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4 Posts
Today was a brutal lesson to fans of international players everywhere. Although most of the matches looked even or at least competitive on paper, those that permanently resided in Korea largely crushed players on foreign teams.
The opening match was the last stand for foreigner hopes—this was Jim's first time competing in Korea—and the continuation of a resurgence from the young and talented Maru. While there was a sliver of hope that Jim could pull off a huge upset against the Korean prodigy, the series initially looked exactly like what we expected. Jim played exceptionally greedy with a nexus first and Maru did an unusual amount of damage with his reaper opening. He eventually managed to destroy his Protoss opponent before he could get his desired phoenix/colossus army out in a critical mass. Similarly, in the second game, Maru’s initial harass did a fair amount of damage and allowed him to potentially take a mid-game advantage. However, he somehow failed to see Jim’s two immortals as a threat, and the counter immortal bust allowed Jim to take a game. However, this was the beginning of the end for Jim. In the third game, after Jim failed a DT drop in spectacular fashion (dropping it in a corner of the main that was blocked by a depot), Maru repeatedly doom dropped the same area of Jim’s main base, which Jim did not seem to realize in time. Maru followed this up with a weird 2 base tank build in game 4, but Jim shut it down and counterattacked with phoenixes and colossi. However, he repeatedly blundered and allowed Maru to crawl back into the game with a botched attack. Maru eventually countered with drops, and exceptionally poor colossus control allowed him to kill almost all of them for free with his vikings. A followup attack allowed Maru to clinch the series 3-1.
Although the first series was generally expected to be the most one-sided, the next match made it look competitive by comparison. From the start, PartinG was completely crushed by Dark after he attempted an aggressive style and got methodically dismantled. Dark opened with an aggressive 14/14 against PartinG’s nexus first, and bought time with his zerglings to be greedy enough to hold PartinG’s 7 gateway all in. While he did need to pull drones, Dark did so before it was too late to stop PartinG’s attack and eventually managed to clean up the all in with a zergling flood and some roaches. In the second game, PartinG tried to secure an early gold base on Foxtrot Labs while convincing Dark that he was going for another all in. However, Dark eventually scouted the gold base and denied mining while taking his own gold. From that point, he easily won the game with burrowed roaches. PartinG, down 2-0 heading into game 3, attempted to play greedily with a fast third base, but Dark quickly discovered PartinG’s plans and simply busted him with masses of roaches and zerglings, securing a quick 3-0.
Nobody was initially sure what to expect from MyuNgSiK vs San, especially after the second series was so one-sided. In addition to the usual randomness expected from PvP, there was also the mystery surrounding these players. Neither of them had played a particularly telling PvP series in months and they played players from different regions, making it difficult to determine their skill levels relative to each other. However, MyuNgSiK displayed a clear tactical and psychological superiority in the series. In the opening game, San opened phoenixes against what he believed to be an identical stargate opening. However, MyuNgSiK actually cancelled the stargate and 4 gate rushed San, who was caught with only four phoenixes, a mothership core and a void ray beginning production. After this one-sided game, both players opted to open with a twilight council. MyuNgSiK ended the game quickly with a hidden dark shrine when San failed to realize that his opponent’s twilight council was not researching anything, and MyuNgSiK was suddenly ahead 2-0 after barely 15 minutes of game time. San, afraid of his opponent’s shenanigans at this point, opened with an oracle and ran into a 1 gate expand. While San quickly destroyed this expansion with a gateway attack, MyuNgSiK easily broke the followup contain with immortals and both players opted to play on two bases. MyuNgSiK proxied two stargates, however, and took his opponent by surprise with four phoenixes before immediately reverting to colossus play. Upon seeing a third base from his opponent, San tried attacking MyuNgSiK’s natural, but the Prime Protoss player patiently crushed San’s attack and completed the sweep.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?36663 Posts
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Really impressed that Dark crushed Parting.
Not surprised at all that the foreigners got rolled
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your Country52796 Posts
On December 26 2014 11:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Really impressed that Dark crushed Parting. Not surprised at all that the foreigners got rolled I'm more impressed MyuNgSiK crushed San so easily. He's got some crazy stuff up his sleeve.
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On December 26 2014 12:01 The_Templar wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 11:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Really impressed that Dark crushed Parting. Not surprised at all that the foreigners got rolled I'm more impressed MyuNgSiK crushed San so easily. He's got some crazy stuff up his sleeve.
That too!
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I don't get what Parting was thinking during that series. That was possibly the most stubborn I've ever seen him play. Not calling off the attack and retreating to a defensible position once he had encountered tunneling claw Roaches on the foxtrot game nearly made my head explode.
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Parting didn't seem like his usual self, seemed a bit sick if you ask me. I'm still glad that Dark won though Happy with all the results in fact!
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Parting failing yet again.
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On December 26 2014 13:09 ChaseTheSun wrote:Parting didn't seem like his usual self, seemed a bit sick if you ask me. I'm still glad that Dark won though Happy with all the results in fact! Don't get me wrong, I like Dark. He's one of the few longtime KeSPA players whose gameplay I actually admire, especially his ZvT - wow! But I wouldn't draw many conclusions from that series, as this article attempts to do. Similar deal with San. There was so much botched play that I don't ordinarily see from both San and Parting that I'd really prefer to just forget about this entire day of Starcraft and write it off as one of those off days for those two.
Even Jim made a few unforced errors, although I disagree with the severity of how much agency the writer assigns to Jim for that Collossus debacle. As much shit as Wolf gets for making bad calls, I have to agree with his statement that Maru essentially forced errors out of Jim by making the path between his drop and Jim's army have pretty much the greatest possible difference between distance by ground and distance by cliffwalk. It's very hard to micro through an entire unexpected battle with pathfinding complexities such as that, and Jim's control seems like he's used to playing through a hearty buffer of ping at the best of times.
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On December 26 2014 12:01 The_Templar wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 11:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Really impressed that Dark crushed Parting. Not surprised at all that the foreigners got rolled I'm more impressed MyuNgSiK crushed San so easily. He's got some crazy stuff up his sleeve. You now have an excuse for losing 2-0
I did predict myungsik to be next big toss of 2015
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What is with this alliteration
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Damn this Dark hype train looks like it will be powering ahead, at least until the next match he plays.
I suspect it will be derailed soon...
>:D Mwahahahah!
But seriously Dark, stop beating people I like.
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+ Show Spoiler [Day 5 Results] +On December 26 2014 11:09 TeamLiquid ESPORTS wrote: Today was a brutal lesson to fans of international players everywhere. Although most of the matches looked even or at least competitive on paper, those that permanently resided in Korea largely crushed players on foreign teams. One day later... Apparently, some people skipped class for that lesson.
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