Jaedong vs Patience at IEM cologne is one of the best games of the year. If you haven't seen it already, we highly recommend you watch it NOW before reading any further:



We've spent quite some time working on this article looking at both players perspectives in the match. Whether you are Protoss or Zerg there is a lot to learn.

Click on the name of the player below to switch between the player POVs.


Photo: ESL

Going into game five, Patience had already pulled out a handful of tricks and bedazzlements which Jaedong met with mixed success: deflecting some all-ins with ease or completely missing a timing and finding himself in rough shape. In any case, Patience's solid macro play mixed with his trademark wonky twist allowed him to take the series all the way to the final game.

With a brilliant showing at recent tournaments and the ability to seemingly pull magic out of his bag of tricks, Patience seemed poised to take a position in the semi-finals. The only thing standing in his way was The Tyrant, the hallmark player of perfect play. Could his unorthodox style pull through and secure him a shot at the championship?



As the game starts, Patience opens with his fairly standard gateway expand followed by phoenix, beginning what appears to be a very standard game.With the map taken into account, both players begin to make alterations. Plainly stated, Alterzim Stronghold is a very big map. When travel distance is taken into account, almost all ground attacks and ground-based pressure can be ruled out and considered ineffective, making stargate play the only real viable option for harassment and slowing down the Zerg economy. Patience, using this logic, invests very heavily into his phoenix harassment. He opens into very standard phoenix/colossus play, but with a slight twist: he goes all the way up to eight phoenixes and researches +1 air attack, making his phoenix harassment much more powerful. His phoenix harass kills three queens, several overlords, and countless drones, more than making up for the investment into extra phoenixes. Interestingly, this tactic would not work on a smaller map like Yeonsu or Heavy Rain, as a counter-hydra timing would hit long before the Protoss player could attempt to get a colossus out: what makes it effective in this case is the gigantic rush distance of Alterzim. In this way, Patience uses the map size to his advantage.




The drawback to a heavy air opening is a slightly later third, closer to 10:00 than the more common timings of 8:00-9:00, however, in conjunction with effective phoenix harassment, Patience manages to break fairly even in economy on three bases. He further extends this theme by taking his fourth and fifth bases fairly slowly to make sure he has enough army and infrastructure to defend them, all the while threatening pressure with his army and a warp prism.



After opening with phoenixes for harass and scouting information, Patience can draw some conclusions about Jaedong's double upgraded ling opening and react accordingly. With the heavy ling emphasis, double upgrades, and insanely early hive timing, Patience can definitely assume Jaedong is going for a 2-2 ultra rush, however, instead of rushing to void rays and getting a big laser colossus/void ray deathball, Patience starts a second forge and a second robo and focuses on getting a more powerful ground army with lots of immortals. The emphasis on a ground-based army allows Patience to better secure his fourth and fifth bases against Jaedong's constant counterattacks as well as letting him put some pressure onto Jaedong's additional bases via army pressure and warp prism tactics.




Throughout the mid game, Patience is constantly moving toward Jaedong's fourth and fifth bases while threatening drops on the other side, attempting to snipe bases and slow down Jaedong's economy. Jaedong's relentless runbys keep Patience pinned back and unable to really commit to any pressure, at several points even forcing him to recall.



With five mining bases up and a powerful ground army of immortals, colossus, archons, and double-upgraded gateway units, Patience finally decides it's time to switch to air, making a total of five stargates. The final addition of void rays to his already formidable ground army creates a terrifyingly strong army which Patience begins to move across the map with. In addition, Patience throws down a dark shrine to fill out his tech and allow him to deal with any further runbys cost-effectively. Unbeknownst to Patience, Jaedong also moves across the map with a gigantic super-army of brood lord/ultra/queen/infestor while Patience is attempting to push Jaedong's bases. Again, the size of the map proves to dynamically shape the game as both players move counterclockwise and miss each other in the center of the map, beginning a quasi-base race. During this base race, Patience manages to destroy Jaedong's fifth and sixth mining bases and moving almost directly into Jaedong's main before recalling to try and save his main base, but not before happening to spot a growing flock of mutalisks.

Stonewalled at the fourth base of Patience and unable to run away with his slow, immobile army, Jaedong is forced to take an unfavorable trade and loses all of his ultralisks and most of his brood lords. Jaedong then begins his infamous mutalisk switch to try and end the game, but Patience is already prepared with his five stargates and air upgrades from earlier. In under a minute, he is able to push out ten phoenixes with the anion pulse crystal upgrade already complete, effectively killing Jaedong's mutalisk switch before it even gets off the ground. Patience also begins multi-pronged DT harass to pick off Jaedong's freshest bases while gathering his army up for one last big fight.



