Mvp @ Top right, Squirtle @ Bottom left. Mvp took the fight to Squirtle in the first game, opening with a one-base hellion/marine/medivac rush against Squirtle's fast expansion. With good scouting denial, Mvp was able to hide his plan for a very long time, and Squirtle contented himself with a blind 4-gate follow-up.

This scouting denial proved to be absolutely crucial, as Squirtle was still in the dark once his warpgate upgrade completed. Squirtle choose to warp in a round of four stalkers at his forward pylon – a good move if Mvp had gone for a greedy build – but fatal against the two prong harass hellion + marine drop coming his way. Squirtle tried to do the best he could with his four offensive stalkers while also somehow defending his main, but it was a forgone conclusion. Marines and hellions killed off everything in Squirtle's naked main, while a wall-in and 30 SCVs were all Mvp needed to hold off Squirtle's attack.

Score: Mvp 1 – 0 Squirtle

Mvp @ Bottom right, Squirtle @ Top left. Calm and collected for nearly fifty games at IPL4 and throughout his fifteen game GSL run, Squirtle showed that even he could be shaken by the pressure of the GSL finals. After opening up with a standard FE into robo build, he managed to lose his important first immortal due to a bad rally.

Otherwise, the game went on in fairly standard fashion, with Mvp doing a standard FE into three-rax medivac pressure, while Squirtle turtled up on his two bases while waiting to get tech units. Besides a failed MMM elevator from Mvp, the macro build-up continued mostly uninterrupted, and the game saw both players go up to four bases with increasingly deadly armies.

Instead templars and storm, Squirtle assemble a large, near-max army centered around four colossi supported by a large amount of blink stalkers. On the other side of the map, Mvp was building up a primarily infantry based army, with his lack of vikings suggesting that he had blindly assumed templar tech from Squirtle.

With a favorable army composition, Squirtle was able to emerge victorious in the first major battle of the game – but not by as large a margin as he would have wanted. Fighting in the wide open center of Entombed Valley negated the strength of colossi greatly, and good EMP's from Mvp prevented Squirtle from using force-fields to alter the battlefield.

All of the colossi were dead by the time the battle was over, and Squirtle warped in another round of blink-stalkers to see if their numbers were enough to snowball over the remaining Terran infantry before they could reach critical mass again. Unfortunately for Squirtle, he was just a a handful of gateway units short of achieving his goal, and Mvp's SCV militia and high medivac count allowed him to defend until he had rebuilt a sufficiently large core of marines and marauders.

This left Squirtle in a very bad position, as he had had no breathing space to transition into a different composition after investing so heavily into stalkers and colossi. He was left having fighting off large numbers of marauders and medivacs with blink stalkers and a couple of colossi, the result of which should be fairly obvious.

Score: Mvp 2 – 0 Squirtle

Mvp @ Top right, Squirtle @ Bottom left. Having shown standard play in the previous game and 2 – 0 up in the series, Antiga Shipyard presented a perfect opportunity for Mvp to throw a curveball. After opening up with a regular FE, Mvp went for late gas and went for mass barracks and marines for early pressure. As for Squirtle, he continued to play fairly standard for the third straight game in a row, taking a fast Nexus and transitioning into some light gateway pressure.

Squirtle's could have used his good micro to tear apart Mvp's only-marine army apart if he had encountered it in the field, but Mvp wasn't interested in playing to his opponent's strengths. Expecting his opponent to move out with gateway units at some point, Mvp sent off a small group of marines outside the vision range of the central watchtower for the purpose of a backdoor attack.

When Squirtle charged into Mvp's natural, Mvp only needed lift his CC and retreat it to his main while defending with bunkers on his ramp, whereas Squirtle was forced to scramble and try to minimize the damage to his naked main and natural. It ended up being a largely advantageous trade for Mvp, who killed off a large number of Squirtle's probes at the cost of few SCVs and some mining time.

Mvp followed this up by greedily making a third orbital command center, a move Squirtle was powerless to stop as he was busy chronoing both of his nexii to try and rebuild his economy. The end result was by the time the two players were ready to fight again, Mvp had pulled massively ahead in economy, and thus had a far more powerful army as well. Mvp had no trouble picking apart Squirtle with drops while the rag-tag Protoss army ambled about indecisively on the map. The accumulated damage eventually became too much to take, and Squirtle GG'd out.

Score: Mvp 3 – 0 Squirtle

Mvp @ Top right, Squirtle @ Bottom left. It would have been easy for Squirtle to crack under the pressure of being down 0 – 3, but he ended up looking more like DongRaeGu than TOP or Losira. While Mvp went for his fourth different build of the night in triple orbitals defended by siege tanks, Squirtle played standard yet again with an FE into robo.

As in game two, there were few complications as the two players built up their economies and armies, but this time Squirtle transitioned into templars, archons and chargelots instead of sticking with colossi. With his upgrades delayed by going for a handful of tanks early, Mvp ended up paying the price by having late upgrades. Squirtle was put into an almost perfect late-game Protoss situation, with every form of splash damage in his army while his zealots were two levels of upgrades ahead against the Terran infantry. Not surprisingly, Squirtle streamrolled through Mvp's army, and collected the GG to stay in the series.

Score: Squirtle 1 – 3 Mvp

Mvp @ Bottom, Squirtle @ Top. It didn't take long for it become obvious that Mvp wanted the sixth game to go super-late. Mvp took a quick third after some non-committal MMM pressure, and after he saw Squirtle take his third as well, Mvp continued on to take his fourth.

Squirtle's plan resembled the one he used in game two, going for mass blink stalkers and colossi off three bases. However, with Mvp playing very defensive, Squirtle withdrew and belated followed Mvp into preparing for the long haul.

