BW is a mechanically demanding, deep game. If someone wants to become great at BW, they have to go through a lot of trials and experiences. They need to nurture their skills by training their mechanics, increasing their game knowledge, analyzing all their losses/wins to help find their weak points, studying the maps, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Think back to how many times we have seen a player state in an interview that having one less worker affected their overall build or lost them the game?

As a player, you are also constantly fighting time, an element that you have no control over. As you age, your reactions suffer overall. What was once possible becomes nigh impossible or barely doable and certainly, quite frustrating. While grinding and studying the game can lead to a large skill increase, you are essentially working against the clock. Furthermore, there are now less opportunities compared to the past to help develop your skills. During the KeSPA era, there were a lot of ongoing tournaments. The players could also live in a team house and focus on practicing BW to their hearts' content. They could learn the game's intricacies as well which is arguably more important.


With the loss of the professional scene, the ability for amateur players to rise up against the old guard has greatly diminished. We've only seen several amateur players qualify for individual leagues, such as ASL, this past year, but they have all failed to make much of an impression with none making it past the first group stage. In this era, practice partners are the individuals best poised to unsettle the current hierarchy and reach the top. These were the guys that toiled away in the background and helped out with house maintenance, just for the chance to play the game they love and hopefully, play on stage one day. If even they can't do it, despite developing the work ethics and gaining the knowledge, sadly, not many other players can.

Few players remained after the last OSL aired. Some went off to try the sequel, moving on with their team while others decided to quit the scene altogether, looking for alternatives to make a living. The landscape underwent a dramatic change as dedicated players tried to make a living streaming their games on Afreeca all in a bid to entertain their fans, gain new ones, and play sponmatches. Some of these players became quite formidable, given the ability to practice endlessly with others while they forged rivalries in the online world of Afreeca. For fans, the only consolation they had was the ability to watch the first person view of their favourite players, something that was highly prized and a rarity in the old days.

The scene slowly built itself back up with the help of many organizers such as Sonic, 41.pOse, BCTV and LoveTV who put a lot of time and effort into running tournaments, aptly named, Sonic Ranking Tournaments/SonicTV BJ Starleague, 41 Starleague, BCTV Starleague and LoveTV Starleague respectively. These online tournaments (SSL became offline in later iterations) provided a battleground for the players where they can test their mettle and develop their skills back in 2012 to 2015 before ASL eventually took over.


One of the aforementioned players is Larva, a player who was a practice partner on SKT T1 and who had no experience playing under pressure and infront of a live audience during the KeSPA days. Although Larva may have acquired the knowledge, developed his skills, and multitasking on the team, the scene folded before he had a chance to showcase his abilities. Given, he was cut from the team due to some interesting circumstances. As someone who loved BW dearly, Larva must've certainly dreamt of battling other players on the big stage and that dream was cut short by tragedy.

Since his re-emergence to the scene back in 2012, Larva has been a constant contender in a lot of different tournaments and his skills have been increasing since. He reached the finals of his first big tournament, SSL7, only to lose 1-4 to Killer, the best zerg in the scene at the time. Despite being nicknamed "Terror lite" by some folks, his passion for BW oozed from his stream where he'll play for 18.5 hours straight some days and pull off a lot of stunts. These include, but were not limited to, stuffing his nose with coins, dumping ketchup and milk on himself and playing starcraft with his feet. While his demeanor may have painted him as a goofy guy who lacked the skills to compete with tougher competition (SSL7 was filled with amateurs), that was far from the truth, and Larva has slowly proved it since.


Investing his time heavily in the scene, Larva started to help out Sonic with SSL organization and kept up his performance as best as he could. He went on to make the quarterfinals in both SSL8 and 9 in 2013 and 2014 respectively, only to lose to sSak and Bisu, 1-3 and 2-3 respectively. By then, more ex-pros had arrived and the competition had become much more cutthroat than it used to be. The skill level had increased and Bisu's arrival in 2013 reinvigorated protoss players and ushered in a new age of 1 gate FE.

Larva had gotten more recognition as time passed for his ZvP and has even managed to eliminate or go toe to toe with strong players. Players such as Movie and Jangbi fell at his hands while others such as Bisu, barely escaped the same fate as their comrades. Considering that Larva used to be Bisu's practice partner during his SKT T1 days, it's not really a huge surprise to see him perform admirably in ZvP.


Even if one tries to argue that these players were rusty and not at their peak, Larva was still able to make it up to their current level and surpass it. He understood the way the matchup worked, or at least he seemed to understand the importance of trying to balance everything. He played an aggressive style where he tried to use his units to maximum efficiency and always looked for an opportunity to slip past defenses to cause havoc, but he also knew when to drone and kept mixing things up to keep his opponents on edge. In a way, his game reminded you of Jaedong and it would seem Afreeca netizens picked up on this as one of his nicknames was "Brainless Jaedong".

