SC2 - Reynor vs. Zest - IEM Katowice 2021 - Finals

[Music] the match-up everyone loves to see and in the top right here our first player in this grand final with back-to-back finals appearances for intel extreme masters katowice he is zest [Music] already sending probe out very early on the map and his opponent down here in the bottom left no doubt used to being pylon blocked in this matchup though in the red representing clash gaming he has gotten energy unlike any other pro gamer there's a lot of people cheering for him it is raynor [Music] now i can't wait to get my hands on that playlist i i if there's one thing that tilts me more towards cheering for rain or than zest it's the playlist but honestly oh man he's got a big big task in front of him dude zest is looking so good and he cleansed raynor with beautiful void ray fire in the group stage i mean that's the elephant in the room right when you go into the series it's like what's the history between rainer and zest look like and you can even go back a little bit further than that to the warty winter tournament where zest had an insane run in that bracket always get into the grand final beating ty in the end but he 3-0 reyna on the way an insane series an insane score against someone who is widely believed to have a pretty uh nigh unbeatable zvp but of course that new void race style rain has been very vocal about it on social media and streams as well he's just not been very happy and not been very comfortable dealing with that style and zest made it work just days ago like you mentioned in the group stages with that 2-0 score over raider of course since then raynor did come out against stats and showed a very timing attack focused style he really definitely a mixture of roach queen nidus's queen hydra timings and even just queen max roach pushes through the map on jagannatha we've seen a lot of timing attack oriented play from rain or and that's why i look at this i say zest is 100 studied those games what sort of extra safety precautions does he take because zest is the guy who remember found himself in this exact same circumstance last year he took cyril out he invented this new grave adept push that hit so early and so fast took out cyril took out a bunch of other people got to the grand finals and he made zero adaptations rogue all in him repeatedly and just killed him even when he scouted it coming zest froze up a little bit under pressure he thought he could just basically say my build's tight enough to get through anything and it was one of the most one-sided grand finals we've ever seen so i think zest here is gonna need to show a bit more flexibility than he did last year i don't expect him to be as stiff as he was in that grand finals yeah certainly a different version of zest since last year and that glamour depth build really stuck around as well we haven't been seeing it as much lately obviously void raises the new hotness at the moment speaking of which number one coming out of that stargate and have a feeling we might be seeing more in this series but yeah they have a depth timing attack was so powerful and a huge part of the reason why cyril folded to zest in the end there but rogue having none of it dropping the roach warren getting the nightest worms up and just stopping him before he could get established [Music] well the first voyage is going to be popping out in a moment no commitment to overlord speed so this is the sacrificial overlord who is going to meet a prismatically aligned death in just a moment and uh does go down incredibly quick you see that bonus to ahmed whenever that's activated does slow down the void rays but allows them to take out buildings overlords and roaches incredibly quickly extra queens are already on the way for raynor and a relatively early evolution chamber now what have we seen most recently camera base upgrades very early from solar in this matchup so that as he builds his queen count through the mid game he is able to actually just fight void ray's head on he can add the double upgrades do big queen hydra or queen ravager pushes i'm curious to see if reynold goes that direction or will he try to go for a more classic plus one melee yeah melee is what the evo chamber used to mean certainly so uh it definitely would make sense to go in either direction here obviously the evo isn't gotten for feng shui reasons for aesthetic reasons he needs to get an upgrade on that meanwhile zest making one void ray is going to be melee by the way so we have our answer and just showing the void ray and going in robo and charge so zest playing with expectations here dude he might even pull off gas here's s yeah yes oh my god zest is going so hard into this he's already pulled one guy off gas to build these gateways this is going to be essentially a gateway all in and raynor going melee i mean melee zerglings aren't terrible versus zealots but you want banelings or especially roaches would be the best it looks like reynolds thinking about void rays you know that's what we're all expecting from zest play void raise take a third take a fourth and he's shown all of these tails to rain or he says look here's my very early third base here's a void rate reynold with these zerglings needs to scout he needs to realize something's up he sees a second void ray that kind of makes you think hey it's mass void ray right this is a totally normal play and we don't see any sign of rain or realizing what's going on no roach warren no bailing nest rain or so far has been tricked he certainly has does that mean he's not going to hold i mean signs aren't great but we don't know until they hit plus one is going to help these lings out a lot but it is still going to be lings against elliott's like you mentioned and that void ray giving him a little bit of room to try and get this prison past the legs and he successfully threads the needle there oh reena just now seen the prism okay he does get a bit of warning this is important he realizes now he really needs to drop a roach warrant he's going to go bailing nests in fact trying to go straight up to hyderabad and remember there were some centuries there there was you know a decent probe count but it's a 20 worker advantage for raynor he needs to gather everything together and fight you know with mass circling as with that many queens he might actually be able to defend this the prison scaring him though going up towards the main base of cancel on the fourth has already happened the void ray is trying to ferry that in i love the split on the unit so far by rainer but his links need to get back down to this third base yeah queens on their lonesome against these zealots are going to have a tough times the links coming in to assist opening up the natural movement for the war prism as well and more charge lots coming in from zest the void rays getting on top of the queens the queens still have a fair bit of transfusion energy and they go back a ways there are four queens here oh and pause oh my god a pause right and an insane moment there in the game i mean obviously this is for a good reason but i don't even know who this pause favors this might actually pause rain or because this is a very frantic situation they're straight back into it there we go and those void rays taking a lot of damage the spore does do a lot of damage to that warping's gonna finish and that is a ton of zealots remember that reynold can lose a lot of drones and still be okay as long as he hangs on those queens behind the mineral line do get surrounded by those zealots if the war prism survives maynard the zerglings have gone down the queen count is falling and says with a surprise charged all in if he gets one more warping that seals the deal and he will get it and he will seal that deal zest getting game one there in just sub seven minutes what a fast and furious way to start off this grand finale yep setting the momentum to tempo right there he's seen that raynor has gone into some of these previous series both actually of the previous series trying to sort of preemptively counter what he thinks his opponent's going to do remember against maru early on taking a very quick fourth base he did the exact same thing against dark he said i know you're going to play muters i'm going to take a really quick fourth base in our first map place super economic and just have a head start from the get-go i think zest looked at those games and very intelligently said there is no way i'm letting you start this series off with a lead i am expecting you to be greedy i'm gonna trick you get in there with a fast all in and take an easy map one yeah that was definitely a great bamboozle there from zest playing against expectations as i mentioned because rainer is definitely expecting voids here as a lot of us are and i mean there are multiple ways i i think the more common one is obviously just to drop the forge and start going into charge plus one and getting the templar archives and going to icons that sort of thing but it normally comes a lot later and it's expected as well like that is very normal for someone to transition out of voids into that just pulling out of gas and going straight charge lot sending two voids into prism yolo across the map and just all inning the zerg pretty uncommon but uh successful in zest case so a good start to the series but it is a best of seven obviously a lot more games to come well i love this misdirection dude it's just so many pieces to sell the story there to really give out those false positives and uh you know what no overlord speed you know no super big investment into the scouting and just skipping that little bit of safety you know raynor if he had a bailing nest already it gives him such a good head start in dealing with that it's still kind of tough because the zealots you saw the way zest split up and hit two angles like that was really well done but here we go into map two he started off with a quick game one win down here in the bottom right hand side of light shade in the blue it's none other than zest and in the top left here represented by clash the italian stallion mr little caesar himself this is rainer it's clash gaming for rain or dragon phoenix gaming for a zest and always a good way to start the series off getting in underneath your opponent's skin a little bit it's such a strong mental advantage but both of these guys are so shown that they're not shaking up easily they they don't just kind of crumble under