Avi-Love comes into this looking a bit content. He has had his best BSL performance to date, and not just that – he’s probably had the best tournament performance of his entire brood war career, regardless of how this series ends up. While he lost his semifinal against Terror, he got this far having defeated players like Koget, Crossy and Oya, three players that were certainly considered favorites against him. Many of us thought Avi would have a fairly hard time in the Ro24, as he was in a group with Crossy and Stryker, and because Avi is not confident in his Zerg vs Zerg. However, eliminating both those two players, he advanced in second place. The Teamliquid prediction crew then thought he would get fourth place in his group containing Gorynich, Oya and Michael – but Avi ended up winning the group.

Then he faced Koget in the Ro8. I have been told that this is a player Avi tends to struggle against, and indeed, most of us thought his run would end there. However, Avi brought his top game, hitting home runs with his mind games, and ended up edging out a 3-1 win – at times looking really impressive.
Beating Koget and reaching the Ro4, he had already secured his best BSL score to date. And facing Terror, once again, Avi was considered the underdog. Sadly (for Avi and all his fans – I guess many of our Spanish speaking friends are happy about it), the Cindarella story ended there – the Peruvian terran hit just the right timings with his attacks, and ended up dispatching our lovely Dane.

Now, we get a rematch from before – Avi-Love against Oya. These players faced off in the group stage already, and Avi won 2-1, looking really good doing it. I think he’s going to impress here, too. Avi-Love hasn’t gotten to play all that much ZvP in the BSL. In the past three seasons, he’s 3-2 in ZvP matches, 7-7 in ZvP games. But that statistic fails to give Avi the credit he deserves: Those five matches are twice against Dewalt (1-1 in matches), once against TT1 (lost 2-3), once against Oya (won 2-1) and once against Laabuela (won 1-0). Basically, he’s broken even against three of the best PvZ players in the scene.

This is a matchup that really plays to Avi’s strengths: His combination of deadly allins with really solid macro and excellent droning, and strong understanding of and willingness to exploit timing windows. Honestly – while I don’t have access to the training regiments of the different players, I’m fairly certain Avi-Love plays less than most of the other top players, and his mechanics are a bit worse compared to that same group. However, he is a real connoisseur of the game, he plays close attention to the Korean scene, strategies and build orders that evolve there, and he has been around forever. He makes intelligent decisions and follows coherent plans and he is comfortable playing a number of different styles of play. Compared to some of the other top Zerg players in the scene, his mutalisk micro is not quite on the same level. But while that is essential for the Zerg vs Zerg and Zerg vs Terran matchups, it’s less significant in Zerg vs Protoss. Here, he’s truly a force to be reckoned with.

Looking at the first series between Oya and Avi, we saw Avi lose one game where he lost four drones against the initial zealot from a single gateway opening from Oya. Even then, he turned it into a real game, despite having an absolutely massive disadvantage from the very beginning. He won one game off a speedling followed by a lurker allin. And he won one game with really solid, impressive macro, with excellent big army movement and a great late game. He looked somewhat vulnerable against some of Oya’s harassment, but his macro and approach towards the games was top notch – and indeed, it was sufficient to take the series.

As a Protoss, there’s something really intimidating about playing zergs that both know how to macro and how to allin. If a Zerg player denies your scouting, then there’s a period where you are forced to make some guesses as to how to approach the game – and Zerg can choose to exploit this to turn the game into a bit of a rock paper scissor experience: Simplifying it a bit, you can force Protoss to try to counter every allin (but then he’s behind against mass drone), or to skip cannons either in his main or in his choke (loses against different allins – but is good vs mass drone). The mind games involved in just this decision making has been one of Avi’s primary strengths so far this BSL – and I see no reason why that streak would end here.

Still – he is up against a top notch player. If one is to make a list over the top 5 foreign players of the past year, Oya is a very strong candidate for one of those spots. Avi – despite his strong showing this season – would not be considered. However, even acknowledging that, I’m going to give Avi a bit of an edge here, because I think Oya is a good match for him. Oya benefits from being the aggressive player, he’s supposed to be the guy who has excellent mechanics but still chooses to allin. Against Avi, he’s on the back foot psychologically. Avi won their previous series, and he did so very convincingly.

Final prediction: Avi-Love 3:2 OyA!

OyA rose to the top of the food chain in a remarkably short timeframe – he went from a BSL7 Gosuleague winner to top four finishes in RCG2020 and BSL10 Proleague. He’s improved tremendously and he has the drive to top his previous BSL achievement. After he got eliminated by Polish powerhouse Bonyth, he’s fixed on the bronze and definitely poised to get it.

