[BR] 2013 Bisu vs Sea Mass Recall on Blue Storm

Going into this game, both players are pretty much equal in terms of sponsored matches. Bisu scored an all-kill for his SoSPA debut vs KHAN but now SKT is down 1:3 and he not only faces SoSPA's most feared Terran, he does so on Blue Storm. The revolutionist does not have the fondest of memories of this map. + Show Spoiler +

He badly wants redemption and the D ₩2,000,000 for his teammates though (as for the man himself, he's repeatedly proven that his main mission on Afreeca is finding a girlfriend - a difficult task considering 2 hours of taking calls from viewers only introduced him to a single underage fangirl that wouldn't even send pics - yes, he asked). Sea, on the other hand, had ages to dust off his skills and acclimatize himself in the SoSPA scene and the Afreeca BJ life. + Show Spoiler +


The players should know each other well enough considering they both started their careers in Pirates under Pusan's leadership back in 2005. If you don't particularly feel like reading the BR right now, the above is something you might want to keep yourself busy with. No subs that I'm aware of though

The game starts and Sea soon turns off his (godawful) music. It's serious time. On a serious map. Regardless of whatever ugly thoughts Epoxide thinks of it, PvT on Blue Storm was pretty much as balanced as it gets during KeSPA days: 102-104 and sure enough, it delivered many epic games. So far a similar level of balance has been developing in SoSPA, though the map has only been introduced with this very league. The ideal playground for the first official clash of the neo titans.



Bisu produces three zealots and trades two of those for three SCV kills in total. If you want to see some examplary marine vs zealot micro, take a look at Sea's FPV. Bisu doesn't do any significant damage here and even donates a goon in what could have been a potentially deadly mine drag, but he does delay Sea's expansion for a little bit as he techs to reaver on two gateways. Sea's CC is under construction behind the natural cliff, can you smell the respect?



With his first gateway in the middle, Bisu can reinforce faster and he's able to keep it alive for quite some time, making the investment somewhat worth it. Both players get their natural expansions up and running, Bisu threatens with the reaver but Sea is aware of everything that's going on and he's more than prepared. Bisu adds the mineral-only.



It's clearly vulture time and since Bisu didn't manage to get any of his delayed observers into his opponent's base, he pulls his forces back to avoid any major disaster in the form of a sneaky drop or runby. He does still make some use of the highground, getting the occasional vulture snipe.



Why would you ever touch the high ground advantage anyway? It adds so much to the game, it's simple, logical and very intuitive. I'll keep coming back to it. On 2 factories only, Sea moves out to take his 3rd and uses the excess minerals to apply some heavier vulture pressure, while Bisu claims his 4th. Yet again, Sea catches Bisu's shuttle in a moment of carelessness. Or does he?



And we progress into your everyday PvT - at least for the time being. Sea's vulture harass gets shut down by Bisu hard. Take notes dear Protoss wannabes, this is the hero dragoon that saves you from severe probe losses if you ever have to play Sea.



Sea decides to quickly claim his 4th base, confirming he's not looking to push any time soon. The ball is on Bisu's side.



The theory is clear: You want your zealots up front to tank damage and trigger some friendly fire, move in with dragoons, deal some damage of your own and finish the job or retreat. Bisu's zealots get stuck on the goons but fortunately for him, the theory is there mostly for academic purposes. In reality, anything works for Protoss. But seriously, the zealot force coming from the middle alley has Sea quite unprepared + there's still the highground advantage. Sea holds but loses many tanks, rendering any decision to push soon seriously questionable. For the foreseeable future, he's happy with just claiming the main highground and splitting the map, leaving Bisu free to expand.

Bisu mans up a bit too much though having some plans of using the 12 o'clock base. Perhaps he was hoping for the attack to do more damage, which it certainly could have. As it is, the base operates for 2 minutes which is quite formidable but a lot of probes pay their lives for this.