that pressure they embrace it they fight back underneath that pressure and indeed rain are going to be going for the forward third base that's going to give him more of a launching pad to go across the map does present a little bit of an opening to things like void rays harassing it later but it does give you an easier fourth base to take that's a little bit easier to protect yeah certainly does it's not it's never comfortable to have the hatchery blocked a little bit but it i feel like it's so common now that zergs have gotten used to it it's kind of like having a new normal you know oh yeah they're like this sucks i don't get to take my natural but i've played this scenario a thousand plus times yeah protoss sends the probe across the map loses some mining time does try to make up for that with a little bit of probe harass but it's just kind of like hey i'll slow you down you slow yourself down as well to do that that's all fine and zest of course gonna be just expanding taking the second gas and that second pile on going down up in the main base now it does look like he's not gonna hide that pylon at all this is something which a lot of the korean players when they do these target openings are very common they put that pile on very far forward and kind of present it something we saw cyril adapt with in some of his matches is he'd send the overlord straight south here and just peek it in on the cliff and go oh you built your stargate in a really easy to scout location cool and then you just fly it off down to the dead space this is something i'd love to see rain or mix in in this series is don't just leave it at the pillar but actually go south with the overlord if there's a stalker that comes out he can always either go the high ground or the low ground route to buy more time and that's going to give him earlier information on exactly what zest is opening with the first couple things coming out here for rayner going across the map to have a little bit of a poke at the front to make sure what's coming out of that gateway is of course going to be in a depth 99 times out of 100 so can make assumptions here third base going down for rainer and where he'd normally take his natural everything looking pretty normal for the zerg on this side of the map so far and as zest gets the stalker out next like he mentioned it's a little bit tougher for that overlord to just sort of dive at this point he's kind of kind of uh stuck on that high pillar there that high ground pillar comes down a little bit just to have a look at the gateway just to see what comes out next but yeah i mean you see the warp gate timing here you're pretty clear with your vision you know even though you don't see the stargate that is going to be stargate um zest really not bothering to scout early on at all because he goes for a stargate that keeps you relatively safe but part of me is wondering if there is room after you know since he's not a depth scouting he's keeping it at home every game to pull a rogue you know obviously it's better versus twilight council to do like a bane bust or something like that but even against an oracle a link flood can do very well and definitely wonder if this uh sort of lack of adept scouting to kind of check for the zergling all in keeps up will raynor consider something like that we'll have to wait and see for now all steam ahead on the macro raynor loses that overlord on the high ground but he knows it's an oracle he's putting spork rollers down at each base and uh we're gonna have to keep our eyes on this is this gonna be oracle into ground is it gonna be more of that classic route like or does he still drop the second stargate and go for air after these couple of oracles yeah well first couple oracles this is so very standard from back in the day like very 2019 almost here from zest to go into two or three oracles and then start getting towards the ground army but of course we'll keep an eye on that the queen's moving in position here with that sport crawler on the back line to start getting a bit of damage on these oracles which can obviously one-shot drones they do get one there but nothing really crazy there as far as damage is concerned possessed but as long as the oracles live and kill drones that's good for the protoss yeah they do lose a lot of shields though uh and their hit points as well sorry so i think reynolds happy with that when your opponent commits to this many oracles though it's not about defending one or two waves like that third oracle oh oh that's huge i was gonna say when three oracles join up they can eradicate a worker line but here we go six the depths joining up raynor does see it i don't know if he has any zerglings out right now though might have to run his drones away for a little bit he's building 10 more things right now he's only got five links on the map these drones are gonna have to get out of there yeah he's gonna have to evacuate very quickly here loses three to start off with but does evacuate but the depths of course can shake and be really annoying good snap decision there from moreno to get on top of that stasis ward taking one for the team that one drone and the other oracle getting shepherded away from the natural the depths do not shade as well as most desserts units are here and it looks like red has actually done an all right job defending you know his work account's still not bad he's got another round of drones coming up next roach warren layer around the corner seems okay for the zerg as all things considered yeah dude six the depths in the third stasis trapping the main stasis trap in the natural and what does he lose three drones two more go down in the follow up but he's handling this so well like the thing is these oracles are not really finding the massive damage that they'd love to and oracle's gone down for this this is perfectly fine for rain or very good handling similar to what he showed against maru his ability to deal with those many different angles that the player harasses on all at once he's one of the best at just bouncing around splitting his queens up managing it keeping all of his drones alive absolutely and at the moment looks like zest is switching gears going for that ground army of course with the adepts heading into charge lots plus one attack on the way templar archives robo coming down as well so he can get that a big force of the immortals the archons and the plus one charge lots a very very good anti roach slash hydra army and extremely good against those lanes oracle's coming in for another drive-by there it's just lings here in the main and one queen but with the spore of course enough to show away these two oracles one of them very heavily damaged from earlier rainer still just maintaining good control here of his economy not letting the protoss get any more damage done makes a big round of roaches here 11 roaches on the way for rainer with more overlords coming up as well potentially even more roaches on the horizon yeah and that's all he should be doing right now because does not have any sign of going for a fourth base or side storm it really looks like zest wants to do a charge immortal arc on push and he's gonna at least clear creep and maybe even commit to try and get a snipe on the fourth base uh we'll see obviously as he spots lots of roaches there's a good chance he backs out of that but this is just safe play from raynaud because he's already built up above three bases of workers he's going to have a handful of workers on that fourth he's just got to make sure that with the oracle still alive he he puts the spark roller down there one of the big mistakes ergs make in these scenarios is just not having a spore on the fourth and sometimes the oracles will come in to get big damage there later for now the pressure's moving out across this map he's already cleared the creep a lot of charge arc on there is plenty of roach ravager to deal with it though zest needs to spot this big ball look he's hiding the roach ravage or his rain or he only shows a handful of roaches he wants zest to commit he's hiding most of it back in his natural he's like zest oh no i'm surprised and zest i think he might be biting the bait he's moving on forward brain very sneaky uh that tagged overlord kind of uh spoiling the plan here for rayner don't attack me big scary mr protoss man uh unfortunately the overlord shows off possessed that there is in fact an army waiting in in the winds there of that creep the lings i like that little idea from rainer to try and go for a backstab with the lings of course just hoping against hope that there might be something there to pick off poking the natural again and as it stands rayna really just spreading that creep and trying to secure a lot more of the map here getting a lot more vision a lot more map control as his infestation pit just around the corner about 80 of the way done heading towards tier three potentially something even more sinister we'll keep an eye on that archons clearing up that overseer zest still threatening the edge of the creep here and forcing more units out arena the supply is looking really good for raynor right now though he's not starting any more upgrades uh but he's max on roach ravager and i think he needs to go fight the thing as you can see zest has got an army in the north an army in the south he's splitting up this zealot archon and he's just running around clearing creep keeping up the mobility war rain is gonna have to split his army up to deal with it and he needs to do it soon because these roaches aren't the best units in the later game if he lets zest smack sounds zest's army will be a little better than his even though it's very zealot heavy rain or needs to fight sooner rather than later if he can start whittling down this arc on count then he'll be in a really good position yeah there's no complexity to to raina's army it's very supply inefficient in these two supply roaches three supply ravages but of course heading towards higher than hydrogen then you can start getting some lurkers and all of a sudden the shoes on the other foot and the zerg army becomes extremely powerful seeing as that's throwing in a few more stalkers here very very good against the roach ravages the two bonus to armored speaking of armor we do have plus one armor on the way here for zest plus to attack lagging behind a little bit there for rainer but it is on the way and really no huge commitment but looks like zest oh there