Things in the first half of the Ro24 have gone as expected with all the Tier 1 and Tier 2 players of those groups advancing into the Ro16, will that trend continue into the latter half of the Ro24 or do we have some early(not by ASL standards) bracket busters in our hands? A certain Tyrant does come to mind.

After the absence of Rain and during the time which Bisu was in the military, Snow was widely considered the best Protoss player. The past two seasons of ASL have been a large set back to that consideration. Snow is still ranked top 5 on Sponbbang, but he has finally become the shadow as Mini takes the title of best Protoss. The rising pool of Protoss players and skill puts him at risk of skidding further down. Fortunately, Snow has been given an excellent group for the round of 24. Royal has become a very consistent player and ranks 12th. ggaemo ranks in at 36, meanwhile GuemChi remains unranked despite playing a considerable amount of spon matches.

Snow versus ggaemo gives us another look at the PvZ matchup. Thus far, the clearly more skilled player has been winning in the matchup and no upsets have occurred. ggaemo would love to start the group with a big win, but he struggles to even win 44% of his online matches versus Protoss. PvZ remains Snows weakest matchup and he’s only winning 50% of his games. Snow is doing extremely poor versus the best Zergs and has his lowest win rate, 23%, against Soma. ggaemo does seem to have a slim chance of defeating Snow, but it will need to come off a strategy of deception and taking advantage of the fresh map pool. Otherwise, Snow is the likely victor of Set 1.

Royal takes on GuemChi in the second set. For the past 3 seasons, Mini has been Royal’s thorn. Outside of Mini, Royal is on a hot streak versus Protoss players. He also holds a 66%-win rate over GuemChi in the past 3 months of playing online. GuemChi is dragging over that same time period, only accumulating 29 wins in his last 66 games versus Terran. Low tier players such as PianO, Leta, and Sasin are all using him as a punching bag. Royal will look forward to doing the same thing in an offline setting.

The arm sleeves are rolled up for the winner’s match. Snow has the reputation of a Terran crusher, but lost a crucial game to Light in season 12. He will need to refocus what made him so deadly in the matchup if he wants to beat Royal. Last season Royal had his highest ASL placement making it to the quarterfinals. Royal is keeping up the trend of playing more online matches than anyone else. He has nearly doubled the games Snow is playing and continues to win 55% of those games. Royal has a huge advantage going into this match. He has the benefit of seeing Protoss versus Terran openings from the first three groups. Royal won’t be giving up gas steals the way Light did to Bisu and he will prepare much better openers against any greedy Protoss builds. Royal will out think Snow in the only game they have too play versus each other and will win.

GuemChi versus ggaemo is a low tier slug fest. ggaemo comes in with a 44%-win rate and will be thankful that GuemChi aka G-dawg has an underwhelming win rate of 36% in the PvZ match up. There is some guilty pleasure that comes out of watching lower ranked players get caught up in hilarious scenarios that only poor decision making can get you caught in. Look forward to seeing the first draw game of the season and then a rematch where ggaemo does an all-in to take out GuemChi.

ggaemo is stuck in a rematch versus Snow. Unlike beast, ggaemo plays with a little more pride and is unlikely to just gamble his tournament life on cheesing Snow. Since 2017, Snow has only lost 9 spon matches to ggaemo, making Snow have a win rate of 75%. ggaemo’s last 6 spon match wins versus Snow come in the last 3 months. Twelve years ago, ggaemo met Snow for their first and only time on stage. He went toe to toe in a 22 minute long, macro game on Empire of the Sun. ggaemo would finish his Protoss win streak going 6-1 in the Shinhan Proleague. Like a clock based on years instead of hours, ggaemo will return to his Shinhan form and knock Snow out for the biggest upset in ASL 13.


Royal and ggaemo to Advance.

Welcome to Group E, its not as Somawinslol as it may look up front, JyJ and sSak are definitely looming threats to his #1 spot while Ruin’s ASTL run could prove to be an unknown quantity in the group’s equation, one that could potentially make an unexpected change in the group.

