Photo by: Kimbilly
Game 1: Daybreak
DongRaeGu was the first to light the fuse of war in this grand final series, quickly going to three bases and doing a burrow roach at Genius' natural. At that time the protoss was absent of observer and in fact just then did he start his robo facility and he had to use all of his forcefields to stall the roaches underground until he could get detection out. To his luck, DRG's burrow movement was not yet done and despite losing all his sentries in the end, Genius did no suffer any lethal damage.
After clearing the roach infestation, Genius continued building up his colossus/immortal death ball while DongRaeGu went up to five bases and prepared to tech to brood lords. DRG preemptively spined his natural but did not account for that moment in which his entire army got caught completely off-guard and slaughtered by Genius' own. Suddenly, DRG had no means to defend his bases and with only spine crawlers out and zerg brood lords, the game was Genius'.
DongRaeGu 0-1 Genius
Genius was obliged to push before DRG's brood lord tech kicked in. Fortunately for him, everything went better than expected
Game 2: Antiga Shipyard
Once again Genius opened with a standard build, going for a forge fast expand as opposed to DongRaeGu's signature triple hatchery. In few seconds everything got away from the canon as after carefully avoiding DongRaeGu's overlords, Genius threw a double proxy stargate at the center right just above zerg's third. There he waited for three void rays and a couple of phoenixes to pop out before he initiated his attack.
On paper this would have been extremely hard for DongRaeGu to stop - his anti air at his third consisted of but one spore crawler and a single queen and the protoss had enough firepower to snipe both of those and kill the expansion. But as it is with those technical rushes, every tiny mistake costs dearly and Genius made one. He split his fire between the queen and the spore crawler instead of focusing it all on the latter, giving DongRaeGu enough time to force him to back off. Hydralisk den was immediately put down and the rest of the queens regrouped in anticipation of any air attack that might follow.
Such did never come and Genius fell back to his base to transition into some sort of a solid ground army. Robo support bay was thrown down but Genius would not see the colossus tech used in its full potential. Knowing that it's him who has the ball now, DRG mustered his hydralisks and attacked Genius' natural. The protoss barely stayed alive thanks to his colossi but this was only the first step of DRG's attack. A mutalisk follow-up soon came knocking and with zero anti-air, Genius tapped out.
DongRaeGu 1-1 Genius
This is the kind of targeting you don't during such a rush
Game 3: Cloud Kingdom
The Cloud Kingdom set began analogically to game two with Genius going fast expand and DRG sprinting to three hatcheries. Once again, however, Genius would use trickery and deceit, this time greatly working in his favor. Knowing that DRG has an overlord in close proximity to his natural, Genius showed a fourth gas and relatively late +1, usually indicative of a sentry-heavy expansion build. As the overlord got killed, though, Genius immediately cancelled the gas and threw down a twilight council to make his feint complete. Blink was immediately started upon completion and Genius began preparing for a 6-gate timing attack.
Over at the other side of the map, DRG had taken the third nexus bait and had teched to a sea of +1 attack speedlings with infestor support. Although, in theory, this composition would be efficient against what Genius was sending, the mere fact that he had no idea that was coming was the doom of DongRaeGu. The zerg rallied his speedlings towards the stalkers once they came knocking but a perfect blink to the low-ground made zerg's army impotent. A round of warped zealots made DRG's job even harder and combined with the fact that he had no energy for a fungal, this attack eventually turned out to be the death of the zerg.
DongRaeGu 1-2 Genius
With twice the smaller army, DongRaeGu is dead as a doornail
Game 4: Entombed Valley
After a void ray/phoenix all-in and a brilliant chicanery one would think that Genius' repertoire was running dry but the protoss would soon prove otherwise. Going into game four, Genius opened with a double stargate phoenix build but after that did not do humongous amount of damage, Genius initiated step two of his plan - going straight for a fleet beacon into carriers. The excitement of the crowd and casters were short, however, as DongRaeGu would not let this bold plan come to pass. Even while the phoenix harass was still operational, DongRaeGu placed a hydra den and started overlord drop, sending some hydralisks out on the map to clear the way of any phoenixes that might spot the oncoming assault.
While Genius was building up his carrier army in secrecy, DongRaeGu hailed in to unchain all he had, flying over the forcefields and unloading roaches and hydralisks alike, quickly making short work of Genius' third nexus and the better part of his ground army. To bring the snowball effect to its full fruition, DongRaeGu followed this up with corruptors to erradicate the air presence of the protoss and a-clicked his speedling army for the tie.
DongRaeGu 2-2 Genius
Genius is already regretting investing so heavily into carriers instead of a more stable and orthodox tech
Game 5: Metropolis
Seeing that solid play brings him way more success than quirky carrier builds or proxy stargates, Genius returned to standard protoss play, opening with a 1-stargate phoenix build, covering his third nexus, while DongRaeGu naturally went for inevitable fast third hatch. The zerg followed this up with a roach/ling/queen aggression against the third of his opponent, opting to crush a protoss base before Genius catches up economically. For a few seconds it looked like the events were going into Genius' favor - his defense at the third was stellar and many a roach and queen met their death without dealing any critical damage.
After one single fleeting moment of carelessness it all changed. A pack of zerglings broke through the natural wall-off despite the presence of a sentry, barged in Genius' main, brought down the nexus and immediately burried themselves to make the victory even more insulting and hard to swallow for Genius. His economy was further damaged when DongRaeGu traded a large chunk of roaches to bring down the third to bring down Genius' income to what can be described as "nearly nonexistent". This triggered an immediate counter attack by Genius, who despite having his bases in shambles was in possession of a scary enough army of stalkers, zealots and colossi.
