Results from Live Report Thread by Seeker.

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Late Bloomers
– HerO and Squirtle shut out SuperNoVa and TaeJa

There's a great bit of Korean pro-gaming lingo, that you can't quite find in the Anglo-sphere. In Korea, Liquid`HerO and ST_Squirtle's potential can be said to be “exploding,” which is an incredibly apt way to put it. With their 3 – 0 beatdowns of oGs.SuperNoVa and Liquid`TaeJa, the Protoss pair have gone from being on the fringes of Code A just months ago to looking like they could win a championship. In HerO's case, some might have considered him a ticking GSL time-bomb after he showed he could overcome his nerves and flex his muscles on the international stage. As for Squirtle, Startale managed to sneak him into IPL4, where proceeded to detonate and level half of Las Vegas, with the shockwave now reaching Korea. Behind closed doors, both had long been known to their teammates and friends as players who could make it in Code S. For whatever reason, everything kept going wrong for the two in the GSL, but now – and as if the pro-gaming gods are bestowing some karmic reparation – everything is going suddenly, incredibly right.


Liquid`HerO 3 – 0 oGs.SuperNoVa

HerO got off to an inauspicious start in the first game on Entombed Valley, having his four-gate all-in scouted out before he was ready to strike. SuperNoVa was able to get some extra bunkers up in time, and HerO was forced to back off after killing just a handful of SCVs.

Yet, HerO was able to improbably transition from the veritable King of all-in builds into a normal game, pulling back and starting a late Nexus. It turned out that SuperNoVa gave HerO just a little too much time to recover – stubbornly going for a planned out, late marine-tank push instead of trying to hit HerO when he was weak. Though SuperNoVa was able to create a intimidating siege line with tanks and bunkers, looks ended up being deceiving as HerO's mass +2 zealots were able to crush through everything. Having invested so heavily in his contain, SuperNoVa was unable to recover, and he fell helplessly to the counter attack.

SuperNoVa tried to even the score with an FE into four-rax stim timing in the second game, but HerO had enough troops and force fields at the ready to hold off the attack. Having cut SCVs, delayed his medivacs, and fallen into an upgrade pit, SuperNoVa was forced to play from a position that was depressingly behind, and HerO ruthlessly built on his lead. Without HerO needing to launch a final attack, SuperNoVa eventually GG'd out after seeing his harassment stopped, the Protoss bases multiplying, and his forces getting stormed a million times.

Down two games on Atlantis Spaceship, SuperNoVa decided to go with one of his trademark two-base, bio-mech all-ins. This variant happened to be a thor-marine all-in, timed to hit when thors reached +2 armor. Although this timing meant he would hit after HerO had templars and storm, it would also be at a timing where templar mana would be at a premium, with HerO having to choose carefully between using storms on marines and SCVs, or using feedback on thors. HerO opted for the former route, and luckily for him, it wasn't the incorrect decision. The shield-only marines were quickly annihilated, and the SCVs soon followed.

For all of HerO's awareness and good use of storms, it may have been SuperNoVa's mistake that played the most crucial part in the fight. SuperNoVa forgot to turn on auto-repair until the tail end of the battle – and though his SCVs did happen to die very quickly to storm – the narrow margin of victory for HerO suggested that even with a few seconds of repair for SuperNoVa, the result could have been very different. With his critical mass of thors lost, and far behind on harvesters and tech, there was nothing more SuperNoVa could do after his one push, and he GG'd out to HerO's counter-attack.


ST_Squirtle 3 – 0 Liquid`TaeJa

In the first game on Cloud Kingdom, Squirtle went for yet another one of his two base colossus builds, something TaeJa had surely studied endlessly as he prepared for this match. Yet, like many Terran opponents before him, TaeJa fell to the attack that came with just a couple of colossi, despite having vikings, despite having bunkers, and despite it being the most predictable strat in the world. He was able to kill off the colossi, but he simply lost too many units in the process, GG'ing out to the flood of gateway units that followed up.

Punished by Squirtle's seemingly invincible strat in game one, TaeJa decidedly to just blindly made two vikings out of his first starport in game two. Had he been going for a different strategy, Squirtle might have smiled to himself about how he deeply he had gotten into his opponent's head, but Squirtle's decision to make a warp-prism meant that the vikings actually worked out somewhat well for TaeJa. However, 'somewhat well' for TaeJa only meant that he didn't die immediately to the huge blink stalker + warp prism attack that attacked his main. The vikings took care of the warp-prism, preventing from Squirtle from straight out ending the game with new warp-ins, but TaeJa was still forced to sacrifice over two dozen SCVs to fend off the attack. After that, it was smooth sailing for Squirtle, as he easily held off TaeJa's counter attack timing, teched to storm, and smashed through the front door to take a 2 – 0 lead.

The third and final game completed a very well-rounded performance from Squirtle, as he followed up the two previous meticulously planned, well executed timing attacks by winning a game where he had to think on his feet. Squirtle's one base, immortal + 4-gate push resulted in a base trade, which then developed into a strange reset scenario as both players started not-quite-from-scratch at new bases. Squirtle wasn't perfect in that unusual situation, even losing a very important colossus due to a lack of focus. However, his overall game plan was more sound that TaeJa's, as he decided to turtle up and go for templars while TaeJa was trying to gather troops to end the game quickly. Excellent force-fields from Squirtle allowed him to hold off a potentially dangerous MM attack, and once he had storms, he was able to raze his opponent's base (again).


After the games

HerO had a laundry list of players to thank after the game, perhaps indicative of the amount of practice put into his match. Curiously enough, he mentioned while he had wanted to practice with TaeJa (as they were playing the same match-up), things just didn't work out for that to happen. Though HerO initially left SlayerS_Eve off his list of shout-outs, the gathered journalists were able to coax a quick mention out of him after dogged harassment.

Squirtle offered a few tidbits on the “Squirtle Timing.” He mentioned that while most Terran players like to push out in the early-mid game to apply a bit of pressure and get a feel for what their opponent is doing, that was a suicidal move against the Squirtle Timing, with the correct response being to patiently turtle in one's base. He also suggested that Cloud Kingdom was a tough map to stop the timing on, with the terrain at the natural actually working against the Terran player. When asked if those comments were just a mind-game for the future, Squirtle only gave a wry smile.


Game of the Night: Squirtle vs TaeJa – Game Three

I was considering picking another game, but I remembered that not everyone bought MLG Spring Arena 1, and thus not everyone else was jaded to base-trade resets. Yeah, they're cool I guess, but they lose their novelty factor when coL.Heart initiates one for the third time in the same day. I swear, Heart's comfort in weird situations, and his willingness to take them on is a really underrated strength.

Oh right, Squirtle vs TaeJa. In this base-trade reset, both players were admirably decisive after the base-trade occurred. They might not have always made the right decisions, but they were always quick to act and never dawdled. Squirtle's choices and execution ended up being better in the end, but it was good to see TaeJa know that the only thing worse than a bad decision is indecision.