speak for themselves. It's just that there wasn't any of that "oh wow, he's thinking one step ahead of his opponent" or "this guy's strategy is way better than the other guy" feeling like there was against Jjakji. Surprisingly enough, that was a vibe we got from some of Genius' PvZ games this season, where all his strategies just seem so well planned out with everything falling into place with his good decision making.

MVPDongRaeGu is in a bit of a similar boat, as he could really be a more convincing Zerg King if he had just slightly better ZvP. His ZvT has never been better, and his ZvZ is as good as it can be in that wonky match-up. He ZvP is actually pretty good as well, it's just not completely ridiculous like his ZvT, which makes him look a bit incomplete, considering he's filling Nestea's shoes. MC took him to the edge with some all-in timings DRG did not expect in during the Blizzard Cup, while Genius simply outplayed him with superior strategies and decision making, showing that DRG is vulnerable on more than one front. Once he's comfortable and gets the ball rolling, and can start to abuse the mobility of mutalisks and speedlings, there really is no better player at finishing Protoss players off. It's just not guaranteed that he will get to that point.

As usual, a lot depends on how the players spent their week of preparation. Maybe it's just the nature of the match-up, but when MC got a couple of days to prepare for Leenock and DRG in the Blizzard Cup, he spent it preparing ten all-in builds. He beat Leenock and was inches away from defeating DRG, suggesting that such an approach can be effective, if inelegant. Parting is almost certain to bring at least one slightly unorthodox all-in that he hopes DRG has never seen, or at least won't expect. Beyond that, PvZ isn't really that conducive to brand new, grand strategies (remember how MC's carriers got hammered down by DRG in the Blizzard Cup?). On the other hand, it's not like the Zerg player can do much either, barring the occasional baneling or roach bust, or possibly a nydus assisted lair phase attack. DRG might very well spend most of his time preparing to not die to anything stupid, rather than look for easy ways to beat his opponent. This series should be fairly textbook PvZ, from the looks of it.

Up to this point, it seems like a fairly even match, with two players who have their specialties elsewhere meeting in a duel where they are nonetheless, still fairly skilled. However, there's one, final mitigating factor: Crossfire has slipped into the map pool. We all know how Protoss players feel about Crossfire. It's not even avoidable either, being placed in the third set. With that, I think we can give DRG a slight lead.

Prediction: DongRaeGu 3 – 2 Parting