With the Ro24 wrapping up this past week, some games were quite the nail biters while others were rather one-sided. All in all, the good news was that all of TBLS have ended up advancing from their respective groups, most in first place. Yes, that also included Stork who played really well in his group and is looking to continue making a splash despite his recent return.

After the last group was played out, the Ro16 selection ceremony commenced. There was a lot of uncertainty regarding the groups, especially considering that Shuttle had stated previously that he wanted to get TBLS all in the same group. As luck would have it, it seemed like he changed his mind and decided not to stir the pot. Aka, TBLS all ended up in different Ro16 groups. You can check out the groups here.

Other interesting things that took place at the selection ceremony were Sea picking Flash, Light asking to be put into a group with several protoss players and a Bisu to Stork switch. The first Ro16 group is set to be played in . While waiting, might as well read on for a recap of the last three groups of the Ro24 written by Bisudagger and BigFan then check out the previews for the first two Ro16 groups written by FlaShFTW and BLinD-RawR respectively.


Camera's pan, fans cheer fanatically and the studio looks like a NSYNC+Backstreet Boys combo reunion tour. With every chair full, fans poured out into the hallways standing ready to watch today's games. Opening with Flash vs Terror, this was marked as the most hyped match across the streamer boards. Terror entered this game with great confidence. Completely focused, he took a third base with authority and teched towards lurkers. The fast lurkers are Terror's attempt to contain the bio force a Terran would typically use to either pressure the natural or eliminate the third. The move proved to be successful. As Flash went up to 5 barracks and +1 attack, he grew an army worthy of taking the battle field. The bio force moved across the broad expanse in the middle of Benzene where Terror made his first heavy strike. Zerglings and lurkers swept in fast surrounding Flash's units and obliterated them.


But having 5 barracks means this army will be back in another wave. The game oscillated as Terror and Flash looked like an even match, up until Flash's fatal move. His science vessels killed Terror's first defiler. Then they killed his second. Without dark swarm, he wasn't able to hold the 5rax+mech+vessel play indefinitely. Meanwhile, a tank from flash snuck its way up on the high ground behind Terror's natural. The damage was too much, the Terran army was too strong and Terror was forced to GG.

Movie versus Soulkey changed the pace fast. Soulkey took a really aggressive third base in preparation for a heavy hydra attack. Movie went for one corsair and Soulkey lucked out because he skipped spire. Movie was unable to get any zealots out to do harass damage and this put Soulkey in a great position. By using the backdoor high ground at the natural and beating storm energy on HTs by 15 seconds, he was able to break the cannons and take the game.

Flash versus Soulkey resulted in one of the most thrilling and brilliant moments of Starcraft this year. It started with Soulkey's insistence to make a lurker timing off two bases. This means faster lurkers than the Terror game! 7 hydras march out across the terrain and find a nice hidden spot to morph. Flash's game sense is alert and he does the necessary scans to determine lurkers are coming. First, he builds bunkers to protect the natural. Fans are expecting a tense display of defense. Suddenly, as if possessed, he sends all his bio units across the map to attack Soulkey's natural. There are no units at home, this was an all-in. Soulkey could run back to defend or attack. He chooses to attack in what would be his final move. Flash defended brilliantly and advanced 2-0.


Terror came into the loser match looking defeated. Clearly, losing to the great Flash weighed on him. Movie opened up safely off two bases dropping two cannons behind his forge/gateway wall, but there were holes for lings to run through. Terror built 10 lings and blitzed through the front. Sprinting to the ramp, they got abruptly caught by a line of defensive probes. Cannons still in range, all the lings went down. Terror looks furioued at the point. He reared up for another bust with hydra/ling. Again, it was defended too easily and Movie was set to have a rematch against Soulkey.

The question going into the final match was whether Soulkey would continue to go for cheap early game attacks or try to play one out. We saw the latter. Playing on eye of the storm, we were treated to a macro game. Fast forward 10 minutes into the game, Soulkey owned four bases including the top and bottom right main/natural expansions. Movie was contained to two bases and forced to tech and add a ton of gateways. Movie decided to make a strong first attack at Soulkey's third base, but was deflected by a nicely constructed sim city. Movie's 3rd nexus is also denied from warping in. As Movie recuperated, Soulkey dropped down 12 sunkens at his third. Movie once again moved out, but with reavers and high templar in the army:


A combination of storms and scarabs tear everything down. Soulkey used pure lings to aid his static defenses and they single file into their death. Movie took a third and became too strong. One final attack on the 3rd/4th was enough to force Soulkey to GG. Movie advanced 2-1.


