Official Starcraft Thread

General Discussion
1721

He was hoping to hide his lair timing but it didn’t pay off.
Also probably didn’t have larva for more mutas before the attack on his spire, and I think he went pretty fast hive afterwards to try to get back into the game. He was behind after the sunken rush so he needed to make something happen.

Jaedong didn’t play super well, but it’s just stupid to think he’s some invincible Zerg who can never fail or have an off day or just get outplayed, or that it’s a reasonable assumption to say he threw the finals just because it’s all the rage for people to think that after Lomo’s not-so-great sunken break didn’t pan out (omg he killed a few sunkens and a few lings HOW COULD JAEDONG COME BACK IT MUST BE RIGGED).

1722

I think it’s a bit strange for you to say it’s stupid to think it could be rigged. These very strange coincidences just so happened to come while Jaedong was playing against members of his own team. I’ve never thought of Jaedong as invincible or anything like that but his play in game 1 was not very good. I don’t think i’ve EVER seen anyone attempt to hide their Lair tech and evo chamber that far from their base before. As I said earlier he was pretty much asking for it to get picked off. Game 1 was great to watch initially but after watchign it again Jaedong shoulda typed gg soon as he started morphing that lair.

1723

“Strange coincidences?” The only “strange coincidence” in game 3 vs. Lomo was that Lomo pulled a Hwasin and killed lurker eggs instead of killing the hatchery, then decided to kill the spawning pool instead of the hatchery. He got greedy paid for it- want to say Hwasin threw his series against Jaedong as well?
Or that when forGG, whose preparation for series has proven to be top-notch, who knows Jaedong’s play well from practicing against him, who has had time and experience against Jaedong to prepare builds and strategies specifically for this series… when this kind of player goes up against Jaedong, it’s a “strange coincidence” that Jaedong tries to weird strats or that he gets read like a book and trashed by sick macro and timing (which is what forGG has always known for)?

As he’s been prone to do since he won the OSL, Jaedong just did what he normally does. His exact opening changes but the overall pattern hasn’t really budged. Sometimes Jaedong gets super greedy, sometimes he opens super aggressive… but it almost always transitions into fast lair -> spire -> mutas -> optional lurkers -> fast hive. He normally gets away with it by scoring economic damage via his ling micro or by defending attacks and then riding his economic advantage. forGG knows this, prepared for it, defended early aggression and ran with his economic advantage until Jaedong couldn’t catch up any more, especially on Terran-favored maps.

And if people want to say it’s a teammate thing… 1) Boxer vs. oov, EVER2004 OSL. 2) if your team is about to lose their captain and former top player to military service, do you really think it’s best for team morale to have your best player throw a finals series to a guy who was, until recently, just an inconsistent Proleague 3rd option for your team? To have the current anchor of your team just give a championship away to the backup? To have the new “champ” know he didn’t earn it, and have that doubt picking at him for all of next season?
It doesn’t really accomplish anything, and Lecaf’s coach/manager is good enough of a coach to know that.

forGG was one bad wraith attack decision away from 3-0ing Flash, whose “slumping” form beat an in-form Lomo in a Bo5 series. He didn’t make bad decisions last night. forGG is probably about to hit his peak, and the question should be “how long will he stay there?” or “how much better can he get?” or “is this the beginning of the end for Jaedong?” not “did a pseudo-slumping Jaedong throw a series he probably wouldn’t have won anyways?”

People are just looking for signs everywhere. forGG is a kid in his first finals appearance ever, he’s just taken down the #1 ranked player and #1 Terran in Korea, he’s just come through one of the hardest brackets that this MSL could put together, he knows where he stands against Jaedong in team practice games, and he’s confident that he can take it… omg he must know it’s going to be fixed in his favor because that would totally be the coolest thing ever??
Jaedong is/was good enough to handle a largely overhyped Lomo (who nobody cared about at all until he did some wraith micro on Kwanro, a player hardly noted for his consistency or staying power), but since Lomo is the new hype it’s “reasonable” to assume that he threw a game where he was just outplayed? forGG is/was good enough to beat Jaedong on the finals stage, anybody who thought otherwise was letting Jaedong’s reputation and not his play sway their thinking… without really paying attention to forGG’s play or reputation.

