[BSL12] Ro4 Preview

Republished By Plato

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Trutacz vs Terror are both seasoned BSL veterans. Terror was the finalist from last season, while Trutacz was the finalist from season 9. Trutacz also has three BSL championship belts – but the last one from season 6, which is more than two years ago.

But one can be a top player without actually winning the BSL. His ro16 group was largely considered the group of death, and he escaped unscathed, taking down both Oya and Gypsy 2-0. Following that up with a 3-1 win against Eonzerg, he has shown great prowess in all three matchups. One of the best sources of information for how the top players perform against each other stems from the ThinkQuick Best of the Best tournament – Trutacz ended up in third place, behind Dewalt and Bonyth.

Terror, on his end, has had a great year, and seems to be have maintained his shape from last season. In the Ro16, he first dispatched of Gorynich and Ultra, before taking down fellow Peruvian terran Dandy in the Ro8. Looking at the same Best of the Best tournament, he ended up in 5th place – however, result-wise there was little differentiating him from Trutacz. Both had 7 wins and 4 losses, but Trutacz narrowly edged him out in overall win percentage. In their own head to head match, Trutacz won 3-2.

Terror’s group stage games against Gorynich were vintage Terror. In the first game he stayed on 1 base for a long time and had very fast tech, but low marine counts for the longest period of time. In the third game, he instead made 7 barracks before he started his factory. This is a testament to how Terror approaches the game: He certainly has solid mechanics – but he consistently plays the mind-game too. Comparing him with Dandy, Terror’s standard SK terran is a bit less polished. But he has a whole slew of tricks up his sleeve. As of late, Terror has enjoyed slightly more success and he has looked like the strongest non-korean terran player – and myself, I attribute this to how many different styles of play he is comfortable employing.

The series against Gorynich also featured some of Terror’s trademark multi-pronged attacks – utilizing his main army to pull drop-defense out of position so drops could deal massive damage, and alternatively, utilizing his dropship harassment to pull Gorynich’s main army out of position, so his own main army could get in a better spot.

Terror’s previous two BSL series against top zerg players are Gorynich this season, and Avi-Love from last season’s semi-final. Avi-Love and Gorynich have some similarities in how they approach the game, for one, they’re both comfortable going hydra lurker in zvt, and they’re less fond of two hatch mutalisk openings – especially against Terror.

Trutacz is a slightly different mold. He has great confidence in his mutalisk micro – justifiably so – and normally, he tends to favor two hatch mutalisk openings. At the same time, he’s quite willing to bring out big ling floods, and he will occasionally open two hatch lurker, too. Especially against Terror – it is undeniable that the higher latency makes two hatch mutalisk openings slightly less viable, especially a long-term, committed two hatch mutalisk opening. Looking at his games against Gypsy, he won both with zergling allins, but you should not be fooled into thinking that Trutacz is a one-dimensional player based on this. The reason why his zergling allins are so successful is that his standard game is so strong that people feel compelled to cut whatever corners they can cut.

Trutacz is a complete player – much like Terror, who can execute many different build orders and styles of play. He has excellent mechanics, and a fearsome late game if it goes that far. However, in zerg vs terran, he is usually a micro-oriented player. While both Avi-Love and Gorynich favored hydra-lurker play against Terror, I don’t think we will see this from Trutacz. More likely, we will see a combination of different aggressive openings, with very smart tactical decisions being made. Clutch backstabs, cleverly hidden zergling allins, mutalisk fakes into lurker openings – and quite possibly, a completely plain two hatch mutalisk into crazy zerg.

I think this one is also likely to go the distance, and quite frankly, I think it’s extremely difficult to differentiate the two. But – seeing how I gave Sziky the edge against Bonyth, I’m going to have to give Terror the edge here, primarily because I hope we get TvZ+PvZ finals rather than ZvZ+PvT.

Final prediction:

TerrOr Advances to the Grand Finals 3-2!