EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/MFK/article_banne3.jpg)
Banner by disciple
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/MFK/foreword_copy.jpg)
In the Korean scene, there are more high level players than the ones you see in GSL. However, we don't often hear about these players due to language barriers. GSL is the premier Starcraft 2 tournament, yet at the end of the day it is only but one tournament in Starcraft 2,
Korean players have been invited to participate in various tournaments with the prize pool ranging from hundreds to thousands. Yet these Koreans are the ones who have set a mark upon GSL and GSTL. We rarely see less prominent players getting featured in the foreigner scene. I aim to change that.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/MFK/im.jpg)
IMYongHwa is the top Protoss for the Korean powerhouse team, Incredible Miracle. He is an extremely creative Protoss that is credited with making the 3 Stalker Robo build, a build that quickly gained popularity among the foreigner scene. His achievements? He's good at Protoss vs Protoss.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/MFK/interview_copy.jpg)
Q. Tell us a bit about yourself and your gaming history in StarCraft 2 so far.
Hello, my name is Choi Yong Hwa (My ID is
IMYonghwa). I have many responsibilities in Team IM such as playing StarCraft 2. Since January 2010, I started trying to be a SC1 progamer. I practiced SC1 very hard for an entire year. In the end, I quit trying to become a progamer in SC1 after losing in the 5th round of Courage. In StarCraft 1 I was in Name clan on USWest server and I was a Zerg user there under the ID YongHwa[Name]. Although I wasn’t able to get into a progaming team, Name clan had its own team house. However, along came SC2 and I started playing SC2 and I joined Team IM as the head coach (강동훈) used to be Name’s clan master .Q. You used to be a Zerg player in SC1, why did you choose Protoss instead of Zerg and Terran in SC2?
In StarCraft 2 I found the Protoss warp mechanics like Warpgates and Warp Prisms to be amazing. Plus, I love using various tactics as I play games and I thought that Protoss has many great tactics at its disposal. I find warping units in the opponent’s base with proxy pylons especially fun.
Q. You said earlier that the IM coach used to be Name's clan master, tell us more about how you got into Team IM.
Since we had known each other in Name clan, it was easier for me to get into team IM. As head coach, he bought me into his SC2 team. The currently team house of IM used to be Name clan’s former clan house. After the formation of the team, he saw me playing Protoss and he thought I was a pretty good Protoss user.
Q. What do you think about life in Team Incredible Miracle?
To be honest, our daily schedule isn’t very tight. We don’t have a strict schedule. We must practice 10 hours a day, however we can do these 10 hours of daily practice anytime we want. We can also choose when to eat and sleep as well. In IM, my roommates are
LosirA, Junwi, Seed, and 
Gaebyul (DreamerTT). I feel as if we’re family since we sleep, eat, and wake up together every day.During weekdays and Saturdays, I spend my time mostly in the team house, but on Sunday, I spend a lot of time outside with my teammates. We spend this time eating tons of delicious food especially ribs and anything made of meat. I also love eating Ddeokbokki (popular Korean snack). At home I love watching Japanese anime and my favourite anime is Naruto.
Q. What's the practice schedule like for you this next week in Incredible Miracle?
I have to help
NesTea practice for the Code S Finals and also prepare myself for the LG Cinema Daegu qualifiers in May 14th. My hometown is Daegu so that is the qualifiers I will be attending. I will be going to my parent’s home on May 12th and I will try my best to play stably even though the entire qualifiers happen on the same day. Only the finals of the qualifier are BO3, the rest of the series is BO1. I don’t know who is going to the qualifiers so it is hard for me to prepare. However, practicing with NesTea will definitely help my overall skills and my PvZ. Our team holds a lot of meetings and conversations so that will definitely help me out a lot for the qualifiers. Of course, I can count on my teammates as my practice partners. They help me practice several games a day. We then hold the meetings to discuss my weaknesses.Q. You weren’t able to qualify for the recent GSL, what happened in the qualifiers?
In my 2 GSL qualifiers, I lost to
GuineaPig from team MVP both times. I lost because I didn’t practice enough, made several misjudgements in both games and I also didn’t optimize my computer settings. So basically it was my fault. The GSL qualifiers is a BO3 and this series was played on Xel'Naga Caverns, Metalopolis, and then Scrap Station. In my first series against
GuineaPig (GSL March qualifiers), he played Terran. In game 1, GuineaPig played Terran and did the marines and tanks push. I successfully defended with Gate units and Immortals. In game 2 and 3, GuineaPig used the 1/1/1 build while I did the 2gate expo build on Metalopolis. I lost as I couldn’t defend his 1/1/1 attack. On game 3, I used the Void Ray and 4 gate build, but he defended well and I couldn’t stop his Marine and Tank push.The second encounter,
GuineaPig (GSL May qualifiers) played Protoss and I faked 4gate while I didn’t know what build he was doing. So I chose to build a robotics after my 2nd gateway. I thought he went for a blink stalker build but it was just a delayed 4gate and I only had 1 sentry ready. On game 2, I don’t remember what happened because I won the game. On the last game, we both went fast blink stalkers build, but I chose to be aggressive and his defense was very good and I lost in micro.Honestly, since I've done pretty decent on GSTL, I think I got cocky for a while. I will learn from these mistakes and will never under-evaluate opponents in the future.
