Iconic games have some overlap with best games, but there are some games that are not the best that are way more iconic. The Idra v MMA game has started a discussion in this thread. It is iconic. MKP introducing marine split vs banes was very iconic. Classic using DT to snipe the main at Blizzcon was iconic.
The game that made me really believe in PartinG's micro is way later than his soul train builds. He played vs a Terran on Habitation Station. The Terran went Gangnam, floating CC to the gold at the start of the game. PartinG sent his Mothership Core. IIRC, a group of 3 marines would win vs a msc in a straight fight. PartinG killed way more than 3 marines and won the game. He used the terrain well and separated the marines. PartinG micro is iconic.
But the most iconic game I can think of is when Pigbaby showed the world how to beat TaeJa. You scout and defend the incoming harassment. It was in WCS America (or whatever it was called). The crowd could be heard in the cast and after game 1 the crowd chanted "observer, observer" almost the entire series. Observer>Colossus, that is iconic.
Scarlett vs Bomber at one of the red bull tournamwnts with the baneling landlines, and also Scarlet can DRG and MLG, where she’s Protoss and wins haha.
On December 14 2021 04:29 ejozl wrote: it was mma destroying his own cc
Followed by Idra taking the worst engagement possible but still crushing MMA because he is so far ahead in army value. Unfortunately Idra completely misjudges the situation as he for some reason thinks he is losing the battle while also forgetting he pulled his drones off mining for a little due to MMA's harass.
Thinking he had lost the drones, losing the battle and not realizing MMA had killed his own base he GG's a game that MMA would GG out of if Idra had stayed a few seconds longer.
Everyone in the audience celebrates as their beloved American player wins... and then it hits them; Idra left another won game. Neither the audience nor the commentators had any clue what was going on.
What a time to be alive.
Idra thought that MMA taking this forward base means MMA is miles ahead as he's taking his 4th or 5th base(remember, back then this was huge). So when he has done what he has done he thought - well, RIP, I am behind economically and now I fucked up the engagement, so cya. In reality it was a desperate gold with the self kill CC. That just shows how hard it is to properly judge the game when you don't see everything.
If anything it was more of a case IdrA rage quitting based on incomplete information. That happened from time to time - like when he quit against HuK's illusions.
Personally I also remember vividly the game between IdrA and Cruncher in TSL 3. Game 3 Cruncher broke IdrA and wrote "" to which IdrA responded with quitting the game, no GG. IIRC he was trashtalking Cruncher before the tournament so that was perfect silver lining.
Generally plenty of games of IdrA were memorable considering IdrA had no control over his emotions and was famous for trash talking other players and not delivering afterwards. I remember there was a game when vT he played when terran hit blue flame hellions timing, IdrA screwed his defense, lost masses of drones and wrote something like "are you proud?" and left.
Stephano winning WCS EU with borrowed hardware was amazing in many aspects.
There was this game when Mvp played against foreign zerg player - I think - where he was turtling hard because he was something like 2 bases behind and he managed to win.
Rogue vs herO super tournament 2017 finals, when his only chance to qualify for blizzcon was placing first that ST and he barely won 4:3, then he proceed to dominate at blizzcon.
Maru GSL finals victory over TY when he proxy 2 games in a row and lost them, then everybody was like surely he is not going to proxy more right? and then he kept proxying in the next 4 games, and then in game 7 he did a "reverse MVP", didn't proxy and won.
Best TvT ever played in SC2 took place at katowice 2017: aLIVe vs INnoVation.
-- When he completely fooled Maru by not cheesing, causing Maru to turtle on one base against an attack that never came, and then losing anyway because Has' idea of how to play midgame/late-game was to put a bunch of gateways at random places on the map
-- Whichever game it was where Has' cheese failed and he immediately "transitioned" into a DT shrine, causing Nathanias to absolutely LOSE IT in the booth.
I have another iconic game. This is from HotS, when cj herO was at the very top and Rogue was a not yet a great player. I think it was 2013 or 2014.
It was in Proleague, so Rogue had time to prepare a build on a 4 spawn map with a lot of air space between the 4 corners. Rogue rushed infestation pit and started upgrading flight for his locust (a fairly new upgrade that nobody ever used). Nydus + flying locust from 3 directions was not at all something herO could play well against.
