SPL '13-14
Playoffs

Match 1 Recap
CJ Upsets SKT

Battle report
Classic vs Bbyong

Detailed information on
Liquipedia

By Soularion and TameNaken

CJ defied all doubts on Sunday night as they overcame SKT's seemingly insurmountable depth advantage and took Match 1 in a nail-biting series that went all 7 games. With clutch performances from Hydra and Bbyong backing herO's double wins, CJ managed to overcome the strongest team in the league. Up one match heading into Match 2's all-kill format, CJ's position is looking much brighter now than twelve hours ago.

CJ had taken a surprise 2-1 lead over SKT with a strong performance from herO and a surprise win from Hydra. Fielding the Station Attendant Bbyong on Outboxer, this was CJ's oppurtunity to both beat SKT's third and final GSL finalist and bring the series to an almost insurmountable 3-1 lead. Bbyong had performed well throughout rounds 2, 3 and 4 with a mixture of all-around solid Terran play and a variety of innovative builds and strategies. Facing GSL champion Classic, it would take something out of the ordinary to win, and Bbyong delivered.

Bbyong spawns in the top left as the yellow Terran, Classic spawns in the bottom right as the orange Protoss. Right from the start, Classic appears somewhat uncomfortable, fidgeting in his chair and fiddling with the monitor. Meanwhile...



Bbyong opens with a safe 1rax+reactor expand and Classic goes for 1gate expand while Wolf and Sojung debate the technicalities of Korean pronounciation and color blindness. Bbyong follows up his expansion with a factory and a starport, opting to go for widow mine/marine, presumably for drop play. Across the map, Classic is yet to get a good like inside Bbyong's base, going for a robo without actually knowing what might be coming his way. Unscouted, a medivac full of marines heads across the map and unloads inside Classic's base.



The drop is repelled with relative ease just as Classic's first colossus appears on the field. Bbyong, looking posed to attack the front and drop the main simultaneously, decides to back off. Somehow, Bbyong decides that the correct response to being pushed back by a colossus is to build a raven. The follow-up decision to also build a tank is one that would have puzzled Classic had the aforementioned Protoss decided to scout at all (which he still hadn't). In the dark and unaware of Bbyong's unorthodox choice in composition, Classic throws down a twilight council and a third expansion, assuming that there will be no more significant pressure coming for a while. Finally getting an observer across the map, he is met by this:



Although Classic's observer eventually manages to scout both the tank and the raven, it dies before it can scout the crucial second tank (with a third one on the way). Like Wolf, Classic seems to identify the build as an old-school 1-1-1 push, but there is something about Bbyong's play that isn't quite right.



Recognizing that Classic's scouting has been sub-par all game, Bbyong throws down a hidden fourth to the bottom left along with two factories, signalling that he is going full-on mech. With an economy about to far outmatch his opponent's, double armory follows shortly thereafter along with blue flame for hellions and hellbats. Although Classic is getting and 1/1, Bbyong's superior everything - still unscouted - gives him a major advantage. In order to keep his opponent's attention away from his mechanical shenanigans, Bbyong starts pulling Classic's forces across the map with banshees and drops. When a hallucinated phoenix finally scouts Bbyong's third and sees the tanks, Classic's jaw drops as he realizes he has been completely misjudged the situation.



As if things weren't bad enough, the hidden island expansion remains unscouted even as Classic walks across the map to attack Bbyong. With a force consisting of blinkstalkers, colossi and zealots without charge and 2/2 yet to finish, things would have been bad enough without this happening:



While all of Classic's forces are across the map about to run head-on into a fortified tank line, hellbats reign supreme in both his natural and his third. A measly four stalkers attempt to minimize the damage while Classic warps Zealots into Bbyong's main, but by not pulling probes the Protoss has already suffered near unrecoverable damage. Forced to act in order to even out the playing field, Classic charges into the heavily fortified third base of Bbyong.



Following his failed attack on Bbyong's third, Classic becomes visibly desperate. A new round of warp-ins and another failed attack put him even more behind. It becomes increasingly obvious that Classic is ill-equipped to deal with Bbyong's unusual composition, but by the time he realizes this it is already to late for any significant tech switch to take place. Assaulting the faltering GSL champion with a barrage of punches (also known as hellbats), Bbyong pulls further and further ahead while Classic is helpless to stop him.




Drilling claws, 3/3, additional siege tanks and ghost academies all pop up on Bbyong's production tab while Classic is stuck building probes and one immortal at a time. Completely broke with a ruined economy and more probes dying a fiery death by the minute, Classic even takes his hands off the keyboard in exasperation. Unwilling to leave the game quite yet, he still remains in the game and looks for a miracle that is becoming more and more impossible by the minute. To drive the point home and send Classic back to the bench, Bbyong goes for the only thing as rare as mech in TvP:



Although nukes raining down on your empty bases is typically a sign that you've well exceeded the time you were supposed to stay in-game, Classic throws everything he has left into one last-ditch effort to break Bbyong's third and initiate some kind of miraculous comeback. Although immortals, archons and zealots fighting a mech army isn't so bad on paper, when it takes your entire army to destroy less than half of your opponent's and other half is across the map wrecking your bases, you might just want to leave the game.

Writers: Zealously, Soularion, TameNaken
Images: KeSPA
Editor: Zealously