[GSL] Super Tourney ro64 D7 - Page 103

On May 30 2011 20:45 Zinthar wrote:


And many people will look at that and conclude that he's trash, which couldn't be further from the truth. 2 Code A Ro32 appearances means that he's successfully qualified for Code A twice, which is extremely impressive and means that he must be a really solid all around player. If I recall correctly, you have to win something like 6 consecutive series in the qualifier in order to reach Code A.

True, he hadn't been terribly impressive when he got to Code A, but that's a really small sample size and you can probably chalk a lot of that up to nerves and inexperience in televised matches.

Remember that a guy who's probably a top 10 player in the world, Startale Bomber, didn't manage to even qualify for Code A until March.

DRG was completely unknown before GSTL, where he proceeded to tear up everyone other than MMA. San was supposed to be the worst player by far in Code S before he suddenly was "probably the best macro protoss in the world" (roughly quoting Artosis).

Point is, you can't really tell based off of a small number of showings exactly how good most of these players are. The 4 players with easily the most success (NesTea, MVP, MC, & MKP) have each been dropped to the up/down matches in at least one of the past two GSL's.

Line is not, and never was, as bad as people here were saying. Likewise, Jinro is MUCH better than his recent televised matches would indicate. His mechanics and micro are Code S level. He probably needs a new TvZ style, but he'll be fine in the long term.

On May 31 2011 06:09 PartyBiscuit wrote:

I agree with your points, but I just have to say that Line is pretty unremarkable relative to Korean pro standards. His first Code A season was seeded through his run in GSL open 2 where the quality was very low (and he beat....FreeDSL).

Before his wins against Jinro, he had gone 1-9 in his past 10 aired tournament matches. Yes, it may be a small sample, but clearly he has shown himself to be pretty incapable past the qualifiers with a grand record of 4-10 (prior to today). He might be 'ok', but based on Jinro's previous results (and actually ability to attain Code S), he should have destroyed him.

DRG was fairly known before GSTL in Korean scene and people were always terrified of Bomber. I've yet to see an interview of a GSL player expressing their fear of Line.

On May 31 2011 08:47 fant0m wrote:
I think we saw a lot of insight into the current state of ZvT today.

ZvT has always been one of the biggest matchups in Starcraft, and it is THE matchup of SC2. Almost the entirety of the balance and map changes in the last year have been related to what happens in ZvT.

And we have had some "standard" strategies emerge from that and the massive amount of tournament ZvT games that have happened.

Z: Ling/Bling/Muta
T: Marine/Tank

These are the backbones of so many players' ZvT strategy. And it's an obvious choice, on paper they counter each other, so it comes down to micro and it's very unlikely for your opponent to deviate from his comp, because he already "counters" you!

So what happens? Well as we saw today in Jinro vs. Line, Junwi vs. Virus (game 2), AND Nada vs. CoCa, the Zerg should be able to mass drone and expand up, fending off pressure and taking the economic lead.

Terran responds with good SCV production, eventually catching up and taking a relatively fast third. He defends against Mutas by building significant numbers of Turrets and puts down a double ebay and goes for both marine upgrades and vehicle weapon upgrades as fsat as possible.

The Zerg masses some Mutas, does what he can to harass, create map control and stops all T harrass (medivacs, hellions, banshees, etc). He continues to expand and gets a LOT of lings and banelings.

At this point, what will happen when they fight? The Terran sieges, stims marines and pulls back. Banelings charge in but get annihilated, when all the banelings die (maybe they kill all the siege tanks, maybe they don't), the marines come back and clean up everything else, T wins.

So when do Z win? Well, every single time that the Z gets Infestors or Brood Lords out, he can fungal the marines when they fight, or catch them before a fight, kills them and then wins.

Just today Line beat Jinro with this and Junwi took game 2 with this switch. When the Z didn't transition past the initial strategy, the T won (Nada).

I feel that this is very indicative of the current state of TvZ (in GSL at the least), and until we see something radical, I think it describes the current meta game very well.

On May 31 2011 08:47 teamsolid wrote:
Good analysis, but you are simplifying some things a bit much. For example, you can't go hive tech on only 2-base, so in order to safely secure that 3rd at a reasonable timing, you need to pump lots of muta/bane/ling for a short period of time, depending on how aggressive the Terran is. Prime example... on Crossfire, Nada was extremely aggressive throughout the whole early-mid game and in turn forced his opponent to pump a ton of units in order to even get a 3rd base. You can't just "go brood/infest", Terrans have to actually let you. In Jinro's case he simply didn't play an aggressive enough playstyle and thus fell behind as the game progressed.