GSL Code S resumed with its first round-of-sixteen group where defending championship Dark advanced in first place, followed by KeeN who advanced in second.
While Dark had been gleeful about assembling three of the weakest Terrans during July's group selection ceremony, the actual matches turned out to be tougher than he may have expected. KeeN surprised him in the opening match, using the newly improved Ghosts to out-duel him in a split-map war on King's Cove. While Dark did eventually advance with victories over KeeN and FanTaSy, he did not quite live up to his reputation as one of Korea's best late-game players as he struggled against mech play from both opponents.
After his initial, strong showing against Dark, KeeN was able to advance in second place by surviving a close, three-way, Terran vs Terran shootout against FanTaSy and SpeCial (could we call it a Mexican standoff?). Though KeeN was able to celebrate his first Code S quarterfinal appearance in over eight years, it was tempered by somber news as well: After the matches, KeeN announced that this season of Code S would be his last, as his mandatory military service was set to begin shortly.
The Code S Ro16 will resume on Saturday, Aug 31 4:00am GMT (GMT+00:00) with Group B, featuring Trap, Cure, herO, and TY (check out Liquipedia for more information).
Great games. Well worth watching and a lot of fun. Fantasy is getting so close. Won every game he played. Threw every game he played. And then came back after the throw to win a few of them a second time. But not enough. Still. He just needs to throw a little bit less and he’d be so good.
This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
It’s one of those interesting ideas that throws so much convention out of the window that I’m curious how it would work.
Protoss don’t trade all that great without the forge and chrono combo putting them ahead in ups, specifically armour for tanklots, so bio/ghost with the spells swap is essentially an ‘un-upgrade’ in that sense. Would be interesting for sure, my intuition would be that adding anti armour ghosts who share upgrades and production with bio would wreck Protoss. Ravens are already super strong but they’re constrained by needing your Starport for medivacs and other factors.
I like the Raven a lot as a unit currently. My bias as to spellcasters is that adding a few can make your army better, but adding a load makes it worse. So a few Arbiters or defilers vs mass of either or whatever
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
"dark is the better player and played out of his mind, but i'm still angry terran didn't win because reasons"
i always underrate keen in my liquibets. i know he is super good and has been super good for a long time. i picked special over him in this case. would like to see him get deep here. has he ever been to a final in code S? or even a semifinal??
On August 29 2019 10:07 Alejandrisha wrote: i always underrate keen in my liquibets. i know he is super good and has been super good for a long time. i picked special over him in this case. would like to see him get deep here. has he ever been to a final in code S? or even a semifinal??
I mean results wise I really don’t think you’re underrating him, this wound have been his first Ro8 in like 2400 days or something
On August 29 2019 10:07 Alejandrisha wrote: i always underrate keen in my liquibets. i know he is super good and has been super good for a long time. i picked special over him in this case. would like to see him get deep here. has he ever been to a final in code S? or even a semifinal??
I mean results wise I really don’t think you’re underrating him, this wound have been his first Ro8 in like 2400 days or something
yeah i suppose you are right. i think i have the artosis bias. just like cliiiiiiiiiide, artosis loves keen so damn much and i think artosis rents a room in my brain for like 30 cents a month
edit: i think by 'underrate' i meant 'completely dismiss,' in retrospect xD
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
i think you have to accept the fact that fantasy just isn't that good. as an sc2 pro he is pretty much a t2 terran. and by that i mean he is better than every terran in the world besides like 10 of them xD
edit: i would go in to my speculation on why he doesn't play bw anymore but i'm not going to open that can of worms, even with mech having a resurgence vs Z given the map pool
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
"dark is the better player and played out of his mind, but i'm still angry terran didn't win because reasons"
I know you are smart enough to discern what I said. I have a great track record of not balance whining here and a willingness to engage in discussion. And I'm always open for a good discussion over low quality posts of you're feeling up to it.
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
i think you have to accept the fact that fantasy just isn't that good. as an sc2 pro he is pretty much a t2 terran. and by that i mean he is better than every terran in the world besides like 10 of them xD
Keen had the same problem as Fantasy. And many other User and have the same problem against Serral. Playing a perfect game as a Terran player sometimes isn't good enough. It's hard to make sense of it because in most cases Serral really plays brilliantly and makes almost zero mistakes in the late game. But after watching so many TvZs end the same way, after a certain point in the game you just writing the last 20 minutes of the game off as a death animation. I'm not arguing there isn't a way to do it right, but no Terran player, including Maru, has solved this puzzle yet and as a viewer you start to question wether Terran has the tools available to actually solve late game TvZ.
EMP - with upgrade to early to tell
What we see consistently fail: Nukes - hardly does anything except zone and delay Mass viking - bombed/fungaled/Infested Mass Thor - spend to much time fighting broodlings to hit air Battlefield - NP to kill each other
Today: Thor+lib+viking+ghots: Keen's game basically was this and it looked very promising. I am staying hopeful that this build can be reproduced.
I'd love to see some discussion around other option. What compositions are out there we haven't seen yet.
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
"dark is the better player and played out of his mind, but i'm still angry terran didn't win because reasons"
Pretty good reasons. Dark could win with whatever reasonable tools you gave him.
