With tons of scheduling changes for players, tons of swaps, and some replaces we ended up with quite a different line-up than what was originally announced. Most disappointingly BeSt dropped out last minute and was replaced by a Chinese Protoss that couldn't play because of lag. Even though all of these setbacks this is still the most anticipated SRT yet. Why? We still have Fengzi and Brave in the tournament, we have the most stacked round of 16 ever, and amazing racial balance. Sonic's randomizer couldn't have done it better.

The round of 16 starts just one day after the round of 32 ends so you don't have a lot of time to catch-up, KristofferAG has made sure to make that task a lot easier for you as he recaps the last two weeks groups. Another feature we are proud to present is the recommended VOD section that is now going to accompany us in every article, making sure you don't miss any of the good action. Last out is the preview of the round of 16, explaining who possibly has the chance of making it out of these impossible groups. As always with the SOSPA Ranking Tournament, another broadcast is around the corner, group A of the round of 16 starts in just .

The 16th SRT is the first one with a non-korean participant, with the Chinese Zerg player Fengzi making an appearance. Though he's known as one of the best players in the Chinese scene, the question still stands, is he good enough to tango with the top Koreans? In Group A he would go up against Pusan in the second match of the day, while amateur SOSO would go up against StarCue.

Newcomer SOSO would instantly prove his worth by taking out StarCue in a convincing 2-0 series. The first game was an impressive macro game featuring mech play, valkyries, drop play and StarCue actually building defilers, while game two served as proof that StarCue should never ever build a spire. The other newcomer to the SOSPA group, Fengzi, went up against Pusan, and there was definitely proof of a skill gap between the two players. The Spirit Toss took game one by building nothing but reavers, shuttles and corsairs, d-webbing anything that came near while his reavers went to town on the Chinese Zerg's base and army. In game two Pusan's zealot/archon timing hit in time to do a lot of damage to Fengzi's worker lines, but the army still got cleaned up. Fengzi went into mutalisk play, which got instantly cleaned up with storms, which mean that Pusan wouldn't have any energy on his high templars for the next engagement, resulting in a big defeat. When you're behind two bases and one army as Protoss, there's not much to do.



Luckily, Pusan was able to come back in a straight-up game three, before going on to take out SOSO with a proxied gateway and continued gateway pressure. Though the Terran put up a valiant effort with nice marine micro, there was not much he could do when Pusan's reaver was dropped in the back of his base while a large dragoon army was knocking on the front door. SOSO would go on to play in the final match, while Pusan was the first player to qualify for the round of 16.

StarCue once again fell flat on his face in the losers match, as he refused to not build mutalisks. Though Fengzi did look in a bit of a bad shape after throwing away all of his lings, he still managed to bring it back and, after destroying StarCue's mutalisk army, took the game.

So we get a TvZ in the final match, with the so far quite impressive amateur SOSO going up against Fengzi. It's hard to predict this when all you have to go on is SOSO beating StarCue so far, but he quickly proved that he's something else, though not quite yet there. SOSO went aggressive in both the games that were played, and stuck with a bio-based build with siege tanks being added later into the game. No matter what he did, he was unable to break Fengzi. With mutalisks Fengzi was able to snipe tanks and keep SOSO at home till a big enough Zerg army could swallow SOSO's bio, and both games ended up with the Chinese Zerg winning, and becoming the second player in the round of 16.






Group B featured the return of old progamer Brave, along with SOSPA regulars Shuttle, Shinee and ZergMaN. Shinee will always be known as the ladder beast from the Fish server, though he's never been able to transfer his results to any SOSPA event matches or tournaments. Shuttle is fairly consistent in both his PvT and PvP, but gets shut down hard whenever he faces a Zerg opponent. ZergMaN? With a sub-50% winrate and a pretty bad ZvP it looked grim from the start.