1724

http://www.youtube.com/my_subscriptions?pi=1&ps=20&sf=added&sa=0&sq=&dm=2&s=8NVEdYPIWTA#

Havent’ read your above post yet but Klaz and Cholera agree with everything i said about game 1. Not that they are the all knowing gods of SC but just showing that i’m not alone. I’ll give a response to your post in an hour or so, kinda busy at the moment.

1725

The boxer vs. Oov argument honestly has no place in this. Reason being there wasn’t a time during that series where either player seemed to be doing anything incredibly illogical.

Jaedong did not make a serious attempt at muta harassing the entire series. He maxed at maybe 5 mutalisk each game while having 3 hatcheries going. His timing for his mutas was also late on eVERY single game. If you go back and watch there’s not a single game where the transition from spire to mutas is smooth. It’s very conveniant that his timing is suddenly off while playing in teh finals against the only race his team doesn’t have a championship with. Jaedong played very bad throughout the entire best of 3 and ForGG honestly did not play that well himself but thankfully for him Jaedong was playing worse. Also as far as Jaedong changing his play because ForGG is on his team… Jaedong played the same way he usually does except his Muta timing was off EVERY game and he decided to not make a serious harassment attempt every game as well. Watching the finals again you don’t think “wow ForGG is amazing” you think “what is Jaedong doing?” Lol even listen to the English commentary on the Violetak account. They have no idea what Jaedong is doing either and note that ForGG has had a strategy that was a direct counter to Jaedong’s every time. It’s possible it’s a coincidence but you’e talking as though it’s the craziest thing in the world to think there’s more then meets the eye.

1726

lolol in the 2nd game of the finals for klaz/cholera, if you look closely around 8:40 you’ll see tasteless in the audience.

1727

The reason I keep saying this is ridiculous is because people are making really bad arguments for why they think there’s something shady going on.

For instance, forGG’s builds perfectly countered what Flash did every game (ONE bad decision saved Flash from a 3-0), I guess Flash threw his series as well.

In any case, if muta harass was still a strong option on this season’s maps against this season’s Terran strategies, maybe you’d actually see Zergs getting fielded in Proleague. There’s a reason why Zergs didn’t show up very often in proleague, why only 3 zerg total got past group stages for the MSL and OSL…

I don’t know why you keep bringing up the fact that Jaedong didn’t make a huge effort to muta harass when it’s a known fact that muta harass just doesn’t work well on this season’s maps, nor are Terran players scrimping on turrets like they used to so it’s not like mutas have been doing that much damage lately anyhow. Jaedong wins with mutas because he racks up big advantages early game so that his opponent doesn’t have enough to stop the mutas… case in point, game 2 against Hwasin- mutas wouldn’t have accomplished anything if his lurker/ling defense hadn’t cleaned up Hwasin’s push and “saved” his hatch. Contrast this to, oh… game 1 of Jaedong/Hwasin series, where Hwasin forces the mutas to stay at home with a timing attack, then proceeds to kill a ton of crap because mutas actually are pretty bad against +1 MnM unless they have something to micro around.
Incidentally game 3, Jaedong tries to make something happen with mutas and surprise surprise, they get popped by turrets and +1 MnM.

Jaedong’s muta timing was fine, in any case. It’s just that any Terran worth their spot on a pro team roster can and will have +1 weapons and turrets ready by the time mutas appear anyhow. Muta openings punish greedy or overconfident Terrans (strong against greedy FE openings like oov and Flash-esque fast 3rd CC builds) but against pretty much every standard Terran build, they don’t really work if the Terran player is willing to spend a bit more on turrets.

Also it’s pretty ridiculous to say forGG didn’t play really well. Macro was absolutely ridiculous, solid defense, didn’t get greedy or leave himself open to a lot of harassment as it was (no risky extra expos, didn’t scrimp on turrets), denied scouting pretty well, micro’d when he needed to, had upgrade advantage for pretty much the whole series, forced the game to center on 1-2 hotspots so that Jaedong couldn’t just out-multitask him, etc. etc.

