An Analysis of ST.Life’s ZvP at IEM NY

IEM New York was arguably the most exciting tournament of the year due to Johan "NaNiwa" Lucchesi taking down many top Koreans and clinching 2nd place. Last weekend may be remembered for Naniwa’s confirmation that he is a top foreigner and one of the best Protoss players in the world, but what was ironically overshadowed was the champion, Lee "Life" Seung Hyun from the team StarTales. Life played an incredible tournament, with a 21-8 map score. Throughout the tournament, Life played mainly ZvZ and ZvP with 6-4 and 13-4 records respectively. The remainder of this article will analyze three of the aspects that make Life consistently dominant against Protoss.

What was most impressive was his ZvP, as expected with his phenomenal 76% win rate in the matchup. Life took out ROOT.puCK (2-0), KT Rolster’s Zest (4-2) and Liquid HerO (3-0) on his way to the finals where he finished Naniwa with a decisive 4-2, losing two maps to overconfidence (or manner hatcheries).

At IEM New York, Life played nothing but macro games, strangling his opponents with his superior economy and compositions. However, Life stayed true to his typical play style, playing aggressive and putting on massive pressure. Throughout all of his games, Life employs three strategies that synergize together beautifully.

1) Constant pressure with gas light compositions
2) Multi pronged attacks once the Protoss takes a 3rd base
3) Tech during every attack

Each of these tactics and strategies is part of a plan to tech to a gas heavy compositions with infestors while keeping the Protoss on as low of a tech as possible.

Unrelenting Pressure

The first aspect of Life’s strategy is what many consider his characterizing trait: he is always on the offensive. Life’s rise to fame came on the back of his ZvT and ZvZ, where both matchups rely heavily on lings. He was able to make unthinkable plays with his lings, crushing hellions with tiny armies of speedlings and showing off incredible splits against banelings.

Against Protoss, Life makes use of his famed “Life lings” and puts on relentless pressure. In game two against Naniwa, Life was able to keep Naniwa in his base the entire game and force 3 cancels on his 3rd due to endless zergling run bys. On top of that, Life managed to keep his lings alive so long they seemed immortal (which was very reminiscent of JulyZerg). Every run by, Life prioritized sniping sentries before killing probes or forcing cancels. This tactic either allowed the following run bys due to the lack of sentry energy or forced additional sentries and delayed the tech of the Protoss (in Naniwa’s case, he lacked sentry energy and eventually took too much damage from the endless stream of zerglings running past his wall).

However strong Life’s zergling control is, there is a point where zerglings are not enough to make cost efficient trades. Force fields in the early game and colossi in the mid game are too powerful to stay on pure zergling compositions. To deal with this, Life will either mix in a round of 8-15 roaches or hydralisks for his next attack, and typically rally lings behind this attack. My personal favorite is the hydra push with range, which occurs before colossi range can finish. Life will target 3-5 hydralisks on the single colossi, while trying to focus sentries with his lings. 

If this attack was to happen after thermal lance finished the hydralisk attack would be much weaker, but before this critical moment, hydralisks and colossi have the same range. The strength of the attack can be seen in game three of the first best of three against Zest, where Zests’ army was crushed by this tactic.

 

Attack Everywhere

In games where Life is unable to deal crippling damage before his Protoss opponent establishes a third base, Life changes his strategy and instead of going for focused attacks at the natural, begins to attack on many fronts. There is usually a small window after the Protoss establishes his third base where he has a powerful enough army to defend any single attack the Zerg can muster on one front. The Protoss army typically has either a small number of colossi or voidrays that are protected by sentries and forcefields, but this type of army loses its strength in fights of smaller army supplies. Life takes advantage of this fact by attacking on multiple fronts, thereby splitting up the Protoss army, weakening its overall strength and stressing his opponents multitasking abilities.

One of the most used moves Life used was the burrowed roach counter attack. In game one against Naniwa, Life was far behind in tech and economy and needed to buy time to get his swarmhosts and infestors out. He split up his army of roaches (with burrow) and began to attack Naniwa at both his natural and third. Because of Naniwa’s reliance on cannons for detection, he was forced to stay on his side of the map and defend. On top of that, any burrowed roaches that made it past the front of the natural or behind the third base were out of range of cannon detection. This choice in strategy picked Naniwa’s multitasking abilities apart and bought Life enough time to finish his tech and have an army that could crush Naniwa.

On top of any time bought and the potential for damage, this tactic also allows Life to have near perfect scouting. Even if units do not penetrate the main, the Protoss is forced to show what tech choices he is making or he risks taking catastrophic damage to this pressure. There is rarely a game where an opponent surprises Life (see game 4 and 6 against Naniwa where pressure indirectly scouted the dark shrine).

Infestors are a Good Unit

Arguably the most important theme in Life’s play last weekend was his decision to tech behind every attack. After each pressure move, Life had bought enough time to either make a round of higher tech units or finish a critical tech building. The most beautiful aspect of this is that the compositions he uses to pressure are always mineral heavy, leaving most of his gas available for tech. This allows Life to reach gas heavy compositions with ease that other Zergs struggle to obtain.

Earlier we discussed how Life will pressure with roaches or hydralisks, but only rally lings behind them. The brilliance in this subtle decision is now much more obvious: it allows Life to have extra gas to tech! This is only possible because of his impeccable army control (especially with zerglings), which has been noted by other pro gamers when they try to replicate his style (in the season of GSL where Life beat IM.MVP, many Zergs complained about how difficult Life’s style was to emulate).

Life’s choice in tech is another defining aspect of his play. He tends to favor infestors instead of roach-hydra-viper or muta-corruptor compositions. After the infestor nerf to fungal and infested terrans, pro gamers have been avoiding infestor tech. It is difficult in reaching the high number of infestors needed to stabilize and stay safe, but Life’s style allows him to squeeze out the extra gas to reach the critical number of infestors. Once Life has infestor tech, the game tends to lean in his favor as lings become viable again. Life can attack with a ling infestor (with either corruptors or hydras to support) and retreat with his infestors every fight. He manages to make very mineral heavy trades, allowing further tech to hive or increased numbers of tech units. Eventually, the Protoss is starved out and Life breaks him or forces an all in.

The End Result

In conclusion, Life’s control and decision making allows him to play a unique style of ZvP that is incredibly consistent. In each of his games at IEM New York, Life played his own aggressive take of macro ZvP that inevitably wore each of his opponents down. The most important aspect of his play style was the consistency that it provided him. The constant pressure provided not only a way to force errors out of his opponent, but also almost perfect scouting. Even if his opponent defended perfectly, Life had been teching behind his attack, preparing for the next one. All of these traits allow Life to show his skill and consistently win against players of all caliber and play style. With Life qualifying for the next season of premier league in WCS Korea, which is looking to be quite Protoss heavy, we’ll see how dominant he truly is.