Shuttle basically breezed past Shinee, looking damn near untouchable after a quick game one. I still recommend watching game two as it featured 30 hallucinated zealots and some excellent storms from the Protoss player. Brave had to tango with ZergMaN, and it was fairly obvious the rust hadn't been completely shaken off for the ex-pro Protoss. His corsair control was way off the mark, but he somehow managed to make up for it and fight his way back with well-placed storms and a lot of speedy zealots. ZergMaN also showed some fancy tricks, saving hydras by morphing them into lurkers and later cancelling them, and his storm dodging looked really good. For a while. Then he lost all his hydras to storms, and Brave beat him 2-0.



When the two Protoss met in the winners match, Brave was the one putting on pressure with gateway units, while Shuttle went for a reaver, and displayed some seriously impressive Shuttle micro to crush Brave's aggression. It took a while, but Shuttle eventually crushed Brave's army with micro a level above Brave's, and some nice-placed scarabs.

Shinee was prepared to disappoint again as ZergMaN's aggression and muta play seemed to completely overrun the Terran player, leading us to a PvZ final match between Brave and ZergMaN. The Zerg player managed to take a game one with a scouted three hatch hydra bust that Brave was completely unprepared for, while game two saw Brave place a couple gateways in his natural and stab the crap out of ZergMaN's early natural. And his drones. And his zerglings. And then he won. What do you do when something works? You do it again! This time, with a shield battery. No amount of drone drilling could save ZergMaN, as Brave took the second spot into the round of 16.






The third group of the tournament features newcomer Hyosim going up against veterans Cola, HiyA and Lazy. Even with HiyA's terrible results from the last SRT, it was fair to assume that the two advancing from this group would be him and Lazy. Cola seemingly only gets by because of a fairly decent ZvZ, even though he did manage to beat Hyosim without breaking a sweat, defending against Hyosim's pushes and drops before running over him with some drop play and attacks on multiple fronts.

HiyA tried to be cute against Lazy, blocking the choke between the natural and main on New Heartbreak Ridge with a supply depot, while pulling a large amount of SCVs for a bunker push. Lazy was completely on top of it though, and even though the bunker finished, all the marines were killed off. The coming tank push did way too much damage, and Lazy tapped out after losing more than half his worker line. In game two, HiyA once again came out ahead, out-macroing Lazy by far and denying any form of pressure from the Protoss.



HiyA would go on to defeat Cola with excellent wraith micro in the winners match, even holding off a large hydralisk/lurker bust with only marines, a couple medics and his air fleet. You'd think that Lazy would easily beat Hyosim in the losers match, but it really looked grim for the protoss as he lost his expansion to the first mech push. Suddenly he had vultures, mines, bunkers and marines in his main. A reaver and a shuttle would be Lazy's saving grace. With beautiful micro, he was able to take out every single mining SCV along with a defending siege tank, before smashing the forward army with nicely split dragoons.

With Cola being up against Lazy in the final match, the results seemed fairly easy to predict. Lazy held off a five pool and handled Cola's muta play very nicely in game one, though his reaver play was shut down. The game went on for a long time, but ended in a close victory for Lazy. In spite of Cola being in a good position all game, with nice snipes on high templars and denied harass, Lazy managed to get the better engagement in the end, killing all of Cola's army along with his fourth. In the final game Cola failed a three hatch hydra bust, before losing his fourth to a zealot runby, while the drones in his main and natural were killed by high templars.






Once again, Killer proved to everyone that he's one of the most fearful players in the SOSPA scene, as he went undefeated through the round of 32. His first opponent, and the first game of the night, was Olympus, who only recently returned to the SOSPA scene after a long break. He's already proven that he's not a nobody, and game one of Group D was no exception. Going toe-to-toe with Killer, following him every step on the way, bringing us far into the late game, with basically every tech in the game being used. PS! Dark Archon.

However, Killer still proved to be too much for the protoss player. Game one eventually went in Zerg's favor, and in game two Killer got up a quick four bases before crushing through Olympus with hydralisks. In the second match, Scan's attempted bunker rush got defended with ease by Movie, who taught Scan a lesson by throwing down a pylon block between the terran main and natural. Movie won the game with ease, but lost the second game after managing to lose multiple reavers to mismicro. Luckily for Movie, he had no major blunders in game three, and rolled over Scan with relative ease.

