Jumper (noun) - 'Also known as sweater, pullover or jersey is a knit garment intended to cover the torso and arms, popular with both men, women and children of all ages.'

In the only close series of the SSL round of eight, Larva took on Perfectman. As a former OZ pro Perfectman was widely considered the favorite in this match. However, through a combination of cheese in game one and solid play in game four Larva managed to drag the series to the decider.

The final game of the series takes place on New Sniper Ridge. Perfectman warps in at the top left corner, while Larva finds himself in the top right corner. The first overlord wins the scouting coinflip and heads into the correct direction. Perfectman and his executor jumper couldn't care less. Larva opens up with a second overlord followed by a spawning pool. The OZ-toss decides that standard PvZ isn't his thing and opts for a gateway and an assimilator.



A probe also wins the scouting coinflip and manages to deny the natural hatchery for a short while. When Larva realises that he is up against a quick tech build he plants a third hatchery at his natural to create a funnel. Two very early dark templars rush across the map, fully focused on slicing up some drones. However, Larva is perfectly prepared and his six hydralisks, three overlords and a narrowed choke should be able to repel the invisible enemies easily. Only he reckoned without Perfectman's jumper. A single dragoon briefly distracts the hydralisks and one of the dark templars sneaks through. At least four drones end up diced on the creep. The others evacuate to safety. After chopping away at the spawning pool a little an overlord floats over and the dark templar dies to hydralisks.



Larva continues with hydralisk production off a single extractor. Perfectman secures his natural expansion with two cannons and a band of zealots. Due to the Protoss choice of build order, two high templars get to enjoy a spectacle they don't usually see: a nexus warping in at the natural expansion. Hydralisks rush in to pick off one photon cannon. Zealots with leg enhancements drive them off. When reinforcing hydralisks join the fray the outnumbered Protoss units head home. Larva uses his distraction wisely to expand to the three o'clock base and upgrading to lair.

Perfectman still only has two gateways when Larva starts to morph his fifth hatchery. Perhaps the dark templar opening didn't do enough damage. There also appears to be a large opening for some kind of slow shuttle harass inside the Zerg main. No overlords are on the direct path. Instead Perfectman decides to gear up for a strong attack based on his two base economy. He warps in five additional gateways and a robotics facility. Without corsairs, photon cannons or dragoons the main base looks very vulnerable to a mutalisk attack. Except that Perfectman's jumper has hidden a solitary dark archon in the top left corner.



The game enters the next phase when Larva starts morphing lurkers. He now has six hatcheries, some ground upgrades and his three bases are nearly saturated with drones. Perfectman on the other hand has stopped making probes and still has not researched the first ground weapon upgrade. Meanwhile, lurkers set up a contain on the ridge outside of the Protoss natural base. To Perfectman this seems like the perfect opportunity to move out. He tries to squeeze up the ramp to his prospective third base. Larva does something he postively loves to do and blocks the ramp with a lurker egg. The egg buys enough time for some zerglings and hydralisks to get in position to block that route. A few psi storms and some jostling for position later, Perfectman manages to get up the ramp after all. He also made a lot of zealots.

When a fairly sizeable Protoss army pours out onto the map one can sense a decisive moment approaching. The army first engages a bunch of hydralisks. Perfectman's Jumper maelstroms a gob of hydralisks, but his mannequin deems it unnecessary to cast any psi storms.



The zealots charge off screen to fight some distant hydralisks. At that point Larva orders his lurkers to backstab the Protoss army. Few units on either side survive. Reinforcements from both sides pick up where their dead cousins left off. Larva's stronger economy is beginning to tell and his hydralisks start to reach critical mass. During the preceding big battle Perfectman's Jumper had started to secure a third base. Unfortunately, Larva spots an opening and his hydralisks slither in to deny the expansion. Perfectman finds himself in a position to surround and kill the hydralisks, but Larva has a devious trick up his sleeve. The Jumper sighs.



The zerg units get killed eventually, but time is running out for the Protoss player. The largely melee based army fares badly against a large number of reinforcing lurkers. Larva completely prevents the expansion while starting up his own fourth base. Parts of Perfectman's army get seperated by - What else? - a lurker egg and die. The remaining units try once more to break the lurker contain, but they are too few in number and perish. Behind in upgrades, out of minerals, no army and somewhat creased, Perfectman and the Jumper tap out.




















In a match-up between two of the more eccentric members of the Afreeca scene, ZvP powerhouse Larva faces off against evil genius (no, not that kind) Sky for a chance to play in their first offline final at Konkuk University New Millennium Hall. These two have no small amount of history, with Larva making reference to a feud between the two that was supposedly resolved, following his Ro8 win against Perfectman. However neither of these players seem like the type to forget so easily and any veneer of friendship will be quickly burned away by the fires of the first SSL semi-final.

