After two weeks of group play, the Bacchus OSL 2009 is finally in elimination stages! Improbably, this OSL's Ro16 did not require a single tiebreaker to determine its Ro8 field — a fact that shouldn't be interpreted to mean that it suffered from a lack of drama or excitement. The Bacchus OSL 2009's Ro16 was rife with great games, budding rivalries, and, most prominently, shocking upsets.
Take a moment, let it sink in: Yellow[arnc] won Group A over Jaedong, Flash, and Effort.
Fake Yellow's game with Flash was fair and square — if decided by Flash's unforgivably pathetic defense against 2-hatch muta — but he had the advantage of playing Jaedong when JD was extremely fatigued and, at 2-0, almost assured a Ro8 berth. Flash, out of contention after Yarnc's second win, helped him into the quarterfinals by successfully cheesing Effort. Ultimately Yarnc's Ro8 qualification seems as much a product of the OSL Ro16's wacky incentive structure as his own skill — and thus all the more flukey.
Effort deserves to lose some sleep over his decision to 12-hatch against Flash in Group A's final game. Given Flash's busy schedule and awful TvZ performance lately, cheese was plausible; given Flash was playing with no shot at the Ro8, it was likely. Effort not only chose a risky build order, but looked surprised and clumsy in his defense to Flash's double proxy rax. Perhaps Savior's heir needs another seasons' experience before he's mature enough for an OSL Championship?
Flash's poor showings against Jaedong and Yarnc meant Group A's overall game quality was disappointing (especially considering all of the big names). Yarnc vs. Effort was its most competitive set, and a brilliant display of high-level ZvZ. Keep in mind that Effort played this game from 0-1 in the group, and less than a week after losing to Yarnc in Proleague.
Fantasy is the only major pre-Ro16 favorite to live up to his hype. He simply dominated Backho and Type-b, then pulled off a nice comeback against Stork to seal his Ro8 bid. Protosses seem to think that a very aggressive mid-game is the ticket to surviving Fantasy's TvP, but his games against Backho and Stork say otherwise.
In my Ro16 preview I predicted Stork would have trouble advancing past Backho and Type-b, and that his meeting with Backho would be Group B's pivotal game. I was right on the former, but wrong on the latter: it was actually Type-b's Day 1 outlasting of Stork on Heartbreak Ridge that determined Group B's second Ro8 qualifier. Type-b's advancement to the quarterfinals is a small upset, but considering Backho's unexpectedly awful showing and that PvZ has always been Stork's weakness, it's not nearly as earth-shattering as Group A or Group C results.
Savor this game: because none of the Ro16's three Protosses scored a Ro8 berth, it was the Bacchus OSL 2009's last PvT. At least it delivers! Stork and Fantasy show sublime drop play that makes this set a memorable and fitting follow-up to the Incruit OSL Finals. Playing the longtime king of PvT was an important rite of passage for Fantasy, who once again proved how much he's developed since his first OSL run.
Group C played out more like a game of "who can defeat The Revolutionist" than a round robin. Because Zero, Go.go, and Hwasin were all underdogs against Bisu and likely viewed beating him as the easiest way to secure Group C's second Ro8 berth, each prepared a different oddball strategy for the occasion. Thus this group turned into a fearsome gauntlet for Bisu, who held Hwasin's disaster of a 2fac on Outsider but could not survive Go.go's biomech or Zero's queens. Yes, sometimes it's tough to be Kim Taekyong — here Bisu overestimated his ability to force straight up games, and as a result suffered yet another seemingly premature OSL exit.
Considering he was also the nail in Bisu's Lost Saga MSL coffin, Zero has now eliminated KTY from two individual leagues — an accomplishment no other Zerg can claim. Perhaps facing Bisu triggers the switch that transforms Zero from a timid, mediocre player into BW's most tenacious, ingenious Zerg? (For evidence, check the spoiler below.)
Zero follows up his infested Terran-powered Ro36 victory over Kal with more unorthodox, but genius, ZvP. This game is must-watch on all counts. It's saturated with star power, features innovative strategies from both players, and was pivotal in determining Group C's Ro8 qualifiers. And if all that's not enough to grab 20 minutes of your attention, maybe this post-game comment from Zero will: "I didn't want to play a boring macro game, so I went for queens". Enough said!
Thanks to crack translators Konadora and Tertiary, you can read both players' thoughts on this game here at TL: interviews with Zeroand Bisu.
