MSL Finals Hype - Flash vs. ZerO

Introduction



Flash is Destiny.

From the time of BoxeR, Terrans have ruled the universe. The Emperor, The Monster Terran, and the Tornado Terran were the first three Bonjwas to have ever existed. As time decayed the Bonjwas' sovereignty, no new Terran appeared to claim his birthright. So began the dark ages.

It was written on the stars that in these darkest of hours, the Chosen One would be born. The perfect player, endowed with the greatest of the Bonjwas’ gifts. Yet the prophecy did not say he would arrive perfect. The sharpest steel required the hottest fire. And so it was that the Terran child Flash came into the scene a cheeser, and ironically, lived under the Storm Zerg’s care. The world forsook him, deriding his “turtle” style and his personal failures. They said he was just a mechanical freak, doomed to the oblivion of mediocre Proleague Terrans. Still, he labored carrying those around him time and time again until his back and wrists would break. The early supernova was burning out.

And it was to become a black hole that would consume all creation. Flash knew what no one else did. He knew, not because of his outstanding mind, but because of his great heart. Destiny was no trifling matter to be given him without sacrifice. Like matter, it was neither created nor destroyed. Destiny, that majestic triumph of the Terran lineage (BoxeR, iloveoov, and NaDa) and its inherent ingenuity (Midas and XellOs), had to be earned.


Analysis

Lee Young Ho is as close to perfection as can be. He has no weakness.

Early game, he is the best bunker-rusher of all time along with BoxeR. Bunker rushes require intense micro and the largest balls of all. Sure, 4 pool is riskier, but its purpose is two-fold: (1) to end the game early/get an advantage and (2) mess with your opponent’s mind. Losing a 4/5 pool will still accomplish one of the two. It's essentially a sacrifice with a sure reward in series play. Bunker rushes are tests of willpower. Failure will not necessarily defeat you but set you back, so it’s mostly a question of how committed you are to your strategy and how you will transition given success or failure. It’s even a very questionable move because in the face of greedy builds, the Terran still has the option to simply play for a timing attack which is much safer than a bunker rush. Flash has memorized the handbook of bunker rushing and has even amended its provisions. His other cheeses are artistic masterpieces of micro and innovation, be they BBS or proxies.

Mid game, he is the best timing-pusher of all time. He reads his opponent very well with prescient scans and in-game analysis (worker counting, anyone?). He also has a very solid defensive style that negates all forms of midgame cheese. He gets early turrets to counteract Mutalisk aggression or Reaver harass. He positions his Tanks in graduated clumps so that they protect several areas and at the same time overlap to provide killing power. His Vultures are such a pain to deal with because he’s so good at timing a surround + mine to ensure that not all mines are shot down.

Late game, he is the most durable player. I think the most exemplary games of Flash have involved comebacks from the most massive deficits (Flash v Fantasy MSL game 1, Flash v firebathero Neo Medusa, Flash v Leta OSL, Flash v Mind Proleague 10-11, I could go on and on). He simply does not give up. In late-game battles, he manages to be incredibly cost efficient. At a time when most players are so drained physically and mentally, Flash is so laser-focused he can still target-fire tank clumps and navigate his Dropships to destroy the most important tech buildings.

Overall, Flash has unequalled game sense. He detects things from the smallest details. He understands when to play aggressively and when to play passively. I cannot stress this enough. This is why his anti-fans hate him for either turtling (because it looks like his opponent just keeps sending waves of units to crash against an immovable tank and turret line) or cheesing (because it looks like Flash just walks in his opponent’s nat/expos and simply obliterates him in one fell swoop). This is a result of constant, instinctive thinking. It’s an oxymoron, to be sure, but Flash’s genius is not rational. His mechanical talent can be learned, but his mental talent is the only one of its kind. Is his opponent gunning for an economic lead? Is he going for an all in? One by one, Flash analyzes his opponent’s options and eliminates them one by one, forcing the other player to ride his cadence.

Not So-Historical Representative



Flash is Napoleon Bonaparte. No one ever dreamed as loftily, nor influenced so many facets of human life – war, politics, law, science, literature, art and culture. From his military genius to his personal charisma; from his political savvy and arrogance; from his rise and fall, Napoleon was the most influential and decisive leader in history. Waterloo is history. Flash the Bonjwa is the present. Flash the GOAT is the future.

My addition

Flash's recently been struggling with the wrist injury very hard. But those who think that it takes away anything from his superb micro or reaction - watch his semifinals vs. Hydra. This guy's micro is still insane.