we go all right oh he's going for it he's going for it this is a giant army out of zest he's got so many archons and zealots i mean there's a lot of roaches and ravages out for rain or but he is a little outnumbered right now he's got money in the bank he can remax quickly he's taking a good fight i love the fact that he just abandoned his fourth base with his drones he's saying let's deal with this army down here if i can clear this up then i can go and deal with the other army afterwards so far this fight's looking really good for raynor these oracles being a little bit annoying here grabbing those ravages targeting them down a bunch of roaches hatching from that hatchery at the fourth base do pop out and do survive long enough to show away a couple of these archons and these are depths and zealots there centuries being very annoying the stalkers coming in with those zealots on the front line as well the zealots tanking doing great job keeping the stalkers alive rainer taking out a bit more of zesami here taking a huge supply lead zest attack it does damage but i don't think it does enough yeah i mean it was it was a cute idea it just maxed out zealot stalker all in with one one and a few arcons but at the end of the day it was a zealot stalker rolling at the 10 minute mark you know that's a those are the two starting units of protoss you can add blank charge and one one upgrades but roach ravager is such a good defensive composition and it was just so well handled raynor was not getting greedy rushing up to lurkers and vipers and over droning he absolutely respected this he just sat back patiently he waited for zest to over commit into it this was really great defense by raynor realizing there was no need for him to go up to lurkers he just needed enough roaches to hang on and gg rainer has broken the lost streak here against zest that was actually you know with game one zest was on a six-map win streak against rainer until just that game on lightshade so finally a little bit of momentum heading his way and we've got ourselves not a 4-0 finals which is an improvement on 2020 pig as i'm sure you'll agree indeed mate we keep smack talk in that finals but honestly this is what we do we've been on another level like this tournament is is honestly i think in terms of just the number of close matches reversals the number of big names we've had like there hasn't just been one guy who's like good in one matchup only and not that good in the others who comes and just takes out a few of the more well-rounded players like sometimes that happens in starcraft this tournament it feels like we've got super well-rounded players that have had to prove themselves in every single match up going through the the crucible that is you know it's it's it's around a 36. it's around a 24 a round of 12 a round of eight and i mean man it's it's it's these guys who've made it here and for good reason they are not going to go down without a fight i mean the the series is for this tournament as well i mean god damn the the bpd level the bangers per day of series that we were having i cannot believe how many like close game fives we've had as well where the series kind of has its best game right at the end it's it's really it's it's what like esports dreams are made of it's like it's what you want you want the final game you want a nice match and you want that final game to be really back and forth and really close and hard to call i mean i'm hoping for it again there's final it's already great to have that one one score but again a best of seven we got a lot of games ahead of us oh yeah so yeah so yes sir yes and both of these guys have had insane brackets to get here whichever one wins builds a very strong legacy for themselves obviously holding this trophy and becoming the world champion is massive in of itself but when you look at the opponents that they've got through the brackets the group stages the reversals they've had to do it's like my god they are going to build such a big legacy for themselves whoever goes away victorious from this finals everybody's going to remember this day yeah absolutely history has already been made it's just how far do we go how much do we upset the history of this tournament in the top left here hoping to win it for south korea and keep things stable is this gonna happen again for this fine gentleman it is dpg zest and his opponent at the bottom right side of the map representing clash esports he's now tied up the series one to one it's raynal really impressed by the staying on roach ravager though i see dark do this a lot against these really high level korean players uh sometimes you look at it you're like why are you just making roaches and ravages dude like surely you want to make better units than that but it's it's when you get a feel for the protoss who like wants to just do one of these mass gateway unit timings it's the best way to defend defend if a protoss is committing to super low tier units mass zealots and archons roaches are perfectly fine versus that it's if they're building immortals sidestorm disruptors those are the things where it's like okay mass roach is really bad so there has to be this inherent flexible nature for zerg players in this matchup it's why we saw raynor got the misread game one and did completely the wrong thing droned up way too hard was only building zerglings got surprised by the charges but he had the read in that previous game and that completely changed the outcome so i really am just going to be keeping an eye on the scouting of both players and where they can make those reads on each other because it's such a huge influence on how this plays out often it's scouting three or four minutes earlier that decides zerg vs protoss match and it looks like that probe across the map here did that block again forcing rainer to take the third base location as his first expansion here uh everything otherwise pretty normal and i think a lot of people would argue that it's pretty normal actually to take your natural or not your natural in your natural taking it out in third days your second base in your third your third in your second and finally your fourth gets to go where it rightly belongs when you put it that way anybody who's not an expert or a long-time starcraft viewer is like what are they talking about uh don't worry don't worry about it the base got blocked you had to take it somewhere else it's a slight inconvenience things will stabilize here as this goes for the stargate and i think it's once again in that forward position like i mentioned it's so easy to scout this target like your overlord literally needs to move to the left like a few inches and you spot it i think it's um it's definitely you know something which i would love to see raynor change his overlord pattern in one of these games just to get that confirmation but so far three out of three for stargate first does he even really need to guess i think it's more the follow-up that's more important to the initial attack i'll overload speed going down here for rainer looking to duck his eyes and cross his t's and also daddy's lowercase j's here making sure just in case that zest is going to be too tricky on him here good thing about the speed overlord is that it can sort of outmaneuver some of the ground army of the protoss but the void ray does still chase it down and does kind of take it down pretty quickly even with overlord speed indeed indeed i don't want to get those those overlords caught out there i mean you can try to sneak them in a bit later in the game right it's more for like okay uh five minute mark six minute mark i want overlords going down both extreme edges of the map and hopefully one of them makes it through it's oh my lair's done and now i have the fastest overseer in the world that can just fly straight through the middle and get a scout no matter what but um for now you know it's it's gonna be very careful you can see the overlords moving out to the edges and the void ray looks like it's just sitting at the third for now it's hunting around a little bit hasn't found any overlords just yet [Music] he's going to catch one here no okay there we go swings back changes his trajectory locks on and that overlord is toast so a good start there possessed defensively catching that speed overlord but of course this one's going to get a good look through the main base having a cheeky look and seeing what's happening in protoss ville nothing building on that star game second stargate oh he doesn't see the second stargate but this this feels like a ground transition right now because you don't see anything building on that stargate so that could actually be almost bad for raynor where you could see zest does start another void right now and it wasn't even like a mind game he just didn't have the money for it he was just you know going up to the next step getting the second star gate going raynor's gonna need to get back in a little while and try to double check what's happening yeah it's a potential misinformation coming arena here oh queen's going out a little bit far here on the map it doesn't look like he's committing to anything he's just going a little bit further trying to get on top of the oracle early yeah just wants to get some damage on that oracle if possible roach warren's on the way so safety precautions are in place for rain or evolution chamber more and more drones flooding out and the fortune twilight on the way so zest is gonna be transitioning this is gonna be the most standard one of zest's strategies four to six voyages charge lots archons and a whole lot of power that that overlord does spot it very important scout for renault yup sees the second stargate now reina is picking up what zest is putting down and it is going to be that twilight accounts coming down doesn't know about the twilight council just yet but the charge is coming down and like as pig mentioned this is going to be a big ball of charge loss with multiple void rays not just two like game one but a lot more than that hitting the front door of the zerg and trying to overwhelm the queen count the voyage is really really quite nice against the queens there and obviously if there's roots as well pretty fantastic in that regard oh this is this is a commitment he is walking i'm not sure i think he's just trying to intercept i honestly think he's trying to scare he he wants to scare us it's a fake out but i don't know if zest is going to