After a nail-biting Best of 9 series, Team IM managed to defeat StarTale to and become the first ones to claim the GSTL championship title. The home of two GSL champions has won the 10,000,000 KRW and its players can now enter the March cup with boosted confidence.
The road to victory, however, was far from a walk in the park. The star roster of IM met the ferocity of StarTale who had in their possession the team killer Squirtle and BroodWar legends such as JulyZerg and Rainbow. We can never dream of a closer match - all nine games were played and more than half of those were undecided till the last second.
 StarTale 4:5 Incredible Miracle | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Traumen | > |  Junwi | @ Shakuras Plateau | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Traumen | < |  YongHwa | @ Crevasse | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Virus | < | YongHwa | @ Scrap Station | |||||||||||||||||||||
| JulyZerg | > | YongHwa | @ Metalopolis | |||||||||||||||||||||
| JulyZerg | < | Losira | @ Crossfire | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Bomber | > | Losira | @ Lost Temple | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Bomber | < | Mvp | @ Tal'Darim Altar | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Squirtle | > | Mvp | @ Terminus Re | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Squirtle | < | NesTea | @Xel'Naga Caverns | |||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, guys, it was THAT much epic. It all started with Traumen defeating BroodWar legend Junwi with a perfect Tank/Marine push through the middle of the map, spreading his army perfectly to minimize Baneling damage. But his joy did not last for long as the IM Protoss hero from yesterday stepped in to deliver justice. YongHwa proved once again that he has one of the most solid PvTs in all Korea (and how could he not, he trains with Mvp after all) and claimed easy victories over Traumen and later Virus.
StarTale knew that they had to stop the Protoss march at all costs as one more loss would make the victory almost impossible. And thus ZvP maestro JulyZerg stepped in the booth. Getting cross spots on Metalopolis, July was feeling confident. Not to mention that he demonstrated one of the most phenomenal game sense I have seen in a while. July managed to miss the Dark Shrine tech from YongHwa and to make things worse he also scouted a second Nexus. But the God of War reads people like no one else and he managed to morph an Overseer just seconds before the DTs entered his base. He cleared the menace and having every kind of advantage he proceeded to claim the game.
As good as July is, however, what he fails miserably at is ZvZ. IM knew that and sent Losira to deal with the fierce opponent. Exploiting July's explicit aggression, Losira took a safe and powerful road and went fast expo into Roaches. July, who failed both his Bane bust and the Speedling follow-up soon fell victim to the tough army of Losira.
With the score being 3:2 in favour of IM, StarTale sent Bomber (a.k.a. Fancy from BroodWar) and that became possibly one of the funniest games I have seen since the beginning of the beta. With rush positions on Lost Temple, Losira decided to be aggressive and almost won the game before the 5 minute mark when he managed to break through the Marines at the ramp with Zerglings alone and claimed quite a lot of units and SCVs. However, Bomber managed to stabilize for a while but then another huge wave of Lings came. Feeling confident (and maybe a little arrogant) Losira /danced his Zerglings at Bomber's ramp and this gave the Terran just enough time to clear the threat. Bomber was now pumping out Tanks and Marines and soon walked out for a push which was as deadly as it can get. He slaughtered Losira's natural and did a /dance of his own to further insult his opponent. The Zerg managed to push the Terran back for a while and tried to do a Muta transition but he was already too far behind. With a second identical push (yes, with the /dance, of course) Bomber walked in and tied 3:3.
Bomber, however, was soon to experience his toughest moment of his gaming carrier as GSL champion Mvp menacingly entered the booth. Both terrans found themselves on Tal'Darim altar and their back-and-forth dance began right away. With perfect tank control, both players struggled for each inch of the map when finally Bomber managed to secure a huge win and was almost 50 supply ahead. Mvp was put against the ropes but the Jaedong of TvT did not falter and continued to repel Bomber's relentless assault. The StarTale player, feeling confident, decided to switch to bio for mobility while expanding far away. That was probably the thing that cost him the game, as Mvp soon started to gain more ground by easily destroying the bio army and inching forward to Bomber's main. Couple of minutes after he managed to overwhelm his opponent in one of the greatest comebacks we've seen in a while.
StarTale were again in trouble. They were down 4:3 and the invincible Mvp was sitting comfortably in his chair. They had to win two games in a row to be champions and thus the ST coach sent forth the team killer (I just LOVE calling him this way!!) Squirtle who later played no doubt the most intense and high-tier PvT. Ever.
Terminus RE was the map of choice and I possess no words to explain every single thing that happened in this game. The madness commenced right from the beginning with Mvp double expanding (yes, you read that right) and Squirtle's DT harass that gained him quite the advantage. When the mid-game started to fade out, the players saw that this was going nowhere so they took more extreme measures. Mvp gave up his bio ball that was under the constant fire of Squirtle's storms and Chargelots and switched to almost pure mech with thousands of tanks and blue hellions. Squirtle, on the other hands, kept expanding like crazy and threw a Fleet Beacon, followed by a Mothership! More minutes of constant action followed but eventually Squirtled managed to dwindle the mech count to a swallowable amount while doing the same with Mvp's expo. With one final assault he crushed the defending champion and tied the score, securing the most important win for his team.
It was now 4:4 and IM sent in their second ace player - GSL 3 champion and arguably the best Zerg in the world NesTea. Obviously they didn't care for the ZvP issues Zergs have been having but even if they did, IM really needed a player of great stardom to defeat the unconquerable pokemon, who was now 5:0 in the team league. Aiming for a perfect record, Squirtle opened with an aggressive Voidray/Gateway push that almost crushed NesTea there and then, killing a queen and forcing the Zerg to pull his Drones to defend. Fortunately, the Hydras popped out just in time to prevent an embarrassing loss and NesTea, knowing that the time is now, quickly countered the Protoss, who had barely any army. His Hydras and the Ling follow-up checkmated Squirtle and IM sighed in relief, claiming the gold.
Thus, after hours of tension and spectacular games, Incredible Miracle has won their first major team title. And at the end of this recap I would like to take the opportunity to allocate some tournament praise:
Best GSTL player: ST_Squirtle Although there were a lot of pro-gamers that made huge impression coming as darkhorses, Squirtle stands easily on top of them. Achieving a spectacular team kill against fOu and playing a PvT that seemed to have come from the future (and against Mvp on top of that) he is easily the one to receive my admirations.
Best GSTL game: ST_Squirtle vs IMMvp Again, I did not expect to see a game like this any time soon. It was as close, hot and tense as an intercourse in an airplane lavatory and you should definitely spend the five dollars if only to catch this sole set. One of the most incredible displays of macro play out there.
Funniest GSTL moment: The /dance insults If you are feeling a bit down, find the game between Bomber and Losira and watch it. The most hilarious display of friendly in game bad manner, followed by StarTale's marine dance in front of IM's bench would make you laugh so hearty that you would wish that every match ended in such cute display of rivalry!
Most promising GSTL darkhorse: IMSeed Seed entered my Protoss love list with his astonishing PvTs in the Ro8 against oGs. I certainly have a huge craving for more of his play and would love to see him soon in the individual league so he can show us if he has what is needed to become a solid. Code S
Biggest GSTL disappointment: SlayerS I am sorry for Boxer's team, but sadly they have proven be just plain bad. They had probably the easiest Ro8 draw against Zenex and they failed miserably, going home in the first round. Not even fOu's loss (which was due more to coach mistakes than to bad play) overshadows Slayers's performance.