OyA’s road to the third place match was pretty hard-fought – he progressed second from his Ro16 group after falling 1-2 to Avi-Love, won a ridiculously back-and-forth 3-2 against trutaCz before being finally swept away by Bonyth. Now he has to face Avi-Love again and take revenge for his loss in the Ro16, but that certainly won’t be easy.

The Swedish Protoss player has one of the most entertaining and distinctive PvZ styles in the foreign scene. He really likes to mix it up, coming up with a variety of builds, but if there is one defining feature of his play, it’s aggression. He’s usually in the face of his Zerg opponent, whether he opts for putting pylons around to mess with the build order, the oh-so-trendy zealot pressure, his signature dragoon-based pushes or more standard zealot/dragoon/templar midgame deathball pushes. OyA’s peculiar propensity to skip vital tech like corsairs or delay observers considerably to accommodate for his hard-hitters has baffled players and observers alike – but it definitely makes for really exciting games and so far has worked well for him.

Avi-Love’s probably not the best type of player to mess around with like that, though. A veteran of the foreign scene, he’s one of the most adaptive Zergs out there – he chooses his openers in a best-of series carefully, he scouts diligently and always, always has the counterbuild in mind. He has really clever map movement and feels comfortable with a slower, methodical macro style. What’s most important is that he’ll definitely try to adapt for (read: abuse) every peculiarity in OyA’s style, so things might become problematic.

They already did, in fact, in the Ro16. Avi-Love went for a really early lair after a 9pool with speed and punished OyA’s lack of any scouting with a game-ending zergling/lurker bust in their first game. OyA managed to deal catastrophic early damage in game 2, but in game 3, his faux-pressure build didn’t deter Avi-Love from comfortably setting up his preferred macro, where he excels – and he proceeded to win with a metric crapton of Zerg unleashed upon his Protoss opponent.

OyA will have to be considerably more careful this time around. He has the micro to keep zealots and probes alive to scout, but both trutaCz and Avi-Love have opted for early spawning pools to close most scouting opportunities and force OyA into the difficult decision of changing his game plan or playing in the dark. He’ll certainly be unable to resist the temptation of skipping stargate, but he’ll probably want to mix these builds up and go for a more classical approach, relying on his superb micro and multitasking to deny Zerg opportunities to grow. Because of both players’ inclination to go for mind games, he might try to intellectualize even further by deliberately showing misleading signs to Avi, who arguably values information more than his drones.

I feel that OyA has the fundamentals to overpower Avi in a more standard game. After his games with trutaCz, he stated that he likes to go for the dragoon-based pushes because they’re unfamiliar to most of the foreign scene and tend to produce wrong responses, but this time around his opponent is a real build order aficionado. OyA needs to rely more on his basic skill set with a big emphasis on scouting lest he fall victim to the myriad of specialty plays Avi-Love has in his arsenal. Mutalisk-based plays are especially menacing in this context as OyA’s typical reliance on ground-based army, sheer numbers and great storm usage might not be enough against a well-prepared opponent.

Concerning maps, OyA has the right to veto and pick first and I strongly believe he will want to do so to keep as much control over the course of the series as possible. I honestly don’t want to engage in any predictions about the maps since both players are really into detailed preparation and layers upon layers of mind games; let me just voice a personal preference for Gold Rush to not be vetoed for this exact reason.

In fact, all kinds of predictions about this matchup are horribly difficult too. OyA has the advantage in micro and multitasking and is probably on par macro-wise, but his opponent has a wealth of experience to draw upon besides his own pretty solid fundamentals. The outcome will be heavily influenced by the successes and failures of both players’ attempts at outsmarting each other and trying to go into their heads myself will be simply embarrassing. I’ll go for OyA based on the fact that while Avi’s resolve doesn’t seem to have faltered one bit over the course of the past few years, the Swedish Protoss is arguably hungrier.

Final prediction: OyA 3:2 Avi-Love!

Bombastic StarLeague? Or Bonyth StarLeague? Bonyth’s Surely Lovingit? Bonyth Seems Limitless? Bonyth Seldom Loses? Bonyth SLaughters everyone?

I am sure others can do a better job making alternative explanations to the BSL acronym. The point that I am trying to make is that Bonyth has been tearing up the BSL to the point where the two are becoming synonymous. If the BSL is your sole window to the foreign scene, you might be left with the impression that Bonyth never loses. This is his fourth consecutive final, and I’m confident it is going to be his fourth consecutive win.

