[GSL 2019] Season 1 - Grand Finals

On April 12 2019 16:51 pvsnp wrote:
Five years.

Five years of endless war, of skirmishes and battles, of shifting tides and fickle blessings. Five years of gains and losses across a war-torn nation, reduced to little more than churned mud and shed blood. Yet here he stands, in the same spot overlooking the same valley, ready to make it five years and a month.

Not all are so fortunate. High atop the ridge, he can still taste the smoke from the wreckage-strewn valley. Only a day ago those charnel heaps were proud armies under famed generals. He frowns at the nearest fallen standard. The Man of Iron had led the final charge, they said, a desperate, doomed attempt to break free of the slaughter field. Such was the fate of the forsaken. He squints at what looks like the Sun’s sigil, but the bloody rag of a banner could have been anything. The gods know there are plenty to choose from.

Delayed by a petty trap, he’d arrived at this familiar battleground just as dusk turned to night. Too late to do anything except make camp on the ruins of yesteryear. To rally the stragglers and hear out their grim tales of disaster. Listening painted him an eerily reminiscent picture. By all accounts the enemy was in earnest–nine full armies shrouded in a blessed nimbus. Dawn lights tawdry standards in the smoke, staking out each of their chieftain’s conquests. Psychopaths and Assassins and would-be Kingslayers abound. And over all of them, the mark of the Deformed Avatar.

In his youth he would have charged down there, filled with righteous fury, hurling his army at the enemy lines until they broke or he did. Five years ago, he’d done exactly that, and reaped a bloody toll in the doing. For a single glorious moment he’d outshone the gods themselves. But in the end, it was not enough. In the end, he’d been forced to accept that fury alone was no match for divinity.

Now he is older. Wiser. Smarter. Fury has its time and place, but so too does patience. And discipline. And deception. Five years is time enough to cross the span of heaven and earth. To make oneself anew. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Now he wears the thrice-forged crown of the ancient homeland. He is king, and this is his kingdom. And even the gods cannot deny that.

On April 12 2019 21:29 Rodya wrote:
The idea the Maru relies on having time to prepare is really dumb, but it is of course a lie that people trying to promote foreigners and WCS events will continue to perpetuate (so no point in engaging with it). Stop being so obsessed with stupid statistics and narratives and actually watch Maru play... his godlikeness is not because of his preparation, its his ridiculous intuition and mechanics.

In a recent interview, Maru said that the reason he didn't go far in IEM was because of his mental being bad - nothing to do with preparation. But no, armchair players would rather concoct their own crazy theories than listen to what Maru says.

Classic 4 - 3 Maru, and this could be even more one sided against Maru - Classic's preperation should be just too good.

On April 13 2019 05:30 TheDougler wrote:
Out of curiosity, what's the most of any premier tournaments (MSLs and OSLs etc) that a single player won in a row in Brood War? I think Flash won 3 OSLs in a row (and then later, 3 ASLs in a row). Has 4 of any one tournament in a row ever been done before?

On April 13 2019 06:37 burnturn wrote:


I honestly think that people underrate him in the weekenders. Last year he made the semis of Katowice only to lose in a reverse sweep by the eventual champion and teammate in Rogue. Then he won WESG. And he made the semi's of GSL vs. the World, not bad results by any margin. The disappointments are ST and Blizzcon, but ST isn't all that important so the only real disappointment is Blizzcon and IEM this year. It really isn't as bad as you might think.

On April 13 2019 05:02 Xain0n wrote:


Well, if you look at Maru's games it's pretty clear his micro and macro are very good, preparation time alone don't magically enhance mechanics.
Still, he loses weekenders and he dominates Code S; it must be some psychological factor or the inability of reading series on the fly, I'm not sure.

On April 13 2019 18:46 Xain0n wrote:


Less so than a weekender I guess. In any of case, I am not sure why Maru is doing relatively bad in non preparation formats, but I think we can agree there must be one reason?
It seems to happen too often, what is your explanation?

On April 13 2019 19:38 Xain0n wrote:


Then there is no point in you replying to me at all since you actually did not say anything.

"On the fly" of course means immediately, preparation however involves imaginining different scenarios in the boX making it more comfortable to actually face the full series; during KeSpa times in Brood Wars players used to meticolously analize every single move that could be made as counter to the builds they were planning to use, I guess that makes it easier to react accordingly, don't you?

On April 12 2019 16:51 pvsnp wrote:
Five years.