The game turned into a rough half map split, with Mvp taking the five bases on his half of the map, and one of the islands as well. Squirtle took his half of the map and the two neutral ground expansions, while the remaining island was left untouched.

As tends to be the case in such tight situations, neither player was willing to attack for a very long time. Mvp built mass orbitals and sacrificed his SCVs for more units, and then began to sacrifice his units for OTHER units. It was pretty much the same story for Squirtle, whodiscarded his cheaper units for ones of higher value.

The end game composition of choice for Mvp turned out to be mass battlecruisers supported by ghosts. For Squirtle, it was stalkers, templars, archons, and a lone mothership. But even with their final compositions put together, neither player was willing to try and end the game. Even when Squirtle stranded a large number of his units at Mvp's island expansion with a suicide mass-recall, Mvp was too tentative to commit to a real counter-attack. After a long standoff (during which Squirtle was able to ferry back everything from the island with a warp prism), for no real reason than the fact that Mvp finally felt ready, the fireworks commenced. Mvp moved out into the middle of the map with twenty odd battle-cruisers and a squad of ghosts, ready to take the Protoss army head on.

The resulting clash was epic. Though there were many theoretical problems with Mvp's composition and execution, it didn't prevent the total destruction of twenty battlecruisers from being one of the most exhilarating moment in GSL history. Half of the BC's were vortexed into oblivion, while the rest ate a deadly combo of storms and feedbacks. With a group void rays also on hand, Squirtle was able to completely overkill Mvp's army.

Cleaning up was easy for Squirtle, as he instantly warped in a massive ground army to replace whatever he had lost and swept through Mvp's bases.

Score: Squirtle 2 – 3 Mvp

Mvp @ Right, Squirtle @ Left. Having played an extremely safe series thus far, Squirtle took his biggest 'risk' of the series by skipping a robotics facility after taking his fast expansion. Mvp went for another FE build including a handful of tanks, having the option to pressure his opponent but wisely chose not to after sensing his opponent had gone for quick chargelots.

Instead, Mvp went for a later timing once he had stim and medivacs, setting up in an advance position outside of Squirtle's third base. Squirtle could have played the situation slowly, but perhaps feeling too confident in his chargelot + templar army, he decided to run straight into the fray. It ended up being a disastrous attack, where he ran single file into a well set Terran line, losing much of his army advantage. Squirtle tried to attack again after he had reinforced with another round of warp-ins, but it turned out to be another unwise over-extension against a superior Terran army. Mvp was able to counter-attack and raze Squirtle's third, and then set-up a siege line a stone's throw away from the Protoss natural.

At that very moment, Squirtle was in a very tough spot, but he was able to patiently work his way back into the game. Mvp was entrenched right outside Squirtle's natural, but as he was not within striking distance of the Nexus, Squirtle didn't have to react right away. Instead, he used his forward pylons to warp-in zealots to kill several SCVs at Mvp's bases, while also taking a new third base in another location. Though Mvp had a good position outside of Squirtle's natural, he wasn't able to deal with anything Squirtle was doing elsewhere at the map which caused him to slowly but surely lose his lead.

With this third base up and the mining at Mvp's bases seriously disrupted, Squirtle eventually turned the tables on Mvp. After a few rounds of backdoor attacks, Mvp suddenly realized that he was actually in a fairly big hole, and that Squirtle would probably win the game if he waited any longer. He took the troops at his semi-containment position and moved them into Squirtle's natural, only to be met by a barrage of electricity and lasers. It was already too late – Squirtle had put together an army too powerful for Mvp to handle. Squirtle busted out and crushed Mvp's army, and moved onto his base to collect the GG.

Score: Squirtle 3 – 3 Mvp

Mvp @ Top right, Squirtle @ Bottom left. We'll never know what Squirtle had planned with the series on the line, as he spent the entire game reacting to Mvp's moves. Mvp had no qualms going for a high-risk, high reward strategy, sending out SCVs for a proxy 11/11 barracks rush. Once a handful of marines were complete, Mvp sent out SCVs from his main for a deadly all-in attack. Fortunately for Squirtle, he sent his scouting probe out early enough to catch the SCVs leaving Mvp's main, making it obvious what his opponent's strategy was.

Delaying for as long as possible with his first zealot and a handful of probes, Squirtle did the best he could to minimize his damage until he had two stalkers out. With a bunker going up by his gateway, Squirtle managed to just barely avert disaster by killing off every single SCV as the bunker reached 90% completion. That left Squirtle with the marines to take care of, but with his second stalker popping out in timely fashion, he was able to repel the attack with stalkers and probes. Mvp looked extremely dead as he was down to just five SCVs with absolutely no tech to speak of, but he decided to stay in the game on off-chance that there would be an incredible miracle.

The Starcraft gods smiled upon Mvp, and his prayers were answered. Squirtle became overconfident and completely misjudged his lead, forgetting that a mule and handful of SCVs was still enough to make continuous marines out of two barracks. Squirtle sent a zealot and two stalkers to attack the proxy barracks, only to lose a zealot and a stalker (half of his army) to a flank attack from Mvp's surprisingly numerous marines. The marines were quickly joined by all of Mvp's remaining SCVs for one truly last-ditch attack supported by a single mule at home.

It was just enough. A zealot and a stalker were far more than Squirtle could afford to lose at that point in the game, and he was powerless to stop Mvp from destroying his pylons and depowering his gates. Squirtle could only watch dejectedly as a bunker went up next to his Nexus, not even having the will to muster his remaining troops for a futile last stand. When his Nexus went down, Squirtle GG'd out for good.

Final Score: Mvp 4 – 3 Squirtle