What saddens me most is that we might be losing a great player if he doesn't get his wrist cured ASAP. As a BW fan, I just hope he does. Otherwise - 1) we lose a great player and 2) even more important - we don't even realise how to beat him, and his entire knowledge about the game is carried away, because one can only show it in practice. Not just in theory. It is great for development of BW strategy to have such a player active nowadays, and it's a challenge to everyone. I hope that at least someone accepts this challenge - and takes ZvT, PvT, whatever - to the higher level, with assumption that the opponent can do everything perfectly (especially micro) - and still they will have the chance to counter.

I always thought that there are no JvZ, BvZ, FvZ, FvP etc. match-ups - there is a [Race] vs. Flash (and etc.) match-ups. Because in order to beat top players - you must practice not vs. specific race as you usually do. You must keep in mind what would that player do. For example when ZerO practices with Light, he might know that he can pwn him with muta micro. BUT - he can't do the same with Flash, so Flash would own his mutas. Therefore - he must not fly his mutas and try to kill Light's marines in an unsafe position (for Zerg), to make his practice effective. This is a simple and maybe stupid example, but I hope you got my point - while top players play an ordinary vs. [Race] matchup, just on very high level - the height of their level of play forces their opponents to play the "different" match-up called for example Zerg vs. Flash. Because at that point quantity turns into quality - it can't be played the same if you want to be potent vs. the specific player.

But speaking of Flash's injury. Really. Flash, please do something to this. T_T Even if you have to stop playing for a while - IMHO it's mindless to damage your further life and ruin the ability to play the game you're good at.

If it's already incurable (but I highly doubt this) - then Flash should probably quit right after this MSL, no matter he wins or he loses. Seriously - he risks his health for the future life. Starcraft is just a game - and he already has earned a place among the top players and is considered the best player to have ever played Starcraft, to this date. If it can be cured - he should leave BW temporarily and undergo a serious treatment immediately after the finals... Then he could join BW again after some time - because, as you know, you can't retire from BroodWar . And then he can either leave BW undefeated after winning 107 OSLs and 59 MSLs , or (I'd prefer this version) gets "figured out" and matched by other players, and this will be the next era of Starcraft.

Ok, I'm not the person to tell him any advice - but that's my opinion...

Mystic Unknown Shit from _Quasar_

Well, I like unknown mystic shit very much. So I had to put this into both players' articles.

When I wrote a Soulkey vs. Leta Ro16 article, I used the Tarot cards to "represent" the players. Ok, Leta's "Chariot" swept through the entire "World" of SK, leaving him just the feeling of wondering "wat was that".

However, Flash and ZerO's cases are not that simple. I think I must choose the two cards for each of them (you'll realise as you read the ZerO article why), to represent at least two sides... perhaps, the biggest strength and the major weakness of each one. That should make up into the whole image.

- The Emperor



Well... to tell things simply, Wikipedia article about this card says:

"A. E. Waite was a key figure in the development of modern Tarot interpretations. However, not all interpretations follow his theology. Usually all Tarot decks used for divination are interpreted through personal experience and standards.

Some frequent keywords used by card readers are:

Fathering ----- Stability ----- Authority ----- Power

Control ----- Discipline ----- Command ----- Common sense

Status quo ----- Order ----- Structure ----- Egocentrism

Tradition ----- Rigidity ----- Leadership ----- Experience

Inflexibility ----- Conservative ways ----- Organization"

Well, this pretty much speaks for itself. This card tells about just a stable and unshakable power, held by the love for order, tradition and organisation. This is what Flash is, and he has mastered all those things perfectly...

But...

- The Tower



The biggest enemy of Flash, at the present time, is Flash himself. Most Flash's serious losses seem to be just out of logic. Yes Jaedong is capable of winning vs. him, but he is suffering some psychology-based slump, and, while being able to stand against Flash and be considered as an equal opponent to him personally - he fails at many other things, that prevent him from being on the Flash level of power.

Any other opponents, including ZerO, can only be seen as underdogs when facing Flash. That probably won't be forever, but now - Flash is, realistically, a favorite vs. anyone, excluding (arguably?) Jaedong.

...but we all remember this:

http://i.imgur.com/PAYTy.png

and this:

http://s2.postimage.org/8jn4leude/flashnoonecanbeatmekkk.png

and also... this:

http://i.imgur.com/RurWq.png

The Tower represents the lust for power and its denial. It tells about hubris and the reckoning for it. When you've counted something stable and unshakable, and you've begun to be too proud and arrogant about it - it all can crash in one moment. The moment of rational self-observation must always be present and not let you be too arrogant about yourself, disrespectful to others or aiming too high without a reason. Otherwise, you will fall down.

