"How cool would it be to hear Tastless shouting “boom shakalaka” when one of Jinro’s Thors catches fire, barrels through MC’s base destroying everything in its path and caps off the rampage with a tomahawk jam on top of the nexus?"

The next season of the GSL starts next week and there’s already a lot to be excited about. Season two of the Code S/Code A format will feature new maps that are a lot bigger than the typical ladder maps we’ve been playing on for the last six months. Last week’s GSTL competed on these maps with tremendous success. They helped promote longer macro style games with each player often times ending up on four or more bases. If you missed the tournament, it really is worth buying the $4.99 season pass, even if just to watch the VODs of the finals. You can find that much money in your couch cushions, go digging around and buy those VODs... now!

Game eight took place on Terminus RE, one of the new maps, and it’s already been crowned by some as “The greatest StarCraft II game ever played” - one of the cool things about SC2 being so new is that a claim like this isn’t just ridiculous hyperbole. Seriously, watch that game and then try to find me a better one. The map was split down the middle, both players claimed, lost, and reclaimed fourth, fifth, even sixth expansions multiple times. Squirtle made two - yes TWO! - motherships over the course of the match, and some of the battles were so massive that the observer couldn’t even fit them on one screen. It felt like we were watching a war being waged between two super powers. Can you believe the winning super power isn’t even in Code S next season?

The new maps probably weren’t the only reason that the GSTL games were so awesome, but they were definitely a major factor. StarCraft II is still really young and will continue to evolve as the maps change and as the next expansions are released. Consider this: the NBA was founded in 1946, but the shot clock wasn’t added until 1954 and the three-point line wasn’t added until 1979. That means it took 33 years for two of the most integral rules of the game to even exist. I’m sure that some great games were played before the three-point line and before the shot clock but they were undoubtedly a lot different than the way the game is played today. Just like how there were a few great matches played on Steppes of War (TLO vs Huk in the King of the Beta tournament), but those matches looked more like a bazooka fight in an elevator than the epic conflicts we can have on maps like Terminus.

Maybe these bigger maps are SC2’s shot clock, but rather than speeding up the game, they’ll help to slow it down a bit. They’ll promote macro styles and make one base all-ins a little more difficult. The next expansion might be the three-point line: while not as essential as the shot clock, it’ll open up possibilities that we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Then the final expansion will be like when the NBA finally evolves to be the like the classic arcade/Nintendo game NBA Jam, with players jumping 45 feet in the air, doing triple somersaults on the way to insane dunks and literally catching on fire. How cool would it be to hear Tastless shouting “boom shakalaka” when one of Jinro’s Thors catches fire, barrels through MC’s base destroying everything in its path and caps off the rampage with a tomahawk jam on top of the nexus? I can see the “fire is OP” posts already.

Regardless of what comes next, these new maps are a welcome change to the tournament scene in SC2. In basketball, the shot clock prevents a team from holding the ball for ten minutes and running out the clock as soon as they have a lead. In SC2, bigger maps make it more likely for us to get to the mid-late game where players are on multiple bases and won’t lose to one surprise medivac drop that snipes a couple key structures. In the Squirtle-Mvp game (again, that’s game eight of the GSTL finals... go watch it!), Mvp did exactly that: he dropped in and blew up Squirtle’s templar archives and dark shrine. It was a solid blow for sure, but it wasn’t game ending. Just like when Squirtle was able to snipe Mvp’s engineering bay before the infantry weapons upgrade finished - it put Mvp behind and may have contributed to his eventual demise, but it didn’t end the game immediately. It’s this back and forth with players taking the lead then falling behind that results in epic games. How can you not get excited when a player makes multiple motherships as a legitimate strategic decision and not just a gimmick to get cheers at MLG? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have the next “greatest StarCraft II game ever played” next season in the GSL. I’ll even be paying closer attention to Code A this time around.

Links:
Squirtle-Mvp GSTL Final: http://www.gomtv.net/2011gstl1/vod/60831
NBA Jam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Jam
TLO vs Huk King of the Beta: http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3898881/