Celt palas were absolutely not a show of dominance or disrespect. Hera explained the thought process in the interview. He knew Jordan was teching into Champion and Samurai. If Hera goes Champs, Japanese Champs are better. If he goes Woads Samurai will shred them. Even if he goes siege he still has to have a meatshield of some sort. The only thing which made sense was Paladin. Hera even practiced the situation with Daniel and he knew how strong Japanese are against Celts because he played the matchup before, specifically against Viper in the semis. The only way Celts win is either with a huge lead in the midgame or with a surprise like Paladin, even if it is terrible Paladins.Celts paladin was an absolute show of dominance, a clear show of confidence that he was the best in the match, for me was even disrespectful.
Swordsman with aztec is a good choice, what are you talking about?? they have +8 mele armor. and jordan in that game loose the 3rd gold in a noob way with a castel on his face. plus jordan didnt make even 1 jaguar.
Aztecs get Garland Wars and Champion so most of that armour from Bagains is negated. As we saw the Champions traded well with the two handed swordsmen. The reason Jordan lost that game wasn't because of inferior units but inferior position. He couldn't deal with Hussar raids and didn't have control over his secondary golds. Maybe he could have gone Jags but the Hussars would have destroyed them and he would be restricted to castle production when he was losing castles. As far as Jordan losing the gold goes, things happen and even the best of the best make mistakes.
I agree that the final wasn't the most competitive but you can't have a perfect tourney all the time. For me HC4 was much better than HC3 and on par with RBW3 as far as quality goes. The first round, second round and semi games were incredible to watch and just super high quality Aoe2. Viper vs Hera was a series which simply delivered; there is no other word for it. I know people will say that Viper couldn't play his homemaps which is unfair but at the end of the day Hera was just the better player in the final five games. Also both knew the fixed maps were going to be played and both had ample time to prepare strats for them as well.
Also finally seeing the Vietnamese pros getting decent results is really cool to see and honestly well deserved. We could have new finalists pretty soon
I'm not saying HC had no issues, just that the positives for me at least far outweigh the negatives.