The highly anticipated match between Killer and Movie was no disappointment, with near non-stop action. For a moment, Movie looked to be in a great shape as his harass not only did massive damage, but seemed to throw Killer completely off, making the zerg botch some of his movement, and seemingly completely forget about the map presence he's so well-known for. In the end, Killer's positioning and control became too much for Movie to handle. Killer made it out of his group in first place.



With his life on the line, Olympus decided to bring out the style. He proxied his robo and got out his reavers, and continued by airlifting into Scan's base. The Terran player was taken completely by surprise, and it didn't take long for him to tap out, with no defenses against the reaver. However, any sign of style disappeared quickly as Olympus went up against Movie. With confident play, there was obvious evidence of a skill gap between the former CJ Protoss and the amateur, and Movie went into the round of 16 with a comfortable victory.






In the fifth group of the round of 32 we found none other than the reigning SRT champion, Sea, going up against SOSPA regular Tyson, up-and-comer Hi, and the Zerg Snail. There was little doubt as to who would finish this group in first place, but with Hi's impressive performances in the 15th SRT one couldn't count him out for a second place finish. Already in the first matches Sea played a dominating performance against Tyson, winning game one with a 2fact, and displaying some seriously impressive micro to defend a proxied gateway in game two, before winning a fifteen minute macro game.



Hi was prepared to bring out the worst in Snail, as he opened his match by blocking the choke to the Zerg natural with cannons. Snail was limited to just one base for almost the entire game, and there really was nothing he could do. Hi even threw up a manner nexus in Snail's base before the gg was called. With DT play that caught Snail completely by surprise, and corsairs that would take out every single overlord on the map, it became a convincing 2-0 victory for the Protoss.

There was no question about who was the better player in the winners match, as Sea steamrolled over Hi with a large mech army, after defending both a reaver drop and some pressure from the Protoss player. Tyson tried to do something similar to what Hi did against Snail, but placed the forge down after the natural went down for the Zerg. Snail was able to easily defend before any cannons were made, and a later attempted cannon rush on Snail's third was also defended. Still, he was completely unprepared for the DT/corsair play from Tyson, and ended up losing his third, before a steady stream of speedlots pushed Snail out of the group.

The two first matches between Tyson and Hi were fairly one-sided. Game one was won by a three gate from Tyson, which hit Hi as he himself wanted to move out. Hi's forces were wiped, and there was nothing left to defend the newly built natural or the main. The second game went in Hi's favor as a reaver/dragoon army hit Tyson just as his expansion finished up. The third game was a lot closer, with Hi almost breaking through Tyson's defenses with a huge dragoon army, but two reavers hit vital scarabs, which saved Tyson, who then took out Hi's natural. After some back and forth, Tyson had the larger and better army, which was enough to secure him a spot in the round of 16.






Group F was probably one of the less hyped groups of the round of 32. Even though the second place from the last SRT, sSak, was in it, the rest of the group consisted of Hint, Ample and Larva. It's been a while since Larva was considered one of the top SOSPA players, and both Hint and Ample have failed to produce any consistent results.

With that said, Ample proved himself to be a superior player to Hint, who tried a proxy gateway in Ample's base (got scouted), a proxy citadel at Ample's third (got scouted), and DTs that instantly got killed off. Both games went in Ample's favor, who won with a clear margin, without Hint being able to do much.



The first game between sSak and Larva was a typical cat and mouse game. Larva was doing his best to avoid any engagements with sSak after his mutalisk play had been shut down, but when you only have hydras it's hard to break a defending siege line. The game went on for almost half an hour, even though it became abundantly clear who was winning after only fifteen minutes. A desperate Larva attempted a 4 pool in the second game, which was defended easily by sSak, giving us a three minute victory in game two.