Patience goes up to twenty phoenix while remaking a powerful colossus/archon army to deal with Jaedong's mutalisk switch, however, during this time both players completely empty their banks and are forced to pick defensible forward bases. Patience chooses the base just to the right of his fifth, very close to Jaedong's new mining base; this allows him to defend any counterattacks reasonably well and push directly to Jaedong's final mining base very easily when ready. After reloading and remaxing, Patience feels confident to take down Jaedong's final fortification and end the game.

As Patience moves in to kill the final base, his composition is based around killing muta/corruptor. Unfortunately for him, Jaedong uses a mixture of ground and air units, including a small handful of ultralisks and brood lords, allowing him to crush Patience's army in surprisingly dominant fashion. During the engagement, Patience makes a fatal error and loses his fresh base to a small group of lings while distracted with the big fight, bringing him to almost no gas income. Unable to make the expensive gas units he needs and now heavily outclassed in composition, Patience looks to be on the ropes. In a desperation attempt, Patience uses his phoenixes to gain air dominance and take out several of Jaedong's drones while retaking his lost base, but Jaedong already has a ling counterattack ready and denies the base from completing.




With his economy slowly receding, Patience's only hope is in the more mobile zealot/archon composition to deal with counterattacks and prevent further mining bases from going down for Jaedong. Though Patience finally manages to secure his income, the prolonged gas starvation is starting to take effect as his lack of immortals and void rays catches up with him. In a final engagement, Jaedong catches reinforcing immortals with lings while punching through Patience's final force with several ultralisks, finally forcing the tap-out.

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Going into game five, the series is tied up two to two; the games have been a mixture of nail bitingly close and absolute blow outs in either direction. JD elects to go for triple-hatch-before-pool builds, not once, not twice, but a full three times in the same series, showing an incredible capability to utilize risk under heavy pressure.




The Tyrant left Brood War with great honor, seeking even greater glory in SC2. With everything on the line and a spot in the semifinals available, Jaedong would need to play his absolute best to get past his rather unorthodox foe.



Jaedong insisted upon playing as greedy as possible and grabbed gas before pool after starting his triple hatcheries in order to crank out ling speed that much faster than usual. This gambit paid off as Patience went for his standard two-gas gateway expand and was unable to contest Jaedong's early greed. The current Zerg vs Protoss meta game favors Hydra or Swarmhost-based compositions in standard games, with some cheese or “just build mutalisks” games thrown in. Jaedong eschews these more standard styles in the final game, instead tailoring his style to suit the map. The early gas allows for an earlier ling speed than normally possible with a quick 3 hatch opening, which leads in nicely to the second part of his build, double melee upgrades. This works with the map wonderfully, giving him unprecedented map control, counter attack potential and base denial.

Unfortunately, Patience also altered his style to fit the map, opting for eight +1 phoenix that did an incredible amount of damage, slowing Jaedong’s build down, as well as making his ling swell designed to shutdown the Protoss third base largely ineffectual.



Jaedong’s opener set him up for a solid mid game in which to execute his plan. The 1/1 ling build usually transitions into a 2/2 ultralisk direct assault against the Protoss player, but relies heavily on creep to bring queens across the map. With Alterzim being such a large map, this timing would be almost impossible to accomplish. Compounding this issue are the eight phoenixes that Patience made, sniping queens and overlords and doing everything they can to deny creep spread.

Instead of forcing the timing despite these setbacks, Jaedong adapts and plays defensively, morphing a hive and placing a macro hatch before his fourth base while amassing a queen/infestor army to deal with Patience’s air units. This defensive play is not to say that Jaedong let Patience do what he wanted, however, as he kept a up a relentless string of ling counter attacks to thwart bases, army move outs, and proxy pylons from Patience. The eventual 2/2 cracklings are obscenely powerful and allow Jaedong to do several runbys, particularly at the fourth base, to deny many bases and buildings of Patience.