Five years of endless war, of skirmishes and battles, of shifting tides and fickle blessings. Five years of gains and losses across a war-torn nation, reduced to little more than churned mud and shed blood. Yet here he stands, in the same spot overlooking the same valley, ready to make it five years and a month.

Not all are so fortunate. High atop the ridge, he can still taste the smoke from the wreckage-strewn valley. Only a day ago those charnel heaps were proud armies under famed generals. He frowns at the nearest fallen standard. The Man of Iron had led the final charge, they said, a desperate, doomed attempt to break free of the slaughter field. Such was the fate of the forsaken. He squints at what looks like the Sun’s sigil, but the bloody rag of a banner could have been anything. The gods know there are plenty to choose from.

Delayed by a petty trap, he’d arrived at this familiar battleground just as dusk turned to night. Too late to do anything except make camp on the ruins of yesteryear. To rally the stragglers and hear out their grim tales of disaster. Listening painted him an eerily reminiscent picture. By all accounts the enemy was in earnest–nine full armies shrouded in a blessed nimbus. Dawn lights tawdry standards in the smoke, staking out each of their chieftain’s conquests. Psychopaths and Assassins and would-be Kingslayers abound. And over all of them, the mark of the Deformed Avatar.

In his youth he would have charged down there, filled with righteous fury, hurling his army at the enemy lines until they broke or he did. Five years ago, he’d done exactly that, and reaped a bloody toll in the doing. For a single glorious moment he’d outshone the gods themselves. But in the end, it was not enough. In the end, he’d been forced to accept that fury alone was no match for divinity.

Now he is older. Wiser. Smarter. Fury has its time and place, but so too does patience. And discipline. And deception. Five years is time enough to cross the span of heaven and earth. To make oneself anew. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Now he wears the thrice-forged crown of the ancient homeland. He is king, and this is his kingdom. And even the gods cannot deny that.

On April 13 2019 09:29 Die4Ever wrote:

and he did make the finals of IEM Taipei 2015 and took Life to game 7 https://youtu.be/Kbwk2vwXNyU
(well now I'm sad, this should've been a long running rivalry by now)

On April 13 2019 20:07 Xain0n wrote:


Ok, let's assume preparation does not count: Maru always has top notch mechanics, his ability of reading the series and adapting on the spot is immaculate; how comes he only won one weekender? He definitely doesn't love travelling and that might be a factor; it has to be noted Super Tournaments and GSL vs the World are played in Korea just as Code S.

On April 12 2019 19:57 Harris1st wrote:


On one hand, that would be really funny. On the other hand, that would mean the TvP matchup needs to be looked at immediately

On April 13 2019 06:00 Neemi wrote:


Flash never won two OSL's in a row, only Jaedong and BoxeR did that. Flash did make 3 finals in a row (like BoxeR), won against Movie, lost to Effort, then beat Jaedong. NaDa & iloveoov won 3 MSL's in a row, Savior, Bisu & Flash won two in a row. Hydra got one between Flash's second and third win. Only Flash won multiple ASL's in a row (3).

No player in the history of BW ever won 4 of any premier tournament, which is still true since Effort beat Flash in his fourth final.

Jaedong (OSL), Savior (MSL), Flash (ASL) all reached one more final after winning 3. Nada even reached 3 more MSL finals after winning 3, but they all lost. BoxeR reached 6 OSL finals (most of any player) too, but only won 2. Savior managed to reach 5 MSL finals in a row (and won 3), which is longer than the SC2 record currently held by soO & Maru.

On April 14 2019 04:05 brickrd wrote:

the fact that people actually think this way is so absurd to me. we literally worship individual players to the point where they aren't "allowed" to have off days or play badly. it's so intellectually bankrupt to be planning balance whines ahead of time just in case someone loses, without having seen any games. we used to do this with Innovation too

On April 14 2019 05:30 BerserkSword wrote:


Nobody bats an eye at those facts tho

On April 12 2019 21:35 Noonius wrote:
I am very concerned

On April 14 2019 05:30 BerserkSword wrote:


It's funny how it's never the opposite.

Since LotV was released, Protoss only won 2 Code S, and Zerg only won a SINGLE Code S (compared to Terran 6). Nobody bats an eye at those facts tho

On April 14 2019 06:43 seemsgood wrote:

well it would be extremely unwise to play race apologist's game.no one should ever mention race winning history or individual performance when talking about the current balance tho
force them to play your own game and you will seldomly lose an argument

On April 14 2019 07:51 Wombat_NI wrote:

Well the goalposts just seem to shift all the time. When Terran have strong periods they’re just better players, when they have relative weak periods it’s ‘you have to be as good as Maru to win anything.’

