*** Reading through some things I've written today and ran through some chapters I drafted up for a Brood War book that I really wanted to complete a few years back. It was about the "top 10" Brood War matches of all time, as determined by me, the writer, as it explains my favorite and the most historic simulated battles that professional players of this E-Sport have partaken in. This entry is about Savior vs Iris, a popular match in the annuls of Starcraft history. This is the 1st few pages of it, about the infamous figure Savior. A pic of him down below.
~
A Maestro's Opus
Dominance
in sports can be a double-edged sword, there are people who revel and cheer on
for this almost mythic figure or entity, and see how long their greatness can
last. Take Michael Jordan, who showed the world for 6 years he was unstoppable.
There are other people who enjoy diversity and are disgusted by the fact that
one person is winning everything and their hands holding a trophy becomes déjà vu.
Whatever
your opinion on is about single-player dominance, what it does create an
entertaining scenario. Anti-fans of the said player often rally around anyone who can slay the beast while
their loyal fans enjoy the constant of state of euphoria. The whole spectating
community watches on to see if someone rises to the occasion or another day of
utter humiliation for some unlucky chaps. Savior,
or Ma Jae Yoon is his birth name, was either a villain to the masses, or a hero
to the herd during his prime as player. As a zerg progamer, he became the 1st
dominant player of that chosen race, who showed flawless and inspiring play
against every opponent.
Ma Jae
Yoon showed his dominance for over year in Starcraft
Brood War, making it to the finals of 6 straight consecutive starleagues
and leading his team to the playoffs with the highest individual win percentage
to boot. He played his song perfectly, and no one could match its glory and
remarkability. However over time though he slowly lost his traction and looked
almost mortal. With every player, map, and organization working against Ma Jae
Yoon, he still soldiered on.
In the ShinHan OSL 2007 Starleague,he would give his last masterpiece to his fans. Just
like Beethoven, Bruckner, Vaughn Williams, and Mahler, whose ultimate piece of work was
also their most painful and heartfelt one. Ma Jae Yoon even looked mortal in
this competition and when it looks like a God loses his immortality, everyone
watches. His style has been studied and therefore countered, the maps are
basically Zerg graveyards, and his thirst for victory is no longer as
invigorating as it once was. But as a true champion who will stand strong when
tested by the sands of time, he overcame it all.
The God of The
Battlefield
For a person with who had
tremendous impact on the scene, Ma Jae Yoon had humble beginnings. As an
amateur, he played under the tag IPXzerg,
and showed particular impressive management play in his games. In 2004, he was
picked up by the Suma GO pro team, a
team with young talent like himself. After what became the most innocuous name
change in progaming history, IPXzerg
became Savior, channeling the spirit
to defy the terran kings who dominated the scene and a tag that harbored his
aura of otherworldly abilities. In his only 2ndStarleague attempt,
he would claim ultimate victory in the UZOO
MBC Game StarcraftLeague, besting the protoss hero Reach in a PvZ finals.
While
not a royal roader, his MSL win was still that should be impressive but at that
time he did not get the credit he deserved. Zergs were dominating the in
leagues, especially against Protoss. Ma Jae Yoon’s victory was said to due to
racial imbalance in the matchup. In the next MSL though, he showed that
lighting strikes twice as he advanced to finals again, but lost to the Veteran
zerg Choja in a tense ZvZ series. While
he did claim 1st place in this starleague, people started to take
note of the people Savior was beating
and how he was beating him.
Ma Jae
Yoon revolutionized how the game was played, he took the management style that GoRush pioneered and mastered it.
Favoring fast high tech play to gain advantages, Savior had to prepare how to defend from proper timings and attacks
so he simply did not lose. He often looked like as if he used the bare minimum
needed to stay alive in the situation at hand.
Savior also popularized the defiler,
fully abusing and exploiting a unit in the zerg arsenal that made Terrans
shiver in the sight of their clouds of doom. They were the perfect the unit to
spearhead Savior’s battleplans, using
them to with small groups of Zerg forces, to hold off aggression or performing
a surgical attack, Ma Jae Yoon used this late-game spellcaster to its full
potential. Rather than focusing on Zerg’s obvious strength of mass troop
production and reinforcement, the Maestro incorporated other tactical ideas
that were not being heavily explored by his zerg counterparts making him the
man who forged the path of the modern Zerg tactics.
While
his style and approach the game changed the way we thought about Brood War, what else set him apart was
his army movements and strategic control on the battlefield. His most well
known nickname is the Maestro. He
would conduct the swarm with the fluidity and grace of Karajan, but with the power
and might of Bernstein. One of his iconic masterpieces was against none other
than IloveOOV, who ate zerg players
for breakfast, on Ride of the Valkyres.
The Maestro lives up to his name as he orchestrates the swarm on a grand scale
to break a seemingly ironclad defensive terran position, shocking the world
with his style and gusto. While his mechanics were not the best in the scene,
he had to rely on his game knowledge and tactical skills, two categories in
which he was unirvaled in.
As the
2006 year came around, Savior became
truly the 1st zerg to be feared and dominant on the scene. Slaying
the best player in the world IloveOOV
in multiple starleagues, leading his newly funded and corporate sponsored team CJ Entus to the top of the proleague, he
became a monster. Slaying Nal_Ra and
lesser known zergSilver in one-sided
starleague finals, only a certain terran called Midas, a former clanmate and teammate, gave Ma Jae Yoon a scare, but
ultimately fell short as Savior is
still being talked about, for both positive and negative reasons, while latter
fell in A/B Team obscurity for years until his eventual retirement.
What Goes Up, Must
Come Down
Even
though Savior had all the momentum in
the world, in 2007 leagues started to introduce new maps that were heavily
Terran favored. Maps like Reverse Temple,
Neo Arkanoid, and Longinus 2 were dubbed zerg graveyards. Savior
even quoted on that he was able to win on these maps as Terran against other
professional zergs, that is how tough it was.If this was an attempt to bring
down Savior a notch, than history tells us that it certainly failed. While many
of his brooding brethren’s felt the wraith of these horribly imbalanced maps, Ma
Jae Yoon wrote a new chapter in his story and continued making his case of why
he was the greatest competitor in this sport.
In the Shinhan06 Bank OSL, 9 Terrans, 6 Zergs,
and one lone Protoss made it to the Round of 16. Terrans were demolishing any
race in their path, and with competent terrans like Nada, IloveOOV, Midas, and Hwasin still
in the player pool, the Pride of War looked as if they were adding another
trophy to their collection.
Savior’s
path consisted of dodging a bullet with his Ro16 opponent Midas, who was one
scan from taking the series but instead lost 5 crucial tanks to a couple of
lurkers. Whether this was due to Midas having
nerve problems or the gods who watch over our world wanted to keep Ma Jae
Yoon’s aura of invincibility evident, one may never know. In the Ro8, he faced
his teammate and Protoss Much, who is
known for his looking older than his actual age and his creative Protoss
tactics. However nothing in his strategy book was effective against Savior, as the only zerg Bonjwa sweeped
him in clean 2-0. His next opponent was someone that he has quite a history
with, a both friendly and competitive one.
~
Throughout College Starcraft was my "Football," or the sport that other males tend to gravitate towards to when they want to get their mind off normal duties. Enjoyed writing about it.
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