Sea establishes the top left base to which Bisu says:



While some of Sea's forces are busy at the 12 o'clock, the recall doesn't do a whole lot. Bisu cannot get the CC, he only grabs a couple SCV kills and a vessel and takes out the turrets. And, well, delays some mining. Most of us percieve this as a pretty bad recall - it doesn't accomplish much and exposes the Protoss to the Terran push. But this is not a standard PvT - we are, after all, on Blue Storm.

Sea deals with this swiftly, he cleans up the 12 o'clock ruins and he has the center locked with mines, turrets and a healthy siege line. He gathers his forces on the main highground pad when...



The same story repeats. The CC lives, SCVs live, some turrets die and the recall gets cleaned up without any problems. This is quite the disappointment. Is Bisu just gonna donate some units and die to Sea's push? What a sad fate for such hyped up match-up + Show Spoiler [LR Poll] +. That sums up the thoughts that flashed through everyone's minds the instant the recall was cleared out. Literally seconds later...


The third recall is unchallenged for a while due to all of Sea's army either holding the center or dealing with the second recall in the natural. Bisu grabs a few vultures and tanks, but most importantly he kills 4 turrets. This is starting to make sense.



Finally a recall that does some real damage - Bisu destroys the 4th CC. He secures a basic level of effectivity by recalling straight into the mineral lines (where 10/10 Terrans do not recommend planting spider mines). Surely, he can't keep this up forever though?



Actually, the recall frequency is strictly consistent and it's probably for a good reason. Anyway, recalls are tasty but how about spicing things up a bit?



With an additonal High Templar in the mix, the recalls start being somewhat more effective in dealing direct damage. But more importantly, Bisu snipes the 4th CC again and he kills a lot of SCVs with the storm drop at 12 o'clock. Suddenly Sea finds himself in a tricky position with limited income. Bisu, on the other hand, will soon be left with his last operating base. How will he ever break the wall of steel that still stands strong? HE WON'T.


Bisu sort of makes up for this by dealing some damage with the remaining forces from the last recall.



It is effectively one base vs one base any second now. However, Sea still has the 10 o'clock for taking. Bisu can't let up the pressure now. He baits another EMP and begins the final crusade.



The recall is a beefy one and it doesn't kill the CC, but it engages the forces Bisu previously stormed and many tanks melt.



Sea has to pull some reserves from the middle to deal with this. And he does, but then Bisu's masterplan unveils.



Once again, the CC burns down and Sea's hope of using that base crackles through the flames. He has the 12 o'clock but at this point he's dry on minerals and he needs all the turrets and units he can get, badly. Sonic has many insightful things to note and so would I but sometimes words are not enough...



Explosions explode. Stuff dies. Fangirls and Sayle faint. But ultimately, Sea holds yet again. Bisu is mining out soon! You can now jump into Sonic's commentary from this moment onwards below...

Or, if you can't watch the video or prefer screenshots, continue here: + Show Spoiler +

Blue Storm made its debut in progaming in 2007 and it just so happens that it all began with a PvT featuring Bisu. The map is quite new to me - I've barely seen a few games on it but the way it changes the dynamics especially in PvT feels very refreshing and exciting. I'd like to point out some aspects of this game and Blue Storm PvT in general and look for answers to questions like - would Bisu's strategy be viable on just about any map? If not, why go for it on Blue Storm in particular? And why exactly did Bisu win? However, rather than my own shabby and incoherent analysis, I'd welcome any and all feedback. Please, dear gosus and fellow noobs, point out all my false assumptions, wrong conclusions and present your observations!


Relevant map analysis
Terrain plays a huge role in all Terran match-ups on Blue Storm. In the early game, you can feel that in the difficulties of simply claiming your natural expansion, 3rd and any real map presence (green color), which was beautifully abused by Boxer. When it comes to late game and pushing, it becomes more about the wide center depression and the main highground pad (red color). Fighting uphill is something you almost always want to avoid if you can and on Blue Storm, you really have to do this twice, the middle is quite open and your reinforcements take forever to catch up.


You can always try and sneak/push into 6/12 o'clock, but in an even game you risk getting surrounded and cut off, in fact it's pretty much inevitable. See below ~25:15.