Well no shit, you have to be amongst the best players of your race to win tournaments in the current era. Which is true across the races. Innovation just won WESG, Terrans don’t seem to be doing too badly in the Code S qualifications, although they had a bad super tournament.

I like Starcraft 2’s racial asymmetry a lot, more so than Brood War and certainly way more than Warcraft 3’s, although there are elements of those games I like a lot more than SC2

The races play differently in fundamentally ways, and they reward different skillsets so there’s room for different types of player to prosper.

Crudely (really crudely) speaking Protoss rely on tricks and super tight builds and timings, and mixing it up, although easiest mechanically. Zerg rely on reading tricks and making smart defensive decisions and juggling their larva mechanic, are crazy APM dependent if you are aiming to hit every inject and have a ton of ceiling there. Terran you do have to have some aggression and technical builds to slow down the other races, but you’re less reliant on outright tricks than Protoss, but you can get way more out of your units with micro, conversely your units are way worse with bad micro.

Terrans have balance whined since Wings (those that do) along a vague rationale of ‘we have to micro so hard’ or more nuanced variants, and ignore the other side of the coin consistently.

Regardless of who wins, and I hope it’s Classic (purely for him to get it before military and for being a consistently great player), there will 100% be at least one game where Classic is in some situation where Maru displays some stellar micro and crushes Classic and people wax lyrical about it, ignoring the fact that Classic literally can’t do that micro with his units.

On April 14 2019 08:19 BerserkSword wrote:


race winning history is not irrelevant. it is a testament to the general design of the races, as well as a benchmark for the effectiveness of subsequent balance changes.



Yup, exactly. I've had people on this site literally tell me that the top Terran players are just more skilled lmfao

the only part is disagree with is that terran units are way worse with bad micro. Protoss armies are the worst with poor control . Not microing terran units has a higher opportunity cost, though.

I'm pulling for classic as well, for the same reason.

On April 14 2019 08:19 BerserkSword wrote:


race winning history is not irrelevant. it is a testament to the general design of the races, as well as a benchmark for the effectiveness of subsequent balance changes.

On April 14 2019 08:59 seemsgood wrote:
@wombat
or you know....may be when people whine about one race too stronk based on watching pro games.it already has nothing to do with thier daily shits at the beginning ...

On April 14 2019 08:53 Wombat_NI wrote:

I mean true, although I just tend to file that in ‘casting spells well’ rather than micro, although it is obviously micro.

If I fuck up my forcefields, or mess my Templar positioning or storm badly, I can just die outright, or I can be left in a position where I can’t gain nearly as much through ‘great gate unit micro as Terran can, with bio especially.

Relative to my skill, micro is by far the thing I’m best at in SC2 although my macro is ok. People were legitimately surprised way, way back when I switched to Terran from Protoss and got back to my Protoss MMR in about two weeks. Kind of made sense to me as I switched because I felt I couldn’t use my best skill enough as P in those days.

Again relative to my own skill, my best period by far in PvP was when it was 4 gate vs 4 gate. Protoss units are actually really microable in small engagements they just don’t scale all that well. I played a lot of Warcraft 3, I find micro the most enjoyable aspect of RTS, so I’m obviously going to prosper in 4 gate wars.

I’m absolutely terrible with Zerg though, which IMO is fine, and part of why I like SC2 a lot.

I was good with Protoss grinding similar builds and playing defensive reactive macro, I was good with Terran opening literally 1 rax gasless FE in all 3 matchups and trying to our mechanic my opponent. I was terrible at playing Zerg because I was and still am bad at making good reactive decisions with that race.

Which is super cool IMO, I like that it leaves that room, and this applies to matchups too.

I’ve generally always been one of the wonkiest players I know, but I like that and if one can understand why, it’s not really a balance thing.

Back in the day my friends gradually outstripped me in MMR as I stopped playing so much. My Terran friends would still practice with me because my PvT was so good relative to my other matchups, I think at one point my PvT was 70% plus vs my PvZ was around the 30s

Which I think is a cool thing about Starcraft 2. Obviously at the pro level you don’t want such huge gaps, but having the races play so differently and the matchups play differently is something I like about the game for sure.

On April 14 2019 09:29 BerserkSword wrote:


I mean even aside from spell casting, there is so much you have to micro as Protoss. splitting zealots when engaging bio + mine, blink, warp prism micro, etc. It's funny because I actually used to main protoss, then I switched to terran because the protoss army is too difficult to control. But yea most non-protoss players dont seem to understand how unforgiving protoss micro can be. If your HTs are in the wrong place, or you use a dumb storm, or you slip on some force fields, bad disruptor shot, etc, your ridiculously expensive army could just get steamrolled.

