In my 4 years of Starcraft obsession, I have never been interested in the foreign scene, have cheered for the Koreans at every WCG but now I'm suddenly finding myself watching every single TSL replay, reading every interview and looking forward to the broadcast tonight more than to MSL or OSL.
I learned that non-Korean players are very different from progamers not only in skill level but also in playing style. Here are some things I noticed in completely random order:
1. Strategical diversity
A very old cliché in the Starcraft community is the notion that Koreans are mechanically orientated and non-Koreans are strategic. While it may be true that many Korean amateurs execute the game better than they understand it, the TSL qualifiers have shown a startling lack of strategical diversity in foreigner play.
In PvZ, Protosses fast expanded and either did a +1 Zealot timing push or a Sair/DT build while Zergs played a 4 hatch den style with fast +1 armor.
In PvT, Protosses went for 2 gate range into double expo while Terrans either opted for 1 fac expo or an FD build.
There were exceptions of course but the overwhelming majority of the games were played very standardly with both sides agreeing to play the macro game.
Granted, the 3 maps favored a macro style, but the thing I'm missing is a sharper sense of timing in the games. If you look at the Korean leagues, a lot of games are decided by builds specifically designed to punish the opponent at a certain timing.
The turtling while trying to harass your opponent that we saw in a lot of games is a style I don't like to watch, it reminds me too much of Bifrost. With the added preparation the remaining 16 players will hopefully do for their games, I hope to see some more daring play.
2. Dominant Mondragon
Mondi is definitely the big favorite to win this whole event. He has the experience, has shown countless times that he does well under pressure, won the TSL Ladder and qualified from his group with ease.
His strength, judging from his TSL replays, isn't displaying stunning micro or unique strategies, it's making his opponents look bad. With simple but solid play backed up by very good macro he manages to exploit his opponent's weaknesses and gain the upper hand. This was very evident in the match against Paranoid where he made his fellow ToT member look like a D newbie.
3. Close shave, Idra
After watching the TvP Idra has played so far, I can't help getting the feeling he was trying to prove something to us, his teammates or maybe just himself. It looked as though he was trying to ignore his opponent and what he was doing as best he could. Not looking left or right, he played his macro game (at which he was clearly better than his opponents) without any attempts at damaging his opponent before his push that he seemed confident was going to win him the game. In game 2 against hannigan, he didn't even bother mining up hannigan's two proxy gates, he just ignored them with his vultures and continued macroing. The message this playing style conveys is clear: I don't need to adapt to you to beat you.
This was enough to earn him a spot in the top 16 but if he wants to win the TSL (and he definitely has chances to do so, being one of the only people to have good chances against Mondi) just relying on his mechanics is not going to cut it.
4. No more PvZ please
If there was one thing in the TSL I could change, it would be evening out the races. The lack of Terrans has forced us to watch series after series of Protosses and Zergs trying to outmacro each other. Almost all games involved lots of expanding, drops by the Zerg and storm harass from the Protoss.
It appears that most foreign Zergs don't have the refined macro that makes Korean Zergs so untouchable for foreigners. In most games Protoss managed to pull ahead slightly with superior macro and very successful storm drops (more to that later).
On the other hand, if the Zerg managed to reach late-game, he had a very dangerous weapon up his sleeve: ultras. I'm not exactly sure what the difference is, but non-Korean ultras look a lot scarier than their Korean equivalents. Both in ZvP and ZvT, most Zergs skipped defilers and went pure ultraling. This should be a distinctly weaker tech choice than defiler/ultraling, but Zerg won a lot of games with it.
5. Mechanics
Since I've mostly been complaining so far, I'd like to compliment the players for once (before getting back to nagging).
What with all the talk on the forums about how much better Koreans are mechanically, I was expecting sloppy games with a lot of macro slip ups and micro mistakes. To my surprise, there was rarely any of that. Zergs had no problem moving their huge armies around, the storms of many Protosses were very good and most of the Terrans set up a mean push. The players managed to keep their money low and while there was a very noticeable difference in macro between say Idra and Horror, it was generally on a high level.
There was a heated debate some time ago about an editorial in PC Games that had suggested that Starcraft was mostly about who is able to click the fastest. So far, the TSL has shown exactly the opposite. The big difference between foreigners and progamers in unit control isn't the mechanical microing or macroing (although that is obviously inferior as well), it's about understanding, about battle tactics (the creative part of micro) and decision-making, a few examples being when to harass, where to place units for defense or when to pull back.
In game 3 of Horror vs Draco, Horror had a very strong push going from his 2 fac, he was at the Protoss natural and could easily have boxed Draco in at his main and killed the natural expansion. He misjudged the situation however and went up the ramp, trying to end the game right there. His push was destroyed from a wonderful position he was suddenly at a disadvantage.
That's the kind of situation where a progamer would show his superior decision-making and seal the game.
6. Where are the scourges?
All the ZvP games had one thing in common: at some point Protoss tried to storm drop. Foreign Protosses seem to have a particular liking for storm drops and seeing how successful they were in the qualifiers it's not surprising. In every other game the poor drones got butchered by templars who were then just picked back into the shuttle and flown back to the safety of the Protoss base. Storm drops seem to be an entirely risk-free thing to do in foreign play because inexplicably, Zergs play with very little to no scourges at all. Dear Zergs, I realize scourges cost a lot of gas but having a few of them patrolling at your expansions is one of those little things that is going to save you from a lot of trouble.
7. TvP on Longinus
1 fac expo is a build that was popularized by Oov a long time ago, when the 2 gate range build hadn't been popularized yet. It's a bit outdated now as the reward really doesn't justify the risks you're taking. Back when Longinus was used in the Korean leagues, 1 fac expo was still fashionable and we saw several Terran players trying to pull it off there. From what I remember it never went very well.
I was very surprised therefore to see Idra going 1 fac expo in both his Longinus games. The fact that Longinus doesn't have a ramp between the main and natural makes a Terran player more vulnerable to any early-game aggression and with a 1 fac expo build you're opening the doors for any kind of all-in build, 2 gate proxy robo, 4 gate spirit toss, you name it. I don't see why a player like Idra who's confident in his macro would put himself at the risk of getting run over after 5 minutes for little gain. Instead, a defensive FD is the much safer choice in my opinion.
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I was planning to make this longer (and better ) but I'll post it now because I have to get to watching the TSL games!
Cheers