[OSL] ... It's About Change

Perhaps if fantasy read TeamLiquid, he would not have lost this game. The game couldn’t have started better for him – his scouting scv sees no probe coming, and combined with the fact that this is a 2-player map, and it’s game 1 of a series, fantasy puts two and two and two together and discovers Stork’s proxy gate off to the side of his natural. He immediately sends four SCV’s, and then places a barracks…


…in total violation of skyglow’s excellent guide on deflecting zealot harass with marines. Worse yet, Stork shows just how much he’s been practicing by immediately sealing off his pylon/gateway with a perfectly placed second gate, protecting his buildings from fantasy’s SCV’s. (In a post-match interview Stork credits Much with this build and helping him practice it.)


At this point, fantasy would have probably been better off sending his four SCV’s back to work, considering they represented a third of his mining capacity, and Stork would have to cancel the blocking gateway anyway to get his zealots out. But instead, he attacks the blocking gateway with all five SCV’s – and then doesn’t even attack the pylon anyway after he “forces” a cancel, choosing to send his SCV’s back to mining as if nothing happened. This essentially cripples his own economy for no good reason, and by the time Stork’s first zealot gets into fantasy’s base, Stork has equaled the supply count, a second pylon up, gas warping – while fantasy just finished his first barracks, and only now starting his second. Oops.


Stork harasses the SCV building fantasy’s second barracks, forcing fantasy to hurt his economy even more by pulling more SCV’s to help fight. And between trying to finish the second barracks and starting a second supply depot, fantasy chokes – without good building placement in which to hide his marines, he mismicroes them on several occasions, losing too many marines to zealots, while never getting around to building a bunker or even keeping up SCV production.


Fantasy can’t get rid of the zealots in his base for a full two minutes, and by the time he does, his base looks something like this


By which time Stork has almost three times his supply, a cybernetics core, a second gate, and the balls to do this:


For reference, that is as many probes as fantasy has marines and workers combined at that point.



The dragoon and probes finish fantasy off, and he types out. A visibly relieved Stork leans back in triumph, having put an emphatic exclamation mark on his game 1 victory. And this is why you read the TeamLiquid Recommended Threads before playing your first OSL final.

Coming into the finals, the big question was, “Would Stork choke?”, or, if you’re Hot_Bid, “How much would Stork choke?”, with surprisingly little attention paid to fantasy's state of mind. After all, it is his first OSL final - and now, Royal Road or not, he just got humiliated in a game lasting barely five minutes. Stork spawns at 2’o’clock, while fantasy spawns at 6. Stork opens with a zealot->core->goon->range build, and harasses fantasy, but fantasy deflects with marines and SCV’s and Stork retreats before the tank pops. Stork allows fantasy’s SCV to scout the robotics warping in his main, but secretly proxies a citadel at the 1’o’clock gas expansion.


Fantasy expands, and Stork positions his dragoons in front of his natural choke to feint an expansion of his own. But fantasy’s SCV scout gets far enough into the choke to realize Stork hasn’t expanded yet, and he immediately moves out towards Stork’s base with marines, tanks, and mine-upgraded vultures.


Stork is forced to use his shuttle and freshly-spawned pair of DT’s to push back fantasy’s army, allowing fantasy to finish the turret in his main just as Stork’s slightly-delayed DT drop arrives. Stork slices away at fantasy’s depots, and fantasy tries to lay mines around the DT’s, but…


With absolutely sublime DT/shuttle micro, Stork sets off the mines without losing a single DT, enabling him to kill the second depot, then moves to the cliff behind fantasy’s main and kills another depot. Before he leaves, he rubs it in a little more by setting off another mine to kill three vultures – again, without his DT taking damage.


At this point, fantasy’s scans are finally up, but the damage has been done. When the shuttle flew into fantasy’s main, fantasy’s supply was 45/60, and Stork’s was 46/57. By the time it was over, having lost three depots, fantasy was at 53/76 – and Stork was at 64/74 and had double-expanded.


Fantasy moves out immediately, and targets the neutral building leading to Stork’s rear cliff. Stork cleverly preemptively seals off the entrance to his rear base with pylons, and by the time fantasy can get up the ramp the vultures have nowhere to go. He camps at the ramp, seemingly unsure of what to do, and Stork is content to wait patiently and allow his economic advantage to build. By the time Stork finally moves to break fantasy’s push, he’s nearly doubled his supply advantage, and the outcome of the battle is never really in doubt:


Fantasy tries in vain to reinforce, but he can sense the inevitability. With only five factories to Stork’s eight gateways, Stork’s units are being replenished faster than his, and there’s no way fantasy can maintain any semblance of map control. Subsequent vulture harass is ineffective, and fantasy ends up just camping at his natural for the rest of the game, as Stork techs to arbiter, expands, and tries some cute harass:


And some not-so-effective harass:


But it all hardly matters at this point. Eventually fantasy ineffectively tries to move out, clumps all his tanks together, and gets torn apart by Stork’s massive army.


GG, and Stork is just one game away from clinching an OSL title.

