@Frank The Tank i think it's highly unlikely someone could win random. Maybe a new player who random the whole time but for an existing pro it would be hard. Protoss and terran have similar enough mechanics that maybe won't be as hard but zerg is just too different
Getting 3rd place on the first try is good enough, a few things going differently vs soma would have gotten him to the finals and maybe a win, every other match was pretty easy for him.
You'd think that Artosis' day job is as a streamer or caster, but you'd be wrong. His actual day job is Protoss salt miner, and he sure mines a lot of salt on the ladder.
How many stars had to align for FlaSh to get all three different races, and then win a clean 3-0 over one of the best Terrans in the world? It's just...amazing. I always appreciate videos like these that help cement and preserve FlaSh's greatness and legacy in SC:BW.
6:30 one thing people ALWAYS forget is that flash, when he was upcoming and still trying to overcome jaedong (which he eventually does handily), was KNOWN as a cheesy player. He'd resort to cheeses very often, so playing random is a major advantage when you're not going to automatically going to the standard every game. Not trying to get any credit away from him, but it's good to remind people that flash is not scared to cheese, he did it often when he was very young.
If someone can do it, it's Flash. Rain (another gaming genius) disappeared for a bunch of years, then came back and got to ASL finals pretty much stomping everyone in his way. So I'm excited to see Flash competing at ASL at least once more, I hope his time away helped ease his wrist and shoulder issues.
wrists dont like to heal man. Flash has already had surgery for his wrist before i believe, so if his wrist issues are bad he might be done competing like that.
He's the greatest player in history, but if he wins with random, he will be the greatest game player forever into the future. For now, he leaves a single gap between complete mastery and perfection.
When I played sc2 I picked random because it hides what I am from the opponent until they check my base. I felt like it gave me an advantage because I knew the match up first and would have an idea of how to play it sooner than the opponent.
4:34 larva is my new favorite SC player. Never seen him play once but that man got an undeniable energy no one else seems to have. Look at that funky dude.
That run Flash made with random in Season 10 is just crazy, and he had some pretty special strategies prepped as well. Insane run. Hopefully he comes back to Brood War, afaik his military service has been done for a while.
I remember thinking during this run he was able to get away with builds and advantages that other races could not because they had no way to prepare for the opening.
The unknown opening in no way measures up to the level of difficulty in playing off races. Also the meta has changed so that most races can do the same build vs any race. Zerg can pool first vs all races, terran can fast mech vs all races, tvz being the worst but still possible, protoss can gateway expand vs all races. The main difference was protoss used to go forge first only vs zerg but now they learned to gateway first vs zerg
@@Sc9cvsd you become more predictable though, flash would know you are more likely to pick those builds since they are safer not saying it wasn't an amazing achievement on his part but it definitely makes it harder for both players, I really hope flash goes random again in the future cause every match was so exciting
Theres just too many nuances in each matchup to master normally you practice 3 matchups per race and its hard, now imagine 9(3 mirrors and 3 matchups on each side).
one of the best ASLs of all time and I mean that, I struggle to finish new ones cause they just don't have the insane energy this ASL had. Also great theme song for it that season. Just all round such a great tournament.
Really sad that military service destroys so many esport careers. Yes, other people have to do it aswell, but there are few professional sectors where it really hurts this much.
i dont know anything about starcraft, but I think this guy is/was striving to be the absolute best in history by proving that he could win no matter what race he got
11:38 a yet another victim of modern day's legal slavery, called for disguise "mandatory military service". a minute of silence for thousands and thousands of men whose careers were broken by this disgusting yet socially accepted practice
As someone who have no idea how Starcraft work, my only question is: how much of an advantage it is your opponent not knowing what you are playing? As it seems to me that in Starcraft it takes some time for the players to meet in the battlefield. This is only a curiousity question from someone without knowledge on the subject. This is an amazing video and the balls to do such thing at this level is just amazing.