Funny thing i used to play a lot of wc3 and am garbage with zerg as well

On April 14 2019 05:15 Anc13nt wrote:


Didn't Jangbi win 2 in a row? They were in different years though.

On April 14 2019 17:16 HolydaKing wrote:

It depends on how long it took them to fill it though, if they just managed to do it then that's not the wrong size, isn't it?

On April 14 2019 17:23 HolydaKing wrote:
One of those rare times I'm cheering for Protoss! Go Classic! :D

On April 14 2019 17:15 sneakyfox wrote:


But if they actually managed to fill it today, even while selling tickets, they really should look at going back to a big venue.

On April 14 2019 17:26 DBooN wrote:
That's a fast Bunker.

On April 14 2019 17:26 Durnuu wrote:

I'd rather have a PvP finals that a TvP one.

On April 14 2019 17:30 Heartland wrote:
Still, even workers, Protoss is getting a third and charge

On April 14 2019 17:32 lolfail9001 wrote:
Another speed run by Maru?

On April 14 2019 17:32 lolfail9001 wrote:
Another speed run by Maru?

On April 14 2019 17:33 ilovegroov wrote:
alright guys lets see how this speedrun goes. you think hes gonna challenge that no hit souls run by Hobo?

On April 14 2019 17:33 ilovegroov wrote:
alright guys lets see how this speedrun goes. you think hes gonna challenge that no hit souls run by Hobo?

On April 14 2019 17:34 Xitah wrote:
Easy 4 - 0. Maru will become GOAT, partially due to lack of talent/motivation in the Korean scene.

On April 14 2019 17:40 seemsgood wrote:
dude still goes for 3 CCs....

On April 14 2019 17:42 Penev wrote:
oh 1-0 already, good first game?

On April 14 2019 17:45 sneakyfox wrote:
What the hell is Classic doing?!

e: okay nevermind :D

On April 14 2019 17:45 DBooN wrote:
Damn, he just broke through that.

On April 14 2019 17:45 yht9657 wrote:

Welcome to Starcraft 2

On April 14 2019 17:45 IshinShishi wrote:
lil bit premature gg, classic was dropping supply rapidly

On April 14 2019 17:45 IshinShishi wrote:
lil bit premature gg, classic was dropping supply rapidly

On April 14 2019 17:46 deacon.frost wrote:

They just hyped it, Classic was ahead in upgrades, tech, supply...

A simple a-move was the only thing how to fail this IMO

On April 14 2019 17:48 DBooN wrote:

Marus defense did look really well set up. (and I remember Classic suiciding into Specials tanks at the global finals)

On April 14 2019 17:49 Elentos wrote:

What next attack? It's not like Maru was actually cleaning up the current attack.

On April 14 2019 17:50 IshinShishi wrote:

I think he cleans that one, Classic stayed much longer in worse position in the previous game, he was already dead before Maru moved out and still didnt leave, so there's that.

On April 14 2019 17:53 ScrappyRabbit wrote:
If this is gonna be how Classic does things, Maru should have a pretty big advantage considering he literally lives with sOs. He probably wakes up with pylons hidden under his pillow.

On April 14 2019 17:53 ScrappyRabbit wrote:
If this is gonna be how Classic does things, Maru should have a pretty big advantage considering he literally lives with sOs. He probably wakes up with pylons hidden under his pillow.

On April 14 2019 17:53 ScrappyRabbit wrote:
If this is gonna be how Classic does things, Maru should have a pretty big advantage considering he literally lives with sOs. He probably wakes up with pylons hidden under his pillow.

On April 14 2019 17:56 Zambrah wrote:
I can finally watch, GO CLASSIC! Tied up feels like maybe the series will be okay? Good even maybe?

On April 14 2019 17:56 Zambrah wrote:
I can finally watch, GO CLASSIC! Tied up feels like maybe the series will be okay? Good even maybe?

On April 14 2019 17:58 Charoisaur wrote:

what's a standard mid-long game tvp? You mean a prolonged 2-base all-in?

On April 14 2019 18:02 Tsubbi wrote:
what is this awful control by classic

On April 14 2019 18:00 Elentos wrote:

It's not too popular with Terrans.

On April 14 2019 18:05 seemsgood wrote:
can't believe artosis though that maru scares colossus tech

On April 14 2019 18:05 Ej_ wrote:

That's why.