A TvT match can either be amazing or depressing to watch. I guess you could call Ample vs sSak a bit of both. With sSak's wraith opening, Ample looked in pretty bad shape, no defenses up and no wraith production of his own. Ample handled it nicely, got his goliaths out, went up to four bases before sSak, and grabbed control of the game. That is, till sSak dropped tanks in his main, and took out most of his production, while taking the middle base. The wraith army made sure the dropships were safe, and the rest of the game ended up being the slow, inevitable death of the former KT Terran.

In the losers match, Larva dominated Hint with his mutalisk play, with Hint only having a few HTs and dragoons to defend with. Hint was left with a shattered economy, and Larva was so far behind that when the two armies clashed, Larva ate every single storm but still crushed Hint. Ample was better prepared for the mutalisk play, and the damage done was limited. Still, after having failed a bunker rush, Ample was behind, and was unable to do any damage with the goliath army he had. Larva decided to make things a bit more even by attacking into a sieged up position with only hydralisks, and Ample was allowed to snowball off it, pushing on with his mech army. With no dark swarm there was little Larva could do.

Game two saw Larva once again going for mutalisk play, and Ample once again defending nicely, though he was contained on two bases. When he finally did move out, his army got annihilated twice by lurkers. The game seemed to be won by Larva as he brought out the cows, but a fully saturated hidden base for Ample allowed him back into the game, along with some fancy drop play. Ample's excellent multi-tasking meant the end of the line for Larva.






Usually I'd pick beast to make it to the quarterfinals, if not the round of 16, but with Sonic swapping up the groups, placing beast up against Sky and Mong as well as newcomer KaZe_Hyun, I'm having doubts. Sky's vT is something scary, which was proven already in the first matches against Mong. With constant aggression and map awareness akin to that of Killer, Sky would deny Mong's patented mass drops, and do sufficient damage in the early game to steamroll the Terran player. The combination of Mong's seemingly lackluster play as of late and Sky's scary PvT (not a single best-of-series loss since the 11th SRT), put Sky in the winners match.



It's common knowledge that beast has a pretty good ZvZ, so it was fair to expect a 2-0 against newcomer KaZe_Hyun. However, Hyun went for an earlier expansion, and defended beast's push in the first game, before winning with a counterattack before beast's spire finished. Though beast did win the next two games in a fairly convincing fashion, with superior macro and mutalisk control, KaZe_Hyun definitely got to prove himself as more than “just another SOSPA Zerg”.

New Heartbreak Ridge is known for cannons on the high-ground behind the natural, but beast's proxied hatchery was something somewhat new. Had it not been scouted fairly early by Sky's probe, it could definitely have done some serious damage, but with it failing, beast was too far behind to claw his way back in, meaning Sky moved on to the round of 16.

The newcomer Zerg got another chance to prove himself in his game against Mong in the losers match, and he definitely did. Though his initial mutalisk opening got shut down hard by Mong's three valkyries, he would continue to brawl it out, taking some pretty decent engagements, but ultimately facing an army too big for him to handle. In the final match, Mong went for bio play against beast, and seemed to be on a whole other level to the Zerg player, in complete control of both games, pulling off a 2-0 victory.






We've reached the final group of the round of 32, which was supposed to be BeSt's group. Sadly, BeSt called it off, and got replaced by a second Chinese player, protoss Zhanhun. The only thing that seemed certain about this group was hero's inevitable domination. Already in the first match, with hero against fairly unknown terran `iOps]..Han, hero outplayed his opponent at every turn, resulting in a slightly uneventful 2-0.

Sadly, due to lag issues, the second match between Zhanhun and Terror, was a walkover in Terror's favor, meaning we skipped right to the winners match. Terror has been banned from Afreeca for a while, so with his return, no-one really knew what to expect, though I don't think anyone expected him to beat hero. hero's one-base muta play easily won him the game, with Terror having too few mutalisks and too few zerglings after going for an expansion.

