Code S Grand Finals: TY vs Maru

Saturday, Sep 15 8:00am GMT (GMT+00:00)

Maru: Beyond History

*****

TY: Black Mirror

Head to Head and Prediction

As the 2017 season neared its end, it felt like we had it all figured out. With StarCraft II’s eighth birthday on the horizon, things were making more sense than ever. INnoVation had won yet another GSL Code S in the final season of the year. Dark and Stats 's rivalry at the top of LotV was as heated as ever, while soO had lost yet again (and again). Neeb had risen to become the undisputed best foreigner—what other fate could have awaited the only foreigner to win a StarCraft II title on Korean soil? We knew what to expect headed into the new year. The picture was crystal clear.But over the last nine months, everything has changed. 2018 has been a year for breaking records and making history. Snow still covered the slopes of PyeongChang when Scarlett became the second foreigner to win a championship in Korea . Spring had barely arrived when Rogue won IEM Katowice , unifying the WCS and IEM World Championships. Barely a week has passed since Serral won WCS Montreal , completing a WCS Circuit sweep.Amid the turmoil, there's a clear leader who's risen to the top of this new world order. Maru , the prodigy of 2010, is finally fulfilling his destiny. A few months ago, he tied Nestea ’s seven-year-old record by thrashing Zest and winning consecutive GSL Code S championships . It was a Herculean feat, one that had seemingly passed from the realm of the improbable into the impossible. StarCraft II is more evolved, mature, and defined than it was in 2011. Where Nestea forged a path through untamed wilds, Maru was beset on all sides by warriors whose skills had been honed by years of constant combat.We've seen dominance before—Nestea, Mvp , Zest, and others captured and held the throne for months on end, earning our adulation and praise. And for all those rosy memories, we’ve never seen anything like Maru’s current reign. Maru hasn’t just been winning titles—he’s been utterly destroying the competition. Not only has he been out-muscling opponents with raw mechanics as in the past, but he's been at the forefront of the meta time and time again. Be it mass-Raven play against Zerg or vexing proxies in TvP, Maru has dictated how StarCraft II is played in 2018.It’s difficult to fully wrap our heads around the sheer magnitude of Maru’s accomplishments. Four years ago we gawked as soO reached the finals of every season of GSL Code S. It was well deserved, for we had never seen such consistency in the world's most difficult StarCraft II competition. The thought of someone retaining such a high level for an entire year was, frankly, unfathomable. We thought we’d never see it again.Maru hasn’t just equaled soO’s mark—he’s trampled all over it. Merelythree finals seems like child's play compared to what Maru is poised to accomplish. Winning back to back GSL finals is undoubtedly a tremendous feat, but capturing a third straight Code S championship would be beyond historic. It wouldn't just place him in the greatest-of-all-time discussion—all such discussions would cease henceforth.Outside of GSL, Maru swatted down Serral and toppled Dark (the best Zerg in the world at the time) to win $200,000 at WESG . He even served as a beacon of pride for his home nation, winning the gold medal at the Asian Games after Korea’s bitter defeat in the League of Legends finals.Even when Maru lost, his presence has been massive. When Rogue won the IEM World Championship, it was Maru who gave him his toughest test. When Stats reached the finals of GSL vs. The World, it was his victory over Maru that catapulted him to the finals. When Serral beat Maru in a best-of-one during the GSL vs. The World team-match, it became one of the most important badges of validation the Circuit king had earned all year.The title of best player in the world is elusive and fleeting. Balance patches, metas and a host of other factors create a constant game of musical chairs. A player might separate himself briefly from his peers, only to be thrown back into the cycle before the end of the next tournament. Maru is defying convention with his iron grip on the scene. He hasn’t yielded an inch of ground after claiming all of Korean StarCraft II as his own.Maru never lacked talent. He’s always been brash and stylish. His mechanics alone made his playstyle impossible to imitate, and he earned OSL and SSL titles on the back of unrelenting-yet-precise aggression. A terror in the eyes of his peers, Maru has long been admired by the fans. If you wanted excitement, you had to look no further than Maru. Even if more patient, calculated players like Mvp and INnoVation enjoyed greater success, Maru was the player you wanted to play like.For all his natural ability, pre-2018 Maru was only scratching at the surface of his potential. 'Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard' is a maxim repeated ad nauseum in traditional sports. As cliche as the saying might be, there’s truth to it. In this case, whether by slothfulness, injury, or other factors we’ll never be aware of, Maru never reached the heights of which he was capable of during Heart of the Swarm. 