In late 2005 the official World Cyber Games tried to expand a bit to the European market. They wanted to create regional tournaments, for example the Panamerican Championships, which Day[9] won. In Europe, the Samsung European Championship was hosted and featured a bunch of the best Europe had to offer – among them Androide. However, the fights between the Russian and Mondragon are a totally different story, so are the SEC.
Important was, that Germany only had one spot for the event. Theoretically, the best German in the WCG 2004 would get this spot. There was no ‘best German player’ in WCG 2004, both Mondragon and FiSheYe had to fight for it in a best of seven. Ironically, FiSheYe, Mondragon and Androide were considered as the favourites. Meaning, whoever would win in the German finals would also be most likely to face the Russian Terran in the overall finals. Since FiSheYe really did train for this event and Mondragon was still more than just active, it was on. More than just on. While fans only talked about such a derby before, now the fans got in huge fights, they cheered, they were thrilled and this time they were not disappointed – the best series between Germans was about to happen!
Set 1
The map for the first set was
Dahlia of Jungle. This map is not quite common, as most maps used for the ECG qualification. Since ECG was a spin-off of the original World Cyber Games ‘the most recent’ maps had to be played, not all of which reflected the current meta game and made up for potential imbalances. However, this map could be considered at least somewhat ok-ish. It had four spawning positions, a middle with two briges between the main space and the corners, an in-base mineral only expansion and ramps. The mineral expansion could be attacked from the outside rather easily, all that was needed was some air unit or floating building to gain vision. Thirds weren’t that hard to take, as the bridges to the middle made contains possible.
In the first set of the best of seven Mondragon spawned on the 3 o’clock position, whereas FiSheYe started on the 12. Both opened with a more or less common build order.
The brown Protoss went for a single gate, gas, a zealot and tried to expand early on in his mineral expansion. The orange Zerg on the other hand played pool first and expanded towards his corner expo in order to get a second gas, which is so helpful for his race. After a few more scouts and ling fake attacks the game speeded up a bit. Mondragon got rid of FiSh’s scouting probe and expanded a second time to his mineral only, while going for a lair. FiSheYe meanwhile added a single dragoon and and a star port. Furthermore, he was able to sneak out a single probe, which his opponent was unware of. After almost seven minutes of cold war the Protoss tried to feel how his opponent’s expansions would be like – a dragoon and four zealots faked an attack on Mondragon’s gas expansion, which was already well defended.
FiSheYe’s characteristic game came through – he used his hidden probe to build a pylon and three cannons right behind Mondragon’s expansion. This was a rather useless move, he had no vision of the minerals, at least not yet. Mondragon did take map control with his initial lurkers, burrowed them right in front of his enemy’s ramp and thusly tried to stall any incoming attack. Meanwhile, he already prepared a few mutalisks, which proceeded to succesfully harass and kill FiSheYe’s undefended natural only. The Protoss reacted quickly, snuck out another probe with the help of a drop ship, flew over to Mondragon’s mineral only and dropped a three zealots. Result: both traded expansions. That wasn’t all, after all, the best two Europeans fought: FiSheYe expanded in his corner and was able to defend it against the incoming mutalisks!
Obviously, Mondragon would not have been in the finals if he would be bad at scouting. He knew about FiSheYe’s expansion, had access and swiftly killed it. The brown Protoss now had to react and did so without thinking for too long: He simply ignored the four lurkers and run over them with a couple of Archons and Zealots, heading towards Mondragon’s gas expansion, to deal another heavy blow. But that wasn’t all, Mondragon took the 6 o’clock main base and its gas expansion in the bottom left corner – which FiSheYe tried to prevent with two dark templars. The Zerg, still busy to a) kill FiSheYe’s hidden expansion, b) watching the entire mini map and c) defending his own initial and most important bases, missed to fulfill all his tasks. He did well for a), the top right corner base was destroyed, his first gas expo was defended, but the 6 o’clock base died and moreover, FiSh was able to take the top left corner base – with another sneaky probe. This happened within another three or four minutes!
This basically is a glimpse of how the entire game went: Mondragon controlled the key areas of the map, while FiSheYe did his best to sneak around the Zerg’s vision – either to expand (most times successfully), or because he wanted to take down morphing hatcheries. This went so-so for FiSh, his attacks never really slowed his opponent down, but he was able to re-take not only his own corner position, but also sneak into 3 o’clocks mineral only. As soon as the first pylon was done, FiSheYe usually also warped in tons of cannons. After 15 minutes of back and forth play, the situation was a bit weird – FiSh’s main was empty, so was his natural, Mondragon was constantly trying to get his economy really running; quite hard to do if you get a few Zeals here and there or a drop. However, Mondragon did have enough of it, moved in with his main army and tried to just kill FiSh’s main – and FiSh thought he’d use this seemingly advantage to take down three of Mondragon’s Expos (6 o’clock main + its natural + 5 o’clock corner base).
The screens show it pretty well, FiSheYe could take down the six o’clock, but had no chances on the other two positions. Meanwhile his base was gone. To make it short, this was a deadly blow. Obviously, the Protoss from Berlin would not give up, Mondragon was about to run out of minerals in his main, did not have his natural only and was on low economy. However, he could re-inforce rather easily, while his opponent had no opportunity to invest in anything but cannons, pylons and gateways. FiSh could hang on and even get back on his feet thanks to brilliant multi tasking, but lost in the long run, as soon as Mondragon had enough Cracklings, Ultras and Defilers to end it.
This was a bit sad, as the first half of the game was way, way better than most could dare to dream, yet, the second half was basically Mondragon against 1a attacks of cheap zealots. It did take a while, but the key move was over, FiSh was out as soon as he gave up his main base.