DreamHack:
Valencia 2013

Stardust
Another Fairy Tale?

Jaedong
1,272 days

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

Read our Lucifron, YuGiOh, and JYP article for more previewy goodness!

Here's something that we don't see too often at a DreamHack: both finalists are coming back to compete at the next tournament! StarDust and Jaedong played one hell of a final back at June's DreamHack Summer, and now they're headed to Valencia to (hopefully) play some more awesome StarCraft. TeamLiquid takes a look at the last DreamHack's finalists ahead of the next tournament in Valencia.

StarDust: Another Fairy Tale?

by Monk

In one of the biggest surprises in StarCraft II history, mYi.StarDust breezed his way to a championship at DreamHack Summer 2013. The stars aligned perfectly for Stardust, as his path to the finals was laden with almost exclusively with Korean Zergs and a scattering of weaker Terran and Protoss foreigners. StarDust's unique style in PvZ—his self-professed match-up—hinged on immortals, awkward timings, perfect force fields, and heavy mind games. This unorthodox style confounded the best Zergs DreamHack Summer had to offer in HyuN, viOLet, and Jaedong, opening the path for StarDust to claim the title against all odds. Here's a short breakdown of some of the elements that made StarDust's PvZ so effective.

• Stalker-less immortal/zealot/sentry compositions
  Unlike stalkers, these units are very specialized and can deal especially well with Zerg's most basic units in roaches and zerglings.
  
• Double forge upgrades
  Because the core of StarDust's armies was frequently zealots, his upgrades scaled especially well.
  
• Awkward timings
  Because he used such a unique army composition, StarDust hit at timings that Zergs were unfamiliar with. For one example, StarDust often ignored getting gas at his natural in favor of a faster push, attacking with zealot heavy armies at unusual timings.
  
• Endless, perfect force-fields
  StarDust liked to dump a lot of his excess gas into sentries, often having 10+ with his main force. On top of having a TON of forcefields, they were almost always perfect.
  
• Posturing and mind games
  This is perhaps the core concept of StarDust's build. StarDust had many different timings he could hit after his opener, sometimes staying on two bases and making a massive gateway unit army and sometimes taking a quick third and delaying his attack. His opponents often guessed wrong, making units when they needed drones or drones when they needed units.
  
  One thing StarDust did beautifully was use pressure and fakes to force his opponents to make early lings and roaches, and then punish them for it several minutes later. He kept Zerg in a vicious cycle where they had to make even more roaches and lings to defend against a growing Protoss army instead of getting the drones and tech they needed. Once StarDust's immortal-sentry-zealot composition reached critical mass, he was able to easily run over a very inefficient Zerg army.

His Zerg opponents tried to adapt on the fly at DreamHack, all with varying degrees of success. You could sense they were getting close to finding a solution toward the end, but Jaedong just couldn't close it out in game five of the grand final.

• Mass spine crawler defense
  Instead of wasting minerals on zerglings that were going to get shredded by zealots and forcefields anyway, Jaedong made mass spines to survive a massive zealot-sentry-immortal timing in one of his games.
  
• Hydralisks
  This seemed to work as long as the Zerg didn't overproduce roach/ling against StarDust's earlier timings, and then attacked Stardust before his deathball got too big. StarDust proved that his army composition could sometimes fight directly with maxed armies of roach/hydra, especially on narrow maps where his forcefields could clinically dissect ground based forces.
  
• Mutalisks
  Like hydras, this was all about finding a timing to transition while not getting destroyed by zealot-sentry-immortal. Jaedong actually got the timings right in the grand final, only to lose to probes in a base trade he really, really should not have lost. In any case, it went to show that while StarDust's timings are tricky to figure out, they can be worked around.
  
• Swarm hosts
  Another reaction that can theoretically work, but probably not on Whirlwind. When Jaedong tried to do so, StarDust just walked around the swarm hosts and won.

Interestingly enough, StarDust has a great opportunity to win yet another championship on the back of his PvZ. This Dreamhack sports almost the same lineup as the previous iteration, except it has even less notable Terran and Protoss players than DH: Summer.