With the exception of Kwanro hard countering Leta's proxy 8rax for a win on Return of the King, the Ro16's final group played out exactly like TL's Liquibetting population predicted. Group D, in its mundanity, proved an ideal environment for T1's "other Terran" to quietly continue a remarkable tear: Canata's Ro8 berth-clinching win over By.hero brought his record in the current StarCraft season to 19-6 (8-1 in TvZ).
By.hero's failure to qualify cements the Cinderella status of his performance in the Batoo OSL, which was already looking flukey given the infrequency of his Round 5 appearances for STX. Out of the individual leagues and barely clinging to a winning record since his 0-3 loss to Jaedong at Batoo, Hero now seems poised to follow Backho and Upmagic as a unique young talent unable to follow up his breakout OSL semifinal run.
Just like its results, Group D's best game is no surprise. Leta and Canata both began this encounter on Heartbreak Ridge at 1-0, and over its course both displayed skill that foreshadowed their relatively comfortable Ro8 qualifications. This game is a high-level, action-packed battle — exactly what you'd expect from two of StarCraft's premier TvT players.
One More Thing:
Of course, the Bacchus OSL 2009's Ro16 brought a new intro video for our viewing (or skipping, for impatient VOD-watchers like me) pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrBLh12_UaI
It seems like both OGN and MBCGame are pushing sex appeal a bit harder with each successive intro reel, and this one's no exception (listen to the fangirls scream in glee as it flashes a shirtless Hwasin). I dig the underwater shots — appropriate given this OSL's sponsor is an energy drink — but regret that this intro's sexiness seems to have come at the cost of its stoic badass-ery. Swimming spin-moves and Kelly Clarkson will never get me going like, say, the explosions, guns, and grittiness of EVER 2007's opening.
The Bacchus OSL 2009's quarterfinal round begins next Friday, July 24, at 18:30 KST! Next week I'll publish a preview of all of its matchups. In the meantime, enjoy the StarCraft Heritage League's second batch of games at 18:30 KST tonight. Kingdom fighting!
On July 14 2009 07:40 Crunchums wrote: yarnac did not use standard 2 hatch muta vs flash
Yeah, he went 12pool so the timing was earlier than usual.
Hm good catch...fixing now. Sorry for the error. I still think this game was decided by Flash's reluctance to spend on defense...he only put up 3 turrets!
Holy shit JWD, this writeup is simply amazing, one of my favorites to date. I really like how you analyzed Bisus group, I never thought about it that way before.
Either way, good job, this is the first 'TL:DR' post that I actually went back and couldnt stop reading until I had finished it.
On July 14 2009 08:18 Teejing wrote: you linked effort vs yarnc instead of effort vs flash...
probably because effort vs yarnc was the better game? ^^
On July 14 2009 08:32 HuskyTheHusky wrote: Holy shit JWD, this writeup is simply amazing, one of my favorites to date. I really like how you analyzed Bisus group, I never thought about it that way before.
Oh that's just because JWD is a little SKTT1 fanboy and therefore everyone is out to get his beautiful bisu, bisu against the world...
On July 14 2009 07:40 Crunchums wrote: yarnac did not use standard 2 hatch muta vs flash
Yeah, he went 12pool so the timing was earlier than usual.
Also, his gas timing was so early it was basically a ZvZ build:
12 pool 11 gas 12 hat (not sure cause of cuts to crowd) 11 lair make a few (4?) lings 17 spire 16 sunk 22 nat gas 21 4-5 mutas
Flash made an ebay once he scouted the super early spire and (I think) started turrets as soon as the ebay finished.
Basically yarnac's build order hard counters any sort of fantasy-ish build that defends muta harass with a bare minimum of gols / turrets / valks, but is bad against anything else because unless you kill them with your first mutas your economy is going to be in shambles.
So who can pick up the Protoss Banner? I'm not quite sure Violet has got it in him to be a real top player, and none of the other tosses have either been consistent or very promising lately =/ Apart from that, I cant really recall any protoss ever doing consistently well against Z's while not being horrible in the other 2 mu's. I might have to wait for SC2 for the re-emergence against Protoss ^^
Hey JWD, is Fantasy and JD on the opposite or same side of brackets? If they are on opposite ends, this might end up looking like Fantasy vs JD finals all over again lol
just a great post, got me all caught up. not too wordy, and great descriptions. im not terribly pleased with the fact that the race diversity has already been narrowed to 2. and just a year ago- the protoss were ruling all~ what a great game :D
Stork vs Fantasy really was an excellent game. I thought Fantasy would get smashed, but his vulture + 2 tank in a dropship attack is really just powerful.
