Byun "ByuN" Hyun Woo took down Jin Air Green Wings' Kim "sOs" Yoo Jin, 4-1, in the Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S finals to earn a seed into the World Championship Series Global Playoffs and Finals. ByuN was the first teamless player in professional StarCraft history to make the finals of a premier South Korean league and absolutely rocked the competitive world with his GSL victory.
Byun is the first player in the 15+ years of professional Korean Starcraft to make a final while being teamless pic.twitter.com/rXZ50AnVtx
- The Esports Writer (@FionnOnFire) September 2, 2016
When the GSL finals began, sOs was the bigger name with an experience edge in tournament finals (as a two-time world champion) and strong macro play. He was a fixture in the modern competitive StarCraft II community and scene, but the dark horse, ByuN, was ultimately too much for him. ByuN possessed better micro and pinpoint control and made the series a blowout. He dominated the set after his initial one game blunder and made it a simple and quick finals. ByuN routinely took down sOs' defenses despite a weaker composition because his ability to kite and out-micro his opponent was just worlds above.
In the matchup of Byun's Terran against sOs' Protoss, Protoss needed a high worker count to marshal the resources to create its area of effect units and clear the Terran's early forces. However, ByuN constantly marched into the heart of sOs' defense with straightforward armies of marines, marauders, vikings, and sneak-attack liberators. He took down sOs' economy with multiple-angled widow mine strikes and attacked the front with incredible marine control. Despite sOs' best efforts to counter the composition with colossi, void rays, and even dark templars, his disadvantage in unit control and micro led to his elimination.
The lone highlight for sOs was map one. He utilized his macro play and created a better army to take down ByuN's defenses. But, then it was all ByuN after that. ByuN dominated games two and three with early pressure to sOs' economy and better micro on timing pushes. Many of the fights came down to both mistakes in sOs' reactions and ByuN's sheer ability to control marines. The last two maps demanded that sOs alter his style, and he attempted to mitigate his shortcomings with a strategic change of pace. He used dark templars, early aggression, and even all-in timing attacks to steal a win, but could not.
With ByuN's victory, he can claim the title as the best player in the game with the greatest unit control of any professional in the scene. He may just be the face of a new generation of StarCraft II pro gamers.