It does give you an advantage in the context of a single game, but not necessarily in the context of a series or tournament. You'll notice Artosis said several times that Flash's success would depend on getting the race on the right map with the right spawn location. This is significant not only due to balance, as BW's balancing comes almost exclusively through maps rather than patches. More importantly, having the right race/map/spawn combination is important because the advantage of being random depends on the amount of time your opponent spends in the dark. Larger maps are advantageous in this regard, but larger maps also typically have multiple possible spawn locations, with some being much closer than others. Similarly, maps with fixed spawn locations, and particularly smaller maps, also influenced the influence of random's advantage. The advantage of keeping your opponent in the dark shouldn't be underestimated, of course. BW is a game where players can recite a build not by order, but by second--at 1:15, you'll have this X units, then Y building finishes 15 seconds later, allowing you to start Z upgrade, which takes 1 minute, so wait 10 seconds and move your units so they arrive just as the upgrade finishes. The game becomes increasingly reactive as it progresses, of course, but it's not like you're running a marathon. It's like you're sprinting one. These builds are optimized based on timing that is, in turn, dependent on resources. Resources are dependent on workers. Workers, however, are also used to scout. As a result of this, on larger maps without fixed spawns, Flash has the advantage of not needing to scout early, whereas his opponent is forced to. This gives him a minor advantage, and also may put his opponent at a minor disadvantage, but again this is highly dependent on the map. This was more or less Artosis' point. If Flash rolled Terran on those maps that gave the least advantage to random and either rolled a distant spawn location on larger maps or rolled Terran in the event that he rolled a poor spawn location, he would maximize his advantages while also minimizing the drawbacks. Whether he got Zerg or Protoss would also be very important, as certain maps are favored for certain races and certain players are better against certain races. And avoiding mirror matchups (outside of TvT) would benefit him as well. So to answer your question, there's really no way to know whether it's advantageous or not because the advantage of playing random is itself up to RNG. Sometimes it might be huge, other times it might be really bad. You would have to have enough data from entire tournaments to really determine the balance between advantage and disadvantage, and whether it favors the random player or not. In essence, playing random not only introduces a new RNG component, it also exacerbates the existing RNG mechanics in the game to a degree that maps simple weren't designed to handle. Yes, there's a disadvantage to playing an unfamiliar (relatively) race, but the whole thing is so chaotic that it's hard to really say whether Flash had any real advantage when he rolled Z or P.
another strong random player is a famous commentator (russian language) Alex007 from Ukraine he still plays on local level every now and then and is still one of the strongest random players in the world
The more popular games have all the money and attention, so few people know about these things, so I'm really happy to see you spread the word a bit on StarCraft and how absolutely insane it is that someone can be competitive playing all 3 races.
As a Korean who grew up enjoying esports in general, i personally felt like starleague was literally the hardest to win even when compared to recent games with global competition
I can know nothing about the topic at hand and still thoroughly enjoy these videos, they are just so well done! Also Jack thank you, I am no longer alone here
Always crazy to me how being the goat of one genre (a small one at that) of gaming can be muddled up with being the goat of all gaming. I mean did he consistantly get top 8 in fg/moba/fps tounies or was it just rts?
Early days esports (and streamers) have something so unique and fun to it. Like im not bombarded by 10 millions ads in a single pro game and casters doing ads midcast.
You cannot play RTS games like SC2 and WC3 to a high level without specializing in 1 race. These games are just *too* difficult in terms of complexity, build orders, timings and tactics. A top SC2 or WC3 player can beat 99.9% of all ladder players with any of the 3 races of SC2 or the 4 races of WC3. But they cannot beat other S-tier Grandmasters without the race they specialize in. In SC2 Maru has been able to play also Zerg to a hih levell, and in Wc3 Infi has been able to play Human and Elf well. but those are exceptions.
favorite season was when larva won, man what a ride and it felt like he deserved it too. Now I'm rooting for Mong, if he can just start building battlecruisers TvZ ffs
Could you maybe do a video on how insane the pro levels are for Starcraft campaign or Co-op Modes? The AI is inherently rigged against you and occasionally outright cheats.
@@orionweiss5418 Starcraft's high level Campaign AI is hard enough that even some top ranked players can't beat it, it requires a unique learning of the game and knowing how to fight its insanity.
if he had won that season's ASL playing as random it would even further cement his status as the true GOAT of gaming.
Maybe it leaves room for someone to beat his record and take the title
Still, all players reaction's prove his goatness
@Frank The Tank i think it's highly unlikely someone could win random. Maybe a new player who random the whole time but for an existing pro it would be hard. Protoss and terran have similar enough mechanics that maybe won't be as hard but zerg is just too different
Getting 3rd place on the first try is good enough, a few things going differently vs soma would have gotten him to the finals and maybe a win, every other match was pretty easy for him.
Isnt it impossible to be be the best gamer of all time as a general statement? Like I feel that would be being good at every type of competitive game
Flash is 11-4 on random, a 73% winrate. That's a higher winrate than any other player has in ASL history.
3:56 Love how my man Arty took a detour to make sure to dump on Protoss while praising Flash's ladder rankings with his off-races. Never change Dan
Classic arty
classic artosis
Hahahahahahha
You'd think that Artosis' day job is as a streamer or caster, but you'd be wrong. His actual day job is Protoss salt miner, and he sure mines a lot of salt on the ladder.
