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United States20667 Posts
14th MBCgame Survivor Tournament Group A
11 February 2008, 1400 KST/2200PST previous day @ MBCGame
To kick off the fourteenth Survivor Tournament, we have an assortment of veterans and neophytes representing four different teams and all different races. Top two finishers will advance to the next MSL, other two will drop down to offlines.
Sea dropped from Gom4 after going 1-2 against  Light in octofinals. s2 advanced from offlines with perfect 6-0 over  TossLife, Chalrenge, and  ZergMaN.
Loki II’s a balanced ZvT map so far, at 5-4 in favor of humanity. Sea has shown strong TvZ play with a 7-3 record in his past ten, with his losses coming to mass-murderer Jaedong and Blue Storm-bolstered 815.
SKT T1's s2 has shown a grand total of two televised games – both ZvT wins, one against BoxeR and the other against JokeR[Gamei]. Here, he might pull out the underdog victory: unknown players have the advantage of an unknown style.
I expect s2 to try the favorite mutalisk-to-ultra build so favored on this map. Sea defeated HoGiL while losing to July and GoRush here, but I don’t foresee s2 pulling off that build well enough to overcome l’enfant terrible. Despite s2’s perfect win %, and even though one victory was over an in-form Emperor, I still consider Sea the favorite. The smart money’s on Sea for the three-base macro win.
Zero dropped 0-2 against Sea and Mind in Gom4, while Much advanced from MBC offlines with an immaculate 4-0 against Terrans DarLinG and Casy.
Loki’s ZvP balance is 0-4; the swarm has never taken a game on it against the warriors of Aiur. ZerO is 33% against Protoss, though two of those losses came from Katrina. He’s never shown dominance (or even competence) against Protoss, and he’s facing a fair PvZer (23-22) in Much. Even worse for ZerO, Much seems to have broken through in PvZ recently: 7 wins in his last 10 matches.
This one is a fairly straightforward call: Much will stomp all over ZerO unless some great mishap [CJ headquarters burning down, Much dying from heart attack in his old age] occurs.
Sea will most likely face Much here. Both powerhouses in this matchup, it will come down to who plays better. The map is exceedingly balanced, 10-10 in PvT. The last time these two met, it was in OSC finals: Much won that encounter 3-2.
If I had to give it to one player, I’d grant Much the slight edge. Sea is a mediocre 5-5 in his recent TvPs, while Much is 7-3. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to discount Sea against any player. This game will be the highlight of the night (Barring some bizarre upset)
Does anyone even care about the probable s2/ZerO match? I’d bet on s2 if I had to, seeing as he went 2-0 over the estimable ZvZ of ZergMaN in order to advance. Still, it’s irrelevant, since the winner will most likely face either Sea or Much in the match finals. Where he will lose. Terribly.
By the way, Zerg vs Zerg is perfectly balanced on this map. Half of the Zergs win, and half of them lose.
If my predictions hold up and Sea faces a zerg here, he might be in a spot of trouble due to the map’s abysmal 15-32 TvZ stats. Still, he defeated ZerO here not too long ago, and holds a respectable 3-2 TvZ on Blue Storm. Neither s2 nor ZerO has shown the requisite ZvT mettle to drop Sea.
Hopefully all goes well and Sea/Much advance to the next MSL.
Feedback: I don't do this much, so I'm relatively ignorant of the whims of the TL populace. More wit? Less stats? How do y'all want it.
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Nice writeup. I liked the balance of stats and wit.
Go Sea and Much!
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needs more wit and epic metaphors, here's what you should be aiming for:
On January 17 2005 20:48 Manifesto7 wrote:
Game 3: Reach (p) 59-48 vs SaferZerg (z) 16-11 on Neo Guillotine
I have heard rumblings about my reporting being somewhat biased towards Reach, and that I should try to be more impartial. I apologize for this, and will try to curb my enthusiasm for him from now on.