Continuing the trend of a packed studio, the lineup is set for the Tyrant, Mr. Moo, the macro dragon, and the legacy Sonic league competitor to face off. The game pace was set off pretty fast in a matchup between the Tyrant and Mr. Moo. Jaedong opened up with 3 hatch and went for the same aggressive lurker opening we saw from Terror versus Flash. Mong hoped to move out and put pressure/take down Jaedong's third but the lurker defense was too good. Behind this, Jaedong researched transport and speed for his overlords. Preparing for what looked like a doom drop, Jaedong raced ovies into the south of Mong’s main base where it was deflected. This was a distraction! Jaedong flew two overlords in from the north and dropped lurkers on the high ground behind Mong's natural base. With SCVs pulled, Mong fell behind fast. Jaedong switched tech to mutas to control the playing field. Meanwhile, the lurkers were still denying mining at the natural. Mong showed resilience and pushed out of his base with an attempt at being offensive. Jaedong's muta play was too good, drops too strong, lurkers too clever, and Mong was forced to concede to the Tyrant.

BeSt faced of against a fierce opponent by the name of Hint. Hint had tournament experience from the Sonic era, but has been overshadowed for many years now. Fans watched eagerly to see if BeSt will have an easy match. The players opened up with similar builds. Naturals were taken and robo was teched to from both sides. Hint, however got the faster speed shuttle and attacked first with reaver drops. BeSt had an impenetrable defense. Each drop attempt was thwarted perfectly, but the audience was enjoying the aggressive energy Hint was giving off. Hint went for a massive attack at the natural while taking a third. Despite having a faster third base, BeSt won the army engagement decisively and had a huge advantage. This prompted him to move across the map and overwhelm Hint. Best advanced to the winner's match.


The winners match was played out by the two favorites of this group. Jaedong looked incredibly strong and a long macro game could be expected between these two. Then one key moment, as BeSt mentioned in his interview, was when Jaedong denied his probe scout of the main base. BeSt used great star sense and determined that Jaedong is going 3 hatch hydra. He used this to his advantage and mounted a strong zealot attack at the natural. He used the area between the main base ramp and wall to expertly position his zealots. This led not only to a massive amount of zergling deaths, but pulled drones were also taken out. Jaedong was in a desperate spot now and his hydralisk all-in must work. BeSt knew this and laid down as many cannons as possible while also warping in 3 more gateways. Speed upgraded zealots and a wall of cannons was more than enough to force Jaedong's hand. BeSt defended brilliantly and advanced 2-0.

Mong versus Hint put up a strong argument for game of the night. Hint is a guy who clearly wanted to show entertaining games. Let's fast forward to where both players owned 3 bases. Not much of an exchange happened before then. At this point, Hint had the economy and tech to start taking a fourth and fifth base. As he geared up to expand, he does something that we haven't seen since the end of the kespa era. He researched hallucinate. After losing an observer to 7 heavily stacked turrets in the natural base, Hint casted hallucinate on an arbiter and flew it into the base of Mong. With one final missile leaving the last defensive turret, the real arbiter went down. Mong felt that he is safe now and started to push out with his army to take a fourth base. Hint was not done yet. In what is an immediate "pimpest play" highlight, he double hallucinated an arbiter, flew into the main, and pulled of an incredible recall (gif). Mong actually had to kill supply depots outside his natural so he can get his units back in the main to defend. Nearly every factory and supply depot in the main was destroyed but Mong still had 3 mining bases and 1-2 completing. Despite the fact that Hint had expansions covering the whole map, nothing can match the slow mech 1-2 push that Mong performed. Each base fell and after a long drawn out sequence, Mong survived and eliminated Hint.


Mong had been destroyed by Jaedong already, just played a 35 minute game versus Hint, and now has one final game in order to advance. Game 5 began in the same fashion as game 1, where Jaedong went for 3 hatch lurker. Clearly, Zergs have decided that lurkers are the key to defeating Terrans these days. Mong was successful at advancing his bio out against the Zerg army and began to attack the natural of Jaedong. Without losing any workers, Jaedong traded all of his army and came out unscathed. Mong's inability to remain mobile on the map allowed Jaedong to take four bases and four gases. That is a very scary situation for Terran players as Jaedong now had the perfect income to execute hive tech play. Mong continued to attempt his own expansions, but a beautiful exposition of mutalisk play denied each and every one.