Since season 5 – which is when the BSL adopted its current format, Bonyth skipped the final once, in season 7. That season, he got third place. Season 5 and 6 he was the runner up. Season 8, 9, 10 he won. This is season 11, and I see no convincing arguments for why this time is going to be any different from the previous three. In fact, in a way – and this is by no means intended as a slight towards Terror, whose play has been fantastic as of late – I think the final is Bonyth’s easiest hurdle to clear on his route to the championship.

Looking at Bonyth’s path to the final, it wasn’t a given that he would make it this time around.
The group stage was not easy for him. He lost the first round against fellow BSL veteran Trutacz, and he lost the first game of the elimination match against Hawk. There was a very real chance that his season 11 run would end in the group stage – being matched with both Trutacz and Hawk was as bad as it gets for him. To the degree Bonyth even has an Achilles heel, it’s been his PvZ.

However, Bonyth prevailed. Then, in the ro8, he was matched against Dewalt. Again – if your sole window to the foreign scene is the BSL, you wouldn’t put Dewalt and Bonyth on the same level. Dewalt hasn’t had much success in this particular tournament. However, looking at tournaments and general performance outside the BSL, I’d argue Dewalt has been playing at a level at least matching Bonyth’s. I thought there was a very good chance that Dewalt was going to take this series – he’s been consistently great for a long period of time.

However, Bonyth prevailed – and while the Ro16 group stage was a shaky affair, his series against Dewalt was surprisingly one-sided. Bonyth secured a quick 3-0 win, even winning a game where he had a significant build order disadvantage. The semi-final was much the same – a solid 3-0 trouncing of an Oya fighting to escape his ‘third best foreign protoss’ status, where Bonyth’s superior control proved sufficient to secure a victory.

Going into the finals, Bonyth is now going to play a PvT. And in the BSL, that is synonymous with Bonyth winning. Looking at his by-matchup statistics, Bonyth’s PvZ is at 18-6 in series (53-28 in single games). This is strong – of course – he still has the best BSL PvZ record out of any protoss player – but it also shows that sometimes, Bonyth loses. His PvP has looked nigh unbeatable, 11-1 in series and 28-5 single games.

Despite his Protoss vs Protoss being fantastic, Protoss vs Terran is where he looks the strongest. 11-0 in series, 22-2 in single games. Both single game losses happened more than two years ago: He defeated Koget 3-1 in the BSL5 semifinal, and he defeated Dandy 3-1 in the BSL6 Ro8. Aside from that, every single PvT Bonyth has played in the BSL has been a sweep – and mostly all the games are against top opposition. In the BSL, he is 3-0 (7-1) vs Dandy. He’s 4-0 (8-1) vs Koget. He’s 1-0 (2-0) vs Terror.

Looking at other tournaments, Dandy having defeated him twice in recent memory adds a bit of nuance to the equation. First Dandy beat him in the RCG2020. Then Dandy followed it up with another 3-2 victory in the ThinkQuick Best of the Best tournament. It almost looked like finally, his PvT has been figured out, and maybe some other Terran players can follow suit. However, revisiting the Best of the Best tournament, Bonyth and Terror faced off last weekend. Bonyth dominantly won 5-0 – and this against a Terror who just the week before defeated Dewalt 5-0. Now, the latter score was certainly an anomaly. But Bonyth beating Terror 5-0 really was not.

Bonyth’s Protoss vs Terran has been the highly predictable sort. I imagine a good 90% of the games of his I’ve seen have opened in a similar fashion: Bonyth opens with some zealot harassment, normally from a gateway in his main base, occasionally one that is proxied. Terran takes some damage from this – more than they are used to taking. (This phenomenon is known as the Bonyth Zealot, where they, for whatever reason, strike a bit more frequently and deal a bit more damage than other zealots do.) Then Bonyth follows up with goons, and Terran takes even more damage, sometimes outright dying. Then Bonyth follows up with a quick reaver (occasionally proxied, normally not), and Terran tends to take so much damage that they are really far behind. If Terran is still alive at this point (normally they are not), Bonyth goes into fast carrier.

This is the one point where Bonyth occasionally looks vulnerable. IF the Terran player manages to hold off the zealot, goon and reaver harassment with minimal losses, and they then follow up with a strong timing that hits before Bonyth’s third and fourth carriers emerge, he can be in trouble. Note – Bonyth usually pulls through even when he looks like he won’t, on the back of fantastic unit control and decision making (in terms of what armies to engage with his own armies) – but I can certainly picture that a couple of games will look dicey. Perhaps Terror manages to snatch a win or two. But Bonyth actually losing a Bo7 finals against a foreign Terran player would be one of the biggest brood war related upsets I can recall: best of one or best of three series can go either way, even if there’s significant skill difference between the players. But a best of seven?