The greatest StarCraft player on the earth today (23-28 vs Z) warped in at five, while SaferZerg (4-3 vs P) spawned across the map at eleven. Safer went for a safe twelve pool build while scouting the map, while Odin himself used his brilliant intellect and cunning to start with a forge-first build which quickly led to a fast nexus. It looked as if the game would boil down to a race between Reach’s sairs and Safer’s mutalisks, but in reality there was no competition. Saferzerg was forced to switch to lurkers while the Gifted One’s air power dominated the skies.
While Safer looked to contain with his new lurkers, Reach simply shrugged off his opponents mild attempts at resistance as his dt artfully ninja sliced the drones at Safer’s expansion. Bordering on contempt for this pathetic display of zerg offense, Reach broke out of his main with a zeal/goon/temp army, decimating his opponent’s lurkers and expanding two more times. With only one expansion, Safer was unable to keep up with the protoss macro game, and with every breath Reach gave life to new legions of armies willing to do his bidding. As Safer huddled in the corner of the map, mounting no offense and trying to avoid detection, Reach launched his Spartans relentlessly, raining blue fire down upon the confused and frightened zerg. With the blood running in torrents, Safer quickly taped out in the face of the onslaught, took one look at the face of God, and ran from the MegaWeb studio to find solace in the company of lesser mortals.
Reach simply got up, made all the girls swoon with a single smile, and then got into his cloud car and headed back to the heavens for fine wine and peeled grapes.
Reach > SaferZerg
Unfortunately, this does not change things for my Mudang hero. However, he will ultimately extract revenge upon all those who attempt to sully his name.
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Doesn't third place also drop to offlines? Generally survivor tournaments have the 24 non-seeds from the previous MSL and the 24 group winners from offlines I think, which doesn't leave any room for people being seeded directly from the previous Survivor. Or are they chaning the format a bit next time?
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United States20667 Posts
On February 07 2008 14:55 Macavenger wrote:
Doesn't third place also drop to offlines? Generally survivor tournaments have the 24 non-seeds from the previous MSL and the 24 group winners from offlines I think, which doesn't leave any room for people being seeded directly from the previous Survivor. Or are they chaning the format a bit next time?
You are indeed correct. I was thinking of OSC 
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On February 07 2008 14:51 ATeddyBear wrote:needs more wit and epic metaphors, here's what you should be aiming for:
But its difficult to have epic metaphors when all there is are predictions for coming matches, compared to Mani's battle report.
Anyway, just keep your writing interesting, and your own style will show.
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On February 07 2008 14:20 Last Romantic wrote:
This one is a fairly straightforward call: Much will stomp all over ZerO unless some great mishap [CJ headquarters burning down, Much dying from heart attack in his old age] occurs.
[. . .]
By the way, Zerg vs Zerg is perfectly balanced on this map. Half of the Zergs win, and half of them lose. Win. <3
Well-researched, well-written, witty. Pls write more. 
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It is excellent, colorful analysis with consensus picks of the winner.
The analysis is spot-on, for me this is like a Dummies' guide to Liquidbet.
A health bit of bias would be fun here, but I suppose you don't have much opportunity because few KTF players make it into the leagues nowadays. 
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can the LR curse stand up to truly shitty zergs?
tune in next week to find out
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That was wonderful, thank you LR.
I love your ZvZ balance comment.
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On February 07 2008 14:51 ATeddyBear wrote:needs more wit and epic metaphors, here's what you should be aiming for: Show nested quote +On January 17 2005 20:48 Manifesto7 wrote:
Game 3: Reach (p) 59-48 vs SaferZerg (z) 16-11 on Neo Guillotine
I have heard rumblings about my reporting being somewhat biased towards Reach, and that I should try to be more impartial. I apologize for this, and will try to curb my enthusiasm for him from now on.
The greatest StarCraft player on the earth today (23-28 vs Z) warped in at five, while SaferZerg (4-3 vs P) spawned across the map at eleven. Safer went for a safe twelve pool build while scouting the map, while Odin himself used his brilliant intellect and cunning to start with a forge-first build which quickly led to a fast nexus. It looked as if the game would boil down to a race between Reach’s sairs and Safer’s mutalisks, but in reality there was no competition. Saferzerg was forced to switch to lurkers while the Gifted One’s air power dominated the skies.