Rogue got the MVP award that day. In the interview he said that the build never won in practice. Rogue went for it anyway. He was expected to lose, so he just went for it.
My wife shouted "flying locust" when she saw the upgrade. Classic was replaced by Rogue as her favourite player that day. Rogue hasn't lost that title yet.
On December 14 2021 04:29 ejozl wrote: it was mma destroying his own cc
Followed by Idra taking the worst engagement possible but still crushing MMA because he is so far ahead in army value. Unfortunately Idra completely misjudges the situation as he for some reason thinks he is losing the battle while also forgetting he pulled his drones off mining for a little due to MMA's harass.
Thinking he had lost the drones, losing the battle and not realizing MMA had killed his own base he GG's a game that MMA would GG out of if Idra had stayed a few seconds longer.
Everyone in the audience celebrates as their beloved American player wins... and then it hits them; Idra left another won game. Neither the audience nor the commentators had any clue what was going on.
What a time to be alive.
Idra thought that MMA taking this forward base means MMA is miles ahead as he's taking his 4th or 5th base(remember, back then this was huge). So when he has done what he has done he thought - well, RIP, I am behind economically and now I fucked up the engagement, so cya. In reality it was a desperate gold with the self kill CC. That just shows how hard it is to properly judge the game when you don't see everything.
The base by itself wouldn't really matter since Idra was about to snowball the fight out of control anyway. Thus Idra must have completely misjudged how that fight went.
If you notice his mutalisks were split into 2 groups during the fight and it's plausible that he only looked at one group and thought he didn't have more alive (As a side point: The mutalisks should never have been separated - Idra's battle micro was horrible).
Combined with him thinking he lost most of his drones to the drop, Idra thought he was dead and left. So it most likely was a combination of 3 different wrong assessments (2 of which were the fault of Idra) that caused him to leave.
I think I read it in some interview with him, so I stand behind my reasoning xD Obviously I don't have the interview so feel free to believe w/e you want, but I'm not gonna change my opinion :D
Sure I watched the same thing - but the point is that Idra very much misinterpreted the state of that game (beyond just the CC killing) - and assuming he didn't watch the replay or VOD back, he never realized he was winning the battle.
I guess Idra was just told after the game "MMA actually killed his own CC, you were about to win". And then Idra was like "ah okay but there was no way I could have known that and I was easily losing if not for that". But if you actually watch the game you would see that he was clearly in the lead regardless.
I suggest you rewatch the game and you should be able to identify that.
What are you writing about? I am saying what Idra said. Yes, when you have the complete information you can make a different decision. If you would have shown Idra the replay and then you would restart from replay he wouldn't have left. BUT. He. Did. Not. Know. This.
On December 14 2021 04:29 ejozl wrote: it was mma destroying his own cc
Followed by Idra taking the worst engagement possible but still crushing MMA because he is so far ahead in army value. Unfortunately Idra completely misjudges the situation as he for some reason thinks he is losing the battle while also forgetting he pulled his drones off mining for a little due to MMA's harass.
Thinking he had lost the drones, losing the battle and not realizing MMA had killed his own base he GG's a game that MMA would GG out of if Idra had stayed a few seconds longer.
Everyone in the audience celebrates as their beloved American player wins... and then it hits them; Idra left another won game. Neither the audience nor the commentators had any clue what was going on.
What a time to be alive.
Idra thought that MMA taking this forward base means MMA is miles ahead as he's taking his 4th or 5th base(remember, back then this was huge). So when he has done what he has done he thought - well, RIP, I am behind economically and now I fucked up the engagement, so cya. In reality it was a desperate gold with the self kill CC. That just shows how hard it is to properly judge the game when you don't see everything.
If anything it was more of a case IdrA rage quitting based on incomplete information. That happened from time to time - like when he quit against HuK's illusions.
Personally I also remember vividly the game between IdrA and Cruncher in TSL 3. Game 3 Cruncher broke IdrA and wrote "" to which IdrA responded with quitting the game, no GG. IIRC he was trashtalking Cruncher before the tournament so that was perfect silver lining.