Final Prediction: Bonyth 4 : 1 TerrOr!

TerrOr has been a staple in the foreign StarCraft scene for a really long time and yet this is just his second BSL finals since the tournament became international – and last time was way back in early 2018. His form has fluctuated quite a bit over the course of the past three years, but he’s back, he’s stepped up his game and he’s obviously hungry for that BSL title.

In the Ro24, TerrOr comfortably advanced first after taking down Ultra and BoA. He made it into the elimination stage after a really convincing display in the Ro16 where he had to face his compatriot Dandy and veteran kogeT, showing great fortitude and a balanced, adaptive style. He proceeded to eliminate up-and-comer BoA in a really tense five-game series in the Ro8 and then overcame veteran Danish Zerg Avi-Love with admirable confidence to reach the finals. The Peruvian Terran showcased his great ability to prepare for specific opponents along the way and displayed proficiency in every matchup, although he arguably did best in mirrors. Still, he proved resilient enough in the face of BoA’s aggressive PvT style.

But now… Now he’s got his work cut out as he’s about to face Bonyth.

Bonyth’s not just your run-of-the-mill aggressive PvT player. He’s not your run-of-the-mill player any way you look at it, actually, as he’s the defending BSL champion… for a third time in a row. Even if his style is open for study and known to basically everyone in the foreign scene, his execution is so flawless that it doesn’t really matter.

And the results speak for it. The only foreign Terran player that has managed to beat Bonyth in a best-of-five series recently is Dandy (even twice, once in the RCG2020 and once in the BBT) and that’s it. TerrOr’s wins against the Polish virtuoso are few and far between, most of them in best-of-one/best-of-three series and none of them are in individual leagues like the BSL, RCG or BBT. Speaking of the BBT, most recently Bonyth dispatched TerrOr with a 5-0 score – and while TerrOr has more time to prepare for the BSL finals than he had for the BBT (he had just faced Avi-Love a day or two before that match), this speaks volumes about the odds the Peruvian Terran has stacked against him.

Even so, Bonyth is certainly not unbeatable. As mentioned above, his style is widely known and can be specifically prepared against. He heavily relies on his immaculate micro, split-second reads and predatory instincts that can easily compensate for any disadvantages after a single crucial engagement. But if he’s denied opportunities to do damage with his trademark abusive plays, a solid timing push with carefully picked engagements is just as dangerous as against any other Protoss player.

TerrOr will certainly have to take this into account. Any type of greedy play will very likely be promptly scouted and punished. Any type of building or army malpositioning will be abused. I expect to see robust openers, emphasis on scouting and denying scouting and really, really tight timing pushes with a drop play or two sprinkled in between. TerrOr likes to throw a funny two-factory build in the mix, but against a micro-based player like Bonyth this feels somewhat risky. Robustness is the name of the game for the Peruvian player.

I’m really curious to see how the maps go. Since this is a best-of-seven, all the maps in the pool have to be prepped for. I feel that the flat maps like Demonio Azul and Sylphid are especially conducive to drop play, whereas TerrOr’s fighting ground Gold Rush will make for interesting wars of mobility around the outer circle. There are plenty of passages on all the maps in the pool to try and sneak vultures around; there are plenty of cliffs to abuse carriers from. There are series of elevations on maps like Polypoid and Eclipse that can make for scary pushes. All the features on the map can play to both players’ strengths and I’m excited to see what they have prepared.

With all that being said, I feel like the most important things for TerrOr are tactics, vigilance and crisis management. If he doesn’t take damage from zealots or reavers, he can prepare a real hard-hitter. If he executes said push flawlessly, pick a favourable engagement or preferably force one on Bonyth, he can be really dangerous. He can enter late game on great terms if he doesn’t cede control over the strategic initiative. That’s if scouts and build order mindgames go his way – there is always an element of luck involved.

Notice all the ifs? That’s the thing with Bonyth and the reason he’s at the very top. You need a lot of things to go your way – and smoothly – to have a fighting chance against him; a scrappy game means he’ll abuse his micro with hero-type units like reavers or carriers and more often than not win from a disadvantaged position. And, quite honestly, I don’t see TerrOr pulling all those ifs in four games. He’s got the mechanical chops, the builds, he knows the ins and outs, he has analyzed Bonyth’s strengths and weaknesses time and again over the years of experience he has, yet the burden of doing *everything* perfectly to win in a best-of-seven is just too great. Mind you, I don’t expect a walkover. I expect exciting and hard-fought games… and a fourth title for Bonyth.

Final Prediction: Bonyth 4 : 1 TerrOr!