While Safer looked to contain with his new lurkers, Reach simply shrugged off his opponents mild attempts at resistance as his dt artfully ninja sliced the drones at Safer’s expansion. Bordering on contempt for this pathetic display of zerg offense, Reach broke out of his main with a zeal/goon/temp army, decimating his opponent’s lurkers and expanding two more times. With only one expansion, Safer was unable to keep up with the protoss macro game, and with every breath Reach gave life to new legions of armies willing to do his bidding. As Safer huddled in the corner of the map, mounting no offense and trying to avoid detection, Reach launched his Spartans relentlessly, raining blue fire down upon the confused and frightened zerg. With the blood running in torrents, Safer quickly taped out in the face of the onslaught, took one look at the face of God, and ran from the MegaWeb studio to find solace in the company of lesser mortals.
Reach simply got up, made all the girls swoon with a single smile, and then got into his cloud car and headed back to the heavens for fine wine and peeled grapes.
Reach > SaferZerg
Unfortunately, this does not change things for my Mudang hero. However, he will ultimately extract revenge upon all those who attempt to sully his name.
Oh, wow. I should read some old news reports, if they are all this epic
Great writeup, my only beef is that you're taking all the randomness out of liquibet. Now everybody will vote Much+Sea (of course most people would anyway). My opinion on wit or stats is wit>stats. TLPD has the stats for everyone, but if you don't write your strokes of genius down, it isn't shared with anyone.
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i think that instead of trying to predict past the initial games you could elaborate a bit on the possible matchups (sea vs zero, sea vs much, much vs s2, zero vs s2) and how the maps would affect them.
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South Africa4316 Posts
Thanks for the writeup LR. My short comments on the games: Zero has some of the worst unit control and multitasking I have ever witnessed from a progamer. His strategy is ok, but he can lose from a winning position easily, by simply not controlling his units.
Sea seems decent on Loki, although not great. I think that s2's biggest chance would be to go for mute harass combined with a timing mute/ling attack. It all depends on Sea's build of course. I don't like ultras on Loki, as mines just take them apart. The mutalisk harass would have to be exceptional to pull it off.
I HATE protoss on Loki. When I wrote the maps in the balance TLFE, I wanted to add Loki simply to complain about how much I hate it. The original Loki was an excellent map. A multiple route Shin Peaks style map, but with interesting mineral walls, and nice open battlegrounds. Any race could grab a quick third gas, but at the risk of leaving their third expansion open from attack on two sides.
Loki II just took away everything that made Loki a nice map. The mineral walls were taken away, and a standard expansion was added to the corner. The third gas is now painfully easy to secure, which means that both Terran and Zerg have a hard time countering Protoss's quick tech. The map has been changed from an interesting unique map, to a boring, unbalanced map.
Balance was pretty poor in both maps though, but the changes made to the new Loki really does nothing for me.
As for the writing, I think it's perfectly balanced wit/strat/news wise. My only complaint would be that you should remove the TLPD mentions from the paragraphs of writing. Add TLPD to the game details at the beginning of each sentence, but keep the body of text clean of TLPD.
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Nice write up, i liked the combo of statisitics and witty commentary on it  it's a good blend.
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Hungary11305 Posts
First of all, thanks for this preview! As I advocated in another thread, for me reading well-written and informative previews is more important than reading the recaps of the games I already watched (of course the perspective is different for less ardent viewers).
As for style: I find the body very well-written and informative, and of course the zvz comment is golden enough. Maybe, if you want to be more immersive, do a small intro which leads to the games at hand from a broader, maybe more metaphorical perspective. I think you have the writing skill for that.
Oh, I forgot: As Manifesto did in his news item which is placed over you now, maybe find a fitting title with a little bit of drama in it, like "la querelle des anciens et des modernes" (just a general idea, not an actual recommendation which would complement the theme you choose in the introduction).
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can you be the one to explain how many players from what league advance and get demoted and such? someone made a great chart for OSC ODT OSL, but im still in the dark about the MSL and survivor tournament. thanks
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Where do you watch survivor tournament and OSC? i have gom and daum, but neither seems to sponsor. can anyone help me out? (besides referencing me to the resources page, where no one would begin to know which player to download) thx=)
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