While OGN may have made this tournament for the fans, and hoped for nostalgia driven ratings, nobody is going to confuse winning the Heritage League with winning the OSL. So what motivation did these players have? For all of them, a shot at 20,000,000 won (16,000 USD) for four play days represented the best chance to hoist a big cardboard cheaque in 2009. With the two favorites of this tournament reaching the finals, a rematch of OSLs gone by was set to go.

The action took place at the e-sports festival, and you can see coverage of that in GoSu's blog posts, and in NeverGG's photo threads. I understand it was held at a late hour, but it was disappointing to see a sparse crowd on hand for the three game set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYh0Pe1_598

Game one on Python opened with NaDa succeeding in one marine expanding, and Savior failing to produce a sunken colony. The end result was a quick firebat strike at the zerg natural which forced Savior to mass produce lings and run his drones away. His hatchery survived, barely, but his mining had been set back. Nada's economy was untouched and his four barracks/factory/port opening blinked steadily with troops joining the front lines.

Having his base at six and his opponent at 3 allowed NaDa to carefully push the small distance between natural and natural with his tanks, and also have reinforcements quickly arrive. While Savior teched from lurkers to hive, Neither player lost much in early skirmishes other than an unfortunate dropship.

At the twelve minute mark the map became too small for the armies, and NaDa set up camp outside the zerg natural. With his main army in the middle of the map and siege tanks raining fire down on his sunken colonies, Savior had to decide, pincer or counter.

He countered. He failed. The attack forced NaDa to lift, but having lost all of his lings Savior was too slow getting up the ramp with his remaining lurkers. NaDa held serve back home with a new tank and vessel, and concluded his offensive at the zerg natural.

Nada 1:0 Savior

It was perplexing how Savior decided to counter with his consume research not even half finished. He had a chance, had he run his lurkers up NaDa's ramp more quickly, so chop up reinforcements, but I don't think there was anything that was going to stop the Terran ball from leveling his own base.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32v9JEU8Fsw

The second game on Destination featured a mech build from NaDa. His initial vultures caused annoyance but no damage as Savior controlled the map with hydralisks. As NaDa reached a mass of goliaths Savior tech-switched to mutalisks perfectly, forcing NaDa to invest in turrets and keep his forces at home.

With a combination of hydralisks outside the bridges and mutalisks harassing the mineral lines, NaDa was bottled up. As Savior got too huge, the mutalisks swept in to kill the tanks, and streams of hydralisks flooded into the natural. GG.

NaDa 1:1 Savior

This game was pure domination. Other than the initial scouting scv and four vultures, NaDa never saw the middle bridges. The game was a textbook on how to counter mech on Destination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ-bQRFZnXo

NaDa again opened with a fast expansion while Savior opted for a mutalisk opening. And then more mutas. And then more mutas. With constant reinforcements he took advantage of the ledges in the terrain and pinned NaDa in his base. A crucial moment came when he destroyed a science facility the instant it finished, preventing a vessel from being created and also delaying irradiate. This meant his incoming lurkers became that much more effective.

While his mutaisks rained glave wurms down on the terran workers, Savior expanded steadily around the map, eventually holding 6 mining geysers. While in recent days he may have hurried his tech to defilers, skimping on units, to be eventually being run over, he stayed at lurker tech much longer in this game. As NaDa finally readied his ball to roll out, Savior hammered it back with wave upon wave of lurker/ling. In a desperate war of attrition, there was no way for NaDa to fight against a zerg who owned the entire map. GG.

NaDa 1:2 Savior

While the first game was unsatisfying, the Maestro dominated the second and third set to pull out a convincing win.

To review the entire league, please check out the Heritage League Results and Standings maintained by heyoka.