Photo Credit: ESL



Don't forget to read about MMA's road to blizzcon here.

      The year is 2011. MMA is at the top of his game, ravaging the GSTL and clashing with the zerg titan DongRaeGu. To face this man would inject fear into your veins, and would almost surely result in a victory for the son of boxer. To cap it all off, this was in the middle of a terran dominated period where they could seemingly come back from being behind in any circumstance while having a plethora of harassment opportunities. Headmanning the team Slayers, he would go on to win multiple tournaments that year, with his signature style multitasking.


The core playstyle from MMA comes from his relentless multitasking, relying on breaking his opponents down until they tap out. The first step to this is to establish map control, having vision across the board to prevent his opponent from throwing him off his game. Once map control is locked down, he moves onto the initial multitask plays, such as dropping a couple of medivacs full of marines into the main base of the opponent. These are very low risk, high reward drops in that you don’t lose much of anything for the potential payoff; picking off anything results in a net win for MMA. The next step is to further establish his economy while retaining map control, and deny his opponents their succeeding bases by increasing the number of drops being sent out. Once a substantial lead in army is gained, this is when MMA strikes, going for a full frontal attack to force the opponent out of the game.



MMA spawns at the 9 o'clock position, with San at the 5. Playing on the knowledge that San doesn't scout, MMA opts for a gas first hellion opening to start out the game. Doing this takes out the early harassment and utility of a reaper in favor of offsetting San's economy with some early probe kills. As predicted, San doesn't scout and opens with an early nexus. This means that San has no idea that the 2 hellions are on the way, and isn't prepared for a runby. Fortunately he opted to go for a 3 stalker opening and deflected the hellion harass easily. While not killing off many probes, the hellions still allowed MMA to get a full scout off, and establish early map control. He makes a widow mine and inserts it on the ramp to the pocket third base at San's side of the map.


With a factory opening, this still allows MMA to get out the standard timing starport with double medivac production, and gives him the option to start dropping as per the MMA style. Moving into the mid game, MMA continues with the standard opener, scanning observers in his main base to deny scouting from San. This allows MMA to send drops across the map unnoticed, and San pays for it with a couple of pylons. While not being a considerable amount of pylons, this is how MMA slowly pulls ahead; continued drops throughout the game picking off a little at a time at the cost of relatively nothing. Picking off another observer in the main base, MMA sends out another drop that San isn’t aware of. This allows MMA to multi-prong drop the main and the natural, resulting in a robotics facility being destroyed.





Following these drops, MMA establishes his third base and starts to split even more units across the map. He continues to look for soft spots and opportunities to drop, but this time San has split his army up to defend even Polt-esque drops. An attempted drop in the main base gets deflected with relative ease, with both players trading about evenly. Although pushed back, MMA keeps the drop behind the base of San and drops yet again in San’s natural, trading evenly again against the protoss army. A small misstep by MMA results in some good storms picking off a good chunk of MMA’s army, and San decides this is time to bring the fight to MMA’s side of the map.


With San’s army marching across the map, he loses a colossus to vikings due to the terrain and pathing of the protoss army. This showcases the difference in micromanagement levels out of both players; MMA rarely loses any units for free while San has the occasional slip up and donates some army. The ensuing engagement goes as expected; MMA is able to launch effective EMPs while San only lands 1 good storm, and the terran army pulls ahead. While this engagement is going on, MMA pushes the multitasking level even further by sending yet another drop into the third base of San, and the latter has misplayed his warpgates by warping in units at the battle and not to defend his third.

MMA tries to land a killing blow, but a lack of ghosts make it too hard to break the zealot line and San holds. MMA pulls back a bit while containing San to three bases, and goes for more drops. MMA has successfully pulled ahead in economy; San is struggling to establish a fourth base while MMA has a planetary fortress already set up at his 4th and is looking to take more bases across the map. Eventually San drops a 4th base down towards the terran’s expansions, and MMA recognizes the protoss army out of position, and sends in another drop, this time killing the third base. This drop isn’t done yet though, he sends it to the natural base to clean up some pylons, and then to the main base where he picks off a second robotics facility. Through all of this, San has tried some warp prism harass which resulted in some mediocre results, killing off a slew of SCVs but ultimately gets tracked and defended by MMA. Finally broken, San decides to go for an attack but MMA fends it off with ease, and San GGs out.



As of recent, Stardust has been showing great all around play. Although his PvT might be a little lackluster, he’s got a number of protoss all-ins he can execute, along with many macro-oriented aggression builds and straight up macro based play. MMA has shown some weakness in defending early oracles with some mis-micro in his rally points and mine usage, but by no means will this result in a sure loss for him. MMA will be looking to pick maps with lots of airspace, to fully utilize his drop potential and harassment style. Ultimately this will boil down to how well MMA can transition out of the mid-game. If he is able to scout and deflect the many aggressive openings and all-ins Stardust can throw at him, he will be taking this matchup with ease, but if he loses his composure and loses too much early on, Stardust will take a quick victory before MMA can show his true form.

Brought to you by the TL Strategy Team
Writer: Jer99
Graphics: Meru
Editors: NovemberstOrm