Its all or nothing now, this one's for the marbles, does one of BW's oldest beliefs prevail once more or will the iron wall overcome all.

I think without a doubt that Mini and Soulkey will be one of the finest finals in ASL history, both players have great backgrounds as former champions in their long careers and their current head to head is as even as an odd number of games can get. Peeano and BLinD-RawR have both taken their sides in this finals, let us know whose side are you on.

It's time. The moment we've all been waiting for. Even the players themselves.
Soulkey gets his shot at finally getting a precious ASL title under his belt.
For Mini it's his chance to officially claim that PvZ title we all know he deserves. The torch from grandpa Bisu will be handed down and its flame will once again burn brightly in Mini's hand.

I'd like to present you a quick overview of Mini and Soulkey first:


Mini and Soulkey's performances in Proleague as well and in ASL are as close as it gets.
They're in the finals for a reason, right? I believe the chart above just says the upcoming finals is to be expected a very close series either way. The amount of games played are kind of low, so as far as the overview goes I'll leave it at this.

What I do want to look into is how Mini does PvZ in ASL. I've already talked a little bit about it in the previous preview before. How is Mini going to win this finals?

I want to take you back to ASL11 first. Let's zoom in on Mini's last 2 matches:
Mini vs Queen 4-1
Game 1: A delayed cannon rush into a failed cannon rush.
Game 2: 9 gate
Game 3: 9 gate and lair and spire timing get scouted for free
Game 4: proxy gate vs 12h
Game 5: 9g no scout nex vs 9p

Game 1 is lost for obvious reasons. Game 2 is essentially won by killing a drone very early with the first zealot. The economical lead off of that basically secures the game.
Game 3 is won sort of easily won by Queen giving free info as well as being indecisive with his muta/scourge and move commanding... Game 4 is an easy win. Game 5 should have been won by Queen as far as build orders go, but Queen messed up his control. This little summary makes it sound not as exciting, but I can really recommend you to watch this series with Nyoken & Scan commentating if you want to get a better feel as well as understanding of PvZ. In conclusion we can say 4-1 happened because Queen didn't play as well as he should have.

Mini vs Larva 3-4
I did summarize this match game by game as well, but I recommend you to just watch NyoScan commentating the whole thing. What's interesting is that unlike Queen, Larva does hydra bust this series. Another thing: Larva has much better simcity and he denies scouting better as well as uses his mutas way more effectively. Another key thing I noticed from this series is the 973 hydra bust timing hits around 6 minutes into the game. And as Protoss if you don't scout it (in time), you will either lose right then and there or you're behind with a denied +1.

Now let's forward to ASL12, Mini gets another great run this ASL. He's looking strong once again, and he meets Queen once again in the semi-finals. Another 4-1. The games look much different this time around, (btw NyoScan were commentating this one as well if you want to improve your PvZ). How Mini lost to Larva, is not happening again. You can clearly see he changed his build orders and approach this series. Mini is much less vulnerable to hydra bust than before. Queen again gave away a game he should have pocketed if only he had been more decisive (or perhaps less nervous?).

Now we arrive at the current ASL. I looked into Mini vs Killer 2-0 as well as the recent Mini vs EffOrt 4-0. Mini's PvZ looks formidable still, but what we can learn from the Killer and EffOrt series is very little to be honest with you. Killer practically lost because his build orders were just inferior. And for EffOrt the same thing could be said? Well not exactly, but he did play very low eco which requires Zerg to do damage which kind of didn't happen. Not enough either way. Thanks to konadora we got treated with an on-the-spot-translation winner's interview of the latter:

Mini did not expect to win 4 games in a row. I certainly believe he spoke the truth there. What's interesting to me is that even the 4 games he did play, I don't feel like he showed too much of his strategy as he basically just had to respond to what EffOrt was doing. You know that moment you know your opponent is all in and you're not at a build order loss and you just stay calm and collective? Yeah.
Soulkey is not getting much from this series in my opinion nor the one vs Killer. If anything he has to look at how ASL11 and ASL12 were different, and be scared of those 3 maps Mini didn't show yet!

So I've watched a bunch of Mini PvZs by now and again for this preview and I can conclude some obvious things. I don't think it matters if Soulkey is aware about this. Mini needs to scout. Dilligently. Every game he needs to know what's going on. He clearly has a way better understanding of how to deal with hydra bust for example, but it is crucial that he scouts it. For mutas it is kind of the same, however the threat vs muta lies less in the time to prepare. Versus Muta he needs his early sairs to survive. Versus lair the first 5muta/2scourge is when it's scary. The mutas can 1 shot his probes and the 2 scourges can threaten his sair(s) when they're still less than 3. For Mini as well as any other Protoss player it's tempting to challenge the zerg in a micro battle, but more often than not we see that turn out bad for Protoss: a sair is lost and the Zerg gets to wreak havoc on the probes for even longer, this often translates in a rather big lead for Zerg. Mini's challenge is to not try and micro battle the muta/scourge over his probe line, but instead run his probes, unless he has 3 sairs. Like 5 sairs+1 or 6 sairs. 3 is a magic number as you can now 2-shot scourges even with a bit of time in between the 2 attacks. Another important thing for Mini is to recognize when he can or cannot snipe a hatchery with a group of zealots, especially in case of a good simcity. What good is it to snipe a hatchery on the 4th if you will be overrun by hydras moments after because your dragoons/ht no longer have the support they need? (See Mini vs Queen ASL12 Game 2 on Largo to see how that unfolds.)