Seriously, does anybody who thinks the game was thrown have a better argument than “well when Jaedong was winning on more balanced ZvT maps he went mutas all the time and his mutas won like one game for him against Hwasin this entire season, so it’s shady that he didn’t go muta-heavy against forGG?”

When Klaz stops screaming about sAviOr every two seconds and realizes that sAviOr-style Zerg is getting obsolete (didn’t Bisu already teach us that like a year ago?), maybe I’ll care that he doesn’t know what Jaedong is doing. It’s not like he knows what Jaedong is doing half the time anyhow.

1728

I’m going to have to agree with kod that the entire time you watch the games you just constantly think “Jaedong is losing this” and not “wow ForGG is a monster”. If i had to compare this ForGG flare up to anything it would be to Mind, when Mind took out both Bisu and Savior. And no, his micro is mediocre, he doesn’t know how to save a Sci ves or drop ships.

and wtf at saying muta build is obsolete? Jaedong got into the MSL finals and Gom Finals. I’m pretty sure he’s doing something right

If ForGG is the great player you say he is, when he’s in OSL/MSL/Proleague and he has to study 3 different opponents at the same time, then we’ll see how he fares.

1729

Jaedong was in the MSL because he won last year. He made it out of his group by beating a slumping Bisu twice (while dropping a game to Hwasin thanks to a bad mouse). He then played Lucifer in the Ro16- Jaedong hasn’t slipped in his ZvP much at all, and Lucifer has a career 25% win rate against Zerg and is hardly an experienced player to begin with.

Jaedong got into MSL semi-finals thanks to Hwasin making 2 really bad decisions - targeting lurker egg instead of hatch, and not blocking his ramp against a 4pool that he had plenty of time to react to (also starting a 2nd rax instead of a bunker in that game). His mutas only won game 2 after Hwasin made a stupid mistake and had his entire timing attack killed for nothing, ie. after Jaedong had scored a huge advantage that had nothing to do with mutas. Game 3 was a 4pool. Game 4 was just a formality at that point, it was pretty clear that Jaedong had already mentally crushed Hwasin and probably could have done whatever the hell he wanted.

And getting into the finals? Jaedong, top ZvP player in the world, against Much, a 58% PvZ player who only had ONE win against a top tier Zerg in the past year (Jaedong, on Baekmagoji in the GSI). Most of Much’s PvZ wins are against roster-filler Zergs, and he has a few losses to those same Zergs… but he doesn’t have nearly as many wins against the top Zergs. Much just isn’t fast enough to keep up with Jaedong.

Also, as to GOM…

Jaedong’s bracket was
Ro64 - Modesty (Z) - 2-1 Jaedong
Ro32 - AzAng (T) - 2-1 Jaedong
Ro16 - JangBi § - 2-0 Jaedong
Ro8 - Lomo (T) - 2-1 Jaedong
Ro4 - Shuttle § - 3-0 Jaedong

AzAng is hardly a top tier Terran talent (pretty much a minor leaguer for CJ).
The Lomo series is the entire reason this whole stupid “fixed games” discussion is even taking place, even though it wasn’t even that huge a deal in the first place. Not that muta builds even won the series for him- speedling run-by won game 1 and game 3 he won because he had an eco advantage after holding off the sunken break.

So how is Jaedong’s ZvP heavy schedule against weaker/slumping Protoss players any indication of the usefulness of fast muta builds in modern ZvT? Especially when his T opponents have been weaker players in general, or prone to really bad decision making… and even then he was “slumping” when he stuck with muta builds in ZvT this season anyhow?

1730

GGPlay vs Casy was a good example of how Zerg Muta is effective against Terrans. Also Luxary used it successfully against Flash. If mutas can’t infiltrate the base and harass economy, they are almost importantly used to stall for the zerg to get 3rd gas. Which done properly will work SO well because of the mobility factor that mutas have over MnM. I’m not saying that the reason why fast mutas aren’t obsolete because Jaedong got into the finals, I’m saying that Jaedong knows what he’s doing, so most likely he wouldn’t pick some retarded strat. Which is what you’re saying fast mutas is.

