ByuL, the Limitations of Standard Play, and the Most Scripted Series of All Time

by Mizenhauer



When it comes to "playing standard" certain names immediately come to mind. Whether it’s Rain, Stats, or Serral, each of them reached the zenith of StarCraft by sticking to the tried and true. They strategically dabbled with cheese, but when the rubber met the road, they faithfully returned to the Honorable Macro Game. Powered by precise control and unfailing production, they authored some of the most one-sided games in StarCraft II history with mechanical might alone. Many of their victories were so devastating that they might have been considered boring.

That’s not to imply that all standard players are fighting for a spot among the greatest of all time. Standard, by definition, is the path most players are going to take, even when it can mean a death sentence when facing off against an overpowering orthodox opponent. Even so, playing standard and avoiding risk has typically been the most effective means of extracting glory and financial value from one's career.

Take BraVo, for instance. The once Samsung Terran flourished when mech peaked during the second half of 2015. No longer obligated to precisely control bio units and play at a pace that surpassed his abilities, BraVo surged above his previous rank-and-file status. Leveraging his map control and situational awareness, BraVo made TvT appear elementary—with the highlight being a victory over Maru in Proleague during Round 4 of the 2015 season.




Despite his Proleague success, BravO was thoroughly 'out-standarded' in individual ventures like GSL Code S and SSL. You might wonder why he didn't stray off the beaten path more often. Unable to shine in the conventional sense, many perennial underdogs like Shine and Impact leveraged cheese to (occasionally) beat the odds. But, even that approach had its limits as such players found themselves in a bit of a Morton’s fork. Play normally, and get cut down by fundamentally sound titans Stats. However, a great standard opponent is, also, by definition, one who is great at defending, and you're just as likely to fall flat on your face by attempting chicanery against a player as savvy as Kim Dae Yeob. Perhaps, for players like BraVo, their short stretches of great standard play gave them the hope that they might, one day, join the ranks of the macro greats.

So far I’ve discussed a number of players, but I’ve yet to address the hero of our story—ByuL. In a previous article on ByuL's place as a forgotten great of HotS (reaching three major finals in the span of four months), I focused on how he harnessed the power of Mutalisk harassment to squash any Terran who dared play bio against him in 2015. After long years as a middling player, he inexplicably mastered the calculus of Mutalisk harassment. While others hesitated when presented with the cost-risk analysis, ByuL was immediately aware of what needed to be destroyed, how long he could afford to linger in enemy territory, and when to combine his forces to annihilate the enemy army. He produced more units, multi-tasked faster on offense and defense, and read the map better than any of his peers. Any opponent who chose the macro branch of the fork were left with Hobson's choice: Attack and die to counter attacks, or defend at home and let ByuL devour the map. In essence, ByuL had become the ultimate standard Zerg player of 2015.

ByuL goes against TY’s mech in game seven of their Code S semifinal

But, as much as standard play lifted ByuL to his career peak, it ironically played an essential role in his failure to win a championship. Great as he was, ByuL’s general unwillingness to stray from standard play meant he subjected himself to structural issues plaguing Zerg in 2015. At the time, Protoss was enjoying a second peak in HotS, with Blink-Stalker armies ruling the day. While it no longer benefited from Blink-happy maps like Yeonsu, a number of new maps with far-apart expansions (Iron Fortress being a great example) let Blink-Stalkers take advantage of their flexibility. Zergs had to fear losing straight up to a +2 timing, but were equally as concerned about being contained while their opponent teched-up and grew even stronger. In an expansion dominated by the mid-game, Stalkers allowed Protoss to play at any tempo they pleased.

Some Zergs tried to bypass the uphill battle with creativity (HotS-era Rogue being the most notable example), but ByuL decided the best way to leverage his incredible mechanics was with standard play. This proved to be a winning strategy against lesser players, but two of ByuL’s final losses (to Rain during Season 2 of Code S and herO during Season 3 of SSL) were defined by ByuL playing into +2 Blink timings while being well-aware he was at a disadvantage. He did manage to pick up three map wins across those series by using uncharacteristically aggressive builds, but his general lack of ingenuity, and his inability to tech past weak Roach/Hydra compositions saw him concede 'honorable' losses.

Now, let's shift back to ZvT and talk about the author of ByuL's third finals loss: StarCraft II's standard player par excellence in INnoVation. Unlike herO and Rain, who dabbled in requisite Protoss trickery, INnoVation had little interest in going rogue. When they faced off in the 2015 Code S Season 3 finals, INnoVation opted for bio in nearly every game and walked away with an easy victory.

However, it's not those losses that best illustrate the fraught nature of playing the standard mirror against a better player. Rather, it was a series that ByuL happened to win, but just not in the vindicating manner he would have hoped.

A few weeks before that fateful Code S finals, ByuL and INnoVation faced off in the RO8 of SSL Season 3. Despite INnoVation's later Code S victory with bio, during this match they were still playing at the height of the mech era. While INnoVation began with an unexpected and unsuccessful attempt at bio on Coda (one of the example games in the previous ByuL article), the series inevitably turned into the mandated mech marathon. Both players were married to doing the most meta builds possible, in a way that was so choreographed that it bordered on absurdity. After three brutal mech games, the score was tied 2-2, sending the two players to Terraform for one final dance.

ByuL vs INnoVation: 2015 SSL Season 3 - RO8, Game 5, Terraform

One last brawl to decide it all

Terraform happened to be the most mech-friendly map in the pool, and even the greatest of ByuL optimists were left grasping at straws at how he might overcome the wall of mech.