bite the bait there you can tell because yes he kind of sees the queen's turn around and he doesn't see any roaches coming out with the revelation so reynolds really trying to put out the image of like yeah i'm coming for you with queens build lots of shield batteries and cannons and zest i've talked about this before it's what led to him losing last year he can see signs of an all-in and just ignore them sometimes like zest is so confident in his standard way of playing in this matchup that he you kind of need to force him to react sometimes like just being like oh i'm maybe being aggressive he's not going to care and it kind of looks like reyna while he loses some drones here in the natural without a single oracle by the way a really good oracle from zest it looks like he's kind of heading towards hell muffins which may have been scattered here by zest as he sees the infestation pick going down indeed swarmows can be really effective but there's no knight of swarm or anything like that just yet hive goes down ah okay well you know what viper's lurk is good units right queens and roaches keep you alive and then you add vipers to abduct potentially blinding cloud to parasitic bomb if they keep going for air and uh it's all about those lurkers more than anything right as long as you've got your lurker den getting the range upgrade uh there is some really nice options and we saw raynor even do a lurker range push on stats third base uh hit just with the first seven or eight look there's a big pack of queens some roaches some hydras and the cool thing about that push is basically the protoss is really reliant on sci-storm and lurkers have 200 hit points light storm only does 80 damage so they can use all the energy they want but you're just transfusing those lurkers up your lurkers will not go down to sci-storm and it would be very silly to go swarm hosts against a guy that has question mark void rays there could be a lot more than you than you'd expect and the swarm host not too great to end here we do have storm in the way here for zest lurker den going down as kind of expected here for rainer so starting to amass those hydra so we can get those big scary lurkers up some good timing a little bit just a tad but yeah i feel like he's going to be maxed out before lurker range he could go before lurker range but because this base is such a defensible position like the gateway wall off at the third or by time he's already got gateway warlocks in the middle down here at the fourth face as it goes up it may extend to a longer game now i don't really know i don't know how that goes zest is pretty good in a longer game but so is raynor he's capable of playing those stages if he has to he's very good with his spell casters it just feels to me like rayner if he was a little bit maybe 20 seconds quicker on that hydra then that lurker then finishing he'd have a much tighter timing attack option and as it is i don't think he can hit till zest is getting very close to maxed out i'm with you so i i think it's highly likely that we're going to be seeing a good maxed out carrier ball here from zest as he drops plenty of cannons there at these extra bases with that mineral bank better just lock down static defense all over the shop and even leaving some high temperature and tactical places here and there to drop storms and potential run by soften up balls of units 10 lurkers being made here from rayna it's a lot of lurkers and you definitely just don't want them to just chill at home so he's going to try and make something happen with these lurkers when they morph that's right seismic spines that's the range upgrade is on the way it's still a very scary moment in the game for zest zest has gone up to fleet beacon but he's not using it he starts two more robos i don't think he has a robo bay i mean is he just going to try to mass immortal to deal with this that they can kind of do a decent job it looks like he's setting up for a surround i think he knows this push is coming zest is going to try and flank high temperature exposed there a little bit they do make it to the safety of their bigger cousins and that really feels like an adequate army here for zest to handle this many lurkers and so many workers here from rainer that ground army just isn't strong enough oh the transfuse is so good man this high temper taking a lot of damage as i said the side storm doesn't really clear the lurkers but zest has got zealots on the left he's got an army on the right he is setting up for the surround but the hydra is pushing forward taking out these zealots in the middle zest is trying to hang on by time he doesn't have a shield battery up there and that is a problem for him as those lurkers are doing great damage and the lurkers can handle some bad weather so those storms only soften them up they do not kill it takes a few storms there to make sure that they die they do however take a fair bit of damage on those hydras more of this hydra is being turned into lurkers here on the front line as the queens come forth for transfusions to help out their babies oh zest oh he's walled out he's uh his ground army a little bit they're trying to get the archons and the high templar back onto this high ground position on the floor because he's got these robos here he absolutely has to defend this base oh battery overcharged but you know what he can't really commit just yet he's gonna try and poke with the void rays i don't think there's any vipers out to really abduct them in roaches dealing with the zealot run by zeste is poking in and out on the front big size storms landing on that army big size storm still a few hydras of the queens here as well obviously they have a fair bit of anti-air not too many interceptors available on this carrier the immortal still being made two by two here a big warp into charge lost there at the fourth base rainer with plus two attack mass hydra queen lurker though so much damage output so much dps in the serg army the void race is starting to fall maynard there's just not enough here the zilla flank a little bit too late those are mortals are looking very fragile the queens have gone a bit far forward raynor does need to pull those queens back just a little bit to the lurkers but it looks like he just can't quite hang on to his fourth base one carrier a dead weight in the air and this queen lurker pushed this was absolutely deadly and zest needed that base to live his robos were there so he would have been seconds from falling be stuck around anyway rainer taking the advantage in the series there with a 2-1 score a nice decisive push something he showed in the earlier stages of the tournament as well and uh zest there not quick enough to respond to it i feel almost a little hesitant there i really would have loved it if he went robo bay and got a few disruptors out with two extra robos i was like oh cool he's going disrupters but the immortals they can do it but he kind of needed to be ready when the push was coming having the robots finish up when the lurk is already on your doorstep just a little bit too slow there for a zest and i think he's definitely going to be on his toes looking out for this timing i i don't know if raynor is going to be able to pull that one off again yeah it's uh for me once shame on you kind of situation but uh we will see as we get into game number four around the corner pretty cool to see rainer in the map advantage here he's been again as we mentioned a couple games ago he's historically had a very tough time against zesters recently as a few days ago in the group stages so definitely switching things up a little bit and zest not able to trick him too much in the last couple games at least i mean it's so cool to see the evolution here of raynor's play to see him opening up with overlord speed just scouting so methodically i mean this is the guy we talk about in his comfort zone it's movement it's zergling run buyers it's him attacking in two or three places while defending at home that's what raynor loves to play in starcraft but he's not being allowed to play that today or even in recent months in this matchup but especially against maru earlier and yet he's adapting and he's changing his style we're seeing raynor find ways to just scout his opponent's build and counter it with really just singular focus on timing attacks and that's what you need to be a champion to be a world champion you've got to be able to adapt and recreate and reinvent who you are as a player that's what i'm seeing here in this tournament from raynor and it's why he's got the lead in its grand finals and he's been so close before roddy mentioned it at the desk he was in the world finals the global finals there against dark who is currently the reigning world champion someone that he got revenge on in the playoffs as well so strength and strength from rainer as he takes the advantage in this final but we're far from done we're going to take a short break here when we return the grand finale of the intel extreme masters katowice 2021. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good day starcraft fans welcome back we are in the midst of the grand final here between rainer and zest with the italian stallion currently being up a map in the series with a 2-1 score pig are you enjoying the series so far hey it's good so far we're seeing a little bit of a mind game war here different styles coming out from both players in every single game and that's really what zerg vs protoss looks to be right now played at the highest levels it's all about trying to hide what you're doing from the opponent figure out what track they're going down and then push with the right timing to take advantage of it this is not a super back and forth high interaction style and that's specifically what zest wants to avoid he doesn't want to be doing a back and forth brawl with raynor he wants to be hitting him with sharp attacks and catching him off guard success in game one but it was rainer of course who won the next two maps so we've really got a series on our hands now we certainly do in our next back on around the corner we know that zest's bag of tricks is deep seemingly endless it's like santa's sack of pvc builds and let's get amongst it and see what he's got for us here in game four in the bottom right from dpg this is zest going right across that map on this map i feel like you could go for a uh 14 pylon and still block a 16 hatch but uh or or do a 13 pylon but i think the zest is like i will never allow you to take that hatchery you know radar might go for a 15 hat she might opt for that quickly we'll see how it goes up here in the top left in the red it is of course clash esports rainbow [Music] he was all smiles and rap and bopping around his chair but the last series against maru halfway through changed to business mode he's looking cool calculated and focused here oh he hit the drone there so he's gone pool first and now hiding the drone oh he sees the probe coming back he's going to hide it again still hasn't seen that drone so zest is looking for the hatchery right now and very well done raynor is just going to hide that here on the natural allows him to get the expansion on location so you could argue this is actually even better than just taking a hatchery first on the third because you get your queen out earlier you can get some zerglings and you can sometimes get a bit of an over response from the protoss if they're a little worried about that spawning pool timing and with the map being the nap that it is spawning pools first here do need to be respected in fact zest getting the cyber core before the nexus there which you don't often do in pvc but just as a safety precaution and also potentially aggression as well you can use that to your advantage you're getting the adept a little bit quicker but he's putting out a zealot he's afraid of those first few links as he sees them come out here from that from the pool first build with good reason and this all delays his second pile and then and of course his second gas still has not started just starts now the zealot will be out he should defend just fine this is just a great way to be annoying as raynor i expect him to pull those zerglings home and uh and not actually commit because he knows that adept is building his overlord sees this it's a matter of time oh he might try to run in and zest didn't have quite enough minerals there for that extra gateway as the links came arriving a few of them are nibbling on that pile on here and a couple of them break off into the main base just to be annoying oh this was really well done he gets four zerglings out and he weighs so much mining time he forces the zelda out the core before the nexus it's a such a big response that he's got and and really not that big of a commitment from raynor so is this a game ending advantage oh by no means not at all but it's just good little things starting to go rain or his way he now goes for the zergling speed behind it he can move a drone out to take his third base whenever he feels like it and uh zest's opening has been quite disrupted his twilight council only going down at about two minutes 50 it's about 20 25 seconds later than he'd normally be wanting to go for that and it's gonna be scattered too so the overall is gonna have a look and see that for the first time in the series zest is going to actually be opening twilight council instead of stargate here so something a little bit more old-school from the protoss but of course can turn to a lot of things i know that the adept printer build is very popular on this map you said zest had a big bag of tricks maynard well he's going to go back to it and yeah i really do expect the difference it could be dts as well but honestly just the fact that he's putting rain all through his paces i mean this is so hard to play against you want to play against something that you expect every game you want to be able to kind of preempt it can't counter it reynolds not having that you know he's he's constantly having to check what's going on and go okay a completely different game every single time he's got to do different reactions different strategies as ooh zest does go for the dark shrine here all right the old dt icon drop 2016 asked for its pvz back all right you know zest was the guy that was reluctant to let this build go when every protoss was starting to switch out of this into stargate builds i remember zest is the only one that still was like no my icons my prisms i love this don't take this away from me hey dude it's free damage their shields just regenerate i remember complaints about a lot of zerg players back when they were first figuring out how to deal with this and everyone was struggling with it they just the the micro ability of the uh the prism plus the the dts and then the archons it can be really powerful and because this is so rare these days it's such a like one in nine one in ten games if even that a lot of players are caught without having any real detection now you see reynolds starting at spore but with the response to glaive adapts you don't make a layer for a long time which means you're relying on that spore and potentially a few extra spores now he hasn't seen any adapts move out yet reynolds very intelligently making a spore crawler in each base keep in mind though he's still got to have units present to actually protect those spores because dark templar can kill them very quickly uh you are not wrong as the present comes out it starts to warp in the invisible man which marina now knows is the case here a couple of depths of well as well so he has to keep an eye on those drone lines as he tries to deal with the dts and these dt's 40 t's on their own can actually do quite a bit of damage here zest respecting the roach cap though as the rest of them come in for the natural to reinforce and rain or doesn't have too many overlords on the map so there's not many pickings for these dt's once they morph into arc once they're gonna have to try to go in for the worker lines so far good defense by raynor who powers up a whole bunch of drones starts under the queen is ling's also going to find the third base is all over this opening so far and he's going why not get the third and two depths yes please the feed raynor foundation gets a donation there from zest good micro in the wings as well against the zealot nearly gets it but not quite dude nice pullbacks from raynor so far roaches and queen in the main zester's gotta find something he's asked here he wants to find something two queens two roaches there manages to get a drone a nice pick off to start here for zest focusing on that roach but the transfuse the pullback the micro from rain or denying almost all damage the queen pulls back as well is he give him something rain or what the hell man how good is this kids micro this kid is leveling up right before our eyes here in the middle of a series it seems like he is microwaving like champion a lot of people out there are under the impression that xerx cannot micro and rayna showing them that they are silly yeah well maybe maybe not most zergs on that you know but this one this one's a special bree this guy is not just a zerg this is a damned rain or mate and look at this position it looks like he shut the aggression down you're not expecting someone to shut down this much aggression and then be up almost 20 workers like raynor dude his early game is so tight he just absolutely shut this down only losing one drone in a couple of zerglings this is insane well zest is bringing the rest of his units up forward here a big army supply lead for rainer though he's got a lot of roaches coming out here and i feel like this attack from zest is it's gonna get creeped but i don't know if it's gonna get anything more than that there are three immortals in the back don't be doubting those immortals two archons of war prison to micro zest has made magic happen with less roach speed kicks in but no ravages to break those force fields great force fields to start things off the third immortal is not here it's still walking across the map but these are models are putting the hurt on these roaches and queens that what prison getting mozilla warping zest microing his heart out he certainly is trying to juggle his heart out here rayner though not too far away from his reinforcements lots more zerg units coming out and he's pouncing on top of these immortals not enough room in the prison for everybody so he has to go for the juggle and that archons one shot as well and rayner pushes zest back well he might be going for the juggle but raynor is going for the jugular maynard he is going for the throat and he is going to rip it out there is just not enough units to hang on the roach speed gives him the mobility raynor is up a full base extra of workers zest third is barely mining he's sending two overseers around the bottom to start contaminating the robo as well raynaud in the midst of holding that is thinking about contaminating the enemy's robo he is two steps ahead pig whatever you're being paid you need a raise you're not getting paid enough you see those overseers starting to fly down in here for those contaminates like you mentioned or even just drop changelings keep an eye on what's happening in the protoss main possessed he's not probing in pure zest fashion he's just gonna start throwing units at the problem here and seeing if he can just kill the zerg but the answer is not really because raynor just keeps shooting up further and further in supply i mean raynor might think that he has some breathing room here and get caught with his army out of position but now he knows where zest is gets a cancel in the hatchery and brings everything back to the front line yeah right now zest is playing let's threaten let's threaten and let's hopefully catch you walking down a ram ramp split your army in half and that's where i can get a really good fight but as the roach and ravage account grows that becomes dicey and raynor's oversteers are hanging around they see nothing's building there's no forge the robo's not constructing so they're just hanging and waiting they're like zesk can you please transition so we could freeze your buildings and zest is just he's locked on zealot production right now he's trying to make this work desperately seeing what he can do with force fields and micro i mean this this would be incredible if zest can win with this army against a max out rain or it will be a comeback that we speak of out for eons maynard yeah i've seen zest beat a 60 army supply deficit at home with shield batteries and a prism and at-home warpings but across the map i don't know man that seems like a tall order here rainer sending some roaches into the problem here to try and get some uh some some we'll get the army pulled back and also get some probe damage done but what he does here is open up the map to just rush