2016 and 2017 were massive disappointments, but it’s quite possible that this relatively fallow period is what sparked his current incendiary form.Nowadays, Maru practices harder than ever, at least according to his teammate Rogue. Whereas he once struggled to comprehend, let alone harness his immense potential in years past, the full breadth of his talent is now at his fingertips. He once showed flashes of brilliance, but now he shines with the intensity of a supernova.He dictates the pace in the early game, putting his opponent on the back foot from the get go. He’s predatory in the mid game, seizing every advantage, widening the gap and oftentimes dealing the killing blow. Should his opponent hang on until the later stages, Maru dissects them with surgical efficiency.His unwitting opponents dance to the tune of a song only Maru can hear. They move at his direction, submitting to the melody, unaware of their role in the proceedings. By the time the game ends in defeat they are utterly befuddled, futilely grasping to understand how they met such a fate. Disbelief and disappointment are etched on their features, but Maru isn’t surprised. Everything went exactly as planned.The amazing truth is that no one, not even Maru, knows how far he might go. We’ve never seen anyone like this—someone who keeps improving mechanically, who keeps evolving as a strategist, who remains ever a step ahead of the meta. Maru enters his third GSL final not as an aspirant or a challenger. He enters not as a contender or a mere champion. He enters as a tyrant collecting his due spoils. He enters as a hero ascending into legend. Should Maru win his third consecutive Code S title he will have accomplished something no progamer before him has ever done. It is a feat that is unlikely to be matched and virtually impossible to surpass. And, just as we fondly reminisce about how certain periods belonged to players such as Nestea, Mvp, Zest, or INnoVation, there will be a day where we think back and remember how the era of StarCraft II belonged to Maru.In the Harry Potter books, the protagonist happens upon a magic mirror that shows the beholder their heart's true desire. One wonders what StarCraft II progamers might see reflected in such a fantastical artifact. For soO, would it be himself hoisting the Code S trophy above his head? Perhaps TaeJa would see himself with wrists that are whole. Most WCS Circuit players might long for a world where Serral has been carted off to the Finnish military. I like to imagine that if TY were to look into that mirror, he'd see Maru.TY was introduced to us as THE prodigy among prodigies. He won his debut Proleague match at just thirteen years of age, nearly two years younger than previous wunderkind Flash. TY's ludicrously fast hands were apparent from the start, and the history of mechanically gifted Terrans portended that great things lay ahead for the youngster. The expectations for TY were set impossibly high, and they turned out to be exactly that: impossible. Boxer, Nada, iloveoov—that kind of company ended up being far, far out of reach. TY spent much of his Brood War career mired in mediocrity, with barely any individual league results of note and a Proleague career which could be describe as "fine, I guess."Which isn't to say TY ended up being a disappointment—far from it. Solid starter status in Proleague isn't easily attained, and TY maintained it for most of his career. He managed to amass over $500,000 in prize money winnings, and after ten years of perseverence, he finally won dual championships at WESG and IEM Katowice in 2017. That's probably an upper 90th percentile outcome for TY, and upper 99th percentile outcome for all the kids who try to be progamers. And still, it doesn't feel like quite enough. Not when we've seen whathave been.Much like TY, we first met Maru as a thirteen-year-old prodigy winning in his debut match. Though Maru needed a couple of years to mature, he was still just fifteen when he won his first championship: a Royal Road run in the storied OnGameNet Starleague . Even before 2018, most fans would have