Gaming
esports
3-Hour StarCraft Match: The Best or Worst Ever?
Red Bull eSports breaks down the longest pro StarCraft match in history between FireCake and MaNa.
The Longest SC2 Match in History
© [unknown]
Was the three-hour Challenger League match played on Tuesday between Sébastien "FireCake" Lebbe and Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz one of the greatest games ever, or one of the absolute worst? It’s hard to say: the painstaking, risk-averse play on display during this epic-length Zerg vs. Protoss is definitely excruciating, but it’s also fascinating to see how two players’ build decisions and matchups end up basically breaking StarCraft 2.
A Marathon Match
This is the StarCraft 2 equivalent of that Isner - Mahut endurance match at Wimbledon three years ago, where two mid-ranked tennis players fought each other to a standstill for over eleven hours of play (and inspired one of the most hilarious sports writing meltdowns in history).
If you want to watch the entire thing (maybe pack a meal before your do), check out the video below. It features about 20 minutes or so of a normal game, followed by a slow descent into madness that features caster-raps, improv fiction, and StarCraft numerology.
The Breakdown
So what happened here? Well, this is actually a confluence of two tendencies that Protoss and Zerg both have. The Zerg Swarm Host, in large enough numbers, can spawn so many free Locusts that they become a huge factor in terms of both map control and hit points. When combined with Infestors’ Marines, the Zerg can basically fight battle after battle for free for as long as their position holds out. We saw something similar to this between Michael “Goswser” Dobler and Pedro "LucifroN" Moreno Durán at Assembly, as well. Goswser used his free units to essentially grind LucifroN’s positions down to dust.
The other thing in play in this three-hour game is a longstanding tendency for Protoss late-game compositions to become too expensive to risk, too fragile to break through on the attack, and too strong to attack directly. In his desperation to find an advantage, MaNa even invested heavily in Tempests to try and pick off Zerg positions from a safe distance. Unfortunately, they weren’t quite the tool for the job.
So both players simply skirmished along the border of a divided Akilon Wastes map, the Zerg player unwilling to stake everything on an attack into Templars and Void Rays supported by a Mothership, and the Protoss player effectively bankrupt on gas, trying to whittle his way into the Zerg position.
Balance of the Swarm
While it’s a fascinating game from the perspective of what happens when you get odd asymmetries like this, it’s worth asking whether this match says anything about current balance. We’ve seen this happen a few times with Zerg Heart of the Swarm units, and it’s also striking that, when the moment of truth arrived for MaNa, the Tempests were basically ineffective.
This is a strange game, and it would be dangerous to read too much into it, but it does seem to highlight some issues with HotS units. It will be interesting to see whether this prompts some rethinking of the Tempest’s value.
For more news, follow Red Bull eSports on Twitter.
