2019-03-04

Starcraft II - Serral vs SoO - IEM Katowice 2019 - Commentary of a Commentary

This is a commentary of a first person breakdown by WinterStarcraft. It is a best of 5 series which if I quote Winter's post
"... The world champion takes on the best loser in the history of Starcraft 2."
for Serral was a world champion from World Championship Series (WCS) 2018 and SoO was the player with most second place in the Global Starcraft II League (GSL).

You can watch it here,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgrgC40gOBk
or just read my commentary, for the video was more than 1 hour long. But if you also like Starcraft II and Zerg as I am, you might also want to watch it.

The first game was won by Serral with his Nydus network play as SoO wasn't really prepared for such. He got overwhelmed throughout the map.

In the second game, as Serral realized that he was behind in economy and upgrades, he was trying to use the Nydus once more, but by doing that, in a split second he got his attention divided and SoO just take the chance to obliterate Serral's army.
Jump to the fourth game, Serral went with more hatcheries, and with bigger economy, he didn't have to trade as efficiently, an by the number, he overrun SoO's bases.
In the last game, Winter pointed out that with Serral not taking the +2 ranged upgrade, the advantage behind the roaches' number just won't do, and it makes SoO took the game, and his 1st place in the IEM Katowice 2019. It wasn't the grand final, but this game was arguably the best ZvZ game.

Now, let's talk about the third game. This game last for about 28 minutes, while ZvZ usually takes place in less than 15 minutes, let alone a professional match-up. Sometimes it does, but this game is just different, because if the game went that long, it would be a macro game with hive tech, with both sides using viper, broodlord, ultralisk and such. However, in this game, the constant pressure from both sides make it impossible to advance to such tech.


The first thing that made Winter raised his eyebrows was when Serral lost his lings to SoO's banelings. It doesn't seem much, but the snowball just keep on getting bigger. On that point, Serral couldn't just take the chance to leave his base defenseless, ($150,000 was at stake) making him produce lings thus the larvas couldn't be morphed into more economy producing drones. From then on, roaches started to pop out, leaving the lings outside the equation. After that, constant pressure comes from SoO. Using roaches and ravagers, both of the players dance with their corrosive biles. At the first half, Serral has more map control with his more spread out overlords and overseer, but SoO deny it using some mutas. Serral hold his ground producing hydras. I thought the position was in favor of SoO, but that cannot be said if we see the supply count. for it was almost even all the time. Towards the end, Serral did produce some vipers, and the blinding cloud was quite hurting SoO, but blinding clouds don't stop ravagers from landing their biles. In the end, both player have it till the last roaches alive. When SoO has 3 and Serral has none, he realized that it was a gg. With more than 500 roaches dead. A beautiful game.


If you wan't, the highlight of the third game from SC2HL, it was only 14 minutes,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwaNFZSbSLE


References:
1. https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/2018_WCS_Global_Finals
2. https://www.intelextrememasters.com/season-13/katowice/starcraft-ll-results/#?matchday=1
3. https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/SoO#Trivia

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