Yeah, Bisu still managed to lose the engagemenet and the game, probably due to the fact that he's been out-expanded by the Terran or his arbiters were extra late. I'm not sure and don't care enough to re-watch.

And even if you pull that off, you still have the main highground pad to conquer. All this makes the Terran turtle very powerful and while highground advantage isn't so strong with Protoss, it also renders pushing a fairly problematic business that should only be attempted while at a strong advantage/timing - like when the Protoss is just switching to carriers, which is a reasonable and indeed quite the dominant transition on Blue Storm. The turtly play is perhaps further encouraged by the mineral-only 3rd base.

Finally, take a look at the two 'recalled' expansions and imagine you have to keep moving your army up and down through the narrow chokes. It's like every Terran's worst nightmare, but what else do you do? There's much more to be said about Blue Storm but I'm sure there are better analyses out there..? Sadly there's not a Day[9] Daily on the map that I know of.


Defensive vs. Agressive/Mass recall
In standard (FS) PvT, we often see Protoss players only using recalls occasionally, as a delaying tactique when the Terran push is coming. This kind of recall needs to be strong enough and live long enough to do some damage (like snipe the armories researching upgrades crucial for the Terran push, or lock down the production facilities in the main base). Unless it's a desperation move, the Protoss is buying time for his fresh bases or tech to come into play. If the recall fails with a minedaebak, Terran will use the additional advantage to make his push that much more effective.

Bisu tried using this type of defensive recall on Blue Storm while teching to carriers vs Flash - you can see how that worked out for him below ~17:30



While pulling off recalls on BS shouldn't be an issue (considering even Flash can't stop it), there's still the lack of highground in mains which is probably one of the reasons Bisu opted for a multi-front recall rather than just a single beefy recall into main as we often see him do on Fighting Spirit. These recalls may look similar to the ones in Bisu vs Sea, but the idea behind them is very different, they are defensive in nature.

With the mass recall strategy the dynamic is different - there may be no push to delay to begin with. Since pushing here is unfavorable in what would be even conditions on a flat map like FS, any individual recall becomes not so easily punishable (assuming you're not switching to carriers behind it). In Bisu vs Sea, Bisu doesn't recall to delay any push, the recalls are an agressive response to Terran's turtle.

The Protoss must be careful not to ever recall all of his forces at once though, because a smart Terran user could take whatever he can, push through the center unchallenged and win the game abusing his opponent's own highround, which happens to be much stronger with the Terran. I believe that's why we see the constant 1 RPM (recall per minute, it's a thing) from Bisu instead of a straight-up double recall. In addition, camping an observer at the center of the map to avoid any unpleasant surprises is a necessity considering the actual ground distance the push would have to cover is quite short.


The game
Thanks to Bisu's edge in multitask, Sea didn't get to use one of his bases at all (and a gas base at that, crucially), lost the CC repeatedly and also invested a ton of resources into rebuilding turrets and replacing mines/vultures. Let's not forget the storm drops, too. Bisu came out slightly ahead out of all this and barely won the game using his last resources to ambush the only operating base with typical Bisu control. If he couldn't stop the bases right then and there, he would lose the game.

While some of the recalls would look underwhelming in standard PvT and they indeed had a lot of us quite disillusioned for some time, Bisu still managed to take the little advantages he could - he would always grab the careless vessel. The seemingly innocent storm drops also played a significant part in his victory. There was even some minor zealot drop harassment which I didn't mention in the BR simply because my multitask wasn't up for it. At the same time, Bisu never over-extended himself enough for Sea to punish with counter-agression.

The reason mass recall works in general? Smaller engagements benefit the Protoss, but on Blue Storm, it must be enough for the Protoss to win the game before he runs out of resources. Which Bisu did.

What could've Sea done differently? In my opinion, he really should've stopped at least some of the recalls - there was a number of occasions where he missed an EMP or donated vessels. If he had managed to stay at least 2 minutes free of a recall, he could perhaps use some of his vultures to do damage in Bisu's probe lines which were only protected by 2-3 cannons and further delay the next recall to set up better defences and increase his chances. He was fighting a bit of an uphill battle in this sense though.