His micro was not too bad either and despite playing standard overall, he would mind game his opponents from time to time. Though he still had some holes in his game, his skills were present in some capacity and he had the potential to make it to the top. He just needed much more refinement, something that can only be done with more experience that comes from playing the game and going up against different playstyles.


Two other things held him back at the time. The first thing was his mental fortitude. For a player who had very little experience playing on stage, this was quite understandable and can partially explain why he could never fully show his skills. How many times have we heard that a player is a beast in practice, but can't seem to perform in front of the fans? Far too many times!

The other was the ZvT matchup. Even though he'd beat some TvZ experts like Piano in SSL (he seems to choke a lot!), he lacked the ability to beat some of the more consistent terran players such as Hiya and sSak. In SSL10, he would continue trying to overcome his weakness, showcasing his mutalisk micro as he demolished Sharp in one-sided fashion which was extremely impressive to watch. You could tell that overall, he was getting better, and that his TvZ was improving, but he was still not there yet.


He'd even try some burrow shenanigans against Hiya on Return of the King in the Ro16. It might have failed miserably, but some of the best zergs during the KeSPA era have not had the most success with such a risky strategy. Still, experimentation is one way to reach a deeper understanding of the game. Savior had a higher level understanding of ZvT, because he played terran at times and understood things from that perspective. Likewise, Jaedong was constantly experimenting and even still nowadays, he'll try different strategies on stream to see just how far he can push them. Experimentation is the cornerstone of innovation.

ZvT would continue to be Larva's bane during most of the remaining tournaments in this period. His path was cut short in SSL10 by Last who had just come back to the scene. Last bunker contained him before giving him a thorough beating, but not before Larva almost broke out of the contain. His path in KSL, the other ongoing offline tournament in the beginning of 2015, was not much better with him losing to both Mind and Killer in round robin in the first group stage of that tournament. Though this may have dampened his spirits, you wouldn't be able to tell because Larva just kept plowing through it on his stream and his practice paid off a bit more in the upcoming SSL. Even though he got eliminated by Bisu and hero, the two finalists, in the Ro16 in SSL11, he was finally able to best Hiya offline, a first.

Perhaps a sign of things to come...

He continued making some progress in ZvT which showed in the successor of KSL, VANT where he beat sSak in the Ro32 in quite the thriller despite losing his third base. He also went on to defeat Mind, who won KSL, 4-2 against Kwanro and was tearing up the scene in TvZ during the Sonic days, in their first encounter in the Ro16. However, he was forced into tiebreakers and was unable to repeat the same feat, leading to his elimination by both Bisu and Mind. Regardless, beating Hiya, sSak and Mind offline was a great achievement.


By then, it's been about 5 years since Larva has started playing BW and at minimum, 3 years since he joined the post-KeSPA scene. A quick look at his TLPD stats, which include both offline and online results, reveal some interesting information regarding his performance in both matchups.


It's true that in the earlier years, Larva faced off against more amateurs in SSL, SRT and any events that were hosted and that likely inflated his winrate in both matchups. However, as the years went by, more ex-pros joined the scene, and he was playing less amateur players. Thus, one would expect his winrates to decrease as a result. Let's also keep in mind that the amount of tournaments changed as the years passed by (much more online earlier to much less, but slightly more offline later). As a result, the randomness of group draws becomes more consequential, such that an easier group leads to a higher chance of victory and deeper tournament run, thus high winrate etc...). Alas, his ZvP winrate always stayed above 50% and fluctuated a bit, going as high as 66% in 2014. His ZvP was already well-recognized, and he has beaten strong players before. Therefore, his overall ZvP winrate sitting at 59% is expected and rather, it's pretty decent for someone still improving while facing stiffer competition.

The interesting part of the graph is his ZvT. He was always improving in the matchup and that can be easily established if someone compares any of his games in VANT to earlier tournaments. Yet, his winrate was really low, sitting at 35% overall with a peak of 53% in 2015 (peak likely due to many online tournaments, remove peak and ZvT winrate is as inconsistent as ZvP one). When one considers that ZvT is much harder to master than ZvP for a lot of zergs considering the fine balance that they have to walk, and the fact that he faced a lot of strong TvZ players in this era, then a conclusion can be reached that maybe he wasn't getting the best or rather, right type of practice (weak opponents?). A more likely explanation is that even with how fast he was improving, there was still a large enough gap to cross considering that some of the TvZ ex-pros he faced have had a lot more practice at a matchup that is really tough to truly master.

This might explain why it feels like he couldn't nail it down for whatever reason. It would've been interesting to see what his sponmatch results were in this period, but unfortunately, those are no longer available and this is all we have to work with.