Give credit where credit is due – for a player down 0-2 in his first OSL final, fantasy played surprisingly well. Stork opens reaver, which, unluckily for him, turns out to be what fantasy had been reportedly practicing almost every day against – and who can blame him, after watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blMeBywzb50］this during the semifinals? Plus, according to the post-match interview with Stork, fantasy is especially practicing with IntoTheRainbow, no reaver slouch himself. And it shows:


Fantasy easily deflects the reaver harass, losing no units and killing the reaver – a critical difference, since it allows him to move out freely without the threat of being harassed. He sets up on the high ground outside Stork’s natural and bunkers/turrets up. Seemingly in disbelief, Stork continues to make reavers and attempt ineffectual harass, and tries to cut off reinforcements to the contain, and even at one point clears out most of fantasy’s army:


Unfortunately, with the two players on equal base counts, and Stork’s reaver harass having failed completely, fantasy’s reinforcements are quickly too much to handle, and he pulls out every trick in the TvP Lame Contain playbook, with the turrets, the mines, the high ground, the unflankable cliff, the floating buildings, etc. and starts whaling on Stork’s natural nexus.


fantasy never really takes a third, but it’s okay, since Stork never does either. Without a third base, the wars of attrition quickly takes its toll on Stork. He tries some last-ditch harass, but they are easily cleaned up, and when fantasy moves in for the kill Stork types out.


GG

Stork starts the game looking rattled; game 3 did not go the way he had planned. Nor would game 4. Stork opens 14 nexus, but unbeknownst to him, after walling off the probe scout, fantasy has gone for a two factory vulture build, and makes full use of the old NaDa-cheat-the-units-over-with-a-floating-barracks trick.


fantasy pops a vulture into Stork’s sector of the map, forcing all of Stork’s natural probes to flee back to the main.


A single zealot stands on the ramp to block the vulture from coming in.


Fantasy continues to deny Stork’s scout probe, as his starport (!) finishes.


Stork at this point has to realize something is up, since fantasy has no expansion anywhere around his main. He starts teching to reaver, but the old TvP rule still stands – a Terran drop build will arrive sooner than a Protoss drop build – especially in this case when Protoss 14 nexused and has nothing to show for it. And so Stork sends some of his probes back to his expansion once his dragoon finishes. Unfortunately fantasy’s vulture is still circling around [like a vulture, ba-dum-psh], and it snipes some probes, slowing Stork down further. And right around this time, fantasy’s dropship finishes and airlifts four vultures into Stork’s main base, where they face only a dragoon and zealot.


With some well-placed mines (including one in front of Stork’s robotics that will later cripple Stork’s reaver), fantasy kills Stork’s forces and lays waste to his probes, as the dropship returns and ferries four more vultures into Stork’s natural just before Stork’s cannon there finishes. Stork tries to defend with a dragoon and reaver in a shuttle, but the dropship comes back with two tanks and a wraith, which easily defeat the half-health reaver.


Left with more bases than units, Stork GG’s. fantasy put on a clinic – a smart, opportunistic build against the greedy macro builds by Protoss on this map coupled with a complete denial of scouting meant that Stork had no real chance: fantasy was in total control of the entire game.

And so we come to game 5 – back to the first map, but now Stork with the Stork face firmly plastered on his visage, and fantasy with all the momentum. Everyone’s expecting the choke now. An armada of TeamLiquid posters readies their “silver” jokes.

But during the break between games four and five, Stork gets a chance to talk to his team, and his coach. And when game 5 starts, Stork immediately shows a return to the Stork of ProLeague and the Stork of group stages and quarterfinals – a Stork of relentless practice and rock-solid builds. Spawning at the top base, he sends out an unusually early scouting probe – not to proxy, but to threaten a proxy. As a result, fantasy is forced to lay his barracks immediately – upon which Stork immediately steals fantasy’s gas.


Fantasy's factory is thus so delayed that he has no choice but to fast expand behind a handful of marines and a bunker, as Stork transitions into a one gate range expo build. With his first three goons, Stork is able to pound away on the bunker, and in a critical micro mistake by fantasy, even able to snipe the first tank.


Stork double expands, and walls off his third from both sides with pylon walls, deflecting fantasy’s vulture harass.



Finding his harass ineffective, fantasy moves out and sets up in the middle of the map.
But he is too passive in pushing out – sitting in the middle of the map for a minute and a half. By this time Stork’s third has been online for a while, zealot speed is complete, and he has eight gateways pumping. The battle isn’t even close.





Fantasy loses the middle, and tries to set up another defensive line. Unfortunately he does it right under the high-ground entrance to his corner, and it, too, falls.


Stork clears out the final defenses with a stylish DT bomb, and moves into the nat for the kill.



But like a stubborn onion, fantasy has one more layer of defense, and he manages to drive Stork away. Stork tries to force the issue several times before taking the hint and backing off, expanding again. Meanwhile, fantasy’s vultures finally figure out how to break through Stork’s pylon wall at his third and he snipes quite a few probes.


Meanwhile, fantasy has expanded secretly to the 9’o’clock base, and Stork comes unbelievably close to discovering it on at least three separate occasions – each time missing it by a hair’s breadth. At one point OGN even switches to a first-person view of Stork’s screen, just to see if he had seen the hidden expansion or not – but he never does.


Stork’s begun to tech to arbiters, but the crowd’s beginning to get restless. Fantasy’s vulture harass, for the first time in this series, has been quite effective throughout, sniping several high templars and a significant number of probes, and his 9’o’clock expansion has noticeably kicked in. He’s turtled and macroed his way back into a fairly substantial army. The Samsung team begins to worry about their champagne.


Luckily for them, at this point fantasy chooses to move out. (He probably had little choice anyway, in light of Stork’s imminent arbiter tech.) But he fails to set up his tanks adequately, and Stork punishes him for it.





And then it comes – the moment for which Stork has waited his entire professional Starcraft career.











Congratulations, Song Byung Goo, our newest OSL Grand Champion.