The Nietzsche Toss

GSTL- When your team needs a hero, turn to your unproven Protoss Player?

MVPTails

The MVP team was worried. Their handsome terran ace Keen was outmeched by a man named Happy. The random player now Protoss player Guineapig played PvT like it was 10 months ago and massed 10+ colossus, and he watched all of them get obliterated in 10 seconds by Happy’s Viking fleet. Genius, the man who always has a proxy stargate hidden up his sleeve, lost to a 3-base bio timing attack that hit a few seconds before Genius’s Templars had storm. A maxed out bio army against gateway units with no AOE? This would even make the most hardened zealots cry.

DRG, the Terran Killer or the “EZ PZ” Zerg, comes up to bat and does work. He made Happy and Youngwha look like Platinum players, and his epic game versus Losira might have had the most Roaches produced in a professional game. His reign of terror came to an end though when IM throws out one of their final bosses (Yeah there’s two in this game) 3 time GSL winner MVP. Fearing the map for ZvT (Xel’naga Fortress), DRG executes an early roach rush that does damage, but enough damage and loses to the counter Siege Tank/Marine push that would come from MVP.

Their 4 most well-known and seasoned players have been fielded, and with MVP in the booth and Nestea looking smug on their bench, all hope looked lost for the MVP squad and their fans. The camera pans to the bench, who is it? It is….. MVPTails! Wait what? The Code A mainstay or errr player? The teams, commentators, and all the spectators wait in anticipation, will he do the impossible?

About an hour later, a Korean E-sports reporter would nickname him the “Nietzsche Toss,” because “God is Dead.” A name that I think is completely fitting of the situation.

Yes he is pouring Nestea on his head, the drink that is.

Tails showed some crafty defense to MVP’s 1/1/1 build on his against him on Crossfire. Not being flustered by the banshee focus of the IM’s terran version of this “imbalanced build.” He keeps his cool and eventually ends up winning by the work of one Phoenix in sky. MVP is known as the “Conscious Terran” in Korea for stating publicly that this build is

too strong against Protoss players, and he refuses to use it. Oh the irony of this situation.

While Nestea is certainly the best player in the world, I think he is unbeatable in a BoX format, like the GSL tournaments, but in a format like the GSTL, he is beatable but it is not an easy task. I like the build Tails used, a tricky build off a FFE that was a reaction to Nestea’s taking of the gold on Antiga Shipyard. It is Quick 5 gateway pressure that may or may not work but puts the Zerg on the defense, and forces him to make units. While Nestea was producing an absurd amount of units, little does he know that the Dark Shrine is warping for the MVP Protoss. Tails was losing his Zealot/Sentry/Stalker army so badly, but during that time he was sneaking in 3 Dark Templars into Nestea’s main base, where it was the only place that had no spore crawlers (Nestea played a macro based heavy T1 style, that got a sick amount of drones a

nd units, but no tech). Just like that Nestea lost his hatchery that was morphing into a Lair, and all of his tech structures, but this just evens the game as Nestea takes his 3^rd, and retains his macro lead though. This is just a testament to Nestea’s calibre as a player, Tails punished him hard but still has no definitive advantage.

The game becomes much more standard after this, and Tails wins the game not through some gimmicky DT runby, but just solid defense of his expansions as Nestea came with a mass Roach/Hydra drop style. Nestea probably didn’t realize how even it was as he

was trying to do some ultra-aggression T2 tech style that ran into a wall that is Tails’s Stalker/Collossus ball. He had time to tech to Broodlords and Infestors. Nestea GGs out and Tails gives much meaning to the cliché saying and Oliver Stone film, “… On any given Sunday.” Just another great day of Starcraft in the GSTL.

Sorry Zergbong, Reach is not here to carry you like in BW