Its been a particularly long journey for Soulkey and hero who both had the most equally challenging bracket stage to get to the finals in ASL history, with hero having to get through a TvZ moster like Rush and a full momentum Sharp, while Soulkey ended protoss dreams by going up the ladder of their best against Mini and Snow. Now both stand in each other's way...

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I’m sure fans feel like this finals is quite the comedown from the kind of season we were having but lets not forget we are watching Soulkey try to go back to back as ASL champion and hero is making his first finals appearance in 14 seasons and is desperate to not walk the kong line.

It wouldn’t make sense for me to break this down map by map, its ZvZ its a knife fight, 9/10 times is about who has the better opener, however if you are hoping for something more on the map front, Troy and Neo Dark Origin seem like the best for some of the more unorthodox and longer games(I know you want to say it, I want to say it too, but if I make mention of the tier 3 building and tech I might jinx it).



Once again thanks to TMNT we do have some interesting stats to look at going into the finals.

It has always been the case that hero and soulkey were people who amassed games, hero and soulkey are mainstays of major proleague and have always been participating in sponsored matches(sponmatches). Winrate wise hero has the advantage with a 57.3% winrate in ZvZ overall, while soulkey has only a 51.2% winrate overall, though to a lot of people that won’t come to much of a surprise, soulkey has historically has always had a weak ZvZ that has only recently improved from automatic loss to what it is now.

Their overall head-to-head also puts hero at the advantage being 19-15 against Soulkey, however that doesn’t tell the whole story as hero is 8 - 11 against Soulkey in the current ASL map pool.

I would say that hero will be the one to direct how this series will go because of his playstyle in the matchup where he has the better decision making while Soulkey has the better control of units, we might see some strategies from hero’s side to mitigate soulkey’s playstyle, but hero won’t recover from a build order loss even more so than a standard ZvZ.

hero To Win ASL Season 17 4-3!

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