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As most predicted,  Hydra defeated great without much difficulty. Ignore the result for a moment and let's look at the games.
Games 3 and 4 tell us little. great's burrow build in game 3 made little sense, and of course he lost as soon as Hydra overcame his confusion and tried attacking. Game 4 showed us that 12-hatch-at-nat still loses to 9-pool-speed, as expected.
So the real question here is whether great's remarkable build in game 1 can be successfully repeated. Certainly he tried to do it again in game 2 and failed. In game 2, Hydra's strong defense shut down great's ling aggression, and great's failure to morph his natural spore colony led to many drones dying to a mere two mutalisks. Once Hydra's third hatchery completed, great was left in the awkward position of being behind on the ground, in the air, and economically, and had no choice but to concede. Hydra showed in this game that his mechanical fundamentals are superior to great's, but that does not necessarily invalidate the build great was attempting, as the game could have gone much differently if great had morphed his natural spore colony and had retreated his lings instead of wasting them on a futile attack.
The main doubt about great's performance in game 1 is that with a 12 hatch vs 12 pool build order advantage, standard ZvZ would still usually result in a win. Maybe all great accomplished was winning later than he should have. Still, great showed us something that we haven't seen before: up against arguably the best ZvZ player in the world, who moreover is expecting hive builds and has certainly practiced against them, a mechanically-weak zerg player can still force the game to hive and win.
great's play in game 1 showed us the most original complete understanding of the ZvZ matchup seen in any game to date. great's extensive preparation showed immediately in his novel overlord scouting pattern and his unusual build order. He showed how to use spore colonies to defend while applying pressure with expansion, zergling, and mutalisk threats. He made use of each tier of the ZvZ tech path: queens to allow mutalisks to roam freely, then devourers to regain air dominance, then defilers and lurkers to allow ground offense. In short, great's build was a textbook for how to force hive ZvZ and what to do once getting there.
great's build worked not because of his execution, but despite it. The early zergling attack was sloppy, the expansion-denial timing too early to snipe a completed hatchery, the mutalisk pressure less well-focused than it could have been, the swarmed-lurker attack ineffective, etc. It would be fascinating to see what this approach could achieve in the hands of a masterful executor like Jaedong.
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All I can say is that ZvZ revolution is not ready yet  . I'm not a ZvZ expert but I just thought while watching the finals is that something is wrong or something is missing. He even might had lost in Game 1 if not for the spire snipe because of Hydra's superior micro that may give him a chance to comeback from a BO disadvantage. If sniping tech buildings can be done repeatedly and becomes a part of great's build, then I'll buy it. It needs more time than great had thought.
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G1 was a BO advantage for great, which is really the only way i can see any sort of hive tech.
Basically, for hive tech to happen, the person with the BO win has to play passively.
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I am not convinced now TBH, but I will not tell you that its blind path of evolution as well. I remember that many told the same when anti-Zerg Mech became effective (that it's shitty and be resolved soon), and now we know its not an all-in, but just alternative path to play vs Zerg. So i would wait to find out. Right now I'm sceptical.
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On February 20 2011 16:36 blueblimp wrote:great's extensive preparation showed immediately in his novel overlord scouting pattern
Can someone explain to me how this pattern is working/what it is supposed to achieve? I can't really figure out how it's better since you need to know your opponent's build in ZvZ (if I'm not mistaken) to prepare for it.
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Russian Federation4405 Posts
All I can say that great and ZerO have developed more than a single way to willingly choose the hi-tech way of playing ZvZ, as for now.
And I suppose it's not over yet, they'll both continue to search
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On February 20 2011 19:42 schaf wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 16:36 blueblimp wrote:great's extensive preparation showed immediately in his novel overlord scouting pattern Can someone explain to me how this pattern is working/what it is supposed to achieve? I can't really figure out how it's better since you need to know your opponent's build in ZvZ (if I'm not mistaken) to prepare for it.
I don't have a full analysis yet, but the basic idea is: suppose Hydra starts in the upper left and great starts in the lower left. About half the time, Hydra will send his overlord downwards. So if great sends his overlord upwards and doesn't see Hydra's overlord at the halfway mark, that rules out half the cases where Hydra is in the upper left, so it may be worthwhile to use the overlord for another purpose.
It's not yet clear to me where the overlord was being diverted (since, unluckily for great, every 4-player-map game in the series turned out to be the bad case for his scouting pattern). Possibly it was being sent to look for zerglings mid-map in order to prepare for 9 pool. I wish we could have seen what great prepared for 12-hatch-in-base vs 9-pool-speed.
On February 21 2011 00:01 _Quasar_ wrote:All I can say that great and ZerO have developed more than a single way to willingly choose the hi-tech way of playing ZvZ, as for now. And I suppose it's not over yet, they'll both continue to search
Actually I completely disagree with this. Every previous modern high-tech ZvZ we've seen has been reactionary, where one player happened to put up spores due to build order and teched hive behind them. In none of them did either player enter the game with a plan to force hive tech regardless of his opponent's build. Also, hacklebeast's analysis showed that great only won hive tech games when his opponent teched hive first. Forcing hive is not very interesting if it causes you to lose.
The reason I found game 1 exciting is that great planned to go to hive tech before the game started, and despite that being predictable, hydra could not stop it. That's exactly what's needed if hive tech is ever to become standard in ZvZ.
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Games 3 and 4 tell us little. great's burrow build in game 3 made little sense, and of course he lost as soon as Hydra overcame his confusion and tried attacking.
The objective of Great's burrow build was to rush Hydra as soon as he attacked. There was a lot of mind games going on, and it actually looked like it was really going to work. Players normally send one ling to check for a backstab as they move out to attack the enemy. In this case Hydra sent half his lings, and it really looked like it was going to work perfectly. But Hydra smelt something and halfway toward Great's base he retreated. I think Hydra got so worried about a back stab he started checking every location on the map, and when he realised he'd wasted too much time, he just decided to call the attack off because he couldn't figure out where Great's lings were.
If Great had been playing normally and just kind of put his lings in a weird spot, that would have been a huge disadvantage. I don't blame Hydra at all for smelling it out, but I think you make the game out to be less intense than it was. If all you saw was the end battle, sure, Hydra rolled him. But before that it was an intense mind game. Burrow wasn't meant to confuse Hydra. Hydra was meant to attack him immediately and get his main raped while Great defends. It was a clever ploy that I think must have worked against most people he practiced against. Too bad it wasn't rewarded on the big stage.
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