These are two of the most active players on Afreeca; if you’ve tuned into snipealot’s stream in the past couple of weeks there’s a very good chance you’ve ended up watching one of these two guys streaming their FPV. While this theoretically means that there is a danger of either competitor being able to analyse the play of the other, it’s unlikely to be a huge factor. This is in no small part due to the fact that Sky has such a huge range of awful things he can do to his opponent in any given situation and that Larva’s play relies mostly on gimmick-free defensive strategies. Another, perhaps even more significant, issue is that a majority of their games are played on Fighting Spirit, a map so heavily played by high level Koreans that it has begun to develop a meta-game all of its own, with a multitude of specific openings, simcities and timings based solely around the specific architecture of FS.



The hallmark of Larva’s ZvP so far has been his ability to defend an economic lead until he is simply able to overrun his opponent with little regard for cost efficiency. However, his army control is solid and he has occasionally mixed things up with early pool builds and ling runbys. Larva’s main failing in his two losses against Perfectman was in defending multi-pronged harass which in two games succeeded in disrupting his economy to the point where he was simply unable to produce units. Sky’s ability to replicate the level of multitasking shown by Perfectman in those two games is questionable. He is an objectively slow player who, while having decent EAPM in the mid to late-game, doesn’t have the kind of map dominating style we’d normally associate with the best PvZ players.

What Sky does have in spades is ingenuity.While Larva is a progamer and obviously has the intelligence to take advantage of map features when and where required, he is a relatively one dimensional player. Sky has shown in his other match-ups that he is capable of playing just about any style of game, with the ability to beat any opponent in 10 minute or 30 minute games, in equal measure. If he isn’t able to match Perfectman and disrupt Larva’s flow through brute force multitasking, he will need to find other slightly less conventional means of imposing his style. While he has less experience than Pusan in playing these kind of series, Sky seems to possess a similar kind of intelligence to his fellow Protoss semi-finalist. A multi-game plan like that used by Pusan in the quarter-final could prove useful in undoing his even more inexperienced opponent.

This series definitely looks like it should go long, with Sky’s eclectic style conducive to dropped games and Larva having needed all available games to win every one of his series since the Ro32. Betting against Larva has not served me very well so far in this tournament but it still feels difficult to pick him over such a strong player, even in his best match-up. Despite the fact he has dropped some games, everything Sky has done so far in this tournament has seemed utterly effortless while Larva’s victories, impressive as they have been, had the look of a player scrapping for his very existence. I have no doubt Larva wants it more and that if his macro gets going he will be unstoppable, but Sky always wins. He wins clean, he wins dirty, he wins long and he wins short, but he wins. He always wins.

Sky 3 - 2 Larva



Much like his young Jat clan protege Larva, Pusan has done exceptionally well to make it this far. Meanwhile for Killer, winning the final will be roughly on par with what was expected of him going into the tournament. Having demolished one young, modern Zerg in the Ro8, Pusan faces a slightly more formidable challenge in the form of Killer. The former OZ Zerg took a number of impressive scalps in ZvP during his progaming career, with winning records over the likes of Jangbi and Movie. Conventional wisdom says that Killer should win this at a canter but if there’s any player in this tournament capable of bridging a gap in skill with a little bit of cleverness or deceit, it’s Pusan.

There’s not a great deal to work with when it comes to Killer’s ZvP record so far in the tournament. He took a little over 20 minutes to win 2-0 against an apparently rusty Perfectman in the Ro32, mostly relying on a terrible build from his former teammate in game one, and then solid macro and good hydralisk control in game two to sweep the series easily. His ability to set up huge flanks with hydralisk heavy midgame armies was often a feature of his play as a progamer and was again briefly evident, both in his second game against Perfectman and also in his lurker/ling engagements in TvZs later in the tournament. During this series Pusan will need to be constantly aware of when it is safe to move out with his army and where it is safe to move it to, lest it vanish before his eyes in a rain of hydra spit.



With the persistent harping throughout the tournament (mostly from myself) about how awful Pusan’s PvZ is, he’s done an awful lot of winning in the match-up so far. Although it is slightly undermined by the varying quality of his opponents, a 6-2 record against Zergs so far in this SSL is nothing to be sniffed at and perhaps this preview should be a place where we re-examine this unkind and inaccurate characterisation of Pusan’s PvZ. The difficulty in doing this is that Pusan’s PvZs only really resemble the normal state of the match-up when he loses. All of Pusan’s wins seem to occur in this weird chin-shaped twilight zone from which only the spirits of fallen zealots and the demented screams of confused and defeated zergs can escape. Pusan deserves a great deal of credit, both for his efficiency in beating Zergs worse than him and his intelligence in beating ones that are better.

There is little doubt that Killer is, in a straight up normal game, the best player remaining in this tournament. There is also some argument to be made that, in a straight up normal game, the worst player remaining in this tournament is Pusan. This does not always prove to be the deciding factor in a BoX series but there is some cause for scepticism when it comes to Pusan’s ability to bamboozle a player as mechanically sound, as experienced and as confident as Killer is right now. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Pusan is able to win more than one game in this series. This has to be where the story ends for the former MBC captain; in the Ro4, yet again.

Killer 3 - 0 Pusan

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WRITERS: kjwcj, Simplistik, ArvickHero, JohnChoi
GRAPHICS: HawaiianPig