Love it 😂😂
This run was truly unbelievable watching it in real time was insane I can’t emphasise enough how difficult it would be
I don't know anything about StarCraft but I love your bite sized documentaries
Thanks!
Flash came so damn close to winning it all. I wish he won the ASL title that year playing as random.
The problem is that if he did... What's next ? What can you even do beside retire forever right there ?
@@Nooctae
Bro, Flash doesn't even have to come back and win ASL multiple times and he'll still be the GOAT.
This was incredibly well done. Congrats on making such a high quality SC video. The greatest esport of all time :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
Flash: "you beat the singleplayer campaign..? I beat multiplayer."
How many stars had to align for FlaSh to get all three different races, and then win a clean 3-0 over one of the best Terrans in the world? It's just...amazing. I always appreciate videos like these that help cement and preserve FlaSh's greatness and legacy in SC:BW.
I love how the moment they see a single pixel that looks vaguely Terran their faces be like: *chuckles* "I'm in danger"
It's so fucking perfect lol. It made me bust up laughing.
The commenter doing the ZvZ about the micro was great too.
6:30 one thing people ALWAYS forget is that flash, when he was upcoming and still trying to overcome jaedong (which he eventually does handily), was KNOWN as a cheesy player. He'd resort to cheeses very often, so playing random is a major advantage when you're not going to automatically going to the standard every game. Not trying to get any credit away from him, but it's good to remind people that flash is not scared to cheese, he did it often when he was very young.
If someone can do it, it's Flash. Rain (another gaming genius) disappeared for a bunch of years, then came back and got to ASL finals pretty much stomping everyone in his way. So I'm excited to see Flash competing at ASL at least once more, I hope his time away helped ease his wrist and shoulder issues.
did rain disappear or was treat when he played starcraft 2? im fairly certain he is one of the few people to win championships in both games
wrists dont like to heal man. Flash has already had surgery for his wrist before i believe, so if his wrist issues are bad he might be done competing like that.
@@maoduida387wrists heal but lifestyle can impede it. They may not be very active, and type of foods they may eat also affects it
@@sillymesilly What wrist issues do/have you had?
I miss starcraft. used to watch Sc2 so much seeing Artosis again brought back memories.
As a non starcrafter, is it dead? This tournament looks like it was 2020, so maybe theres still some good tourneys happening.
thanks for the memories man. Im someone who's watched pro broodwar since 07 and Flash's random run is one of those unforgettable moments in esports.
He's the greatest player in history, but if he wins with random, he will be the greatest game player forever into the future. For now, he leaves a single gap between complete mastery and perfection.
The way he managed to get 3rd against the best players in the world with ALL 3 CLASSES is amazing.
No one could even get close to Flash, his accomplishments are immense.
100%. He's like Michael Phelps. Absolute dominance in his field.
"Fuk you if you're playing random! Random has an unfair advantage!"
- Artosis
Flash and Jaedong was one of the greatest e-sport rivalry of all time.
Whenever im feeling exhausted from squats, i think to myself, "flash would do one more rep"
When I played sc2 I picked random because it hides what I am from the opponent until they check my base. I felt like it gave me an advantage because I knew the match up first and would have an idea of how to play it sooner than the opponent.
This guy's win rate was over 70%. OVER SEVENTY PERCENT! He's way out of this world.
4:34 larva is my new favorite SC player. Never seen him play once but that man got an undeniable energy no one else seems to have. Look at that funky dude.
Just got to 10:08 and holy shit i love this dude even more
Look up "larva plays with his feet" if you havent already seen it. Dude is amazing 😅
ASL 10 was by far my favorite esports event of all time. nothing is as fun as watching flash play random.
It's ok but it's not hookers and blow😊
That run Flash made with random in Season 10 is just crazy, and he had some pretty special strategies prepped as well. Insane run. Hopefully he comes back to Brood War, afaik his military service has been done for a while.
What an honor to be alive during the same time as flash in his starcraft Progamer incarnation.
A true master plays Random
He just said "I'm a jack of all trades, master of all"
I recently got into StarCraft 2 it’s cool to see u guys doing a video on ot
Watching his random run was phenomenal and so much fucking fun. It was crazy when he gets terran instead lol
No one will ever match Flash, it feels like he's not human, but some kind of demi-god in this game
I remember thinking during this run he was able to get away with builds and advantages that other races could not because they had no way to prepare for the opening.
