He deserves WAY MORE respect in history as one of the BEST players to EVER play SC2

Triple crown winner, GSLx2, multiple NA + EU wins, Most clutch GSTL player ever. One of the few to be able to beat IMMvp multiple times including a GSL finals. Literally created the drop harass style for Terrans, even without medivac boost.

Literally could count on one hand the number of players who have accomplished what he has

I also really would have loved to see Classic vs Reynor in the Grand Finals… it would have been so epic, based on Classic’s PvZ vs Reynor and Serral earlier in the tournament. Oh well, it’s really cool he’s coming back to form and maybe GSL will have some more Protoss hope now!

The stakes were so high you could really feel how desperately hard the players were trying, and how much players were being affected emotionally for each interaction or mistake they made, and how those emotions affect the way they play the rest of the game and how it affects their opponent etc. That’s when it gets really intense and fun for me to watch, it’s more “sloppy” and back and forth, and more in line with the idea of BW-esque “putting out small fires across the map”, rather than 2 players just executing a really clean build and winning in 1 push.

Unlike Double Elim I don’t get the feeling at all of “oh bad bracket luck”, since it’s much more unpredictable and you get many more chances. Since it’s so unpredictable it also feels like you don’t have to “look ahead” and worry about who they’ll face next.

Some highlights for me was Classic vs Reynor, geez that macro game was so long yet it was intense for the whole 45 mins, unlike stereotypical super lategame PvZs. Since the stakes and prize was so high, guess there really IS a lot that you can do to stay active and gain small advantages, it’s just that players are too afraid or don’t feel incentivized enough to make more plays in tournies with less stakes. It made me really happy to see that SC2 really DOES allow players to be super active and doing lots of small harass and positional plays all over the map, if players really want to do everything they can to win. Classic vs Serral was cool too, but that macro game wasn’t intense or close like the one vs Reynor.

As a Creator fan, Creator vs Byun and Creator vs Spirit were sad to me, Creator sac’d his army and lead by attacking into Byun’s PF in g3, and vs Spirit g3 he made 1 bad attack, managed to claw back in, then made another bad attack and lost. I rewatched Creator vs Spirit g2, and despite how strong Terran’s endgame vs Protoss is, I realize how close to winning that final battle Creator actually was. He literally only needed to build a few more Voids, Carriers, or Stalkers – it didn’t really matter which, literally just needed more AA units, to fend off the Vikings and destroy the remaining BCs.
He actually had too many Tempests, there was a point where there were 8 BCs left and 12 Tempests left, but still 21 Vikings and only a few Stalkers. If he had a few less Tempests and more Carriers or Stalkers to deal with the Vikings, it would have been a close battle, though he’d probably still slightly lose.

But being picky about army composition aside, if he realized he still had that gas geyser at his 3rd, and didn’t sac 20 zealots to kill 1 PF and some turrets, he could have just warped in 20 Stalkers or 6 Carriers, he would have had enough to deal with those 21 Vikings, and then his 12 Tempests would have wrecked the last 8 BCs. After winning the fight he would be able to stop Spirit from mining that final mining base and just camp it.

It was really amazing though to finally see a pro Protoss actually use recalls properly to fight BCs and work around Warp, and awesome to finally see Protoss properly punish by trying to at least kill 1-2 BCs with Tempests after Warp is burnt as they try to fly away. It really makes me think, is a huge $400k prize pool what’s really needed to get pros to do something that seems quite basic and important, in recalling your Tempests away when BCs jump on them? It seems like common sense but I don’t remember any other match where pros have consistently done it in the game when they need to. It really makes me wonder if pros are just playing too comfortably these days, like there isn’t enough at stake for them to actually try their hardest to do every little thing they can and play as intense games as we saw at Gamers8, with harass and small fights all over.

Anyways yeah, Playoffs was really disappointing compared to Group… i really would have liked to see Classic vs Reynor in the Grand Finals, but maybe the gameplay would have been lacking compared to Groups as well.

Oh yeah I’m glad MC won, he was my fav. I love that he said Carrier HT Stalker seems like OP mix so he went for it and it worked. It reminded me a glimpse of the old days when “Protoss was OP” (probably it was moreso like they were just balanced in terms of 50/50 winrates), and it makes me a bit sad about its current state. I’m glad he said Blizzard please buff toss, and I wonder if he really is coming back? Or if he just meant to say something cool like “see ya later friends”, and not that he’s literally coming back?

Reynor losing first round and the seeding system really took its toll. But I do think his 13 ranking actually quite fits where his play is. Going 2-6 against Reynor, Solar and Clem is so normal, pitch any player against these three and that result wont surprise me, even if it’s Maru or Serral.

On August 07 2023 16:49 muppet70 wrote:
While Reynor and Cure were a bit lucky who both dodged Maru and Serral they really performed in the final bracket and Reynor really showed domination, he lost ONE map in the playoffs, thats crazy.
Classic was the high seed not Cure who only got to the playoff until he beat Dark 2-0 in R5.
I hope someone does a replay explanation video of Maru vs Clem, that was so cool but my understanding of TvT is limited.

It reminds me Taeja going 17 – 0 in Dreamhack

Dislikes:
– Ping, seems silly for this to be a factor for such a huge tournament.