This is probably in what sense Flash can be an "enemy" to himself. He is generally a very good mannered player, but, he has this in him. Arrogance and hubris. This is what _might_ strike him back by the supreme power of Destiny itself.

Introduction



ZerO is Wisdom.

Wait, wait... don't beat me yet, let me explain myself.

First of all, I thought I'll say that ZerO is Fortune.

I realized that I can't do this. This would be just disrespectful towards him as a player.

You cannot win vs. all of the top players relying only on fortune. You can sometimes LOSE randomly because of it. But not WIN, especially vs. top players. The way ZerO wins games doesn't leave the doubt that it is only luck. He does it very consistently and confidently. You can't do this only by "luck" - you need to have a consistent basis.

Now another lyrical digression to fully explain myself - I recently was thinking that we all sometimes remind the RPG characters: we are good and bad in different aspects, and often we can pick up some "basic characteristic" that is "leveled up" better that for other people.

I thought that Starcraft players can be described by this RPG-style "basic characteristic" thing

Strength is just the ability and intention to go and straight up kill the opponent. Build 50 gateways, 25 factories, 15 hatcheries, build a shit ton of units and just go and kill your enemy. No matter the losses, you'll build another army and then go and attack again and again. Just brute force.

Dexterity - ok, this one is pretty clear. Micro. You might be not in the superior numbers, but you'll overcome it by superior control.

Intelligence - decision making and macro. This is the ability to trick the opponent during the game, to make the right decisions and use what you have to gain maximum possible advantage not by your hands, but by your brain instead.

Wisdom - well, this is the most complicated characteristic. This is the ability not just to out-think your opponent. This is the ability to invent something principally new and use it in practice. Intelligence is just a kind of "tool" for battle, when Wisdom isn't entirely this type of thing. It is a kind of intuition. While the Intelligence could be described as an ability to calculate (the Descartes' "mathematically-thinking soul"), Wisdom can not be numbered.

Charisma - another characteristic that is largely of non-gaming nature. Well, this is the ability to be the leader or the "soul" of a team, as well as the ability to influence your opponent during the game not only through the gaming process, but through some kind of "aura", for example, of invincibility (or of cheesiness cuteness ).

Stamina - this is pretty clear too. This is the ability to endure omfg long macro games and never let your guard and attention down.

Well, by this classification, the one basic characteristic for the players will be:

Strength: Reach, Stork, Hydra, BeSt
Dexterity: Shine, Kwanro
Intelligence: Light, sAviOr
Charisma: Leta, Hyuk (lol), PerfectMan (LOLOL)
Stamina: Canata (rofl)

okay, and some more complicated cases:

"General" (strength + intelligence): Flash
"Barbarian" (strength + dexterity): Jaedong
"Druid" (intelligence + charisma): Bisu
"Shaman" (LOL) (dexterity + wisdom): BoxeR

Well, ZerO (together with Fantasy) occupies the "Wisdom" section. These players always do something crazy. They can be on the completely another level of creativity than their opponents. That's what wisdom is in life, too: being on the different level, realizing some truth that most people don't. A kind of creativity or insight that makes you go "beyond".

This can surely strike ZerO back (not as often as it does strike back Fantasy, but still).

But come on, things like this are the reason why we watch Starcraft. Some crazy strategies, be it Queens ZvT, fake hydra push into 4 base macro, Infested Terran drops or late game ZvZ. This is what makes a game interesting and unpredictable, not just calculation of the optimal build order and then boring development, final fight and that's all, he who calculated the most precisely - wins the game. That is the (non-game) Wisdom too - to attract the people to the game.

This is why we love ZerO and this is why many people want him to win against all odds (I must say these are HUGE ODDS).

But okay, I'll get back to this "Fortune" thing later, you'll see

Well... let's get down to the

Analysis

ZerO is a confident macro player. He can outmacro almost anyone. Even Flash should be careful if the game gets into the late stages.

ZerO has good micro. Watch his game 4 vs. Calm in the quarterfinals if you doubt this.

ZerO can be just extremely dangerous by the fact that you don't know what to expect from him. He can fake anything and then do anything else. He is a big troll, to the point when....

... he actually trolls himself. ZerO has an unique ability to f#ck up. I guess this is the scourge of all thinking players. They sometimes think faster than their hands move. So, oh hi 6 unburrowed lurkers in the SWL match vs. HiyA, oh hi 12 gate roflstomp by Jaehoon... etc.

