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Recommended Games+ Show Spoiler ++ Show Spoiler [Game 1] +Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 1?Yes (19) 79% No (3) 13% If you have time (2) 8% 24 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 1? (Vote): Yes
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Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 2?Yes (25) 93% No (1) 4% If you have time (1) 4% 27 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 2? (Vote): Yes
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Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 3?Yes (28) 97% No (1) 3% If you have time (0) 0% 29 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 3? (Vote): Yes
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Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 4?Yes (16) 64% If you have time (5) 20% No (4) 16% 25 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 4? (Vote): Yes
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Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 5?Yes (26) 93% No (1) 4% If you have time (1) 4% 28 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 5? (Vote): Yes
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Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 6?Yes (13) 65% If you have time (4) 20% No (3) 15% 20 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 6? (Vote): Yes
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Poll: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 7?Yes (18) 75% No (5) 21% If you have time (1) 4% 24 total votes Your vote: Recommend Mini vs Soulkey Game 7? (Vote): Yes
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On October 15 2023 20:01 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2023 19:22 TMNT wrote:
I swear once Soulkey gets to Defiler no matter how far he is behind there's always a chance he can come back. He's so so hard to kill lol. Remember those series vs Royal and JYJ in the last ASLs? You can see that again today in the Dark Origin and the Invader games.
Invader yes, but on Dark Origin Mini didn't even intend to kill Soulkey outright after he came back but to starve him to death. Which should have worked. I still don't fully understand how Soulkey was able to breach the bridges... If Mini had switched his army, as in put his dragoons behind the bridge and more zealots at the fourth I'm sure he could have defended the assault. Or if he had built a couple reavers to defend the bridges.
Nah the Dragoons are mostly deadweight at that point with all the orange clouds. The reason is simple: he just doesn't have enough. As I said, the supply is deceptive. The difference in supply suggests a game ending push by Protoss but that is only the case in the mid game. Defiler with Crackling is a different story. Zerg can erase 100 Protoss supply in an instance if Protoss doesn't have the right comps. That game has a very weird trajectory in the early and mid game that when it gets to late we kinda loses the sense of judging the game state.
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On October 15 2023 20:01 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2023 19:22 TMNT wrote:
I swear once Soulkey gets to Defiler no matter how far he is behind there's always a chance he can come back. He's so so hard to kill lol. Remember those series vs Royal and JYJ in the last ASLs? You can see that again today in the Dark Origin and the Invader games.
Invader yes, but on Dark Origin Mini didn't even intend to kill Soulkey outright after he came back but to starve him to death. Which should have worked. I still don't fully understand how Soulkey was able to breach the bridges... If Mini had switched his army, as in put his dragoons behind the bridge and more zealots at the fourth I'm sure he could have defended the assault. Or if he had built a couple reavers to defend the bridges.
Mini mis-accolated his resources, put his army west of mid right base but under allocated units the near bridge. He also had very poor positioning at the bridge. Units that mattered were too far off which effectively negates the choke point function of the bridges because he had nothing close enough to the bridge to stop an advance.
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On October 15 2023 20:33 RJBTV wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2023 20:01 Miragee wrote:On October 15 2023 19:22 TMNT wrote:
I swear once Soulkey gets to Defiler no matter how far he is behind there's always a chance he can come back. He's so so hard to kill lol. Remember those series vs Royal and JYJ in the last ASLs? You can see that again today in the Dark Origin and the Invader games.
Invader yes, but on Dark Origin Mini didn't even intend to kill Soulkey outright after he came back but to starve him to death. Which should have worked. I still don't fully understand how Soulkey was able to breach the bridges... If Mini had switched his army, as in put his dragoons behind the bridge and more zealots at the fourth I'm sure he could have defended the assault. Or if he had built a couple reavers to defend the bridges. Mini mis-accolated his resources, put his army west of mid right base but under allocated units the near bridge. He also had very poor positioning at the bridge. Units that mattered were too far off which effectively negates the choke point function of the bridges because he had nothing close enough to the bridge to stop an advance.
Thanks for the input guys. This is kinda what I meant though. If he had a few dragoons behind the bridges, he could have shot at the units moving across the bridge, especially the lurkers. However, in the game he could only send zealots, which got shot by lurkers behind the bridge.
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Well played by both players. I think Mini played well overall. But He needed better intel in mid to late game to stop zerg bases from sprawling everywhere and see enemy movement better.
I guess we'll have to wait for next fall!
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Overslept the finals and just finished watching the replay. Fun match and Soulkey definitely deserves this win. Very impressive 
Unfortunately Mini threw away his advantage in the final game. But his 1 base strat was very well timed, it completely threw Soulkey off. Overall it was a good series.
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Also Mini had fast shuttles in most of the games and there was not a single storm drop which is probably necessity to keep up with zerg final late game defilers shenanigans
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Although I was one of the first to jump at Mini for making mistakes in those two games on Dark Origin and La Campanella, we must not forget who he was facing today. It's always easier to highlight the mistakes.
To look at things from Soulkey's perpective, the overall theme was that he knew how to drag the games into a state that would favor him most of the time.
If you look at the games, they were very competitive to start but the continuation was SK waiting for the mistakes to accumulate from Mini and then in the end the result was not close at all. SK is the true BrainZerg.
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On October 15 2023 19:43 TMNT wrote:
So, out of all the top top tier players since Remastered came out, only the following haven't won an ASL:
Terran: Rush (not sure if I should count Sharp in? He did get to 1 ASL and 1 KSL finals)
Protoss: Bisu, Best, Snow
Zero: Hero, Soma, JD
How coincidental is that that we have had a new champion every season since 11? And even before that the crown was passed around each time since season 5.
