WCS Season One Finals

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by Fionn

Heralded as the best player in the world for months, STX_INnoVation finally won the trophy he needed to seal the deal. Just a week after his disastrous GSL finals experience against Soulkey, where he let a 3 - 0 lead slip out of his hands, Innovation crushed Soulkey's teammate sOs 4 - 0 in the WCS Season 1 Grand Finals. After dispatching Mvp in a close semi-final series, Innovation headed into his second final the span of a week fully understanding the stakes and knowing how slim the margin was between victory and defeat. This time, he made sure his opponent would get no second chances. The nervous sOs, who entered his first finals in his young career, stood no chance against the battle-hardened and utterly ruthless Innovation.



The first game set the tone for the series with Innovation playing his usual ultra-aggressive style, flying around the map with medivacs loaded with hellbats. At first, sOs' defense seemed to be rock solid, but with multi-prong attack spreading him thin, cracks started to appear and eventually Innovation was able to exploit them. Taking an economic lead with his drops, Innovation didn't stop with the pressure, whizzing across the map with even more hellbat drops and taking out sOs' feeble attempts to hold with zealots. Down nearly forty army supply, there wasn't much left for sOs to do but wait for his ultimate demise, and he GG'd out when Innovation came marching in with his superior force.

Hoping to tie things up, sOs went for one of his signature tricky builds on the second map, opting to proxy a stargate in hopes of getting a leg up with an early oracle. Wanting to replicate Innovation's success with his aerial play on the first map, sOs' oracles seemed to do the trick early on, killing off a number of workers and putting Innovation on the back foot. Warping in stalkers and zealots to keep up the pressure, it appeared to be just a matter of time until sOs choked out Innovation and tied up the series.

Unfortunately for sOs, he misjudged the situation and hastily pushed his stalkers up into Innovation's base in an attempt to end the game quickly, rather than try to play out his advantage slowly and methodically. sOs paid the price for his recklessness, as his troops were surrounded by SCVs and gunned down by marines. Having thrown away his advantage, sOs found himself massively behind for the second straight game, not even having a nexus at his natural expansion while Innovation already had a second orbital command center ready to float down. Just as in game one, Innovation pushed his econ lead, massed up his army, and eventually went to kill the helpless sOs.

Put down into a 2 - 0 hole, the first time finalist already seemed to be crumbling. Soulkey had noted in a prior interview that if sOs was able to take the first game, he would have been in a good mental position to take the series. But being down two games to the top Terran in the world was too deep a hole for a player already noted to have nervousness issues in high pressure games to climb out of.

The series continued to play out by the same script in game three, with Innovation confirming that sOs' defense wasn't strong enough to defend his drops. The game started out even, as both players built up to around 100 supply on even bases. But then - just like the first game - the drops were too much for sOs, and all the holes in his static defense were exploited, giving Innovation a large army advantage. In his panic, sOs even built an accidental second templar archives as Innovation pulled further and further ahead.

To sOs' credit, he managed regain his composure, and put up a good fight toward the end, pulling off perfect feedbacks against drops to give him a small window of opportunity. Closing the gap in supply and having the stronger army composition, it looked like he might be able to steal a victory if he could get enough blink stalkers to support a colossus based army, but his composition just never came together in time to stop Innovation's overwhelming army. Down 0 - 3, sOs had to put on his best GGPlay and Soulkey impression if he wanted to take the championship and place Innovation in a club that even MarineKing didn't belong to.

Deciding that standard play or conventional cheeses like proxy oracles wouldn't work against Innovation, sOs pulled out possibly the most out of left field strategy we've ever seen in a major final. Wanting to play the ultimate turtle game, sOs put all his chips down on the tempest. The hope was that if he could get enough high templars and tempests, Innovation would never be able to attack him straight up, while constant zealot harassment would be able to wear him down.

Right out of the gate, the strategy looked to be an embarrassment, Innovation finding about the tempests early and being able to put up three starports in retaliation. The entire linchpin of the build came down to being able to hold the fourth base - the center gold base on Planet S - using the tempests and high templars to stop any incoming attacks to try and take it out. Innovation didn't let sOs set up in turtling position, rushing in the first chance he had with his speedy bio army, sniping down the base and moving out with minimal losses.

This dance would continue for most of the mid-game, sOs building tempests, hoping to get into an ultra late-game situation, and playing turret defense with his gold base. Innovation would continually rush in with his medivacs and bio army, take heavy losses from storms and the shock blasts from the tempests, but be able to take out the gold base in the end, giving him the large economic advantage.

Finally, after going through the same cycle for most of the game, sOs got the army that he wanted. With 10+ tempest on the map, he was able to do his zealot run-bys, kill off a large amount of Innovation's workers, and even move around the map with his air force and target down the extra bases that Innovation was trying to secure. Evening out the army supplies and taking a slight edge in economy, the crazy strategy built around the overlooked long rage Protoss air unit was starting to look more and more genius.

The climactic battle came at the gold base, Innovation rushing in with his marines and vikings, wanting to take out as many tempests as possible. Both sides took heavy losses in the exchange, still at around the same supply by the time it was over, but Innovation gained the huge advantage by breaking the critical mass of the expensive, slow-building tempests. With his opponent's core army composition broken, Innovation had free reign to run around sacking sOs's before he replenished his tempest numbers.

The biggest factor in why sOs eventually lost the game was the upgrades. With a 0/2 army against 3/3 bio, sOs had no chance against Innovation's infantry, losing engagements that he would have normally won if the upgrades were even. In a world where his upgrades were better, sOs would have actually come out with the victory in this crazy game, maybe even creating a new PvT paradigm by with his tempest centered army. Unfortunately, he overlooked the upgrades to try and get a high tech army, investing all his money into the tempest/templar combination.

Down 100 supply after losing all of his ground army to Innovation's upgraded forces, sOs tried to hold on one more time with his remaining air fleet. With not enough storms to blow up the ground forces, the marines were able to get under the tempests, take them out, and secure a 4 - 0 victory for Innovation.