down that natural and take the high ground away from the protoss pulling back from the force fields as well raynor so patient is zerglings in the main wreaking havoc the roach ravage of rotating around finding little openings here there and everywhere that still is not mining on his third there's no pressure for rain or to really finish him here he's just maxed out so he figures why not let's take a trade if we can he's still carefully looking for the right engagement zest looking to split the army with the force fields reynold does get part of his army court some nice little traps there picks off a few roaches and ravages raynaud though stays locked at max supply he's got money in the bank and he's respecting zest as well he's like all right i'm not gonna miss a beat i'm still gonna get my hive i've still got my upgrades on the way i'm about to have plus two he's got we have two attack upgrades here against the protoss with no upgrades whatsoever i don't even think there's a forge here so the powerful army of rainer is getting more powerful the longer this game goes he's maxed out and it is just all up to zest to try and find an angle here it's so hard though with rayna absolutely everywhere yeah you're right about those upgrades maynard i've seen comebacks happen with plus two charles lot of model arkham but zero zero you can see that zest realizes for him right now he knows he's probably out of this match but he says okay how do i win if i can just threaten look for pick offs look for pick offs and then max out with one super powerful army find just the right engagement then there will be a chance but reynolds backstabbing him once again oh force fields he separates a lot of that pack away from the rest of their friends kills a lot of them there on the front line those zealots getting the mints on but there are so many more zerg units and a bunch of roaches making into the main base killing a ton of probes as well completely making the main of the protozoa ghost town rainer getting spine crawlers up back at home along with a lot of ravages in the back line and queens zest coming up a final here he's desperate he has to make this work but rainer will not let it happen the bile's even connecting with the archons there he's transfusing spine crawlers in the midst of this as well even drones get pulled into the battle raynor knows if he just holds on here he is good and even though a few of his workers do go down he holds flawless victory that was a masterclass about a shutdown a dtr controlled maynard fatality ringo wins oh man that was an incredible moment there because now we've got ourselves a situation where the non-korean is on match point at the intel extreme masters katowice and this just does not happen pig this is south korea's tournament they've been winning it time and time again year and year after year south korea is holding that trophy at the end of the day but rainer just beating maru and making it to the grand final is not enough for him he wants to completely turn this tournament on its head and be the first non-korean champion in the intellectual muscle kavitza in recent history and i mean you know we know that history changed in 2018 of course with cyril holding the world championship back then and this is the new world championship do we have sarah's rival raynor getting it done where cyril could not oh man it's looking like he's definitely on that road right now and like you said just making history making it to the grand finals as the first foreigner to do that where it is a global world champion that that's not enough you know he's like no dude i am here for the glory for the joy and it's also cool to see because raynor has clearly got a lot more serious he's not rapping as much he's not singing as much he's not bouncing and bopping but he's still playing excellently not a single bit of his mojo is disappearing we still feel that hectic energy in his play despite him being dead serious right now yeah it is all business here reyna laser focused on that last map can he close this out or is it going to be like the semis where the player against the ropes starts to get momentum again zest one more life remaining can he come back or is it over let's go in the bottom right here looking at chloe's way back in the series in this grand final it is dragon phoenix gamings zest [Music] unfortunately dragons in phoenix not in this game but there are other flying units that will do this guy though he's managed to take them out with some nice pushes so far in this series let's see if he can do it again on romantic side in the top left representing clash it's ray nor [Music] as he was saying uh match points yeah he was saying you know that lost to dark at blizzcon hurt it did hurt that uh that big match there where he got just clean sweeped but [Music] also early in his run absolutely insane yeah indeed uh once again as we see many times in this matchup the probe getting the block off there and rainer going for the other hatchery as a result but it's it's romanticized it's it's very uncommon the product's gonna actually block the third base they just kind of make things uncomfortable at the start what is the big difference though of having your base put at the third here is it just the crease spread being less comfortable in the natural kind of opens them up a little bit more to the depths potentially if the adept printer does happen and strangely enough haven't really seen too many adapts except apart from on submarine yeah i mean if it's parting it so we can sneakily cannon rush your third base in the in the shadows where your overlords don't see it just doing it to disrupt i mean it came about in that glaive meta you're absolutely right where people were saying hey the adapts are all about mobility i'm gonna force you to split your workers between these two bases that are really far apart it's hard for you to defend both at once but nowadays that are so many people are opening stargate it is a little surprising to me that no protest player has actually gone back the other way i think they've just kind of said you know what this just slows down the zerg's opening and stops them getting to the point they want to get to the drones have to walk all the way from the main to the third base that that takes a little bit of time uh you know it just it just means those workers aren't able to get down there as quickly and efficiently it just makes it a little slower to get the economy going and i don't really know the math on i think it's a very fine thing but for whatever reason protoss players are saying hey this just feels better for me right now and uh i remember you know it was when this was starting it was artosis who was saying dude protos players have a way higher win rate when they do this when are they going to figure this out and do it every single game well they figured it out i guess indeed stargate going down in pozesto of course not going to be the the printer that we know and love and overall speed once again for rainer as well really doesn't want to cut too many corners here against zest which makes a lot of sense yeah i mean he's he's playing you know like i said evolution of his play he's just playing so safe he wants to see what's happening and after map one i mean yeah yeah was that still at that respect didn't he surprise charge lots in your base and definitely caught him off guard i i like the adaptations for raynor and there is a lot of angles you can come in with air harass also with those overlord scouts as well though as zest opens up with a void ray a second gateway looks like his most favorite is to build orders i wouldn't mind him just doing the stock standard build that he's such a master at the void reason to the charge that archon may not i think as long as he's prepared for that lurker push either with disrupters or just having a lot more zealots and immortals ready for a flank i do think that lurker queen push is absolutely holdable i'm with you on that one it feels like zest hasn't really shown us a ton of those builds that he showed us last time he played rayner in the group stages that that style that you mentioned he's looking for the overlords right now trying to intercept he's got the one over at the third nexus this one to the main base i mean zest knows that it's very likely going to be there so the void ray is trying to intercept just misses it so the overall is going to get a little bit of a look but i mean really what's it going to actually start here yeah just going to kind of get in and confirm what is already known for the most part doesn't actually see the stargate location which is always a little bit of a bummer but uh second stargate now going down in the natural that's the one that's gonna be important to scout as it does look like a repeat of death aura so far oracle snagging two kills it's hull completely intact no real damage going down on it as extra void rays start to power on up and i i just love the efficiency of this build from zest i mean there's a reason he's had such success with it it's you get the super fast third you get the gases on the natural start your second stargate and then it's full steam ahead with void rays such a quick transition into charge off the back of this economy explosion it's such a streamlined build order and uh raynor does get the scout on the stargate there but taking a little bit of damage at home yeah good oracle from zest swinging on in getting three drones and most importantly surviving as it goes out to the dead space there to come back a little bit later with a bit more energy as rainer continues to drone up and obviously with stargate builds you can drone up quite a bit here as a zerg you don't need to cut anything you can just drone like a a lot more than you normally would against twilight council robert that kind of thing of course speaking of twilight councils you mentioned pig there is a transition here for zest it is the multiple void ray plus one charge build here so it is going to be a uh pretty powerful army here zest a very anti-queen ling army but not too bad against roach as well thanks to the high amount of void race it's not like one stargate boy ray like in game one this is going to be quite a few more laser beams here for the protoss indeed those void rays if they ever get a chance to just hold position or like focus on the roaches ignore the queens they evaporate dude they they disappear really damned fast and uh the robo on