I'm not actually the best analyst, but it's fairly safe to say that ZerO is
1) a very creative player
2) among the best macro players
3) good at micro
4) extremely dependent on his mood and on the "temperature of the water on Mars", or to say simply - on some unknown factors that make him look just OMFG brilliant sometimes - but make him look godawfully bad at the other times... and therefore - he is sometimes bad at decision-making.

He himself has admitted in the interviews that the power of will is his weak point. But recently he has been showing the signs of improvement (coming back from 0-1, 1-2 with Calm, confident 3-1 victory vs. Jaedong, where he didn't f#ck up at all, while he had many opportunities to do it, but instead, it was Jaedong who f#cked up). And this is an even more notable achievement because he had fought his way to the finals through a set of ZvZ's - this WAS his weakest match-up. Maybe, it isn't anymore.

The biggest advantage that ZerO has over Flash is probably the fact that there will be much less pressure on him. He is rightfully holding the position of an underdog, so no one will blame him if he loses. Even he won't probably blame himself - he surely knows that he isn't on the level of Flash yet, and also he already has overcome his burden of failing to advance deep into individual leagues. With his current form - another deep league run is surely not far away. (Last time he got into semifinal - now, the finals...)

This should help him greatly in getting what he needs most to show all his potential - the calm state of mind. We can expect him to perform at his best possible level in this MSL Final.

Not So-Historical Representative



Mikhail Kutuzov.

Note: this character being associated with ZerO was thought of during the Ro16, when all this hype thing started. %) So don't blame me for ZerO bias, this is not true. But nice coincidence.

Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov is known to be one of the greatest Russian generals of all time, and his excellence as a general is considered second only to A.V.Suvorov (who hadn't ever lost a single battle). He can also be considered a heir to Suvorov, as he fought some battles under his command in the early times of his military career - including the famous storming of Ismail during the Russo-Turkish war (1787-1792).

His mastership as a general was largely based on army maneuvers, including fake ones, ability to be smarter than his opponent, and to get out from awful situations with minimal losses. The last quality, together with overall nice personality, earned him a lot of popularity and the reputation of a solicitous leader among the soldiers.

However, he could be a major troll among the war councils - you can for example read the chapters of L.Tolstoy's "War and Peace" which precede the Austerlitz battle - Kutuzov there, foreseeing the defeat of the allied Austrian army, tells the Austrian general about it in a very cryptic and "trollish" way. Another masterpiece of Kutuzov's trolling was when he fell asleep during the war council before the Austerlitz battle (he knew that the battle was a lost one, from the beginning). Unfortunately, he was forced into this battle by the Emperor Alexandr I, to whose will he didn't manage to resist - while the Emperor himself, after this battle, kept thinking that it was Kutuzov's fault to lose the battle. So, his will was by no means an "iron will", though he knew the consequences of the upcoming battle. Still he managed to get out of a lost fight with the minimal losses and a very organised retreat.

Overall, Kutuzov was said to have a sharp tongue since his very youth, and that had even been sometimes dangerous for him.

One can compare Austerlitz battle to Polaris Rhapsody match of ZerO and Flash (worst possible conditions (map) for Zerg, but still ZerO gave the best possible resistance). But who knows, who knows...

There was also a maneuver in the history of the War of Third Coalition, where Kutuzov did the very similar thing to this game: Russian army was in serious danger of being surrounded and destroyed by the enemy - so he sent a small avant-garde of his army to the nearby village of Schöngrabern to confuse the enemy and make him think that this is all Russian army. They believed Kutuzov's deception and agreed on the cessation of arms for several days (they had to wait for reinforcements, because they didn't dare to fight the Russian army of an unknown size without it). It gave Kutuzov the precious time to retreat from the threat of being surrounded - and the army was saved.

His general attitude towards the Patriotic War of 1812 (French invasion of Russia) was the following: "We won't defeat Napoleon. We'll deceive him."

Mystic Unknown Shit from _Quasar_

- The Magician



Wisdom and arcane knowledge. Some people win by the raw force. Some win by being smart and knowing something their opponent doesn't. ZerO can do the first, but he is just excellent at the second. Doing weird and unusual things is his forte.

But...



This card might be seen as positive - but but but. Fortune can not only give, it can take, too. This is a sign of the lack of any stability, of dependance on fate and luck. ZerO is extremely vulnerable to this.

Wisdom is usually the thing that helps you to turn the tricks of Destiny in your favor. Will ZerO be able to do this?

Realistically, Flash should win this final. I can claim that ZerO is the favorite, but objectively he isn't.

But there are so many "but"'s that this MSL should end on a extremely entertaining note. At least, I hope so.