The unknown opening in no way measures up to the level of difficulty in playing off races. Also the meta has changed so that most races can do the same build vs any race. Zerg can pool first vs all races, terran can fast mech vs all races, tvz being the worst but still possible, protoss can gateway expand vs all races. The main difference was protoss used to go forge first only vs zerg but now they learned to gateway first vs zerg
@@Sc9cvsd you become more predictable though, flash would know you are more likely to pick those builds since they are safer
not saying it wasn't an amazing achievement on his part but it definitely makes it harder for both players, I really hope flash goes random again in the future cause every match was so exciting
Theres just too many nuances in each matchup to master normally you practice 3 matchups per race and its hard, now imagine 9(3 mirrors and 3 matchups on each side).
Playing against the player nicknamed "God", your place in the tourney is left entirely to RNG. A complete coin flip. Then the coin lands.
You: 5:48
Flash is the greatest gamer of our times
He slapped snow and larva! Wow
So since he went random, got lucky and got to play against Free with T it was essentially a...
"Free win"
one of the best ASLs of all time and I mean that, I struggle to finish new ones cause they just don't have the insane energy this ASL had. Also great theme song for it that season. Just all round such a great tournament.
Really sad that military service destroys so many esport careers.
Yes, other people have to do it aswell, but there are few professional sectors where it really hurts this much.
i dont know anything about starcraft, but I think this guy is/was striving to be the absolute best in history by proving that he could win no matter what race he got
why does this clip to drones walking over the eggs while artosis says "stuff thats NEVER been done before" lmao
Artosis : "Protoss is kind of an easy race to play"
The Salt still flows even after almost 2 decades.
My favorite pro gamer of all time! The Ultimate Weapon! Long Live FlaSh!
Insane production and you even got Artosis on. :)
He's coming back!
11:38 a yet another victim of modern day's legal slavery, called for disguise "mandatory military service". a minute of silence for thousands and thousands of men whose careers were broken by this disgusting yet socially accepted practice
As someone who have no idea how Starcraft work, my only question is: how much of an advantage it is your opponent not knowing what you are playing? As it seems to me that in Starcraft it takes some time for the players to meet in the battlefield. This is only a curiousity question from someone without knowledge on the subject.
This is an amazing video and the balls to do such thing at this level is just amazing.
It does give you an advantage in the context of a single game, but not necessarily in the context of a series or tournament. You'll notice Artosis said several times that Flash's success would depend on getting the race on the right map with the right spawn location. This is significant not only due to balance, as BW's balancing comes almost exclusively through maps rather than patches. More importantly, having the right race/map/spawn combination is important because the advantage of being random depends on the amount of time your opponent spends in the dark. Larger maps are advantageous in this regard, but larger maps also typically have multiple possible spawn locations, with some being much closer than others. Similarly, maps with fixed spawn locations, and particularly smaller maps, also influenced the influence of random's advantage.
The advantage of keeping your opponent in the dark shouldn't be underestimated, of course. BW is a game where players can recite a build not by order, but by second--at 1:15, you'll have this X units, then Y building finishes 15 seconds later, allowing you to start Z upgrade, which takes 1 minute, so wait 10 seconds and move your units so they arrive just as the upgrade finishes. The game becomes increasingly reactive as it progresses, of course, but it's not like you're running a marathon. It's like you're sprinting one. These builds are optimized based on timing that is, in turn, dependent on resources. Resources are dependent on workers. Workers, however, are also used to scout. As a result of this, on larger maps without fixed spawns, Flash has the advantage of not needing to scout early, whereas his opponent is forced to. This gives him a minor advantage, and also may put his opponent at a minor disadvantage, but again this is highly dependent on the map.
This was more or less Artosis' point. If Flash rolled Terran on those maps that gave the least advantage to random and either rolled a distant spawn location on larger maps or rolled Terran in the event that he rolled a poor spawn location, he would maximize his advantages while also minimizing the drawbacks. Whether he got Zerg or Protoss would also be very important, as certain maps are favored for certain races and certain players are better against certain races. And avoiding mirror matchups (outside of TvT) would benefit him as well.
So to answer your question, there's really no way to know whether it's advantageous or not because the advantage of playing random is itself up to RNG. Sometimes it might be huge, other times it might be really bad. You would have to have enough data from entire tournaments to really determine the balance between advantage and disadvantage, and whether it favors the random player or not. In essence, playing random not only introduces a new RNG component, it also exacerbates the existing RNG mechanics in the game to a degree that maps simple weren't designed to handle. Yes, there's a disadvantage to playing an unfamiliar (relatively) race, but the whole thing is so chaotic that it's hard to really say whether Flash had any real advantage when he rolled Z or P.
@@loldoctoryou really must be a doctor
@@loldoctorhow can you write so articulate
@@martinc1842 He is a doctor.
another strong random player is a famous commentator (russian language) Alex007 from Ukraine
he still plays on local level every now and then and is still one of the strongest random players in the world
The C Ball is on point! I spit laughed. Great video as always!