the way there for zest as well gonna give him the ability to add a few immortals in their group stage match there's a couple of immortals added to archons that allowed him to defend a big old queen roach nidus worm attack and i don't really think that raynor should opt for something like that on this map because it's just too easy to defend the front like the the natural and the third is so close to each other there's a ramp out front your base it's hard for zerg to push up there so i feel like uh raynor should definitely kind of play a little bit of a longer game on romantic side it's this fourth base of protoss which oh my god ah that is a very fast fourth base made out oh my god yeah it's just getting a little greedy here he's got minerals to burn he's gonna decide to spend that on the fourth face at the front door very quickly here like six and a half minutes not even as infestation pick goes down for rainer i think you might get that hive build or rather the longer gain that you wanted out of rainer here he is just starting to expand with if the fourth gets up batteries and cannons and stuff like it's going to be hard for him to break through it does look like that lurker build again from raynor so far but uh i think zest is going into this match with that in mind he's keeping up in model production he's going to move out for a little bit of zealot archon pressure with the void ray see if he can clear some creep maybe look for a cancel on the fourth base and seistorm coming in behind it here for zest as he gets out of the map now clearing up a bit of that creep getting himself a good path to be able to push through later of course which rainer is going to try and wrestle back a bit of a tightrope walk a bit of a tug of war between the two races here as dessert tries to spread creep and the protoss continues to try and deny it good scout with the overseer confirms the forge is spinning that the templar archives has also got its lights on as well so you know storm is on the way there's the hive beginning here for the zerg and zest just clears up some of the creep on that highway through the middle of the map and pulls back it's interesting to not see the void rays separate from the pack and maybe just you know try and take off extractors something like that something low hit point just to be a little bit more harassing zest accidentally left his oracle on in between harassment waves decided to run back in and kill one drone before he ran dry there but the oracle has been very useful it's it's really paid for itself it's still alive it's still gonna find repeat damage fleet beacon goes down once again for possess curious now he didn't use that last time in this exact same scenario he went for that and said oh no it's a big queen lurker push it ditched it he could go tempests right tempers can outrange lurker queen you could just pick away it from afar it is actually a viable option i don't think he can go carriers though i don't think he'll get carriers up in time to defeat us it feels like the autopilot though is to go carriers oh wow the link's separating an immortal from the pack hard and shield may save it yeah that's bait that's bait it's so hard to actually kill an immortal with zerglings man but uh you know good try doesn't really cost train or too much because he's going up to the hive and two carriers are starting up plus one air weapons as well so zest is gonna try to just buy time with the mid-game army and get up to carriers and if he can get enough of them don't get me wrong carriers are like so good against this ground focus zerg army it's just no matter whether or not he can get up to four or i think especially six carriers is like a real power point and carriers are not fantastic on their own but when they have the high templar and the archons underneath them with the the ground on the underneath them they can be super powerful a good little usage of contaminate there to get rid or not not get rid of but slow down plus to attack there for zest every single little bit matters seismic spine starts up as long with 13 workers for rainer that's a lot of lurkers coming out here for the zerg lots of spine crawlers going down as well raynor knows there's going to be zealot counter attacks trying to distract him little run by he's trying to pull his attention home but those lurkers are finished seismic spines as he said is halfway done and i think it's time for raynor to start pushing across this map and with plus two attack he's gonna be hitting pretty hard as well with those seismic fines he's got 24 roaches 13 queens and they are coming for a walk pig the oracle tag has given away that rainer is on the move but zest stares at this army and he's got to figure out what to do with it ah he's going to drop some storms here on the lurker soften them up a little bit but the queens are here to transfuse their babies again oh my gosh talk about the preparation raynor knew exactly that zest was going to come in the moment he moved across the map so those roaches are going to deflect that and then they're going to come across the map and join in with this pressure he's breaking those rocks down on the south zest's carry account is growing he's got two out soon to be four i believe and he's got a third star gate on the way he's just got to buy time and force those lurkers to stay back great side storm damage i mean those queens energy is actually getting pretty low already this sky storm's doing a lot maynard they even got a couple feedbacks off there on the queens as well so the queen's definitely getting softened up if they go down the longevity of this army does start to dwindle a little bit and it really is the the more convincing anti-air here oh good move from rainer though separating the roaches to pick off this nexus yeah that's the fifth base that out would be very nice the carry is coming 40. oh pig went full robot there i'm not sure he's coming through i'll take it away though pig while the robots get their their oil changed here as the deceptors come on top of this army here the zealots starting to make some purchase through those spine crawlers the workers are getting dwindled a little bit but still more at the back line the hydra is also picking off the interceptors intercept the count of zest pretty low at the moment but as long as the carriers live and as long as the zerg army is pushed back they will regenerate and they will come back again the immortals getting pretty low zest pushing back some of this rainer army the zealot harassment actually still finding more of those reinforcements zest actually starting to stabilize starting to hold here and pig are you back yes i believe so do i sound okay hold on you fantastic sorry about that you know sometimes i have a syntax error in my brain my voice back my voice box drivers break down when i'm this excited because that was a sick whole process i doubted him getting carriers up in time shame on me maynard he held off that first wave really well another great science storm there's a lot of hydras though the carrier counts good but that's enough hydras to kill the interceptors he needs to get sci storms on them oh pig.exe dogs actually has stopped responding again the high templar really want to storm in the middle of that hydro pack but rainer is not letting him have it he keeps seeing the high temperature he keeps moving back the footsies here from raina the jukes keeps keeping away from those storms meanwhile picking off intercept after the intercept that there's a decent storm but again a lot of hydra's still here for rainer continuing to collapse in intercept is coming in from every angle carriers coming in for the natural carriers coming from the north side the archon's also coming to assist as well no more storms possessed though the void rays coming in from the south side rainer's army completely surrounded and zest is going to take another map in the series and fight back here he will not go down without more of a fight no not at all then the zest hanging on and like i said i don't feel like reynold proved that that build order is in fact uh you know defunct or anything like that zest showed he made some adjustments there the super fast fourth base was brilliant he got that established so early and really excellent understanding of how to stall that push out get massive value side storms and those carriers came in big he made it to that carry account he certainly did and when the carriers get to that critical mass when they have their support of the high templar and the archons as we mentioned before to be able to actually push back the hydraulics to push back the lurkers giving them room to breathe that is when the carriers really shine and with raynor overextending losing too many resources in an army it was a sure thing for zest from there on out so it made a lot of sense to tap at that point zest getting another map on the board here potentially a sign of a momentum shift or is it just delaying the inevitable with rayner still on match point it's an interesting turning point in the series we've seen the void rays we talked about it so many times before the tournament started in the early days we haven't seen that much void ray protoss first sir have we but now here in the finals we've got a one game successful break of it with the lurk is one game adjustment successful hold where does reynold go if he finds himself in that same situation it is of course a 3-2 advantage for raynor so he's still got another life to spare but i mean is he out of tools does he go for the hydra bane queen bust it's it's a big question mark for me i think zest feels confident with this build order and i think he's going to keep doing it i think so i think it's his bread and butter i think it's his safe place it's his warm safety blanket and why not try it again here in game six and the north side here for dragon phoenix gaming fighting back can he do it again this is zest no it's robot boy again one more time i will introduce this player don't worry pig you will recover in the bottom left from clash the italian stallion he is rainer [Music] and hopefully uh my issues over here will sort themselves out but you know what it's just something where there is so much excitement it overloads the technology maynard the the electricity the internet it just can not keep up with the pace that these guys play i mean the italian stallion the protoss from korea who just smashes his way through