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StarCraft 213 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

The soso column #10: The force is strong with this one



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“This chain of events from that last two episodes of a fictional movie trilogy parallel the Korea vs foreigner StarCraft II scene with surprising consistency.”


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“[QXC] went back to Degobah (Spain) and refocused his training to become a Jedi Knight (Gosu SC2 Pro). I can only assume he also sought the advice of Yoda (Day9). In the end, he emerged focused and ready to redeem himself.”


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QXC's hero reaper manages to snipe the forge before +3 attack finishes.



A couple weeks ago, Koreans went 1-2-3 at IEM, Jinro and HuK were both eliminated from the GSL and things looked very bleak for foreigners trying to compete at the highest level with any Korean pros. I even went as far as to compare the situation to the characters in Final Destination trying to avoid their inevitable demise at the hands of Death: in the end, both the Koreans and Death find a way to come out on top.

I was wrong.

The events of a few weeks ago were not like the Final Destination series at all. In reality, they were more like The Empire Strikes Back. By the end of that movie, things looked almost hopeless for the Rebel Alliance. Han Solo had been captured and frozen in carbonite, Luke had his hand severed in this first duel against Vader, and the Empire was at its strongest. If you didn’t know that there was another sequel coming and had forgotten that virtually all mainstream American movies have a happy ending where the good guys win, the guy gets the girl and everyone lives happily ever after, you’d be legitimately concerned that the Empire would rule the galaxy for all eternity. Luckily, there was a sequel.

In Return of the of the Jedi, Luke finally becomes a full-fledged Jedi Knight. He leads a successful rescue mission to save Han Solo and helps orchestrate a plan to destroy the new Death Star and dethrone Emperor Palpatine. Things don’t always go according to plan, but in the end balance is restored to the force and we learn that the Dark Side isn’t unstoppable after all.

This chain of events from that last two episodes of a fictional movie trilogy parallel the Korea vs foreigner StarCraft II scene with surprising consistency.

After IEM, Koreans looked vastly superior. They won with such ease that it was hard not to lose a bit of hope for foreigners. But in the weeks that followed, things changed. Foreigners have been holding their own against the top players from Korea on a variety of stages. The World Championship Team League went all the way to a 15th game before Korea squeaked out a victory. And in the TSL, Koreans have been falling to underdog foreigners left and right.

Of all the breakthroughs, upsets, and turnarounds in performance, no one stands out more than QXC. He personifies Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance better than anyone.

At IEM, QXC didn’t win a single series. He got beat so badly that he probably would have rather had his hand cut off by Darth Vader so that at least he’d get a sweet battle scar and robot hand out of the ordeal. But just like Luke, he didn’t give up. He went back to Degobah (Spain) and refocused his training to become a Jedi Knight (Gosu SC2 Pro). I can only assume he also sought the advice of Yoda (Day9). In the end, he emerged focused and ready to redeem himself.

In the first round of the TSL, QXC faced a heavily favored Korean Protoss, MvPGenius. As the first match began, Husky and Chill explained that the superior macro skill of Genius would probably force QXC to rely on aggressive early attacks and precise micro in order to win. To some extent they were correct. QXC made use of plenty of micro intensive multi-pronged drops in order to harass Genius, but he followed them up by out expanding his opponent and taking a strong economic lead. This allowed him to slowly wear Genius down and eventually pull out an impressive win in the most standard macro style game you could imagine. It was great, but it was only a single game. To truly prove himself worthy of any Luke Skywalker comparisons, he’d need to find a way to take home the series.

Then came game number two.

Occasionally there are games that feature several gigantic battles between maxed armies. There are games where every base on the map gets taken and nearly mined out completely. There are also games where one player manages to pull out an epic comeback after falling behind early. Sometimes we get to see rarely used tactics such as nukes or speed reapers. And sometimes we’re fortunate enough to witness unbelievable micro wars where high templar are feedbacking ghosts who are EMPing high templar who are storming marines. There are even times when more than one of these things occur in the same game. But how often do ALL of these happen in a single game? Once. And it was game two of QXC vs Genius.

QXC fell behind early when he had to delay his first expansion in order to deal with dark templar. This put him in a position in the mid game where he knew he stood no chance against Genius’s army in a straight up battle. So rather than attack into forces that he couldn’t defeat, he played extremely defensive. He systematically got up expansion after expansion so that he could stay in the game economically while he looked for creative ways to harass and slow down Genius. The result was some of the coolest, most unique skirmishes that I’ve ever seen in StarCraft.

In one battle, QXC lost nearly his entire army as well as his planetary fortress at the gold expansion. The game could have ended right there had it not been for five cloaked ghosts who undoubtedly earned congressional medals of honor for their heroics. They fended off the remaining stalker and colossi force, mowing down all but a single colossus who managed to escape back to his base.

In another epic exchange, QXC hopped three reapers into Genius’s main to try to snipe his forge before +3 attack finished. It seemed like a hopeless suicide mission as soon as Genius’s forces came in to defend, quickly killing off all but a single reaper. Yet somehow, the last remaining reaper juked his way through Genius’s base, dodged a platoon of blink stalkers and destroyed the forge in the most amazing reaper harass at the 33 minute mark that I’ve ever seen.

By the end of the game, the ghosts and reapers were teaming up to slow down Genius’s last fulling mining expansion. The slight economical advantage that this gave QXC, combined with his brilliant tactical positioning, micro, and use of “the force” enabled him to pull off the improbably win. It was unlike any game I’ve ever seen.

Regardless of what the rest of the TSL has in store for him, QXC has proven that there’s more parity between Koreans and foreigners than a lot of us sometimes think; he restored balance to the force. And it couldn’t have happened at a better time. The NASL starts in less than a week and will be the biggest tournament to feature so many prominent Korean and foreign pros competing head to head. Oh, and of course, it features QXC.

LINK: All VODs for the TSL can be found here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=203014

Woody "soso" Favinger is the author of The soso column, published every Wednesday on GosuGamers.net. You can contact him via email at [email protected] or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/wfavinger

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