Flash is God
What a great video, thanks!
i heard about this a while ago but hadn't seen videos on it. this is absolutely insane.
Please! More Starcraft content! I want to see Tastosis in your next video!
Such good content.
The wildest part of it was me realizing that Broof War is still being played on comp level
The more popular games have all the money and attention, so few people know about these things, so I'm really happy to see you spread the word a bit on StarCraft and how absolutely insane it is that someone can be competitive playing all 3 races.
The nostalgia, man. Back when e-sports was all about Starcraft, Quake 3 Arena, and CS.
can sb explain what they meant with "he knew it's a spore colony, not sunk"?
the in-video embeds didnt show up for me
As a Korean who grew up enjoying esports in general, i personally felt like starleague was literally the hardest to win even when compared to recent games with global competition
Such a crazy story and such a good video the Esports Historian himself rt’d it.
3:56 never change Artosis.
I still salty he beat Stork on OSL
"hes like the king of Zerg besides being named queen" isnt that cause Zerg race revolves around a queen? like bugs or someshit...
Love your content 😊
Thank you! 😁
It wouldn’t be arty if he didn’t call Protoss easy
I can know nothing about the topic at hand and still thoroughly enjoy these videos, they are just so well done!
Also Jack thank you, I am no longer alone here
5:50. Confidence doesn't flood out of someone, it drains out.
Boxer, Flash, Jaedong - The holy trinity of Brood War Goats.
That Larva foot gaming cameo though.
Boxer is still the GOAT.
he also left his fate to RNG crypto dump :^)
Good vid, I’ve always loved Flash
Wow, great story and great video
Watching those matches live was intense! What's next? No mouse?
This man the real life Yugi Moto 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Always crazy to me how being the goat of one genre (a small one at that) of gaming can be muddled up with being the goat of all gaming. I mean did he consistantly get top 8 in fg/moba/fps tounies or was it just rts?
Saying StarCraft is a small game shows your ignorance.
what happnd to you OWL highlights vids ?? will it ever comeback??
I promised that I'd watch any Flash related video after the last one. Here I am for another.
Fun fact the first world champion ever D22soso won playing random only
Thanks for the vid
I thought the greatest gamer of all time was Billy Mitchell.
😂😂😂
This is funny, he announced his commeback a few days ago
Never seen starcraft in my life but now i want too lol. Thank you for the great video.
12:23 = How to shut someone the fuck up after being told their wrong about Flash being the GOAT of all time GAMER. list is massive
Never played StarCraft , hooked me in
Early days esports (and streamers) have something so unique and fun to it.
Like im not bombarded by 10 millions ads in a single pro game and casters doing ads midcast.
wow, random was the hardest if you don't have a favorite. this guy has evolve into a random power
You cannot play RTS games like SC2 and WC3 to a high level without specializing in 1 race. These games are just *too* difficult in terms of complexity, build orders, timings and tactics. A top SC2 or WC3 player can beat 99.9% of all ladder players with any of the 3 races of SC2 or the 4 races of WC3. But they cannot beat other S-tier Grandmasters without the race they specialize in. In SC2 Maru has been able to play also Zerg to a hih levell, and in Wc3 Infi has been able to play Human and Elf well. but those are exceptions.
it was indeed amazing and unmatchable , i watch all the asl's and gsl's....
This Artosis guy sounds exactly like that LCK English commentator. I think his name is Wolf… is this him?
Never say never, that is stupid. This can and should happen again.
favorite season was when larva won, man what a ride and it felt like he deserved it too. Now I'm rooting for Mong, if he can just start building battlecruisers TvZ ffs
Thanks for the nice Video!!! Next Idea maybe Oliveira AMAZING RUN.... That is amazing FAIRYTAIL STORY
how do you even begin to make a game this complicated
random also gives him an advantage tho, since he knows what his opponent is playin while his opponent is goin in blind
I understood like 10% of this video. Great stuff
"he's the greatest gamer and it's not up for debate"
Every gamer ever: "hold my beer"
I beat my brother all the time I could take him
Nah, Flash would 1v7 most of us
1:00 very nice transition.
military ought to be working hard to see if these guys make good commanders or generals!
Could you maybe do a video on how insane the pro levels are for Starcraft campaign or Co-op Modes? The AI is inherently rigged against you and occasionally outright cheats.
That description applies to most RTS maxed ai
@@orionweiss5418 Starcraft's high level Campaign AI is hard enough that even some top ranked players can't beat it, it requires a unique learning of the game and knowing how to fight its insanity.