Early aggression can both give intel as well as control. When Mini gets this, he often excels. An early drone snipe often nets him a win. As far as APM - maybe not mutlitasking per se - Mini has the edge. Mini should challenge Soulkey on this. The times I've seen PvZs being won by a DT drop is wild, so that's definitely something to keep in his arsenal. Finally cannon rush... I expect and hope to see Mini go for this. Watch out for the 4 player maps, in particular Polypoid. Mini loves opening forge on these maps. Mini's challenge is in either commiting to the cannon rush or faking it, then he can turn it in a lead. If he half-asses it, it will hurt him both economically and mentally. Don't take chances on a 2 to 1 odd bett that's against your favor.

One last thing: Mini vs Larva Game 6. Mini went 2 robo that game, and... he won it!
The map was Ultimate Stream. I reckon a greedier strategy in similar fashion could be used on Tempest (ASL). I really hope to see PvZ reavers make a return this Bo7!

Mini is wiser now and thus even the tougher Woongjin brother will be slain.
It's time to hold the PvZ torch for real now. Mark my words.This will be Mini's Fall.

Mini To Win ASL Season 16 4-2!

Consistent, tenacious and with the way he’s been performing all season, inevitable. Soulkey doesn’t just play zerg, with the way he’s performed all season, he’s lived like zerg.

Soulkey has finally moved past the wall that was the Ro4 to make his first ASL finals, this comes after 5 continuous Ro8 performances, being up there with hero as one of the most consistent players in the ASL.

Now making it to the finals beating the two best terrans all season is all fine and dandy, but soulkey is facing up against protoss and not just any protoss its Mini, the very same Mini that came to his Semifinal match against EffOrt with multi match strategies and somehow got away with showcasing very little if any of them, a lack of data that surely is going to be a sore point for soulkey to resolve.

You can refer to the data from Peeano’s side of the coverage and see that Soulkey and Mini online are about as even as you can get with an odd number of matches played between each other, the only update is that Soulkey is now 4-3 against Mini.

Now it should also be worth mentioning that the kind of matches they play online, mostly the daily proleague games in MPL are high stakes without a doubt, this is where all the players make their income primarily after all so they do take them quite seriously after all, but it is also worth mentioning that they are games of volume. Meaning that they are not games where they use their highly specific counter builds/prepared builds for maps like they would have back in the KeSPA days.

But what it does show is that in a normal game, given the map pool Soulkey does have the advantage and therein lies Soulkey’s core plans, to ground mini into playing predictably, he doesn’t scout much anyway, just deny scouting entirely, spook him safe.



If you thought the map pool favored zerg in a ZvT, it's more skewed in ZvP.

Tempest (Map) is an interesting first choice for soulkey, while in general online play its shown to be one that does favour zerg, over the course of the season its favored protoss more, it’ll be interesting to see what exactly soulkey has cooked up, not the easiest map to just go for a hydra bust since thats an uphill battle of sorts, more likely going for tighter mutaling start especially if its cross map.

La Campanella or as I like to call it, Neo Neo Requiem. Definitely an odd choice from Mini, but maybe its to get it out of the way as early as possible. Mini was already relieved that he didn’t have to play the map against EffOrt and having to save whatever strategy he’s planned here, Soulkey needs to be very careful, what would be cool is if soulkey could drill behind the natural and hide a base in the 3/6/9/12 position base of Mini.

Neo Dark Origin Zergs love this map, but so do protoss, its not as bad as it is for TvZ as it is for PvZ, another map all about getting behind your opponent’s natural, if there ever was a time to go for that hydra lurker bust, this is it, ball is entirely on Soulkey’s court to act.

Retro is shaping up to be the new fighting spirit like map for this era, its also the map Soulkey beat Rain and Bisu on, don’t know much else to say, statistically it goes either way and a very standard map with no gimmicks to abuse.

Invader, when I think of this map, I think of the Ro24 game Mini had against soma, where Mini had a classic Mini moment of taking an uphill fight he really had no right to be taking and having no scouting on the flanking attack that demolished his army at the same time, Soulkey would consider himself lucky if Mini tried to pull that again.

Polypoid See Retro.

Apocalypse It is surprising that Apocalypse was left as the final map, probably the worst map in the pool for Zerg and Mini just left it to be the last map as if he’s confident that he could win without it or that if it came down to it, he’d be the one with the advantage. Base structure is kind of out there, 4th gas is very hard to hold, if there ever was a map to go all in on hydras for the gold, this is it.

All in all, most of the maps are on Soulkey’s side, a Bo7 in ZvP favors Z in general because if the Zerg advantage over Protoss, its all about keeping Mini in line and Soulkey’s Iron Wall will hold for him to become the second ever current dual champion with ASL and KSL gold.

Soulkey To Win ASL Season 16 4-2!

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