But as you saw in the finals, for some odd reason jaedong just didn’t look like himself. I’m not saying ForGG is bad. I just don’t think he’s as good as you say he is. SC is a game where anybody on their day can beat anybody. Luck plays a factor into it, and honestly, I think ForGG had some luck on his side. But thats debatable. Some call it luck, some call it having your team mate throw the game for you =P

1731

Casy is a hyper-micro TvZ player, not a solid macro player who plays safe. Flash has been overconfident and greedy all season. I’m not saying mutas are worthless, they have value- but Jaedong did about all he could with his mutas, which was kinda stall the initial push. But you aren’t going to stall that kind of macro for long.
And again, the maps just don’t let mutas use their advantages quite as well. Not nearly enough artifacts or cliffs to fly over to get out of sight from the MnM, so the MnM can just keep shooting for as long as the the mutas are in range. Once the Terran’s macro hits a certain point, he can push out because he’ll have enough units appearing in his base to deal with the mutas anyhow.

And forGG’s micro was pretty decent. People act like it’s a horrible thing to ever lose a vessel or a dropship, forGG’s style and choice of builds just don’t require the babying of units that standard SK Terran requires.
I mean it’s not like Hwasin kept his vessels alive very well with his superior TvZ unit control. forGG just didn’t have to keep his alive as often (and he did save his vessel clouds a few times here and there, followed by a ton of irradiates). forGG plays a lot more tank-heavy TvZ anyhow so it’s not like he needs the constant irradiates to handle lurkers/defilers/ultras like SK builds do.

1732

Honestly i have no idea why you keep bringing up the Lomo stuff. I have barely mentioned it but you keep harping back to it. I don’t really care about that at all. Yes it had signs of potentially being fixed but it has nothign to do with Jaedong vs. ForGG. ForGG had the worst micro i’ve ever seen in a finals winner and Jaedong’s play was mysteriously terrible. Also if the maps are so bad for muta harass, why did he make his build around it EVERY time? You don’t see any lurkers in game 1 i believe and barely see them in games 2 and 3.

Also…what part of Jaedong’s strategy does Klazart get incorrect? Him and CHolera pretty much called it perfectly and mentioned all the mistakes he made.

Lol now that i think about it. WHAT WAS JAEDONG’S STRATEGY? I doubt you’ll be able to explain what he was trying to do and have it seem like anything logical. The more I think about it the more unimpressive these finals become. Pretty much a joke of a finals.

1733

I’d say the 3-0 is more a sign that it wasn’t thrown.
And everyone knows that Klaz is a massive Savior ***, this is probably the biggest failing among the announcers too much personal bias and favoritism.

1734

The Psyonic Reaver cast was definately biast. The first game especially they were talking as if Jaedong was still in the game after most people from what i’ve seen pretty much saw ForGG having the lead the entire way after that first drop. I didn’t really see any bias from the Klaz/Cholera cast. Klaz didn’t even speak of Savior until someone else said something about him.

1735

Jaedong’s strategy was the same strategy he always goes, optional speedlings -> fast lair -> mutas -> optional lurkers -> fast hive -> defilers -> push out -> ultras -> win at some point. His exact opening might vary a bit, but the overarching plan never really does. Look back at his triple-league encounter with Flash last season, Flash knocks him out of the OSL and the GSI by taking him out of that sAviOr-esque comfort zone of “one build fits all.” Flash going mech threw Jaedong off, and even when Jaedong had an answer for it, Jaedong couldn’t execute his attack properly because he wasn’t comfortable with it.

Game 1 - 9pool or overpool -> sunken rush (repelled) -> double expo (to catch up economically) -> fast lair -> spire -> mutas + evo + save gas for fast hive (spire and evo die) -> double evo (to catch up on ups) + hive -> scourge/muta/ling to stall -> defiler -> ultra (ultras die because carapace isn’t done during forGG’s drop) -> attempt to cut off reinforcements with ultraling while using swarms to break the push (except it doesn’t pan out because there are way too many units) -> run out of resources and die.