Q. In GSTL, you have been one of the earliest users of the Colossus and Void Rays composition on televised Korean matches, tell us about your thoughts on this unit composition in PvZ.
Generally speaking it’s not that great a composition against Zergs now. These days, players choose to use banelings a lot and if you go Laser Protoss (Korean’s name for Colossus and Void Ray composition), you are severely lacking and gas and you wouldn’t possibly have enough gas left over to build sentries. Without sentries you cannot defend against a Zerg midgame rush so you can’t preserve your gas heavy units to reach critical mass. Secondly, when Zergs choose to use doublelings (Korean’s name for zergling and baneling), they have a huge stockpile of gas which can be used to make many infestors which shuts down Laser Protoss.
Q. Currently some Protoss has been experimenting with delaying Robo and instead using early forge and cannons for detection in PvT, what are your thoughts on these 2 tech options?
These days many Protoss choose the fast forge build as you can upgrade your units far faster than Terran. Even though I go with the fast forge build quite often nowadays, I’m not totally comfortable with it. For example, you can’t really beat a Terran army even with just highly upgraded Gateway units. You must have High Templars or Colossus versus Terran and a forge first build delays your tech. This means that if you go forge first, you will be forced to play very defensive and cannot apply pressure to Terran as your tech is delayed quite long. I think the best tech option is Colossus since I don’t think High Templars are strong enough after the nerf.
In my opinion, attack upgrades are useless unless you have many Colossi as Zealots rarely hit Marines and Marauders and Stalkers only get +1 attack with each upgrade. Before Colossus, armor upgrades for Zealots are useful but even after upgrades, Terran can freely micro against Zealots and Stalkers without receiving much damage themselves. In conclusion, Protoss is still very reliant on Colossus for firepower. Of course after 6 gas, adding High Templars is a very good choice.
Q. In the foreigner scene, you are known as the creator of the “3 Stalker Robo build”. Tell us about the history of how you created this build and your thoughts on this build.
I found 4gate vs 4gate fights extremely boring in PvP so I tried hard to create a BO that can counter 4gate. I focused on the fact that if you 4gate, the 1st army that leaves your base (1 Zeal/1 Stalk) cannot beat my 3 CB’ed Stalkers. With that advantage, I can easily demolish the 1st pylon near my base. Since I have 2 gas earlier than the 4gater, I have a huge advantage after the 4gate stage. This build can beat 4gate, however it has its weaknesses. I advise you not to use this build in bigger maps with multiple routes between you and your opponent’s base as in bigger maps, there are several spots that opponents can proxy pylons without it being scouted even with the 3 Stalkers. Basically this is a nice anti-4gate build for smaller and simpler maps. Of course you would want to kill the probe as fast as possible before it lays down 2nd pylon as your 3 stalkers cannot kill the 2nd stalker fast enough. The probe needs 4 hits from stalkers to be killed.
It doesn’t matter if the opponent does not 4gate as both of you would have similar gas production. Like with a Robo build, you would go observer first and then accommodate based on your scoutings. After you scout the opponent, you can either add Immortals or go straight for Colossus.
Q. In the foreigner scene, your PvP is regarded as one of the best in the planet. However many also believe that PvP is a very luck-based matchup. How do you approach this matchup and how do you decide what builds to use ingame?
To an extent, I agree that luck plays a part in PvP. However if you have better micro and judgement, you will be the winner in the end. In PvP, you have to win the mindgames against the opponent. You have to be confident about your build and your instincts. I believe I can beat any Protoss and if I need luck to do it, I will make it mine.
I always try and maintain control of the game by always faking 4gates but going for other builds. The key point is that you are always trying to pressure him into thinking that you are 4gating. A good way to do this is using your stalker to chase or kill his probe before you drop down the 2nd gas.
Q. This year GSL has been making more maps, what do you think about the GSL and ladder maps?
I like GSL maps a lot better as they are bigger which produces longer games and decreases the chances of all-ins and cheeses. Even though I like these maps, Xel Naga is still my favourite map as many of my best tactics are specialized for this map. Delta Quadrant and Slag Pits are my least favourite maps. Rush distances are too short and expansions are located in open positions so it’s hard to FF efficiently.
Q. How much do you know about Teamliquid.net and the foreigner scene?
To be honest, I don’t know much about the foreigner scene. However I have played players like
Loner, Jinro, HuK, mOOnGLaDe, DIMAGA, White-Ra, and TT1 in ladder. I feel that they have a somewhat different style compared to Koreans. At first I thought that Koreans would be better at micro and macro, but it turns out that wasn’t true at all. Most of them are great players and their skill levels are at Korean levels.Q. What do you think about SC2's growth in Korea?
I think that it’s getting better as when I visit GomTV studios, I see more and more people watching and attending. However in the current system, new players have a very hard time getting into the scene. Code A only allows 16 new players from the qualifiers and only 8 Code A player advances into Code S. I don’t enjoy watching all the same players every season.
