GSL WC Korea vs The World

I'm not going to lie. After the IEM World Championships I thought that the skill gap between Korea and the rest of the world was very large. I thought that while isolated foreigner wins would occur, but the Korean's would largely dominate any tournament they went too. Then TSL happened. A series of upsets against many of the Koreans began to make me believe that competition was possible between the two realms. But I didn't really believe it.

            But then the GSL World Championships came around. The best the World can muster to be sent out against the pride of Korea (a term you will get very tired of hearing after watching the VODs). And it was far closer than I imagined. There was no 8-1 sweep of the International scene, with some legend taking a single win to be lauded over at home, as it would in the Brood War scene. No, this was a close and action packed series that showed that the world wasn't too far behind.

Players to Watch:

Sen: Calm cool and collected, all the shots of him in his both showed no signs of fear or worry. And he felt neither. One of the few Foreign players to qualify for the open GSLs, Sen is once again back in Korea. And he showed his worth. Calmly counter attacking with lings as his third gets destroyed, and standing off all sorts of early pressure, he was the one to say that "The International Scene is here, and won't be sewpt away!"

TT1: He's got this. Watching TT1 play was like being on emotional rollercoaster. Time and again, he seemed to put himself at a disadvantage and then say "No, I don't think I'll let you win like that". He would shut down the early pressure like a man walking through a water cannon, somehow emerging on his feet.

DIMAGA: This guy is a beast, and its a shame he isn't in NASL. His control is extremely precise, and his decision making very solid (Oh I see that you walled in there with your barracks sir. why don't I just make 50 BANELINGS!). He is one of the best in Europe, and could easily take Code S here in Korea.

JulyZerg: Of all the Korean players, Julyzerg has the best showing. I think that if his matches were first, the foreign scene would have given up, and left the top tier SCII play to the Koreans. Luckily for us he wasn't, but when he stepped into the booth he brought his usually ruthless early aggression. Time and again he would take the early advantage, and then roll over his opponent with a second wave of units. He proved himself to be a mastermind of the early game, baneling busting and going for a 7:00 third with equal skill.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Series Recap:

I'm not going to go over all the games one by one, but rather give you an overview of the games as a whole (expounding the interesting parts of course). It started as one would have expected any Korea vs. The World tournament to go. Morrow gets rolled by anyproPrime. And I went "Ok, thats how I expected it to be, somewhat disappointing that. I hope a couple foreigners pull out wins".

And then they sent out Sen. The map is Terminus RE (which for the uneducated viewer is fricken HUGE), and anypro goes for a five warp gate push. And Sen catches wind, and gets 5 spine crawlers down, and stands it off, and then makes 11 Mutas. Then anypro breaks down the back door rocks, and tries again. But between the spine crawlers, the muta's and new hatching zerglings, Sen hold it off, emerging with double the supply of his opponent.

And then, after being ground down for 2 minutes, anypro all-ins with all his probes, and gets destroyed in the middle of the map. And suddenly, it looks so much better for the foreign players. Hope is back with us. And Korea responds by sending out one of their heavy hitters, MarineKingPrime. And Sen rises to the challenge and outplays him on Xel'Naga Caverns, getting a group of lings into MKP's natural mineral line and destroying all his SCVs their while MKP's army is out attacking Sen's gold.

And then Sen took down one of Korea's finest, MarineKingPrime. And it becomes very apparent then that the foreign scene is able to compete, and defeat the main Korean names. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern, with Sen getting taken down by SanZenith. And TT1 getting send out, and Artosis telling us that "He had a build that counters four-gate". Which wasn't quite true, but after being rushed, he was able to destroy San's army at the loss of almost no economy, ending up with a large advantage. And this was followed up with Nada getting manhandled by TT1s giant ball of units. And the World finished up the day 4-2.

The next day was dominated by one player. MC was sent out first, and with some ceremony, was able to displace TT1. And Head Coach Artosis decided that this couldn't stand, and sent out the Ukrainian Protoss White-Ra, who then played one of the most entertaining PvPs ever, and ended the reign of the Korean Protoss before it even really started.