all the opposition to get here and damned we have a series on our hands we're in game six now i'm i'm hoping dude i'm hoping for that game seven but whichever way this goes these players have shown incredible depth of play great strategic understanding and uh it's just been such a pleasure to watch this series evolve yeah it's been some really high level games and some honestly incredibly clutch moments from both players as well zest barely defending in the middle of the map there on romantic side so close like a hare's breath away from crumbling but just holding on and getting himself enough room to actually start to snowball in favor and also just really sick control and really great movements of the army from rainer on submarine it's been a good showing from both players so far i think i'm dropping out a little bit again may not but i'll try here you're good as we do keep going the uh probe there just doing the normal harassment and uh we'll see where that goes okay and people are going to probably think that this is australian internet but i promise you it's actually probably not australian internet it's australian hardware technology as we get back into the game here looks like zest is just going for the uh pretty regular stargate opening again with the overlord there from rainer he does see that the cyber core is not researching warp gate just yet and with delayed warp kate does generally mean that stargate is happening so it doesn't need to see the structure to know that it's happening here rainer once again with the hatchery block in the natural you've seen it time and time again shouldn't be too much of a problem for him though it hasn't really been a huge factor in this series it's just something that producers are used to doing at the moment and there's that oval evolution spur board speed again as we get pig back i believe i'm trying to work on it here as best i can may not i'll try and join you with the cheering from the stands but because my connection there is just a little bit twitchy i may have to drop out for a minute we'll keep you updated on that one and uh all right i do cut out one more time i'll disappear for two minutes or so and then i will come back but apologies to do this to everybody out there of course you know it's been uh sorry guys the troubles with the last year um but we're pushing on through it we're playing what has been a fantastic tournament so well it's been it's been such an awesome series and uh those void race coming on out here that's gonna be overlord speed versus void rays again it's a similar pattern and we really get to sink into this matchup of these sort of openings versing each other and and really get to see like who can who can take this on in a longer game who can take it to each other raynor is going to have a lot of scouting info again zest is going to get his third base up easily as he chooses to take that with the depth there's no zergling speed to contest it straight to the macro game maynard great indeed and reyna knows all about it as that link comes forward spots the third nexus and the pylon coming down as well always important to have that safety nest there for those depths the links do come and knock on that third nexus and rainer has actually done a whole lot of like big run buyers on that third nexus apart from submarine of course but that was a bit of a weird game where he had a massive opening rainer generally has been on the defensive and then started to go into that hydra lurker hive style that he really likes to try and uh yeah we saw it really effective on death warrior the plus two attack lurker attack timing with seismic spines catches that stasis water 10 from zest as well pushing back the oracle as has been the case for the last two series the semi and this grand final rainer's early game at pretty flawless yeah that's that's the story isn't it i mean ray norris just looks so damned powerful in this early game and getting himself into a good position time and again as the second stargate there coming on up void ray's shepherding away the overlords hunting them down where possible and uh you know what i think is that the second overlord kill so far oh we gotta check that here from mapu in a second on the units lost but uh just the first overlord going down speaking of which considering we are potentially in the last game of the day with rayner on match point i have to give a massive shout out to mapu do follow him on the twitterverse he has been our one and only observer for the entire nine-day broadcast of the intellectual master's cadavita 2021 this kid works so hard and he really deserves a lot of love miss you mapu hope to see you again someday and you're doing a great job as well yeah every single time i get to cast a tournament well there goes the robot again and i and i'm sure that that was a beautiful speech i'm crying it was beautiful i felt the energy behind it before pig.exe stopped responding we do have the double void rays coming out here from zest it's that build again tried and true we saw it multiple times the series we're seeing it the third time now the double star gate void rays charge lots plus one robo coming down as well as he switches into that ground army but off the back of having a pretty powerful void ray force or at least a safety void reforce he can still get stuff done with i found it very interesting in the series so far that there hasn't actually been a whole lot of void ray harassment i know that when the multiple void ray builds started to hit this matchup the void rays usually were used to go across the map to try and pick off queens to harass a little bit and to pick up extractors even which may seem like inconsequential sort of trivial benign damage but with the zerg needing all these gases to try and get something gas heavy like ravages uh potentially going into what's the higher tech stuff the double upgrades that is something that's still damaged so picking off extractors certainly can matter the extra gateway is coming down now force that's going to have a lot more production here with the templar archives coming down as he starts to round out his production here in the main with the overlords of rayner once again just not really missing any beats continuously scouting here with that overlord speed to have a good look at what's happening in zestville oracle coming in for a tag there on that third hatchery the queen's shepherd it back but it doesn't really uh get picked off there so there's the overseer there for rayner the edge of the main and we do have 14 roaches coming out for rainer and seeing all these gateways can be forgiven they're making a giant roach force and trying to get something done with it and rayner could potentially be very aggressive here with a big ball of roaches as the queen's dropped their injectors and he saturates that fourth doesn't necessarily mean we've got a macro game ahead of us here and we have been trying to build that pig are you here or is this the main art show it pig is not here this is the main art show guys apologies i will try to do my best i don't have my codecaster with me it's very scary and out here in the cold all right the overseer coming in over the main base the void race picking off those change links as the charge lots and the storm is halfway done here for zest but rainer has been making a lot of units for a long time big army supply lead for rainer queen's going through another map obviously wants to have as much time without zest knowing about it as possible the oracle getting shepherded back there by the queens as he drops the tag but reyna expertly trying to hide those roaches away from zest with respect the fact that there are a lot of the uh of the void ray still here which are very fantastic against the roaches the revelation is about to expire on those queens giving him a little bit more room with those roaches morphs 14 ravages and the queens are beginning their march across the map this tournament on the line right here for zest for rainer just now he sees those queens going through the middle there the oracle gets picked off so that won't be a part of the battle and here comes the rest of the army is zest actually going to be able to defend here he just has a huge army supply deficit he does have storm he does have void race he has shield batteries i believe at that fourth base actually no he doesn't that fourth place is a little bit open not a whole lot of static defense there pig is back pig take it away big power of the queens there the roach ravager queen those side storms are being so juicy but he's forced his way through choke points before in this tournament can he do it again those queen count it does get butchered there before the finals are still looking strong big biles on the ark on as well you can't really move the icon while it's warping there unless you move around with your units the piles are coming in the queens of the back line also assisting with the air army well lots of drones are dying across the map reyna's army just can't seem to be stopped i think this might be it dude the void rays they're all gonna form a they're all gonna fall the battery oh pig pig are gone again pig you're gone again it's gone pig.exe has stopped responding but i think that zest on actually is also having problems the programmers are going to sleep the project is done we got rainer re-rallying to try and push forward here against still 80 supply and advantage while zest has dealt with the first blow and yes he got some counter blow done with the zealots there is still so much serve on the dance floor and just not enough protoss zester mortals coming forward getting picked off one after another there by the army of rainer biles even connecting with the archons the void's even taking a little bit of damage from the ravager biles rainer all over zest zest left with nothing here as the void ray falls and that is history ladies and gentlemen rayna is going to be your intel extreme masters 2021 world champion [Music] oh my god huge moments there huge moment in history for the game for the esport for rainer of course this kid strike the strength made it to the world final so the global finals against

Channel: ESL Archives

Views: 433,663

Keywords: ESL, IEM, esports, gaming, competitive, esport, starcraft, sc2, sc, sc2 Highlights, sc2 Live, dreamhack, dh, masters, intel

Id: 7Ry_B3RZQ4M

Length: 75min 30sec (4530 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021