Once Mong had finally transitioned to mech, he was able to momentarily hold onto 4 bases. He also snuck 3 dropships in from the north which unloaded a strong bio force in Jaedong's main. He focused down on his two evolution chambers, an ultralisk den and a defiler mound. On paper, that sounds great, but he killed no drones, left the hive alive, and couldn't kill off the spawning pool. All of which were possible. Jaedong used his lings to control the game, all the meanwhile his mutalisks persisted in their attacks. Finally, the ultralisk den was back up and the cow army were created. Jaedong cleverly dropped ultras all over the map denying the third and fourth base once again. This move destroyed Mong economically and he was forced to GG. Jaedong advanced alongside BeSt from this group.


Group F was a bit of an interesting group to contemplate due to many unknown variables such as By.Maru and Iris' skill levels among other things. Alas, from all the Ro24 games played so far, it had some of the most one-sided and least exciting games. hero kicked things off against Mind on Benzene opening with 2 hatch lurker (Light's advice) against the cc first from Mind. When Mind moved out with his initial mnm army, hero went for a frontal assault with 6 lurkers+several zerglings and morphed two sunkens for defense at home. With only two marines inside the bunkers, the attack was successful (gif). Mind tried to make a stand in his main but hero slowly inched his lurkers towards Mind's production eventually prompting the gg.


The second game featured the Berserker, Iris and the unknown protoss, By.Maru on Benzene. After opening up with a proxy rax which was easily scouted by Maru, Iris easily deflected Maru's zealot aggression, took a gas, built an expansion then took a page out of Rush's book and tried for a bunker contain. He managed to get the bunker up and took the economy advantage (gif). On the back of superior economy, positioning and decision-making skills, he attacked into Maru's third to easily take the game as Maru's units disappeared into oblivion.


In the winners' match, hero took a crack at Iris on Circuit Breaker. hero opened up with hatch first into 3 hatch muta while Iris went for 1 rax FE and tried to surprise hero with speed vultures (floated a factory outside his base). Though he caught hero's drone as it made its way to morph a hatchery at his third, none of this really mattered. Iris didn't plan well for hero's mutalisk harass in his main. As a result, turrets fell, marines fell, SCVs gave their lives and Iris had no choice but to call it quits after his last rax was under fire.

The losers' match between Mind and By.Maru on Circuit Breaker highlighted Mind's strong defensive skills. After denying scouting, Mind took his expansion on the back of mines with 2 tanks+marine support while Maru opted for reavers. Mind deflected the reaver harass and established his third to stay ahead. As Mind took his fourth, Maru decided to go for an attack (gif). Unfortunately, he lost most of his army for little gain. Sensing that it's the right time for a strike, Mind moved across the map and pushed back Maru's army several times to gain another chance at redemption.


The final match was a TvT between Mind and Iris on Eye of the Storm. Both players opened with a similar build, fac expand. Iris took the eco advantage by grabbing his third much earlier than Mind and had a successful vulture runby into the expansion to snipe some workers. However, with much superior positioning and engagements, Mind slowly turned the game around. He eventually managed to grab a fourth and fifth base after splitting the map in his favour while constantly harassing Iris' workers through drops and vulture runbys. As Iris' economy suffered and his army size grew ever so small, he typed out after most of his loaded dropships were sniped by cloaked wraiths.


Group A will be featuring 3 solid Protoss players, and... and then there's Light. Previous ASL champ, Eyewater/Shuttle, will look to defend his crown against the likes of GuemChi and Stork, two other strong Protoss vs Protoss players. Will Shuttle prove himself to be a better delivery system than a Stork? We'll find out in this preview of Group A.

Having been last season's champion, Shuttle is looking to prove himself as more than just a fluke. His last run through the gauntlet involved making it out of a group with EffOrt, Free and sSak, and defeating the likes of Jaehoon 3-1, Last 3-1, and Sharp 3-1, to become the champion. A quick look at his stats show an impressive 57% PvP winrate and a slightly weaker 52% PvT winrate. However, his PvP is 15-5 in the past 20 games with most of his wins coming against Jaehoon, who is no slouch at the mirror matchup. His latest PvT games come from the last ASL where he smashed Last 3-1 and Sharp 3-0. Overall, Shuttle looks very confident in both matchups in this group and I expect him to be able to advance 2-0.