To oversimplify things, the first 18 odd minutes of the game (in HotS time) were largely inconsequential. That's an odd thing to say about a game that began with a proxy-Hatchery and a handful of unsuccessful Roach attacks, but in the big picture view, nothing impeded the slow march toward another staring contest between Terran mech and the Zerg swarm.

This time, however, there was one major twist. At around 18 minutes and 20 seconds into the game, the observer made a routine switch from displaying the normal army tab to that of upgrades. While the intent was probably to allow viewers to check in on ByuL's rapidly developing tech tree, it also revealed a small mistake—that, left uncorrected—would eventually lead to INnoVation’s downfall. Not only had the normally unfailing macro monster forgotten to get a second armory, he hadn't even started +3 attack despite being under zero pressure for several minutes. INnoVation was unaware, the casters weren’t interested (at least not yet), and the observer didn’t notice—instead going back to the usual cycling between the units and production tabs.

Anyway, back to Terraform. As the game stalled out, it became readily apparent why it was such a deathtrap for Zergs. The official map description states that there are three distinct routes to the enemy, but with INnoVation's mech perfectly situated along its narrow corridors—with Tanks often able to fire across different paths—the number of viable Zerg attack paths had plummeted to zero.



It took INnoVation until around the 30-minute mark to realize his mistake and get his sole armory spinning again. But even then, a glimpse at the minimap suggested INnoVation was well on his way to victory, having split the map 50/50 and having his troops in place to defend all the narrow corridors. Vipers, Infestors, and Brood Lords had done little to stall INnoVation from inching toward a victory by attrition, and even ByuL's considerable bank looked like it was earmarked for the Terran meatgrinder. Yet, in the end, that one crucial mistake of forgetting upgrades threw all expectations into disarray.

As INnoVation began his game-sealing transition into Battlecruisers, ByuL executed a perfect Viper-Hydra-Ultralisk attack into the Terran fourth. Blinding clouds nullified tightly grouped Tanks, letting ByuL's ground forces massacre them with ease. ByuL pushed the pace with another attack into one of INnoVation's outlying bases, and while he was eventually repulsed, he successfully destabilized the Terran defense line. ByuL's once deceptive bank advantage all of the sudden looked very meaningful, as he was able to continue churning out waves of troops to keep the pressure on INnoVation.



Now, this kind of scenario isn't uncommon when Zerg faces a turtling Terran. The Zerg concentrates the majority of their army at a single point and punches a temporary hole in the Terran defenses, takes down a base, and gets some momentum going in a painfully static game. However, what usually happens afterward is that the Terran's more efficient army eventually stabilizes, reclaims lost territory, and the Zerg is sent back to the same starting point—just thousands of resources down.

However, that's only possible when the Terran army is indeed more cost-effective—which was not the case for INnoVations 3/0 mech at the 40-minute mark of the game. ByuL's continuing pushes deeper into enemy territory should have meant costly engagements against INnoVation's defender's advantage, but instead, he was able to rampage through expansions and gut the Terran economy. Eventually, INnoVation was left holed up with his whole army defending one mining base, while ByuL started to expand to what used to be enemy territory.

With the writing on the wall, INnoVation moved out and invited ByuL's army to a final, conclusive battle. By this point, ByuL had reinforced his swarm with an enormous number of Corruptors to counter the Battlecruisers, and still retained his massive upgrade advantage on top of that. The deciding battle only looked even for a few moments, before the tide broke decisively in the favor of Zerg. With the crowd going wild, INnoVation GG’d out of a game that at once point had seemed impossible to lose.



It’s hard to find a game and series that serves as greater evidence of the limitations of playing standard than the one detailed above. ByuL was powerless versus mech in games three and four—so powerless that commentators were left wondering if he had lost the will to fight. While ByuL did make some good plays in game five, he ultimately emerged victorious because of INnoVation’s baffling failure to keep up in upgrades in a slow-paced game. ByuL, who spent the majority of the game butting his head ahead against a slowly encroaching wall of Tanks, found that things get a little bit easier when the opponent temporarily turns off a part of their brain. Instead of following the linear path to defeat that we had already seen twice that match, ByuL’s standard play was actually enough to overcome INnoVation.

It wasn’t that he played especially better in that game than the others—his skill and the viability of his playstyle meant he was doomed from the start if INnoVation failed to make such a grievous error. ByuL played at the very limit of his abilities from game one onwards, but, thanks to INnoVation’s poor decision to play bio on Coda and his forgetfulness on Terraform, ByuL won two games he had no business winning.

Of course, mistakes are a part of StarCraft II, and no match is so perfectly played that it's decided by 'pure skill.' Even so, it's hard to think of another standard game that felt so decided by factors outside of normal StarCraft ability. What would have happened if you replaced ByuL with a less talented Zerg? How much of a downgrade could that player be while still winning this game thanks to INnoVation's mistake? How many other Terrans could control the game as long as INnoVation did despite being at a disadvantage in a good portion of the fights? How quickly would TY—a player ByuL defeated in the next round despite him remembering his upgrades—have folded under the circumstances?

The lesson of this series could go two opposite ways, depending on you're point of view. One is that there's an innate sense of despair in being a 'standard' player if you're not literally the best in the world, because the only way to overcome an even better standard player is by taking advantage of catastrophic mistakes. On the other hand, maybe there's an inherent hopefulness as well—as long as you're close enough in skill, you never know what kind of gift the StarCraft gods might bestow upon you.

Unfortunately for ByuL, those kinds of breaks just never came in the finals. And that's the difference between being a player who is still celebrated to this day, and being left as one of history's forgotten greats.

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