Kc_mrblue from twitch chat suggested some tank harassment of the 6 o'clock. I'm sure you guys can come up with many other ideas. Bring it on!

Deadly fact: Bisu did a total of 15 recalls and 2 storm drops in 12 minutes.


Other games
In this cool game ForGG shows you can also use your own highground agressively instead of simply turtling, if you only know how (where) to push. ~14:00



ForGG forced Bisu to engage in an unfavorable setting by threatening the natural expansion and then used the advantage to leap over the center depression to Bisu's half of the map and deny his 5th base. Bisu still defeated the entire push and almost managed to cut off ForGG's mining operations the way he did to Sea, but the lack of 5th base ended up costing him the game.

This game serves as a good example of how ambitious pushing on Blue Storm can be and how deadly multi-front recalls are in the late game. Also, interestingly, it is the last official PvT Bisu played on this map. Was Bisu vs Sea just Bisu's old plans finally coming to life?

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The universe conspired to provide us with a re-game of Sea vs Bisu on Blue Storm yesterday. This game tells a story of its own and I do suggest you enjoy the cast (Kim Carrier has arrived!) or FPVs (this time we have Bisu's as well ).


If you have seen the game already or don't mind being spoiled, it also happens to be another perfect tool for understanding the Blue Storm dynamics: + Show Spoiler [Re-game Summary] +

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In some aspects similar game that came to mind was HiyA vs Sky on Neo Electric Circuit from 7th SSL.



Much like on Blue Storm, 3rd gas isn't so easily taken on Electric Circuit - it requires the Terran to spread out on the map which in turn exposes the mineral-only 3rd (which also happens to be a highground). While it's not so difficult to push on Electric Circuit as it is on Blue Storm, there's still the open middle and the players spawned in cross positions. Sky took advantage of the situation by teching to arbiters off of 2 bases and recalling into HiyA's mineral-only to then backstab the 6 o'clock gas base with his ground forces, creating a similar effect to Bisu's double front recalls.

Sky's recall looked underwhelming, it didn't manage to snipe the armory or get the CC but as Sayle noted, that would've only been a sweet bonus, he didn't need to do it. He did delay the 3rd gas at 6 o'clock from going up while not only taking his 4th (12 o'clock), but also adding one more gas base to that (9 o'clock), making the early arbiter tech investment well worthy.

The next recall managed to kill the base but HiyA slaughtered some probes with his vulture harass in response (less turrets to build on on EC?) and went for a somewhat scary but still a desperation push - which was crushed with the help of stasis and superior unit count, although it cost Sky a lot as well thanks to some poor control. Sky was even comfortable enough to claim another base (1 o'clock) while this was happening, whereas HiyA was merely hoping to get his 6 o'clock up and running. He simply couldn't afford 1) enough tanks 2) enough upgrades 3) enough vessels for the push to work, not while on 2 gas bases only. The single vessel did not save the day vs Sky's 6 arbiters.

At that point the only reason the game should still be going on was HiyA's superior army control. Soon after stopping the push, Sky went back to recalling...


...and eventually destroyed HiyA's last push attempt despite some horrible engagements (unit donations), he was that far ahead. While Neo Electric Circuit has its own dynamics, the idea of denying Terran's 3rd gas using a recall for diversion and relying on the map to render any counter-attack push unfavorable seems to work the same way here as it did in the mass recall game on Blue Storm. These recalls were also agressive in nature.


In conclusion, I'm sorry about all the above, but I haven't been able to play BW for quite some time now due to carpals, so this is my way of venting that. This was a D-rank powered analysis so it's bound to be wrong in many aspects



Discuss.

I'd recommend this over Lee Soon-Shin. It's also based on a Korean manhwa, which makes it the ideal tool for anyone watching dramas to improve their Korean. If you want to "know more" about that manhwa shoot me a pm.