But the next to stand up was the God of War, July. And he was able to defeat White-Ra with a lucky run past his wall-in zealot, and White-Ra's questionable decision to follow up with Void Ray's. And thus July's reign started. Next up was HuK, who never seemed to get his foot in the game. July pressured early, and then just existed, as some unfathomable existence, unable to be touched, as he got further and further ahead, until he rolled in with a maxed army.

Next was Moonglade, who in an unremarkable game got a build-order loss which, in traditional Hyper aggressive July style was immediately capitalized on. Against Jinro he went for a quick three base, into unusually fast Muta's, which did enough damage, that in a style similar to the HuK game, July just rolled over Jinro's army.

That left DIMAGA. Could he stop July's fearsome rampage, and prevent a five-kill on the second half of the foreigner bench? Early game favoured him, with two or three clutch banelings dealing massive damage, while July's banelings were largely ineffective. But after all the early attacking was done, July had snuck two zerglings into DIMAGA's main, and killed a whopping 7 drones in stroke.

Suddenly our Ukrainian hero was looking uncertain. He took a third while power roaches, while July started transitioning into Hydra's. But DIMAGA's macro proved superior, and moving into the final battle he had a small supply advantage, despite the Baneling Bomb. And as DIMAGA's pure roach army attacked, would he pull through against the superior DPS of the Hydra's? Yes indeed he could. July's rampage was stopped, with the foreigner team proving it didn't run completely out of steam.

Next was MVP, moving into battle. The game proved to be a long drawn out affair, and after well over half an hour, a Disconnect occurred, and there had to be a regame. In the regame, MVP favoured a quick marine pressure, which was easily repelled, and DIMAGA responded shortly after with a move he is famous for in the Korean scene. He morphed 50 banelings (49 IIRC, not an exaggerating)  and rolled right on through MVPs wall. And with that, he took the game and victory.

The Ace match was not as interesting as the build up was. Both players built up economy for ten minutes, before Nestea moved out with a timing attack that DIMAGA was unable to hold. despite this though, the foreign scene proved its ability to compete, with only July's rampage and Nestea's ZvZ skills preventing a complete domination of the players who were considered the best of the best.

Interesting fact: Not a single Terran player won a match in all 15 games (of those 15, 4 featured Terrans, Sen vs. Marine King, TT1 vs Nada, July vs. Jinro, and DIMAGA vs. MVP)

End of Spoilers

So you all should go watch the vods, available for free at www.gomtv.net. As well their are additional recaps and a couple interviews to be found at www.teanliquid.net, which is also the premier foreign SCII website out there, so you should all check it out

Ladder Season 2!

It is here, it has happened. Season two is upon us! The numbers have all been reset, and the stomping of nerds can continue. I foresee a bunch of action happening on the ladders over the next couple of weeks for several reasons:

1) The top will be scrambling to try and get into Grandmaster League. The top 200 of each realm will be joining this prestigious league, and everyone is going to want the points.

2) Anyone who is changing races will be doing so now, when their points aren't at stake.

3) People are going to be looking for promotions now that the freeze and been lifted. In addition people are going to want the take the opportunity to be at the top of their division while they can be.


Personally, I started off the ladder in a great way, by losing my first match (I really need to figure Protoss out someday), something that I improved upon, and at the writing of this post I'm 6-4 (go me!). After winning my second game though I was actually at 2nd in my division, which I really should have taken a screenshot of. Especially because its going to be the only time I'm ahead of Liquid'Haypro who is in my division! I imagine that with the reset the pros will get spread a little more evenly, with the larger amount of Master's Divisions in existence.

And so the process of the best floating to the top begins. the ladder reset should flush out all that dead weight at the bottom of each division. For laughs I put myself in top 8 of my random 2v2 division in the previous season. And it took me exactly 23 wins to do. So now things will get more active until it has time to accumulate. That said, a large number of people will choose to play one game, just to place, but what can you do.

That is all for now, next up I'll be talking about the GomTV World Championships Friendly Korea vs. The World showmatch. And epic series that you should all check out, AND you can find the VODs for free on the Gomtv.net webpage. And let me tell you this - it was not as one sided as you might expect.


Cheers

Icekommander