It's like everyone gets a bite (except for the ones listed above)
And what's the reason behind that? In the past, OSL and MSL crowns were always shared between a few players. Now we have 12 consecutive seasons with 11 different champions lol.
It'd be more useful to look at (semi-) finalists rather than champs alone, even though it seems clear there is no true dominant player right now like in the KESPA days that the majority of ppl would pick to win the title.
From the players listed it's probably easier to pick who most likely won't win a title anytime soon :p
If anyone, probably be Snow would be a big favorite win an ASL, but his streams and streaming personality have contributed a lot to his popularity. Not to take away from the quality of his gameplay and general win rates. Just saying that average form in ladder/practice/proleague don't seem very representative for ASL performance. Ofc there are a lot of additional factors involved - pressure, offline play, preparation, focus and peaking when it matters, etc. But perhaps those are also what makes the difference between elite and elite+.
I guess you could also turn it around and say ppl don't care about ASL so much and are more concerned with making money and growing their fan base through streaming and proleague...
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Mini's lategame just leaves so much to be wanting. I hope he can evolve.
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Netherlands4652 Posts
On October 16 2023 04:20 Sabu113 wrote:
Mini's lategame just leaves so much to be wanting. I hope he can evolve.
^This. But job welll done by Soulkey to get into mid-game quite unharmed to then pull it to late.
I hate that I wrote a preview for a finals that turned out to be this 1 sided. Mini should really get better late game PvZ understanding. The scenarios I imagined didn't include late game and to that I can only credit Soulkey for not falling to Mini early. Mini on the other hand proves to be a bit too 1-dimensional.
I'm curious to see a Bo7 rematch between these 2 in a semi or finals next season and see what Mini learned from this series. 4-1 just hurts to see 
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For a 4-1, great games - only Tempest really a disappointment. Though Mini's unit comp could use more reavers late and he wasn't really storm dropping.
Nice to see Soulkey win a title!
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Every "standard" PvZ game Mini tried to play ended in defeat. Fun series to watch regardless.
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Great comebacks from Soulkey, really happy to see him finally take an ASL. Mini did a lot of damage but could never close it out vs SK, and then SK really shined in the late game.
Love the Starcast casters too!! Much love to Nyoken and eOnzErG (and the crew behind it, if there is one?). The quality and speed of the casts make ASL so much more enjoyable for a noob like me to appreciate.
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In some moments in the late game Mini was having a great advantage and he was never able to use it. Everytime he was trying to bust any position, it was like he was hitting a wall...
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Masterful play from SK, it was like a tidal wave just crashing against this impregnable fortress.
Games were bonkers and after mid game Mini just seemed loss against the amazing defense. Just proving #zesagi2023.
Maybe now SK can finally afford to buy food
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apparently soulkey streamed for a long time after the finals and received many donations while rewatching rain/bisu etc. vods of the finals. maybe he can finally retire the need_money tag 
On October 15 2023 19:02 RJBTV wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2023 18:25 whylessness wrote:
soulkey joins rain in the realm of the sc2/bw multiple game champion golden gods. but while rain's win was against snow when rain looked invincible in pvp, soulkey's ASL trophy has no question mark. still a great finals imo Soulkey already had a KSL trophy so he was already a multiple game champion. But yeah, he was missing an ASL title  . I think that makes Flash, Rain and Soulkey the only multi-game champions in the post 2012 era.
yeah rain and soulkey were already in a league of their own as far as multi-game champions. i was just celebrating the fact that soulkey now has an ASL under his belt in addition to a KSL/GSL. imo the mount rushmore of elite bw/sc2 dual champions is now soulkey, rain and flash. although flash faltered a bit in sc2 he is such a goat of bw i think he can comfortably be mentioned in the same breath as those players. you also have to take into account that all three players were good in bw before sc2 came out, and then successfully returned to bw during the ASL/afreeca era, showing strength in three distinct eras across 2 games.
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Every game was really fun to watch so I can't complain, and both players played extremely well. It's been a long time coming for soulkey so I'm glad to see him finally earn one.
But as someone who was rooting for mini it was tough to watch him lose his lead in games 3 and 5 . Game 5 especially I'm wondering if instead of taking an early 4th, he should have just powered on 3 bases and went for a pre-hive timing bust on soulkey? I know a lot of that decision-making was made because he didn't scout soul-key's 4th though. Just seems like every minute longer the game drags out past 15 minutes on Invader in PvZ gets exponentially harder for protoss lol.
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On October 16 2023 21:55 Ideas wrote:Every game was really fun to watch so I can't complain, and both players played extremely well. It's been a long time coming for soulkey so I'm glad to see him finally earn one. But as someone who was rooting for mini it was tough to watch him lose his lead in games 3 and 5 . Game 5 especially I'm wondering if instead of taking an early 4th, he should have just powered on 3 bases and went for a pre-hive timing bust on soulkey? I know a lot of that decision-making was made because he didn't scout soul-key's 4th though. Just seems like every minute longer the game drags out past 15 minutes on Invader in PvZ gets exponentially harder for protoss lol.
This depends on the map imho. For really high-value armies, protoss can basically kill infinite zerg units if the layout allows for choke/highground abuse. Watch Best vs Action from last season for example. In the map pool of this season, especially with how g3 played out (Mini's 3rd), I would say protoss generally has an advantage in late game vs zerg on Neo Dark Origin.
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Sunkens + Lurkers + Darkswarm = Really strong
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EPT
