Shinhan Masters Tournament

Carnac

Germany / USA16648 Posts

March 19 2007 07:13 GMT

Thanks to Xeofreestyler for the awesome banner!

When talking about OSLs we have heard nothing but ShinHan for almost one and a half years by now. It all started with the Shinhan Bank OSL 2005, in which we saw iloveoov claming his 2nd OSL title and July receiving his 2nd 0-3 defeat in an OSL final.

Apparently the Shinhan corporation was extremely pleased with the publicity they got through sponsoring it, so they decided to sponsor all three OSL seasons in 2006. Though partially controversial because of the changed 24 player format with massive amount of games on two days a week the three Shinhan OSL seasons of 2006 proved to be quite entertaining.

We saw Casy, or "Neo-Emperor" how some like to call him because of his often micro and strategy oriented low economy playing style, avoiding all the competent Protoss players (anyone remember how bad of a rape he received in the match for 3rd place the season before vs Pusan?) and making his way to the finals where he won desively with 3-1 against Chojja.

Then we finally saw the Golden Mouse that had been promised to the first player to claim three OSL titles actually in the hands of a player. Five players had been able to win two OSLs so far: Boxer, Garimto, Nada, July and iloveoov. It was the most accomplished player in Stacraft History, NaDa the "Tornado Terran" who stepped up in the 2nd Shinhan season of 2006 and became the first (and so far only) player ever to win three OSL titles by denying Anytime to abuse the "Legend Of The Fall".

And last but not least we saw Savior extending his long time MSL dominance into the OSL, as he won the Shinhan 3 OSL with a 3-1 victory over Nada. It was also the first OSL he ever participated in, making him a "Royal Roader".

Shinhan, however, wanted something more than just sponsor 3 additional OSL seasons, they wanted something special: the Shinhan Masters.

This Shinhan Masters was to feature four players: firstly the three winners of the three Shinhan OSL Seasons from 2006 (Casy for winning Shinhan 1, Nada for Shinhan 2 and Savior for Shinhan 3).
And secondly a fourth player who was to be determined out of 8 players (among those the other runner-ups of the 3 Shinhan seasons) in the Shinhan Pre-Masters Tournament. You can find the details of it in this thread. Suffice to say that Iris went 6-0 in the Pre-Master tournament, defeating Midas, Gorush and Goodfriend each with 2-0, proving once again that he is one of the scariest TvT players around at the moment.

Now, the real deal, the Shinhan Masters!

The four qualified players - Iris, Casy, Savior and Nada - before the heat starts

It is certainly not a coincidence, that the four players in the Shinhan Masters were also the four players in the Shinhan 3 OSL semi finals, i.e. the last and most recent OSL. While except for Savior they did not qualify for it because of that it still proves that they belong to hottest players at the moment. Everyone was naturally expecting a lot from it, a Nada vs Savior rematch was possible, or one of those insanely intense TvT finals.

Since four players were left the final event started with two Semifinals, Nada vs. Iris and Casy vs. Savior. With Iris recent TvT streak quite some of our readers were expecting him to beat Nada fairly easily, but Nada proved them wrong as he won 3-1:

Nada

Iris

Nada

As for Casy vs Savior, while Casy certainly does have an awesome TvZ, his style is easily countered by Savior's style, who is almost always safe against any kind of attack, getting the needed units at the last possible yet crucial moment. Savior won relatively easily by also winning 3-1:

Casy

Savior

I don't want to embed the youtoube videos of all the 3 best of 5 series, because I think that might be a bit too much, so I will only embed the final videos, you can get all the videos here. You can also download a torrent with the Semi-Final games here.

What a worthy final indeed. A rematch of the extremely hyped OSL final from a couple of weeks ago between the overall most accomplished player of all time against the most accomplished (and most scary) Zerg player of all time. I guess pretty much all of you will remember Savior's triumph over Nada in the Shinhan 3 OSL. Time for Nada to get his vengence. Or at least try? See for yourself.

Nada and Savior with the trophy, just before they enter their booths to battle it out

Many will have seen the games by now , for those who have not you can either download this torrent or just watch the Youtube videos, for which I have also written short game summaries:

Nada vs Savior - Game 1 - Sin 815

Nada bunker rushed Savior's hatch at the natural and killed it at the very last possible second. Savior was so much behind that he saw his only chance in gathering lings only from his single hatch and try to overrun Nada as soon as he comes out again. His attack on Nada's outcoming forces failed, forcing Savior to say GG, play time round about seven minutes.
Nada 1-0 Savior

Nada vs Savior - Game 2 - Arkanoid

Fast expansion by both, into 2nd expansion from Savior, while teching. Savior basically tried to get to defilers as fast as possible while maintaining a reasonable army and a good economy, however, he was not good enough at trying to slow down Nada at the crucial moments of Nada's advance, play time round about 15 minutes.
Nada 2-0 Savior

Nada vs Savior - Game 3 - Reverse Temple

Pool first then hatch at expo for Savior, rax then CC for Nada. Savior tried some early pressure with his first lings, but couldn't do any damage. He then proceeded to tech to lair, while building as many lings out of three hatcheries as he possibly could. As he had around two groups of lings and some more building he decided to go basically all in on Nada's natural, who only had a single bunker and some stray marines for defense. He also had only just completed his 2nd rax and had two more building. Savior just ran over him with ling only. Total play time less than six minutes. For reference on how to win against fast expanding Protoss/Terran players by going three hatch ling you may also want to have a look at ToT)Hullah('s all kill of xLo in the latest fragbet encounters. You can get the replays here.
Nada 2-1 Savior

Nada vs Savior - Game 4 - Sin Peaks of Baekdu

Again pool the hatch at exp into 3rd hatch from Savior, but something totally different from Nada! He went rax into gas and built a fac at the close high ground expansion of Savior. Even though Savior scouted it with his overlord after Nada had floated it to the other side, and accordingly reacted with placing a sunken in his main base, Nada was still able to majorly disrupt Savior's game flow by forcing him to build lings and hindering his mining, while also killing a couple of drones. Nada proceeded with infantry from three rax, while also expanding. As soon as he had about one group of infantry he moved out, Savior was late on sunkens at his natural, costing him the game. Play time 7:30.
Nada 3-1 Savior

Overall we saw three fast games and one with average game length. Even though Nada lost one of the shorter games he proved that the best way to beat Savior is to kill him before he gets his feared defilers.

One more trophy for the collection

So, Nada got his revenge, once more proving his status as a player who should never really be seen as an underdog, no matter the strength of his opponent!

A nice interview tranlates by ilovezil and mrmin123 can be found here. Fifo pictures can be found under the three following links: 1, 2 and 3.

Cheers