Guemchi, aka G-dog, returns to yet another tournament as an underdog in the group stages... which generally means he pisses me off and eliminates one of my favorites. I guess since my life motto is live and don't learn, I'm going to once again predict that G-dog isn't going to make it out of this group. His PvT is ok at 51%, but his PvP leaves much to be desired, sitting at a weak 28.6%. I have faith in him against Light, but against two good Protoss players like Stork and Shuttle? I'm skeptical. Then again, PvP is a very interesting matchup where anything can happen and Guemchi always seems to enjoy pissing on my bonfire... so what the hell, throw a Liquibet at him.

Light... oh Light... you asked to be picked by Guemchi for what I can only guess is praying to get swapped out of the group... but I don't know why you'd ask to be put into a group with 2 Protoss players already then pick Bisu (who got swapped with Stork). I can only imagine this is all part of your secret plan, but let's be honest, your TvP is abysmal. In the KeSPA days, he had a measly 45% in the matchup and before people tell me "But FlaShFTW, he's at 63.6% in post-KeSPA!", that's because he's played 11 matches, is 7-4 and most of his wins come against amateurs and scrubs. If you only looked at the decent KeSPA-era players, he's actually 2-4. So yeah, even with only one matchup to prep for, Light doesn't have a chance in hell, especially when his first opponent is Stork, the PvT mastermind.

Stork made a very triumphant return into professional Brood War, notching up 2 clean wins in his group to advance. His game against Rush showed he was a bit rusty but still loved those carriers and against Free, well, let's just pretend Free lost on purpose that game. Either way, Stork is in a group with a weak Terran, and 2 Protoss players. His first match against Light should be a walk in the park, especially when Stork had a winrate of 66% PvT in the KeSPA-era. His PvP was also strong, sitting around 60%. His game against Shuttle will be especially interesting, but regardless I expect him to still be able to beat Guemchi if he can't beat Shuttle in the winner's match. That being said, I'm putting him down as a 2-1, to advance because I don't think he's had enough time to practice BW again and I think Shuttle's momentum is carrying him right now.

Shuttle > GuemChi
Light < Stork
Shuttle > Stork
GuemChi > Light
Stork > GuemChi

Shuttle and Stork to advance to the Quarterfinals!


The Universe has decreed that Jaedong and BeSt get to tussle again this ASL in another dual tournament match but this time, the stakes are higher and the opponents are much more dangerous. In fact, this group, while not the Group of Death itself, is quite a tough group to crack.

Jaedong's advancement was expected in the Ro24. Albeit, advancing second was a little unexpected. Then again, BeSt reacted perfectly to Jaedong's 3 hatch hydra and there wasn't much Jaedong could have done at that point, but what goes around comes around. This time, we can expect Jaedong to be better prepared. However, following that, we have Sharp and Mind to look at, both no slouches when it comes to their TvZ. This will be the true testament to the return of the Tyrant.

BeSt must be feeling hot after advancing 2-0 from his group especially after beating Jaedong the way he did and now he gets to feed on two terrans who both don't have a very good TvP win rate. One can say that BeSt is pretty much a lock into the Ro8 but only time will tell.

Sharp and Mind are in a very interesting position in this group making for two very different story lines. Sharp, the ASL Season 1 Runner up and Mind do have a lot in common though. They are both players who, if given proper time to prepare can just about win any game but against each other? Sharp is the clear winner of the two with TvT being his defining matchup. With a more healthy number of protoss this time or - well - even before that getting through, BeSt is going to be his biggest protoss challenge yet.

Mind has got a lot to prove and it really hasn't been his year, dropping down to a midcarder among terrans especially since he was considered the best one in 2015. We're almost to 2017 now and things have changed a lot. His once unstoppable TvZ is looking more and more normal now and his other matchups remain as weak as they have in the past. As I've said before, Mind is a player who thrives on preparation and hopefully he has prepared some good builds because he is gonna need them to be perfect if he wants to advance from this group.

Jaedong and BeSt to advance to the quarterfinals!

Writers: Bisudagger, BigFan, FlaShFTW, BLinD-RawR
Graphics: v1
Editors: BigFan
Photo Credits: Liquipedia and Afreeca