Sung Hoon "Polt" Choi was crowned Assembly Winter 2012 champion after the Korean terran ploughed through Ilyes "Stephano" Saturi 4-1 to raise the $10,000 cheque.
After defeating Taeja, HerO and Lucky in the first three rounds of the playoffs stage, Polt had to face the foreign hope Stephano at the grand final of Assembly Winter. The French zerg was the only non-Korean left in the tournament by the Ro4 and this was to be his first ZvT series after long hours of beating protosses to the ground.
Stephano opened the series with a dominant performance on Antiga Shipyard, heavily outupgrading Polt and chaining fungals each time before engaging, softening this way the marine squad of Polt. Stephano made the score 1-0 in his favor once ultralisks hit the field and cleaved their way through the terran.
Taking notes from his mistakes in game one, Polt sprung back on Daybreak, being on equal footing with his opponents in terms of upgrades and cleverly made use of Stephano's mistakes (which included uncharacteristically bad engagements, to mention one) to keep a constant pressure on the zerg's fourth, eventually bringing it down. Aiding Polt's cause was the indescribably high count of sniped down mutas.
Game three on Metalopolis was nothing short of epic as Polt made great use of the close-by-air spawns to command a low-ground 2-base push and hold his position for, literally, infinite amount of time. Although Stephano had four hatches up, Polt did not allow him a moment of peace to drone up and stabilize his economy and crawled ahead inch by inch. Polt dedication was showcased when after mining out his main, he floated his CC to the center base and continued to stay on two bases, knowing that investing 400 minerals in another command center would cost him the game. Stephano kept throwing more and more units at Polt but all in vain.
On Shakuras Plateau, Polt opened with a double expand behind reactor hellion pressure, while at the same time Stephano was going for a very unorthodox build for him - a 2-base mutalisk. Knowing Stephano's usual ling/infestor play, Polt was caught a little bit off-guard but his double e-bay proved to be almost a hard counter to the zerg's fliers as the 2/2 marines easily chased away the harassing force. Still, Stephano would not give up easily and went by the old zerg saying that "Each tough situation can be solved with an abundance of banelings".
Facing the massive sea of green balls of death, Polt was temporarily pushed back and was forced to defend tooth-and-nail his third expansion. But, apparently, +3/+3 marines are kick-assingly good and once his positions were stable, the terran moved out to snipe the third of Stephano and get a 3-1 lead.
The series was closed on Korhal Compound with the game entering a relatively passive state after Polt's hellion harass could not do any damage. A turning point in the game came after Stephano caught a large chunk of marines and tanks unsieged and out of position, fungalled and slaughtered them to take a huge lead. Despite that, however, the zerg had immense problems keeping his bases alive against the 3/3 marine squads of Polt and the terran, despite being beaten down so hard in the mid-game, finally emerged victorious, earning praises of his immortality out of the casting duo.
ASUS ROG Assembly Winter 2012 standings
1.
Sung Hoon Polt Choi, $10,0002.
Ilyes Stephano Satouri, $6.0003.
Ho Joon Puma Lee, $3.0004.
In Soo Lucky Lee, $1.0005-8.
Grzegorz Mana Komincz5-8.
Hyeon Deok HerO Song5-8.
Samuli Elfi Sihvonen5-8.
Kyung Hyun SeleCT Ryoo