The game thus grew into a base race as at the same time, DRG had his mutalisks tearing apart whatever was left from Genius' bases. The win chance scales were very even at first sight until Genius suddenly started acting hesitantly, maneuvring his army forth and back and forth again without a real purpose and without directing it to anything in particular. He finally made his mind and started cutting through zerg's natural, but then taking another questionable decision to split his army and send some stalkers home in hope that he can clear the mutalisk threat. Such was not the case and as this small protoss squad got cleaned, Genius understood that there is no winning this set.
DongRaeGu 3-2 Genius
Revealed and overrun - arguably the two least favorite things for every protoss
Game 6: Crossfire
The two players spawned on Crossfire for the sixth set - a map heavily favouring 2-base play for the protoss and run-by strategies for the zerg. Once again, Genius opened with a 1-stargate phoenix build, this time dealing visibly more damage then in the previous game, and then rallied units towards the top left where DRG's third was. For a second time in this series, Genius showed indesiciveness and failed to do damage to the third but at least denied the fourth of DRG, winning a small victory which was made bigger as on the way home he caught zerg's army split and dealt huge blows to it.
Knowing that it'd be hard to face the protoss army head-on due to his earlier losses, DongRaeGu transitioned to a spire and started spawning as many mutas as he can, while at the same time fortified his natural, spining it up to the teeth. Genius, on the other hand, continued to add more and more blink stalkers but because the front door of DRG was obviously impenetrable, the two began a series of high-mobility cat-and-mouse game. As DongRaeGu approached critical muta mass, his formerly small threat fly-byes became exponentially deadlier for the protoss, the latter trying at all cost to reach the heart of either DRG's natural or third. The atrocious stalker count did cut through some of the spine crawlers but as they were eventually forced to run back, DRG made sure to transfer whatever drones and spines he had left to his third and made it his new base of operations.
At that point, both players' economy was extremely low but because of the constant mutalisk threat, Genius knew that taking a third himself would prove an impossible task. Thus, he turned all his attention into taking down DRG's only remaining mining base. The ramp was spined up but Genius still had the real chance of blinking behind them into the mineral line and winning the game. However, DongRaeGu was just too good to let this happen. Patiently waiting out for Genius' move, DRG's mutas just floated there awaiting for the stalkers and once they blinked, he barely cleaned them to bring a victorious smile on his face as he walked out of the booth to grasp the GSL 2012 Season 1 trophy.
Final score: DongRaeGu 4-2 Genius
This is where it all ended for Genius
Editor's take
Hand on heart, I have to admit that the hype surrounding this GSL grand final did not disappoint in the end.
Until game six, it all looked like to be the closest series of one-sided sets Code S has ever seen, and even then it was apparent that the two players were very, very equally matched. Seeing how this did not end up to be another NesTea vs Losira team-mate trample is delivering relief to the eSports fan in me and an "In your face" gesture to the advocates of the former.
Examining the entire series under magnifying glass betrays how mind-blowingly good it actually was. It is an enormous feat for two players that live and train with each other to still have a stuffed bad of tricks at their side during the grand final. Having this intertwined with the extensive knowledge of each other's play style and habits made the experience tangibly different from other GSL finals.
If we are to take a step back and just skim through the six sets, one could see how much closer it all could have been. Although prevailing with a 4-2 score, DongRaeGu's fate was hanging in the balance not once or twice and in games two and five the possibility of a loss was very clear and present. Ultimately, the key to his success rooted in Genius' only faltering characteristic: momentary loss of control at critical points of the game.
Instants of hesitation can be traced back to the aforementioned game two on Antiga Shipyard when Genius would not fully commit to his void ray/phoenix rush, choosing to retreat despite having the obvious upper hand. But when this move of his can also be contributed to a simple mismicro, same cannot be said for the Metropolis set. In that game five, we saw Genius doing a succession of mistakes, starting with failing to protect his wall-off, continuing with the move command of his army during his defense of the third and ending with the fatal indecision to fully commit to the base race. Drawing the line here, we see two sets which might very well could have gone to the protoss, since he was ahead in both of them.
Enough bashing on Genius, though, I do not want to leave you with the impression that this was a disappointing Code S afternoon. On the contrary - if anything, exuberant praises should go to the protoss: he fought more valiantly than any other protoss we've seen in a while, gave DongRaeGu much harder time than statistics and history presupposed and is still the worthiest protoss to make it this far in Code S since MC won his second gold.
Praises! To both of them!
GomTV's afterword
Dear GOMTV.net users,
the GSL Season 1 Finals have been an amazing experience! The matches were top-notch, the atmosphere in the stadium was great and Tastosis were on fire! During the finals #GSL and DRG were trending worldwide, showing once again that e-Sports has become a global phenomenon. We at GOMTV would like to thank everyone for watching and spreading the word. We hope all of you had a good time and look forward to Season 2 as much as we do.
The live venue was filled to the last seat, in fact, many fans had to stand because the venue just didn't fit all the people! But not only the live venue, also our online broadcast received a tremendous amount of interest that exceeded our wildest expectations. As many of you noticed, our website temporarily collapsed under the overwhelming amount of traffic caused by our worldwide fans.
We did our best and quickly got the situation under control, but unfortunately a lot of fans were unable to watch the beginning of the broadcast. We would like to sincerely apoligize for any inconvenience this may have caused and promise to work hard to provide a more stable service that is able to withstand any amount of traffic.
As a token of appreciation and a thank you for everyone's support, we are preparing a little something for all ticket holders. More detailed information regarding this will be relased in the near future.
Thanks again everyone for watching GSL Season 1, we're looking forward to seeing you all again in Season 2! Also don't forget that GSTL is currently in its final stages, so be sure to tune in and definitely don't miss our GSTL Grand Finals in Las Vegas together with IPL 4.
Thank you.
GOMTV.net