I continue to have high expectations for Soma and as far as sponmatches go, my expectations are well met, since the start of the year soma has had a 62% winrate against terran holding winning record against all the terrans in the ASL and a 53% winrate against protoss, but heres the wrinkle when it comes to the opening match, Ruin has the advantage looking at sponbang with soma being 0-2 against him, while we can’t say for sure if that would translate well offline on the ASL stage, its certainly worth noting, in official games though, Soma clearly is ahead looking at their ASTL results.

sSak and JyJ have known each other a long time, both came up in the KeSPA system as a part of SKT, as such they could easily have upwards of a few hundred games played against each other over the years, however that being said sSak is nowhere near in the kind of form TvT wise hes been during his SSL10 run from years ago and JyJ was never particularly great at the matchup either, sSak should win this one.

Soma is still the safe bet when it comes to making it to the winners game, facing up against most likely sSak, head to head since the start of the year Soma is up 8-5 against sSak, but most of sSak’s wins have come within the last week, so it seems sSak is cracking into Soma’s play, assuming soma isn’t hiding killer strats, we might have a solid game on our hands, but one soma will win.

Ruin came in clutch for his team during the ASTL season 3 semifinals getting the 3 kill including a win against ASL finalist Rush, I would not count him out against JyJ, however unlike Ruin, JyJ has been active with sponmatches and has shown good results against protoss, including a winning record against ASL champion Mini(7-6).

Regardless of who sSak would meet in the final game, he should advance, he’s got good TvP and JyJ’s TvT isn’t on his level

Soma and sSak to Advance to the Ro16!

We conclude the Ro24 with Group F featuring the returning Jaedong, the always a solid pick to make a deep run in a tournament Soulkey, the Iron reaver Movie and the resurging Mong.

Jaedong has returned to streaming and playing in earnest since his military service has concluded, looking at sponbbang we can see that he’s getting his game legs back. At this point we see him coming into a more standard middle-of-the-pack level zerg where ZvT seems to be his biggest challenge, his ZvP is going well but struggles against most top protosses, but Jaedong being Jaedong seems to be doing exceptionally better in ZvZ right now.

Jaedong’s path is fairly simple all in all, he needs to beat Mong, he can beat Soulkey in the winner’s game but his odds are a lot better if he had to face Movie. What he doesn’t want is to face Mong twice, simply on the account of him being a terran.

Mong is pretty hard to gauge because he streams and plays sponmatches a lot less than he used to, and his performance last season was mediocre at best. One thing to note though is that he has been working on his TvP extensively, If he is able to beat Jaedong he would still have to deal with Soulkey who is a very challenging opponent under even normal circumstances let alone a point where you’re actively avoiding TvZ. Hopefully all that TvP practice is worth it against Movie.

Movie definitely got the short end of the stick this group, not that it is impossible but it doesn’t look good, he doesn’t have a winning record against anyone in the group. On top of that hes starting up against Soulkey, it would be a major upset if he pulls off the win against him, but even then if he were to face Jaedong he has an 0-3 record against him right now and Mong has a winning record against more active and higher tier protoss than him. Movie is most likely to go 0-2 here.

I left Soulkey last because frankly there isn’t much to say, its his group to lose really, like I said with Movie, a loss to him or Mong would be considered a major upset for Soulkey’s ASL run seeing as how he’s sitting at a 67% ZvT and a 64% ZvP since the start of the year. That being said his chances of making it out of the group in 1st place does have a slight challenge in the name of Jaedong, Soulkey’s long time struggle with ZvZ might come to haunt him again should he face Jaedong against whom he has a losing record of (5-8), in the unlikely scenario that we ever see Soulkey vs Jaedong in a non winner’s game situation we might see the end of Soulkey’s run right here.

Soulkey and Jaedong to Advance to the Ro16!

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Writers: BisuDagger, BLinD-RawR
Graphics: v1
Editors: BLinD-RawR