Game 2 - 12hatch -> ling “contain” -> fast lair -> mutas to stall push -> lurkers to stall for hive -> fast hive -> all his units start dying to 1/1 (2/1) MnM + tanks -> defiler tech (finishes shortly before siege mode blows the hell out of his nat) -> GG

Game 3 - 9pool -> 2nd hatch at nat -> 3hatch -> speedling harass (keeps this up for a while, keeps marine count down but doesn’t stall forGG’s or tech at all) -> lair -> muta fly around and stall the push -> den + take 3rd gas- > more aggressive muta harass (hey he went for it and lost more in mutas than he could conceivably have cost forGG thanks to turrets and +1 MnM, why doesn’t he do this more often I wonder?) -> lurkers get raped by MnM and tanks -> lurker/ling/defiler/sunkens get raped by siege and sheer MnM numbers (and forGG went firebat heavy after the first defiler showed up) -> GG

major point of interest is that forGG always had upgrade advantage for every important stretch of any given game - note that this is how the “Flash build” handled standard PvT 2base carriers. Upgrades are huge in SC, and forGG took a page out of the SK terran book with his heavy emphasis on upgraded MnM.

1736

Incidentally, English commentators kinda touched on it but the Korean commentators kept harping on this- TvZ on the map set for this MSL final is pretty heavily skewed towards T.

Colosseum TvZ is ~71% in T’s favor, Othello is like 62.5%, Tiamat is 100% (LOL)… the closest thing to a balanced map in the pool was Athena (50%) and it never got there, and the closer would have been on Colosseum. That said, Tiamat and Athena haven’t really gotten a ton of play compared to Colosseum (already at ~100 televised matches).

In any case, these are the maps we’re stuck watching for a bit longer so I hope everybody likes TvT, TvP, and PvP… at least in the MSL. The current OSL maps have been friendlier to Zerg in terms of win-rate… in ZvP… and mostly because of July.

1737

Jaedong is eliminated in the group stage of the OGN offline preliminaries.
Jaedong, contender for best ZvP at the moment, lost to a Protoss 1-2.
A Protoss who has only played 2 televised major league matches, losing to July and Goodfriend. Is han going to be another SkyHigh (minor leaguer who takes out a favorite only to crash out soon afterwards) or is he going to go on to bigger and better things?

All I know is Jaedong had better step up his game soon.

-edit-
Guess who didn’t lose to a might-as-well-be-minor-leaguer in his pool? forGG advances out of his group over By.Baby, HoGiL, and a bunch of minor-leaguers.

In other news, firebathero fails to make it out of his group, losing to fantasy who advances to the next round.

Hwasin beats some Protoss then bullies some second-rate Zerg to advance.

Heartbreak #1 of the night- Boxer loses to Shark 2-1, Shark then goes on to advance.

Heartbreak #2 is also crazy awesome news of the night for fans of the old school- sAviOr loses 1-2 in his group final… to Pusan, who advances to the next round.

Midas finally takes his group, beating GuemChi 2-1. Sadly, TossGirl lost her only set in that group 0-2 to Nbs[gm], aka CJ’s 2v2 protoss lol.

Heartbreak #3, XellOs and GoRush fail to make it out of their group and SoO aka July’s 2v2 partner advances, wtf XellOs (didn’t really think GoRush would do anything, though).

LOL Canata, infamous TvT master and TvT staple for SKT T1 not only loses 2 TvTs in a row, but he loses them both to JUSTIN aka Bifrost aka whatever the hell he’s going by now… more than that, he had a chance to come back that was thwarted by a neutral creature that ended up under his floating CC, preventing him from landing and getting back into the game… LOL

other news from earlier-
as mentioned already, Jaedong fails to advance, losing to han 1-2.
FrOzean doesn’t make it out of his group ;( Eff0rt from CJ 2-0’s his way through and advances.
Kal advances from his group.
UpMagic fails to advance =[ poor eStro
Iris advances.
Light advances over OverSky =[
Daezang and DarkElf fail to advance from their group, which is taken by Dongrae.
Kwanro, Shudder, and Zeus fail to advance as HerO takes their group.
a bunch of old-school names fail to advance from this group- RainBOw and JoyO both fizzle out to SangHo, who advances.

1738

Where do you guys get to watch these matches? I haven’t seen a savior match in months.

1739

http://www.yaoyuan.com/live.php

Is the easiest way. Click the “Tvants???]” link to download Tvants, then load the page again in IE since it doesn’t work for firefox.

1740

what are these groups for again?
OSL? MSL?