Luckily for the BW lovers out there, Terror and Han were still here to make sure we had some entertaining games. For the first part of their match, the Terran amateur danced along with Terror, with nice bio control, and defending the mutalisks handily. However, he was unable to do any actual damage, and Terror was allowed to macro up to lurkers, defilers and ultralisks. The game featured sloppy and scrappy play, and was extremely entertaining. Did I mention that one huge drop Terror made where he also made a manner hatch in Han's main? Being so far ahead, Terror didn't care much about mines or siege tanks, as he charged in with ultralisks and zerglings, smothering Han with his swarm.



Game two saw Han in complete control. Terror was unable to do anything with his mutas, and an early bio push from Han forced zerglings and sunkens, meaning Terror had little to no economy. Terror attempted a lurker bust, but it failed completely, taking us to game three, where the mutalisks were allowed to do more damage. Keeping Han's economy down, he also bought enough time to get up a lurker defense and defilers. Terror even made some guardians to harass the natural of the Terran, and a devourer to defend them. Still, the Zerg kept running straight into mines, and into Han's defended choke, meaning the Terran was able to stay in the game for a looong time before Terror, on twice the bases of the Terran, managed to close it out.

In this new section we list all the good games from the previous stage of the tournament for your viewing pleasure! The games are handpicked by me and KristofferAG, the games are in no particular order. Enjoy!

This group consists of three players in the top ten of the best SOSPA players, and the former peak SOSPA ELO holder. To say the least, this group is pretty insane. Of all the four players, Shuttle's PvT is the one that stands out the most, with a win rate at almost 75%. He has only lost one PvT best-of-series in his SOSPA career, against who is regarded as having the best TvP in the scene; sSak. It would be very surprising if either Mong or HiyA could win against him. Both of them have taken games off of him though, having records of 3-7, 27.27% and 1-2, 33.33% respectively. If someone were to beat Shuttle in a TvP in this group it would be HiyA. His crazy unorthodox TvP, including early aggression in practically every game, might disrupt Shuttle's play who is usually playing comfortable games until late tech is out. Most likely Shuttle won't let that happen, but HiyA will make sure to have Shuttle lose at least one game in this group.

If Mong was in his old form, he would have demolished Tyson. But with the way things are at the moment, Tyson will be a tough fight for Mong. Mong tends to only win games that he is in control of and is being aggressive in as of late, Tyson is the kind of player who brings it with stupid attacks that shouldn't work to your front door. In these situations Mong has been seen to completely fall apart. Mong is 7-5 head to head with Tyson, but with the two most recent games being losses. After this day is over I think the score will be tied up 7-7.



If the PvP and TvT would happen in this group (it will, trust me), Shuttle and HiyA are the favourites. Even though Tyson is 3-2 against Shuttle, Shuttle is generally the better player and has the better PvP with 8% higher win rate. Shuttle should be the one to take it, but anything can happen in a best of one. HiyA and Mong have a long history of facing each other. They have played each other a total of 21 times. The score however is extremely in HiyA's favour, 14-7, 66.67%, and 5-1 in best-of-series. Mong's worst match-up is TvT and has generally done bad against ex-pro Terrans. HiyA should be the definite favourite in the mirror.

The closest possible match-up in this group is HiyA vs. Tyson. It's the match-up that will probably decide who will advance alongside Shuttle. HiyA is prone to losing silly TvP's, and Tyson is prone to win silly TvP's. A rematch from SSL8, in which Sayle lost his voice forever. HiyA did however 2-0 Lazy in the previous group stage and it looked extremely solid. HiyA will repeat the SSL8 meeting.

Shuttle and HiyA to advance.




For what seems to be the dozenth time Pusan has to face both hero and sSak. As good as Pusan has been lately these two players are the ones that have been stopping him in his tracks. Luckily for both hero and sSak the other two players in the group are Protoss, which is their best match-ups. Neither Lazy or Pusan are good enough to stand a fair fight against either of these titans, ranking #4 & #5 on the SOSPA Power Ranking. The opening PvP between Pusan and Lazy shall prove to be nothing but a consolation on who gets third in the group. Pusan isn't exactly known for his PvP but his recent 3-2 against Movie is credit enough to give him my favour. Pusan will get third in the group, once again getting knocked out of a tournament by hero and sSak.