Q. Any last comment you want to say to TL?
I genuinely feel sorry for my fans that I couldn’t show my games enough to them on GSL and other tournaments. I will practice really hard until some people even say that they are sick and tired of my games because they are seeing too much YongHwa in various StarCraft 2 tournaments. For those of you who don’t know me yet, please remember my name as you will come to know me very soon. You will come to know me and never forget me.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/MFK/lg.jpg)
The following questions contains possible spoilers including the recent GSL Finals.
The LG Cinema Tournament is a tournament held in Korea. To participate in the main tournament, you must first advance in qualifiers held around Korea. The qualifiers is even more unforgiving than GSL as each series is BO1 and only 2 players may advance. So far, the qualifiers in Hwangju and Daejun have been held, with the winners
Check, Rain, NEXTaeja, and LeenockfOu advancing. Coincidentally, the Daegu LG Cinema qualifiers were held at the same time and same place as the GSL Finals between NesTea and InCa. The winner of today's qualifiers is his teammate Gaebyul, and Younghwa.You made the journey from Seoul to Daegu to participate in the Daegu LG Cinema qualifiers. What have you been doing since then?
Originally I planned to go to Daegu on the 12th, however I pushed back the date to the 13th. At Daegu, I’ve been living in my parents’ house. To be honest I haven’t actually been doing any practice after arriving at Daegu since I thought it would be bad for me.
Today has been a great day for team IM, with
NesTea winning the Code S Finals while you and Gaebyul winning the Daegu qualifiers, tell us how the day went for you.To be honest,
Gaebyul and I knew that we would easily pass the qualifiers, we weren’t overjoyed. The highlight of the day was definitely NesTea winning GSL. The day was filled with laughter and joy especially when we ate Korean beef at a nice restaurant. After dinner, we came back to our team house by bus. It took us about 4 hours.Many people have expressed disappointment regarding today’s GSL Finals between
NesTea and Inca, how do you personally feel about the games?As I was playing in the Daegu qualifiers, I couldn’t watch games 1, 2, and 3. However I did watch game 4. To be honest, everyone in our team thought there was a clear skill gap between
InCa and NesTea. We all predicted either 4:0 or 4:1. Those games proved we were totally right.As one of the winner of the Daegu LG Cinema qualifiers, tell us how the event went.
There were 128 players participating in the Daegu LG Cinema qualifiers. The 128 players were divided into 2 groups composed of 64 players each. From each group, only 1 player can pass the qualifiers. I advanced from my qualifier by winning all 6 of my series, while
Gaebyul won all of his matches as well. The first match was PvP and there was nothing special about that game. I won. Second game was PvZ, I cannon rushed him. I won. Third match, the opponent quit. I don’t know why. Fourth game wasn’t special either. I won.
On the fifth game, I played vs
PuMa on Metalopolis. I went for 2 Gate expo while PuMa went the 1 Marine FE build. Right after my Nexus, I built my Robo and my Observer saw that PuMa was going fast tech for Medivac harassment. So I quickly teched to Colossus and had no problem defending my base from his harass. As I was preparing for his harass, I went for my 3rd while I teched to DT’s to counter him, but they didn’t really do much to be honest. However, my upgrades were much faster than PuMa’s and I easily won the game with 200/200 Chargelots, Blink Stalkers, and Colossi.For the finals, it was a BO3. He went 2 gas but since the map was Scrap Station, I thought that he wouldn’t go for Robotics. So I predicted that he would be going for fast DT’s, Blink Stalkers, or a 4gate 2 gas build. Therefore I also went a fast second gas to give him the impression I was going for a long game, but I went for a delayed 4gate build. (The opponent went for a Blink Stalker build). The second game was on Xel Naga. We both went 2 gas fast Robotics and for the first half of the game, both of our composition was Gate units and Colossi. When we both started our expos I found out that he was getting his second Robo and Forge for upgrades. Therefore I added Void Rays to easily counter his Colossi-heavy army.
It is unfortunate team IM will not be participating in GSTL. What do you feel about your team’s exclusion in the third GSTL?
This question requires a delicate answer. I am very sad that IM won’t be able to participate in the GSTL. However we don’t have any complaint about it. The rules are stated clearly and as players and coaches, we must abide by the rules. I personally feel responsible for the exclusion of IM in the GSTL as I could have raised my team’s points by qualifying for a Code A, a goal that I failed this season. Most of my teammates including my coach firmly believed that I would qualify for Code A, but I repeatedly failed them. I am genuinely sorry. I will try my very best to qualify for the next season. This is the third GSTL. I personally pray that Startale will win this one. However, I hope that IM wins the rest of the future GSTLs. Please watch us win all the upcoming GSTLs and cheer for us continuously!
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/MFK/replay.jpg)
As this interview was conducted before the 1.3.3. patch, YongHwa would like to personally apologize by releasing an entire 1.3.2 replay pack.
Credit goes to NosRainyDays (Nicholas Seo) for helping to translate for IMYongHwa