By the time ASL1 rolled around, it would seem that Larva hit rock bottom as he was eliminated without a single victory to Sharp, PianO and even Jaehoon from the onset, however, that was far from it. Think of it as the calm before the storm, where the right conditions were reached right after for Larva to truly evolve into the ultralisk that he is these days. An important point to consider that plays into this was that Larva had already become an extremely popular personality on Afreeca by this point and had gained himself quite a large amount of viewers, enough to draw the ire of players such as Sea who spoke highly of eliminating him in competition during the SSL days.
The arrival of Flash, Jaedong and other players coupled with this important fact pushed him past his limits and allowed his biggest skill increase to date. It's really hard to overstate the importance of the return of these pillars to the scene as well as being a popular player on a platform such as Afreeca. Bisu's return saw a large skill increase amongst the players and there's no doubt that Flash, Jaedong, Soulkey, Rain and other players' arrival back to the scene has caused a similar, if not a bigger effect. As time passed, Larva ended up forging a friendly rivalry with both Flash and Last on Afreeca where he would constantly play sponmatches against them. He would also play quite a bit against Bisu. On top of that, he streamed on a daily basis and has even done 5 day streams where the majority of time, aside from necessities, was spent on playing BW.

A quick look at his ZvT winrate against Flash and Last over the course of almost 2 years shows this improvement. Against Last, Larva is definitely winning more of their games and the graph clearly shows an upwards trajectory, with his troughs being higher than in the past. Against Flash, Larva's winrate tends to fluctuate, but he has managed to at least maintain it to some degree, despite unfavourable maps at times (ex. Camelot) and Flash upping his gameplay by quite a bit. Considering the large chasm that exists in both experience and amount of games played between the two, it's quite amazing to see these results!


Taking everything into consideration, there is really no doubt that training your muscle memory more rigorously, going up against different playstyles, and facing off against the best have helped Larva immensely in both increasing his mechanics to insane levels, and further increasing his understanding of the game. Larva also found himself with a little children and a wife to take care of which is another big motivating factor.


Since then, he's shown much better results in the second half of 2017, compared to the early days and he's been more consistent in his results, going even with Flash and Last in the late game during the 5 rax +1 into mech period. What's interesting to see is the way he uses his units. His mutalisk micro has become extremely solid and one of the best in the scene. He's not afraid to dive in and pick off marines, medics and firebats as he sees fit. He still tries for zergling runbys, and to gain whatever small advantages that he can. His micro in other areas, such as the late game, has improved as well. The only words that come to mind when watching his game are fearless and awe-inspiring.


His confidence has greatly increased. Whether he finally realized that he had developed the skills to tangle with the best or his impersonation of Conor McGregor allowed him to break his limits, his ZvT has improved to a level where it has been recognized by his peers, much like his ZvP in the past. Other zergs have observed his games with Flash and Last to see what they can learn from him. He even earned a new nickname, "Larva McGregor" and has been caught various times on streaming screaming "Fucking Mayweather".

With the increase in mechanics, his ZvP has also gotten much better, allowing him to develop a new style of defensive play that seems exclusive to himself. Even Bisu struggled a lot when trying to break Larva in their stream games, and he's considered one of the best PvZers around. While Larva's track record in the first couple of ASLs is nothing to be proud of, with an early exit in the first group stage, his sponmatch results from the beginning of May 2017 till the first week of March 2018 show just how formidable of an opponent he has become:


He has a winning record against every protoss player out there, except Bisu (note: results up till Dec for Bisu). His second worst winrate sits at 61% against Rain. That should speak volumes to how strong his ZvP has become, but this isn't that surprising considering that his ZvP was already decent to begin with and with his recent skill increase, it's gotten that much better.


His record in ZvT is also pretty solid with only Flash, Last and Light being the sole survivors of his recent spike. As he keeps getting better, there is a chance that he'll at least tie with both Last and Light or maybe even exceed them, but matching or exceeding Flash is a different topic altogether and few, if any, can exceed him at his current skill level.

In the previous ASL, Larva finally delivered for his fans, reaching the semifinals and showing them that he can be quite capable once he is able to relax and play as he likes. His path may have been cut short by hero, the ASL4 finalist, in a close 2-3 loss, but Larva was responsible for the elimination of Light, Shine, Effort and Rain; players that have shown some stellar games at their best in the post-KeSPA era. By the end of it, he took 4th place, after failing to beat Bisu in the 3rd place match. In WEGL, he beat both Mong and Sea, 2-0 in dominating fashion before losing to Soulkey in the finals.

And this is just the beginning... With more time to practice the new maps and with the Ro16 groups decided, it's finally time for Larva to show us what he's made of. Can he repeat the same feat as before? Has he finally defeated his demons or will he succumb to his past? It's Larva's time to shine!
Writer: Bigfan
Graphics: v1
Thanks to: 2Pacalypse- and Lemmata
Photo Credits: Captain America