felt that Maru had lived up to his potential. He had won two major titles, was the ace of a Proleague winning team, and was bound to go down in history as one of StarCraft II's all-time great progamers.TY made up ground on Maru by winning his dual championships in 2017, which at the time, also represented an unprecedented achievement in pro-StarCraft. In a game so notorious for devouring youth and exhausting passion, it was unheard of to achieve such a delayed career peak. In 2018, Maru one-upped TY in the biggest way possible, putting together the most dominant stretch of StarCraft II history in year eight of his career. If TY's old-man heroics had taken him from good to great, then Maru started making the push from great to greatest.How fitting it is that TY now stands in Maru's way as the final obstacle to StarCraft II immortality. TY already faced his alternate reality doppleganger once before at a crucial crossroad. For TY, the WESG 2016 finals was a chance to validate his career and finally win a major championship. For Maru, it was an opportunity to recover from the lengthy "slump" (by Maru's standards, anyway) that afflicted him in Legacy of the Void. TY ended up triumphing then in a seven-game series , kicking off his late-career surge that continues to this date. And perhaps, unwittingly, he helped provide the impetus for Maru's 2018 run as well. That WESG final was the closest call in Maru's 2016-2017 title drought. Present-day Maru seems to have learned from that experience, and is determined to never taste that kind of bitterness again.If immortality is on the line for Maru, then what are the stakes for TY? So great is the hype of Maru's historic run that we've almost forgotten the 'ordinary' glory a GSL Code S title bestows upon every other player in StarCraft II. It's the most storied, difficult-to-win, and prestigious championship in all of StarCraft II. TY's year-ten rise to championship-caliber player is already a minor miracle, but it wouldn't feel quite complete without a Code S title. Of course, there's also the matter of BlizzCon, where TY has unfinished business after being knocked out in the top four last year. Already, fans are looking ahead to BlizzCon 2018 as the site for a definitive showdown between Maru and Serral for the title of best-in-the-world. What better way to announce that it will be a three-way race than by taking out Maru in Korea? Denying someone else's dream usually doesn't make it one's own, but for TY it might lay the first stone.Let's start with some good ol' Aligulac.com statistics.It should be noted that Maru got two 'free' 3-0 series against Demi and Strike from the Asian Games. Regardless, there's not much separating these two in terms of raw tournament stats, and it will suffice to interpret these numbers to meanIn recent matches, there wasn't much to be gleaned from Maru's 3-0 stomp of GuMiho in the quarterfinals. Maru ran circles around GuMiho with sheer mechanics (a proxy win was thrown in for good measure), but GuMiho has never been known for his finesse. I'd be surprised if TY gets styled on in that fashion.In head to head stats, TY and Maru are tied 5-5 in all-time BO3+ series while Maru holds a slight, 19-18 edge on map score . Maru and TY faced off just once this year, with TY defeating Maru 2-1 in the group stages (Ro24) of IEM Katowice ( VOD ). I'm sure you'll be absolutely SHOCKED to hear that Maru tried to proxy TY twice in the series, splitting those games 1-1 and losing in the one macro-ish game.It might be simplistic to look at the series this way, but it seems likely that this grand finals will also come down to the success and failure of early game shenanigans. TY is not averse to cheesy tactics himself, and it's worth noting that three out of seven games during their WESG finals match involved some kind of proxy or hidden building ( VOD (1) (2) ). TY has been known for years as a skilled build-smith, while the 2018 version of Maru has been a meta-defining genius. Even if it's not necessarily due to cheese, the lengthy amount of preparation time given in Code S means that this series will probably be eventhan usual.I've long maintained that TvT is the best mirror in StarCraft II, but unfortunately, I don't think this is the series where we'll see a macro game that dethrones INnoVAtion vs TaeJa . Things tend to go awfully wrong for one side when both players are trying to out-clever the other, and we're probably in for a lot of strange, landslide games. While I think TY will prove to be a very tricky opponent for Maru, how could I predict against the dominance Maru and the Jin Air brain-trust have shown us this year?- 2 TY