The polar opposite happens in the second match. It will decide who goes out in first and who goes out in second. hero and sSak have faced each other three times since the SSL8 third/fourth place match. sSak winning both the best of threes and hero winning the best of five. hero has been burning recently earning him both the fourth spot on the power ranking and the third spot on the SOSPA ELO. However, what got him there was mostly thanks to his ZvP. His win in SRT14 in the best of five series against sSak gave me hope that hero can be better than he was in ZvT. In this group he has to prove if he really has improved. I'll take my chances that hero will win against sSak. Either way both of them will advance.

hero and sSak to advance.




I said group A was insane. Then what is this group, you might ask. I can't tell you, because this group is out of this world. There are three people that can realistically get out of this group. Killer, Sea, and Sky. For these players the commonly referred Brood War balance T>Z>P>T goes hand in hand as I consider it Sea>Killer>Sky>Sea. Fortunately for us, it's not cut in stone. Either of these three can win against each other (Sky probably has the hardest time winning against Killer). The fourth player is Fengzi, oh poor Fengzi. The Chinese played much over expectations in his round of 32 group and probably had quite a fair chance at advancing to the quarterfinals if he was placed in an easier group. His opening match is against Killer which frankly, he doesn't stand a chance at winning.

Sea has two make or break situations in this group. Unfortunately for Sea he has been placed in the same group as Sky a couple of times in a row now. Sea has started to win against lesser Protoss', but Sky is the one that he still hasn't managed to beat. The last time they met Sky won 2-1 in a very close series. This time I believe Sea can win and go on to face Killer in the winners match. If he doesn't Sky will lose against Killer and Sea will win against Fengzi, so they will face each other again in the final match. One of these times Sea is sure to win, and this time it will be the first.



In the very likelihood of a Sea vs. Killer match-up you're going to want to see it live. These two have been fighting for the last months over who is the rightful king of SOSPA. They always bring it, it's always close, and it's always entertaining. I'm not going to say anything more than that, you're gonna have to see for yourself, and I assure you don't want to miss it.

Sea and Killer to advance.




Movie dodged a bullet. He should crush this group with ease as it's the easiest group in the round of 16. Same thing for Brave, if he were to have been put in any of the other groups he would have been knocked out for sure. This group however is very suitable for Brave. Both Ample and Terror didn't impress that much. Both of them got out in second in their groups and neither had to face difficult Protoss opponents. Both Movie and Brave is good enough to beat both Ample and Terror.

The opening match is a PvP between Brave and Movie. Brave has only played one PvP since joining the SOSPA competition. It was a game against Shuttle in his round of 32 group, which he lost without too much to say. Movie is a bit hit and miss in PvP and can either be brilliant or be Hyuk. Brave though shouldn't be too tough for Movie to beat, as his superior mechanics, macro, and micro should do the trick.



Ample showed that he is still capable of at least winning TvZ, winning easily against Larva in his round of 32 group. Terror too showed that even though he hasn't been around for a while he still knows how to play. However, Terror's series against the amateur Han was a lot closer than he would like it to be. An ex-pro like Ample is sure to capitalise on Terror's mistakes. Terror's arrogance and chatting won't exactly help him, the games will be hilarious though. Either way the winner has to face Brave. Brave won against ZergMaN 4-1 in his group, and even though his corsair micro was questionable he still delivered. Brave's worst match-up in KeSPA was his PvT. But most of the losses were against formidable opponents like Fantasy and BaBy. Ample is no Fantasy or BaBy. His TvP hasn't been all too great recently, not winning a series against a noteworthy foe since 2012. I'm really rooting for Brave and Ample has disappointed me on numerous occasions. Brave will advance alongside Movie no matter who he faces in the final match.

Movie and Brave to advance.