Generally plenty of games of IdrA were memorable considering IdrA had no control over his emotions and was famous for trash talking other players and not delivering afterwards. I remember there was a game when vT he played when terran hit blue flame hellions timing, IdrA screwed his defense, lost masses of drones and wrote something like "are you proud?" and left.
Stephano winning WCS EU with borrowed hardware was amazing in many aspects.
There was this game when Mvp played against foreign zerg player - I think - where he was turtling hard because he was something like 2 bases behind and he managed to win.
That's the curse and beauty of the incomplete information. It doesn't matter what shows replay or w/e. I left a game which was almost won. Wasn't a rage quit, it was simply bad read situation. Sure, I am nowhere near IDra's level, but ... well that happens
The Huk game is IMO in the same ballpark. He though Huk is ahead and didn't realize there are hallucination as nobody was using them(was this after the post-research change? I believe not). This was a bigger rage quit, but considering the age and game meta, completely understandable.
People forget how messy the game was and how new it was.
On January 02 2022 09:51 deacon.frost wrote: That's the curse and beauty of the incomplete information. It doesn't matter what shows replay or w/e. I left a game which was almost won. Wasn't a rage quit, it was simply bad read situation. Sure, I am nowhere near IDra's level, but ... well that happens
The Huk game is IMO in the same ballpark. He though Huk is ahead and didn't realize there are hallucination as nobody was using them(was this after the post-research change? I believe not). This was a bigger rage quit, but considering the age and game meta, completely understandable.
People forget how messy the game was and how new it was.
That's fair assessment but somehow it was IdrA, not anybody else. Yes - it was bad read but it was IdrA who was prone to execute: bad read -> rage -> rage quit HuK game is one example, MMA game was another. Most players would scratch head and stayed for few extra seconds which would be enough. At least extra 0.5s to write gg
On January 02 2022 09:51 deacon.frost wrote: That's the curse and beauty of the incomplete information. It doesn't matter what shows replay or w/e. I left a game which was almost won. Wasn't a rage quit, it was simply bad read situation. Sure, I am nowhere near IDra's level, but ... well that happens
The Huk game is IMO in the same ballpark. He though Huk is ahead and didn't realize there are hallucination as nobody was using them(was this after the post-research change? I believe not). This was a bigger rage quit, but considering the age and game meta, completely understandable.
People forget how messy the game was and how new it was.
That's fair assessment but somehow it was IdrA, not anybody else. Yes - it was bad read but it was IdrA who was prone to execute: bad read -> rage -> rage quit HuK game is one example, MMA game was another. Most players would scratch head and stayed for few extra seconds which would be enough. At least extra 0.5s to write gg
Idra’s problem was as much good reads as bad, and not just fighting it out too of course. He knows how good a player MMA is, he’s taken a sloppy engagement and doesn’t factor in well, what happened. He’s probably dead, better gg and prepare for the next set rather than tilt in a losing game, or waste time.
It’s a pretty good mindset for laddering, much less so for big tournaments.
Idra had a keen idea of how Starcraft should/is optimally played, and for players as good/better than him that he rated highly probably gave them too much respect (i.e they won’t make mistakes, better gg), and for players with wonky styles he considered worse than him or playing bad Starcraft he could be a bit complacent.
That Huk read was bad though, realistically how could he have pulled all those scary units out in that timeframe.
Does anyone still have the "Jaedong The Tyrant Wins" clip that was produced by Blizzard after that Jaedong 3:2 Dear at Blizzcon? It was about 1:30 minutes of the best angles from Jaedong's win, including him fistpumping in the booth, and one of my favorite StarCraft II videos. It seems to be gone from YouTube, sadly.
Also, does anyone still have the "The legend of BitByBit" fan video? Also gone from YouTube, apparently.
SoS vs Bunny last year GSL has to be the one of the best of SoS being SOS of all time. Proved new strats were still being found even then with the Proxy Nexus in ur base
EPT
" to which IdrA responded with quitting the game, no GG. IIRC he was trashtalking Cruncher before the tournament so that was perfect silver lining.