• Not-returning: Squirtle, NaNiwa, TaeJa, GuMiho, Sting
  
• Newcomers: Center, JYP

From StarDust's point of view, DreamHack Valencia is basically an easier version of DreamHack: Summer. The best players besides himself are mostly Zerg, the tournament is a bit Zerg heavy in general, and there are even less strong Terran and Protoss players to stand in his way.

The flip side of the coin is that StarDust's style is now much more exposed. With both Hyun and Jaedong losing to StarDust in the last tournament, they've surely analyzed their replays and now have a better understanding of how to deal with his unique and hard-to-decipher style. On the other hand, StarDust surely knows he's being examined under a microscope, and will surely have added new twists and turns to his style to keep it viable.

Jaedong: 1,272 Days

by Waxangel

It's been very clearly and very painfully demonstrated that Jaedong did not adjust well to StarCraft II. It's hard to blame Jaedong for it, considering that just about every facet of his professional life was turned upside down. He's on a team that has totally different priorities from any KeSPA team. He's in the position of being a challenger, not an established titan, for the first time since 2008. He wasn't even playing StarCraft II full-time for six months when HotS was released, forcing him to adapt yet again.

Unfortunately for Jaedong, his pesky rival Flash has decided to make him look bad in comparison by almost instantly (in StarCraft time) becoming a top tier player. Goddammit Flash, wasn't it enough to take three Brood War championships away from Jaedong in the game's final years?

Despite Jaedong's slow start, it's undeniable that he's been making progress. In fact, if Jaedong wasn't eternally saddled with this Flash comparison and had come into SC2 with anything resembling normal expectations, we'd be lauding him for the progress he has made. When you take into account that TLO and Grubby are praised for developing into fringe championship contenders over the course of two years, then shouldn't the player who in half the time, came within ONE MAP of winning DreamHack Summer get some credit?

Nope, not when your rival has been busy locking down the most wins in Proleague award and dragging his team to the playoffs. Being Flash's rival is a pretty raw deal, even when you're not actually playing him in a game.

There is one thing that Jaedong can do to keep this rivalry respectable, one achievement he can attain first, one way he can still one-up Flash: Win a major StarCraft II tournament. No, the HyperX Tournament doesn't count. I'm talking about tournaments that tens if not hundreds of thousands of people will watch and care about. Both players have come close, but they're still tied with silvers being their best result. Flash came up short against Life at MLG Dallas, while Jaedong conceded the DH: Summer title to Stardust.

So far, Evil Geniuses have done just about everything they can to help Jaedong reach this goal. They've sent him to nearly every major tournament possible since his signing, and he is inching closer and closer to winning a title. He placed top eight at MLG Anaheim, top four at DreamHack: Stockholm, and was one map away from winning DreamHack: Summer. Now, he's headed toward his fourth international tournament in as many months.

In each previous attempt, Protoss came between Jaedong and his goal of a championship. In Stockholm and Anaheim he was thwarted by housemate NaNiwa, while StarDust narrowly edged him out at DH Summer. While amusing at first, JvP became a less and less funny joke each time around (or more and more hilarious, if you're a Flash fan). JvP is a worthy successor to JYPvT and RyungvP from the WoL era, being an unusually awful match-up for a player who is otherwise rather good. While Jaedong seems to have the nuances of ZvZ and ZvT down, for some reason he can't seem to stop himself from running into horrible meatgrinder deathtraps in ZvP.

Yet, even JYP and Ryung eventually found ways to get over their single match-up troubles, and Jaedong is showing signs that he is slowly figuring out how to not be an atrocious ZvP player in tournaments. Even though he lost to NaNiwa at MLG, he also did beat Stats, one of KT Rolster's best players not named Flash. Even now, the badness of Jaedong's ZvP gets a bit exaggerated. He typically plays well for 95% of his games, but it's the 5% where he makes strange and incomprehensible decisions that holds him back. With a bit more improvement at ZvP, and perhaps slightly better bracket luck in avoiding Protoss opponents, the age of the Tyrant may very well return.

It's been 1,272 days since Jaedong won his last major championship. It's been 1,272 days since Jaedong could say he was better than Flash. In Valencia, Jaedong can start making up for lost time.

Writers: monk and Waxangel
Graphics: shiroiusagi.
Banner Photos: 7mk.
Editor: Waxangel.