K so I've brought up Leta as a potential top Terran for a few weeks now. Now that he's added qualifications for both MST and OSL on top of his monster ProLeague stats, I'm gonna take this post to declare Leta as the next Terran star.
(pic taken from Plexa's blog)
In an era already set with a dominant Terran, and with many powerful players ready to take his place, what sets Leta apart from the crowd? Let's start with cold, hard numbers:
That's 21 Proleague matches with a dominating 16 win, 5 loss record. However, Leta had always been relatively strong in Proleague, as anyone who watched last season's playoffs could attest. But since June, Leta has shown excellence in the individual game leagues as well, with an aggregate record of 32 wins and 9 losses since June 2008. 16wins, 5 losses from Proleague. 16 wins, 4 losses from individual leagues. That's a 78% win rate, folks.
But it can't be just stats, right? Like my Econ professor said all last semester: "There's lies, there's damn lies, and there's statistics." Point being that there has to be something beyond the quantitative that demonstrates Leta's potential for greatness, something that makes him unique. For example, Flash has his macro, his prodigy/non-emo persona, and the anti-carrier build. FBH rapes zergs, dances, strips. ForGG looks like a gorilla. What does Leta have?
I'll identify two traits that sets Leta apart:
1.) Mid to late game Strategy
(Really 14cc vs Leta facport, minimal harass on Really. BO disadvantage means nothing to Leta!)
Maybe not the sexiest attribute to have, but it certainly rings up the W's. Simply put, the longer the game goes, the more likely Leta will win. In fact, most games you watch with Leta you'll see him fall behind early game from BO disadvantages. The opponent will usually control the map up to the mid game point. But once mid game hits you'll slowly start to see the map swing in Leta's favor. Early expansions or central control the opponent may have had start to crumble away, kinda like an overextended pawn structure. In chess terms, Leta's play is like a good Sicilian defense playing against an overeager white player: white takes early control of the board, only to see black's well positioned pieces slowly exert more and more pressure until white's positioning implodes.
Leta asserts his will in the mid to late game stages by consistently positioning his troops at the right position and at the right times. In this game vs. ForGG, you see the similar pattern of Leta games: the opponent takes the early advantage, Leta asserts pressure at the right time/place, the opponent falls. Note the drop from 15:00 for Leta(blue) as well so many other times where Leta sieges or drops just at the right time to maintain positional advantage and weaken ForGG.
And of course, there were his OSL matches against Sea. In contrasting the two players and their styles of play, you can really see Leta's tactical advantages in terms of positioning and mid to late game strategy. I encourage you to look up the games if you haven't: Batoo OSL Sea vs Leta.
I know I've mentioned all TvT games, but it's because in TvT where mid to late game strategy/positioning is most important. But he's strong against the other races as well; maybe a bit weak vs. Protoss, but so is everyone else. Leta's last ten stats by MU:
TvT: 10-1 TvZ: 7-3 TvP: 6-4
2.) Wraith Control
If Lomo started the TvZ wraith usage, Leta has evolved it into a more perfect option TvZ. In the above game, an Ace match of KTF and OGN, Leta vs Luxury, Leta rips through mutas, spore colonies, whatever, with his wraith control. He also backs up his wraiths with MnM, which seems to be relatively new for TvZ, and supposedly he did the same in a recent MST game. And Leta loves to go facport, using early game wraith harass to compensate for his usualy early game disadvantages.
That's all I have for Leta so far. The knock against him is that he's always been good proleague but has sucked in individual leagues. Now that he has broken past MST and OSL Ro36, it's time to keep a close eye on Leta as he attempts to challenge Flash for the number 1 Terran spot.
Note: if you watch Leta's games lately, you'll hear an occasional Lee Young Ho from the announcers. That's them comparing Leta's dominance to Flash's pretty much every Proleague game.
I like your midgame -> lategame analysis. It also occured to me that I am watching Leta play and think "oh man, he must be screwed by now", but he just keeps etching out little little bits of advantage and equalizes the playing field with that.
On December 26 2008 06:12 zulu_nation8 wrote: hes doing well but he needs to play jaedong, flash, stork, bisu, mind
yah this is true, though i'm fairly confident --albeit subjectively-- he can beat flash/mind right now. I think the "six dragons" are gonna be what Leta has to worry about the most, as well as Ensnare-Jaedong
On December 26 2008 06:12 zulu_nation8 wrote: hes doing well but he needs to play jaedong, flash, stork, bisu, mind
yah this is true, though i'm fairly confident --albeit subjectively-- he can beat flash/mind right now. I think the "six dragons" are gonna be what Leta has to worry about the most, as well as Ensnare-Jaedong
edit: stuff
flash almost played twice as many TvTs than leta and has a 69.49% chance I highly doubt it will be "easy"
On December 26 2008 06:12 zulu_nation8 wrote: hes doing well but he needs to play jaedong, flash, stork, bisu, mind
yah this is true, though i'm fairly confident --albeit subjectively-- he can beat flash/mind right now. I think the "six dragons" are gonna be what Leta has to worry about the most, as well as Ensnare-Jaedong
edit: stuff
flash almost played twice as many TvTs than leta and has a 69.49% chance I highly doubt it will be "easy"
same applies to mind.
yeah i took out the "easy". but i know this: mind is flash's bitch. and flash... is he really that good at TvT? The last memorable TvT he had in terms of opponent was ForGG.. that did not go well.
in my mind, in TvT, it goes like this: ForGG>Flash>Mind. and I think Leta can beat all three
Yes i'm watching with his progress with very big interest. Looks to me, after Luxury went KTF, team manager decided to make him main star of the team and big part of it works on his success. Edit: Oh, i forgot, thanks to the creator of this arcticle for very interesting information.
On December 26 2008 06:12 zulu_nation8 wrote: hes doing well but he needs to play jaedong, flash, stork, bisu, mind
yah this is true, though i'm fairly confident --albeit subjectively-- he can beat flash/mind right now. I think the "six dragons" are gonna be what Leta has to worry about the most, as well as Ensnare-Jaedong
edit: stuff
flash almost played twice as many TvTs than leta and has a 69.49% chance I highly doubt it will be "easy"
same applies to mind.
yeah i took out the "easy". but i know this: mind is flash's bitch. and flash... is he really that good at TvT? The last memorable TvT he had in terms of opponent was ForGG.. that did not go well.
in my mind, in TvT, it goes like this: ForGG>Flash>Mind. and I think Leta can beat all three
ForGG's TvT is not good. Sure he beat flash at an epic (but kinda failure) BO5, but at the same time Flash is known to underestimate his opponents and fuck up everything. And by your theory, Sea > ForGG, therefore Flash > ForGG. It doesn't work that way.
Im not saying Leta is hype, hell I think he will do really well. But under no circumstances is Flash an easy opponent. This is like saying Effort's ZvZ is 77% so he has a very good chance against JD.
Well observing a lot of Letas proleague games TvT he tends to go longer games and relies heavily map control. Someone should count average length of his games, I bet its near 20 min or more (at least TvT)
Nothing has changed for Leta since last season when he carried OGN, he can dominate the normal progamers yes, but the only significant progamer he has beaten so far has been forGG, which doesn't say too much. He is still losing to the S-class progamers more often than winning, but if he can break through that wall he can definitely be a potential terran emperor. Leta is constantly being compared to Flash because of their strong mechanics style, and it's the "boring" style that many Flash haters like to pick on, but lately Leta has been showing more creativity in his play, so props to him.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/blog/leta2.jpg)
JangBi Loss 
FrOzean Win 
Luxury Win 