Also, even if Flash didn't go for the gay bbs, effort might not have made it out of the group. Although he is no slouch at zvz, yellow[arnc] and jaedong are both zvz specialists (even if yarnc's record doesn't show it) and he would have had a devilishly difficult time with the tiebreakers, especially since jaedong doesn't have any more proleague obligations and would have been more prepared for tiebreakers than he would have been for gom.
On July 14 2009 07:40 Crunchums wrote: yarnac did not use standard 2 hatch muta vs flash
Yeah, he went 12pool so the timing was earlier than usual.
Hm good catch...fixing now. Sorry for the error. I still think this game was decided by Flash's reluctance to spend on defense...he only put up 3 turrets!
I think that rather than a reluctance to spend on defense, he just didn't have enough money to make turrets in time. He went for a relatively fast expo, then a factory and a starport and an armory and went valk/goliath. Since yarnc came so quickly with muta/scourge, flash just didnt have time to put up enough turrets. remember, because he expoed so quickly, he has to be able to defend both his expo as well as his natural and this is not easy until the money from the expo begins to flow in and he has 2 valks+ turrets and gols.
This could not be more true. TvZ I think is one of the best match ups, kind of a 'man vs beast' feeling.. or Starship troopers, however you want to think about it. There are so many builds you can go in TvZ on both ends that it keeps it very exciting, especially with lurkers being able to do redic damage to marines and bio drops able to destroy tech so quickly, the list goes on.
TvT is a boring snoozefest at times. Dont get me wrong, some of the large scale epic macro games are just that, epic. But in general they can turn into slow paced games that arent really all that exciting. Though I know there are people like Artosis who completely disagree and love TvT.
ZvZ to me is so tacky that it is the easiest matchup for a far less skilled player to beat a more skilled player. This is always a risk in Starcraft but I think ZvZ outlines this best. One tiny mistake is more unforgiving in this matchup than any other by far and its ALWAYS the same 2 units.
The lack of protoss takes out two of the more interesting matchups IMO so its a shame that none made it. I think its a slight testament to the newer maps though. Bring up the 5ish newest maps and look at the Protoss ratios, on average they arent very good (I wouldnt say they're getting slaughtered though).
On July 14 2009 08:49 Promises wrote: So who can pick up the Protoss Banner? I'm not quite sure Violet has got it in him to be a real top player, and none of the other tosses have either been consistent or very promising lately =/ Apart from that, I cant really recall any protoss ever doing consistently well against Z's while not being horrible in the other 2 mu's. I might have to wait for SC2 for the re-emergence against Protoss ^^
Violet. No other new toss is good in all 3 matchups. Kal maybe, he's the last non-slumping dragon. Besides Bisu, but I think Bisu's proven himself superior to other 5 finally.
Also, I predict Zero vs Fantasy for the final. (If brackets permit).
This could not be more true. TvZ I think is one of the best match ups, kind of a 'man vs beast' feeling.. or Starship troopers, however you want to think about it. There are so many builds you can go in TvZ on both ends that it keeps it very exciting, especially with lurkers being able to do redic damage to marines and bio drops able to destroy tech so quickly, the list goes on.
TvT is a boring snoozefest at times. Dont get me wrong, some of the large scale epic macro games are just that, epic. But in general they can turn into slow paced games that arent really all that exciting. Though I know there are people like Artosis who completely disagree and love TvT.
ZvZ to me is so tacky that it is the easiest matchup for a far less skilled player to beat a more skilled player. This is always a risk in Starcraft but I think ZvZ outlines this best. One tiny mistake is more unforgiving in this matchup than any other by far and its ALWAYS the same 2 units.
The lack of protoss takes out two of the more interesting matchups IMO so its a shame that none made it. I think its a slight testament to the newer maps though. Bring up the 5ish newest maps and look at the Protoss ratios, on average they arent very good (I wouldnt say they're getting slaughtered though).
Just my .02
PvP is the easiest matchup for a less skilled player to win, all the zvz builds are soft counters rather than the hard ones of PvP that involve dark templars or unscoutable goon all-ins. (The only exception to this is 9 pool speed vs 12 hatch on close positions).
I'm really upset that the supposed big guns all got eliminated. My original predictions went Group A: Jaedong, Effort Group B: Fantasy, Stork Group C: Bisu Hwasin Group D: Leta Canata Flash got dropped for Yellow-Arnc. Fine. Fake Yellow isn't THAT bad. Stork got dropped for...typeB?! I thought for sure that guy was a fluke. I hope he shows us good games in the Ro8 or else I'll be real ticked. Hwasin lost, but I'm not a Hwasin fan and I should have known better because he's not that great anymore. Bisu, on the other hand, was a bit overconfident and I'm losing faith in him. I was hoping he would make it at least to the Ro4. I have to give it to Go.go for the 4rax push though.