Fantasy used basically every Terran unit in a series, did a lot of cute fun stuff like swapping Viking modes to snipe bases, splitting a Thor/tank mech and somehow managing to outmanoeuvre his opponents with those comps.
Dark played great regardless. BL/Infestor//Corruptor In his hands is borderline unkillable, or Serral’s or w/e
If Zerg didn’t have moveable static D I think the slowness of the comp would make for a super interesting dynamic, you could starve them out and multiprong around it.
If it was a dynamic of picking around the edges that’d be cool, as it often plays out it’s a matter of picking around edges that don’t matter because eventually you have to face the army and just die.
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
i think you have to accept the fact that fantasy just isn't that good. as an sc2 pro he is pretty much a t2 terran. and by that i mean he is better than every terran in the world besides like 10 of them xD
Keen had the same problem as Fantasy. And many other User and have the same problem against Serral. Playing a perfect game as a Terran player sometimes isn't good enough. It's hard to make sense of it because in most cases Serral really plays brilliantly and makes almost zero mistakes in the late game. But after watching so many TvZs end the same way, after a certain point in the game you just writing the last 20 minutes of the game off as a death animation. I'm not arguing there isn't a way to do it right, but no Terran player, including Maru, has solved this puzzle yet and as a viewer you start to question wether Terran has the tools available to actually solve late game TvZ.
EMP - with upgrade to early to tell
What we see consistently fail: Nukes - hardly does anything except zone and delay Mass viking - bombed/fungaled/Infested Mass Thor - spend to much time fighting broodlings to hit air Battlefield - NP to kill each other
Today: Thor+lib+viking+ghots: Keen's game basically was this and it looked very promising. I am staying hopeful that this build can be reproduced.
I'd love to see some discussion around other option. What compositions are out there we haven't seen yet.
I don’t think there’s really A solution, purely because theoretical compositions are just way, way too hard to control. It’s already hard to control 3/4 units with differing characteristics without anything ground based being blocked by broodlings.
Maru demolished Reynor at WCG with a combo of really heavy libs, sieging to nuke infested Terrans and sending BCs in to the fray on top of it.
Haven’t seen it since, it looked interesting for sure. Reynor is in my view relatively bad for his calibre at lategame vT though so it might have been so successful because of that.
As for changes I think you could see some improvement with stuff that would be innocuous to other interactions. Thors with a smaller model and space occupied wouldn’t be stuck as badly, Vikings that were slightly faster or accelerated quicker would give Terrans more options IMO
On August 29 2019 08:24 BisuDagger wrote: This was a great day of Starcraft and the casters were awesome too.
I am really sad about Fantasy's losses to dark though. It is become really irritating to see Terrans grab massive leads to lose to the late game Zerg death ball. Dark played out of his mind, but it still felt hopefulness for Fantasy once the dream composition hit. I dont usually look forward to patches, but I am not sure the emp buff was enough to make late game enjoyable for viewers rooting for a Terran player.
I wonder if the raven had emp and the ghost had anti armor missiles would be a good exchange of spells.
i think you have to accept the fact that fantasy just isn't that good. as an sc2 pro he is pretty much a t2 terran. and by that i mean he is better than every terran in the world besides like 10 of them xD
Keen had the same problem as Fantasy. And many other User and have the same problem against Serral. Playing a perfect game as a Terran player sometimes isn't good enough. It's hard to make sense of it because in most cases Serral really plays brilliantly and makes almost zero mistakes in the late game. But after watching so many TvZs end the same way, after a certain point in the game you just writing the last 20 minutes of the game off as a death animation. I'm not arguing there isn't a way to do it right, but no Terran player, including Maru, has solved this puzzle yet and as a viewer you start to question wether Terran has the tools available to actually solve late game TvZ.
EMP - with upgrade to early to tell
What we see consistently fail: Nukes - hardly does anything except zone and delay Mass viking - bombed/fungaled/Infested Mass Thor - spend to much time fighting broodlings to hit air Battlefield - NP to kill each other
Today: Thor+lib+viking+ghots: Keen's game basically was this and it looked very promising. I am staying hopeful that this build can be reproduced.
I'd love to see some discussion around other option. What compositions are out there we haven't seen yet.
I don’t think there’s really A solution, purely because theoretical compositions are just way, way too hard to control. It’s already hard to control 3/4 units with differing characteristics without anything ground based being blocked by broodlings.
Maru demolished Reynor at WCG with a combo of really heavy libs, sieging to nuke infested Terrans and sending BCs in to the fray on top of it.
Haven’t seen it since, it looked interesting for sure. Reynor is in my view relatively bad for his calibre at lategame vT though so it might have been so successful because of that.
As for changes I think you could see some improvement with stuff that would be innocuous to other interactions. Thors with a smaller model and space occupied wouldn’t be stuck as badly, Vikings that were slightly faster or accelerated quicker would give Terrans more options IMO
What if massive units could crush broodlings in the same manner that they crush forcefields. Thors would still have to take damage to get near broodlords, but it would solve mobility issues without changing the model size.
EPT
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/GSL/2019/codes3/s3reversalbanner.jpg)
Really excited to see Keen make it back to round of 8 again.
