EG's terran Ho Joon "Puma" Lee is crowned NASL Season 2 champion, repeating his success from the last season. Puma defended his throne in a dramatic revenge match against Liquid`HerO, the two having met two weeks ago at the DH Winter grand final.
Puma reached for the championship title after a 4-2 score against the Liquid protoss, not giving the fans' the seven map final that they hoped to see. This is the second NASL first place prize that Puma is awarded after he won the first season coming out as an open tournament winner. In Season 2, Puma reached the playoffs after a consistent top three performance, finishing first with a 6-1 score.
Puma's was lucky enough to start the series on one of his best 1/1/1 maps - Dual Sight. But the terran played elusively, remembering how HerO defeated this exact build not two weeks ago at DreamHack Winter so instead he opened fast CC into ghost academy. Meanwhile, HerO's build was in the form of 6-gate/immortal push that arrived at Puma's doorstep around the 10th minute mark. EG's terran was of course more than prepared and a few EMPs later, the protoss army was more naked than a Russian thundra.
Knowing that the danger has passed for now, Puma took a third while preparing for HerO's second push.The said push came with the AoE power of colossus reinforcements and that was the only reason that "torn to shreds" is not an accurate phrase to describe it. After a very equal trade, HerO was pushed back all the way to his base and it was Puma's time to unleash his roar. A medivac drop sniped the chargelot upgrade while a simultaneous frontal attack decimated HerO new and fresh third. The first game would go to Puma.
Bold were Puma's moves on Antiga Shipyard as the terran went for fast CC into proxy starport east of HerO's main. But Puma was soon to discover the newest greatest addition to the protoss arsenal - the ninja zealot. Waypointing a single unit around all watch tower vision, Hero managed to sneak inside Puma's main and scout the factory timing. That immediately triggered his amazing sixth sense and just a few seconds later, his stalkers found the hidden starport and took it down. This was HerO's green light to go on the attack and he struck Puma with a 5-gate blink. The damage was morbidly amplified by the timing of the attack which was just before stim would finish for Puma. And no one can fight blink stalkers without stim, I can tell you that.
Everything went wrong for HerO in the Shattered Temple set, his first major misfortune being him failing to climb Puma's ramp and get around his bunker to scout his build. Being denied such crucial information, HerO had to throw down an immediate robo bay on top of his 1-gate expand just to satisfy the need of efficient scouting.
Ironically enough, his observer did not provide that "efficient scouting" we were talking about one sentence ago. Puma's build was actually the same as in game one - a fast CC into ghost academy, and to his greatest joy Hero's observer could not at all locate the nicely tucked in ghost academy. Seconds later it was sniped and HerO was again in the dark. To extend the irony, the protoss went for the exact same push he did on Dual Sight and once again he found out about the EMPs when they started raining upon him. His push crumbled to smithereens and he had to GG out when Puma's counter-attack knocked on his door.-
The size, topography and meta-game of Crevasse led HerO into going for expansion first build, throwing a Nexus right at the outer expansion. Puma, on the other hand, went for the more common pocket expansion and did a similar build to the one on Antiga Shipyard, proxying a starport north of HerO's inner base. This time the tech did not get ninja-scouted but the banshee of Puma had the worst luck of arriving just as an observer popped out for the protoss. Talk about a poor timing.
Yet while HerO was busy dealing with those banshees, Puma hit a very strange timing attack with stimless marines and four siege tanks. He was able to destroy HerO's third and drill his way inside the protoss main and start raining fire upon his production facilities. HerO was up agains the ropes but even in such dire straits the Liquid protoss kept his composure and cool thinking and in a stroke of brilliance he warped in a couple of DTs via one of his proxy pylons and sent them to pick apart Puma's economy.
Now both players had deadly problems in their bases. Puma turned to his starport to build a raven so his push does not get sliced to death by DTs and HerO continued shredding his opponent's economy until his was virtually not mining. To make things even more convoluted, HerO managed somehow to sneak most of his probes out and secure a fully mining base down at the 5 o'clock. This led to a very tense low-supply game of nerves which got even more thrilling when the two remnants of armies engaged directly and when the smoke cleared Puma had two cloacked banshees and some marines while HerO was in the possession of a single stalker and whatever probes survived the carnage. As valiant as his last stand was, however, HerO realized he was fighting a lost cause and there were no more back doors from which he can pull off a victory. He typed out, making the score 3-1 in Puma's favor.
Having a comfortable 3-1 lead, Puma decided to strand away from the fast CC/ghost builds and go for a 2-rax combat shiled push but, fortunately for him, he smelled that HerO was 4-gating behind his fast expo build and decided to wait for a better time. Supposedly, that better was thought to be when stim and medivacs hit the field and thus Puma marched north only to face an early death. With no ghosts in the mix and the timing a bit off, Puma was forcefielded and girdled in archon lightning and chased back home tail between his legs. HerO kept his macro tempo going and soon he was sitting on a maxed out +3/+3 army with every single critical tech in play. Puma, on the other hand, had the puny 140 supply and just +1/+1 so when the time for direct engagement came, there was just not much he could do. 
Just one milisecond. This is all HerO needed during the early game on Belshir Beach as his proxy stargate got scouted and Puma, enjoying his best luck thus far, sniped the pylon in the last possible moment to put the void ray on indefinite hold. Having won a grand victory that way, the terran knew that all he had to do is exploit his advantage and win later. There was no rush.
That is why, as the set entered its late stages, it became a game of cat and mouse. Puma constantly maneuvered in front of HerO's bases and denied his third not one or two times and not without the help of diversion medivac drops. Once he reached critical bio bass, Puma added some ghosts in the mix but again there were no uncalculated battles, no overextending, no immature rush. Puma played it most cool, waging a war of attrition with the protoss - a battle that was surely his now that he had a gold base up and HerO was still struggling on two base. As the armies finally clashed, Puma's overwhelming numbers shot him up to the NASL champion's throne for the second time.
In the bronze final match, SEn defeated Thorzain with the same result. The zerg took an early 2-0 lead and then kept trading set for set to make the final score 4-2 in his favor. The top four finisher will bring home a total of $80,000, with Puma grabbing $40,000 and HerO $20,000.
NASL Season 2 standings
1.
Ho Joon Puma Lee, $40.0002.
Hyeon Deok HerO Song, $20.0003.
Chia Cheng SEn Yang, $12.0004.
Marcus Thorzain Eklöf, $8.0005-8.
Dennis HasuObs Schneider, $3.0005-8.
Pavel BratOK Kuznetsov, $3.0005-8.
Stefan Morrow Andersson, $3.0005-8.
Greg Idra Fields, $3.000