Oh, and one more thing: I really don't like ZvZ and I'm not too excited about ZvT either. There's a reason I will only play toss against Z. The lack of PvP too, that's a bit disappointing but not the worst of it.
This could not be more true. TvZ I think is one of the best match ups, kind of a 'man vs beast' feeling.. or Starship troopers, however you want to think about it. There are so many builds you can go in TvZ on both ends that it keeps it very exciting, especially with lurkers being able to do redic damage to marines and bio drops able to destroy tech so quickly, the list goes on.
TvT is a boring snoozefest at times. Dont get me wrong, some of the large scale epic macro games are just that, epic. But in general they can turn into slow paced games that arent really all that exciting. Though I know there are people like Artosis who completely disagree and love TvT.
ZvZ to me is so tacky that it is the easiest matchup for a far less skilled player to beat a more skilled player. This is always a risk in Starcraft but I think ZvZ outlines this best. One tiny mistake is more unforgiving in this matchup than any other by far and its ALWAYS the same 2 units.
The lack of protoss takes out two of the more interesting matchups IMO so its a shame that none made it. I think its a slight testament to the newer maps though. Bring up the 5ish newest maps and look at the Protoss ratios, on average they arent very good (I wouldnt say they're getting slaughtered though).
Just my .02
PvP is the easiest matchup for a less skilled player to win, all the zvz builds are soft counters rather than the hard ones of PvP that involve dark templars or unscoutable goon all-ins. (The only exception to this is 9 pool speed vs 12 hatch on close positions).
Have you seen Bisu vs. Jangbi on Avalon MSL, and Bisu vs. Jangbi GOM S2 on Colosseum?
PvP isn't really about hard counters...
Plus PvP is hard because you can't really scout between goon tech and obs tech. And there are a LOT of options that the Protoss can do after the first dragoon comes out that isn't necessarily going towards fast observers.
splendid piece of text once again, thanks JWD! I hope we can still see some epic Semi's / Final's even without the protosses, though the lack of them depresses me aswell :|
Fantastic writeup! I love the simplicity. I can only see four top contenders though. Those being Jaedong, Fantasy, ZerO and Leta. Do we know what the brackets'll be? I really hope Jaedong is going for the golden mouse
On July 15 2009 02:53 Hammy wrote: I really hope Jaedong is going for the golden mouse
I said it before and I'm saying it again: Kim Carrier predicted that JD is taking this OSL, hence he's got no chance of taking it.
The ro8 bracket is really weird, JD vs Zero while all the other games are inter-team games. It's the first time there's no protoss in the ro8 since... Shinhan 1.
although i was disappointed when jaedong lost to fake yellow.. (and besides the obvious fatigue..) does anyone else think he may have thrown the match so that flash wouldn't have a chance? it might've been a strategic move considering fake yellow was probably the worst out of the group
I'm sort of mixed. I must say Jaedong's muta micro was atrocious. Also it was guaranteed that even if he lost the worst-case scenario would mean he would have to play a ZvZ tiebreaker game. And that only if Flash lost to EffOrt.
This could not be more true. TvZ I think is one of the best match ups, kind of a 'man vs beast' feeling.. or Starship troopers, however you want to think about it. There are so many builds you can go in TvZ on both ends that it keeps it very exciting, especially with lurkers being able to do redic damage to marines and bio drops able to destroy tech so quickly, the list goes on.
TvT is a boring snoozefest at times. Dont get me wrong, some of the large scale epic macro games are just that, epic. But in general they can turn into slow paced games that arent really all that exciting. Though I know there are people like Artosis who completely disagree and love TvT.
ZvZ to me is so tacky that it is the easiest matchup for a far less skilled player to beat a more skilled player. This is always a risk in Starcraft but I think ZvZ outlines this best. One tiny mistake is more unforgiving in this matchup than any other by far and its ALWAYS the same 2 units.
The lack of protoss takes out two of the more interesting matchups IMO so its a shame that none made it. I think its a slight testament to the newer maps though. Bring up the 5ish newest maps and look at the Protoss ratios, on average they arent very good (I wouldnt say they're getting slaughtered though).
Just my .02
You might wanna read what mastermind put in spoilers next time
EPT![[image loading]](/staff/Daigomi/Banner__BacchusOSL__v1h.jpg)
YellOw[ArnC] 2-1 → advances
By.Flash 1-2
Stork[gm] 1-2