Once Jaedong had secured a fourth base, dealt with the immediate phoenix threat, and started grabbing ultralisks. the game begins to take a somewhat unexpected turn. Many viewers anticipated a huge ultralisk/queen/ling/infestor timing, but this was impossible due to distance between bases and limited creep spread. Others expected him to bank lots of money, take a favorable engagement, and then start his trademark muta transition. Jaedong does add on a spire, but immediately starts teching to brood lords instead; this is a fantastic addition to his already strong ultralisk/queen/infestor force as it gives him extra space control and siege damage at a relatively cheap cost compared to swarm hosts, which would be more expensive for the same effect. Due to upgrades from ground affecting broodlings as well as broodlord (air) upgrades boosting his later mutalisk switch, this was a wise decision.

Looking at Jaedong’s army composition choices, Jaedong tailors his army to whatever in-game scenario presents itself. Jaedong starts by planning a ling/ultralisk ground army, designed to keep himself alive and counter attack. Once this phase of the game is done and Jaedong is on four or more bases, he transitions into a mixed army that’s not over-emphasized in one direction or another, with broods, ultralisks, queens, and infestors rounding out his lineup. This army is his “championship” fighter, designed to get in the ring and knock out all comers. This army is so powerful that it, coupled with some amazing proxy brood lord and ultralisk drop harass, forces Patience into somewhat of a base trade.




As Patience starts to close in on Jaedong's main base, Jaedong's plan reaches the next stage: the hardest muta swap known to man. Expecting a hard base trade, Jaedong prepares by giving himself mobility mixed with an unbeatably strong army by trading out his lost drones for mutalisks.




This is Jaedong’s signature kill move. He’s fried championship Protoss after championship Protoss with this strategy, but in this game Patience reads him like a book. With a grand total of five stargates prepped and ready, along with an already heavily upgraded air force, Patience immediately slams into full-on phoenix production, deflecting the mutalisk choke hold and blunting Jaedong's death march, putting himself in the lead.

Despite this hurdle, Jaedong plays patiently, working to rebuild his army and his economy that are both in shambles after the expansions and army are traded. The tech switch to mutas also forces further phoenix production from Patience than would have been strictly necessary given perfect information, weakening the potential response to the more evenly mixed composition Jaedong was building. He then expands into the mid-right side of the map and safely mines long enough to build up a reasonable army again. Once this base is secured, Jaedong’s intention is again revealed through his compositional mastery. He adds in broodlords, ultralisks, infestors, and queens, knowing that this will be another knock down drag out fight involving everything either side has to throw at each other.



Throughout the game, Jaedong uses his army positioning and harass to protect his bases and secure different portions of the map. During big engagements, he also uses harass to make seemingly impossible fights go his way by diverting his opponent's attention. The second major fight in this game is easily the most-discussed engagement, and there’s a lot of factors that play into the fight swinging his way:

1. Expansion positioning
2. Harass
3. Air army positioning
4. Focus fire, fungals, and micro

The game has gone all the way from three mining bases in the opening stages down to two mining bases for Jaedong, barely enough sustenance to build an army. With his bank depleted, he understands that economy is once again the most important aspect of the game and goes in for a ling counter as the engagement occurs, drawing Patience’s attention away from the fight and away from microing his expensive army to defending his expansion.

Jaedong engages with broodlord/ultra/infestor initially, fungalling the Protoss army and holding it in place while broodlings and ultralisks go to work. The casters for the event started shouting “Where are the corrupters, where are the mutalisks?”, perplexed as to why Jaedong only engaged with a portion of his army, but this deliberate move on the part of Jaedong was critical to him winning the fight. If he had engaged with his air army too soon the number of archon/phoenix would’ve shredded his air, leaving him with nothing even if he did manage to trade out the army. Instead JD waits, picking off phoenixes with spores and infestors and letting the broodlords focus fire the archons and tank some amount of damage safely with their high armor. Then, once the Protoss army has been weakened, Jaedong’s air army sweeps in, swinging the tide of battle once again in his favor.




With some amazing air positioning and fungals, Jaedong takes this fight and begins to press his advantage by chasing Patience’s army down and picking off stragglers while simultaneously denying a much-needed base from the Protoss. As this happens, Jaedong starts his transition into a ground-only army again, knowing that he won’t need his slowest, most powerful army for some time to come. Jaedong continues to wear away at Patience, pressing against the crucial bottom middle expansion. Finally Patience is forced to fight to defend his army, but Jaedong has split him up with lings in his reinforcement path and trapped his main army with fungals. With the last archons evaporating and his last mining base surely about to be crushed, Patience taps out.



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