Like a delicious snail, the first two groups serve up the Round of 16’s first helping with plenty to savor. The title nods not only to the tasty treat some may enjoy during a broadcast binge but also to the esker — a winding ridge of gravel and sediment formed by glacial meltwater, splitting and rejoining with subtle curves. Groups A and B of ASL19 mirror this shape: two narrow paths of elite players winding forward, where each bend in the bracket reveals something buried — a resurging legend, a rising rookie, or a rock-steady champion refusing budge. As we set foot onto the icy trail of this Ro16, expect intense, high level play, and hopefully some unexpected detours on the road to glory.

Keep reading to enjoy Simplistik's picks for the round of 24's highlights and see who FlaShFTW and BisuDagger pick to advance to the next round!

Liquipedia

Two much happened this week to review any particular game in detail. In fact, this is a clear contender for one of the most fun ASL weeks in history. So let us briefly look at the highlights, both epic and ridiculous.


10. Tyson throws. Hard.
Starting us off, on the ridiculous end of the spectrum, is Tyson. He looked good in the qualifiers and he did have chances to upset both favourites of Group D. But, boy does he not know how to score in front of an open goal. In each of his two games, against Light and Bisu, he was clearly in a very favourable position.

After that Terran opening (see below), Tyson is so ahead that he gets away with uncontested 2-base carriers. He has three capital ships out and a large ground army against a Terran push with four goliaths. If Protoss clears the push, Terran is all but dead, stuck on two bases and with no way to fight 4-6 carriers. But Tyson counters (mostly himself) by throwing his army (away) at the Terran natural. Where there is a ramp. Behind two bunkers. With Turrets. And Tanks. On high-ground. Remember, Terrans have tanks. Tanks are good. Especially on high-ground.



The second throw is, if anything, even more criminal. And I say this as a long-suffering Bisu fan with a weak heart (see below). You are playing PvP. Neither player has expanded. Your DT's gift you a massive 3-1 probe lead. And you see that your opponent has a reaver-shuttle. You know where it is and when it can get to your base. What is the one thing that can cost you the game?



A mutiny of course. There is simply no other rational explanation for all your dragoons to be in the middle of the map, where there is literally nothing of any consequence going on. Listen, Tyson. You really need to treat your troops better. Give them a raise or buy them a beer or whatever dragoons drink. Maybe engine oil? This can't continue!

I have no idea what happened here. First Tyson lets the reaver in, then he doesn't expand. Then he keeps donating goons for nothing. Then he takes a weird hidden base. Man, just use your goddamn advantage. Wait... is Tyson a Bisu fan as well?!


9. Queen does all the things.

Queen hasn't had a decent ASL-showing in a while. But this time around he looks sharper. And maybe, just maybe, our former back-to-back-champion is getting ready for another deep run. Sure, Skey isn't top-class opposition, but Queen really didn't hold anything back this game.

He snipes the scouting SCV with a drone and goes for his usual greedy style. A drone blocks the next scout and Skey is blind for a while. The fresh Terran qualifier defends the first mutalisks reasonably well and manages to put together a scary push. But Queen's defense is really solid. Forward sunkens buy time. Lurkers shuffle back and forth. A couple of tanks get picked off. And then...



Scourge get one valkyrie and the guardians effectively end the push. Nydus is up. Consume is on the way. The lurker count is healthy. This is textbook stuff.

I feel a little sorry for Skey, because he didn't play badly. But everything he tried got shut down hard. His first science vessel strays forward very slightly, and gets scourged. A small Terran force manages to delay the Zerg fourth, but gets almost wiped out in the process. By guardians. Even at this early point, Queen is already almost 20 supply ahead.

Skey tries a mech switch on three bases, while Queen simply takes his side of the map and gets ready to pound his opponent into the dust. It almost looks like Zerg is testing Terran. If I send my guardians to your natural, what do you do? Oh, you have tanks behind mines and no vultures. See, this is how mine dragging works? Do you know how to deal with hydra-lurker-defiler? Good. Do you have defenses at your third? Nice! What do you do against queens?



Ah, no anti-air. Haha, sorry! Better luck next time.


8. JD gambles his way through the decider.

You are the, admittedly ageing, Tyrant. Your opponent is an old foe you've beaten many times. But today you lost time him in a straight up fight (see below), even though you didn't do much wrong. You really want go to the next round though. So what do you do? You gamble, of course.



Sometimes ZvP is really simple. You kill the scouting probe. You hide some slow lings. You kill a cannon. And then you win. Your opponent did have a chance to spot the lings, but he missed it.




7. Third time's the charm for Light.

Light has been one of the pre-tournament favourites for god-knows how many seasons. But, for someone famed for solid play, he has a habit of tripping up in strange ways. This week he had a little wobble too, but managed to pull himself together just in time to through in first place. With just a little help from Tyson as we've seen.

The amusement starts very early. Tyson opens gas steal into 13-nexus. And Light decides to expand while putting on pressure with three marines and an SCV. The bunker gets to 350/350 HP when the SCV dies, but doesn't finish.



The knock-on effect of the attempted pressure is that Light supply-blocks himself on 26. And with zero gas he doesn't have anything else useful to do, so he throws down a second barracks and an academy. Sure, surprise M&M attacks can work against Protoss. And Tyson does go observatory first, so there is an opening. But weirdly, Light decides to attack without either medics or stim. I guess 12 marines can still put out a good amount of damage, but isn't there a reason we basically never see this?



Yes, there is. Let us just say that naked marines are somewhat suboptimal against Protoss. Funny though. Is Light trying to diversify his online persona, by adding some humour? Either way, he's now miles behind. But somehow he pulls out a miracle manouvre and sneaks a sizeable force of eight tanks, four goliaths and sundry infantry all the way to the Protoss natural. And of course Tyson doesn't react correctly.




6. Queen is greedy and Stork almost pulls a JangBi.

The winners match of Group E, between Queen and Stork, was also great. Queen goes for a fairly greedy opening, as he is wont to do. But perhaps he bit off a little bit too much, as he is also wont to do. The game turns into Protoss' favour when five speed-lots hit the Zerg natural unopposed and quickly slice through the single sunken.



Mutas pop, but they don't kill zealots quickly, so the damage is done. Stork decides to keep pushing the pressure with another ground attack, supported by archons. Significantly, Queen fails to take out the corsairs on his first try, so overlord parts start raining from the sky as well.



The damage keeps mounting. And with the mutas taken care of, templars out and 40 supply up Stork looks good for making it out of the group in first place. And then Protoss overextends instead of delivering the killing blow. A couple of storms whiff. The zealots bleed off too easily and the sairs start falling.



And although Stork gets up his third, Queen lines up a counter-punch. The Protoss army isn't positioned well enough. Another couple of soft storms evaporate, together with Stork's hope to make it out in first place.


5. sSaK's other TvZ's.

sSak played three TvZ's this ASL and all three were entertaining. The last one was epic enough to be its own highlight (see below). But the first two were also very fun. In match 2 of Group F, sSaK pulls out the 1-1-1 and Action tries to counter with delayed 2.5 hatch mutas. Thanks to two great irradiates, this goes disastrously wrong.



Action tries desperately to wriggle his way into a better mid-game. The players' armies dance around in the middle of the map for a while. And then both players go for an unusual TvZ base trade.



There is perhaps a possible world where Action snipes the vessels or hides a hatchery and the game stabilises. But as it is, the remaining games pan out perfectly for maximum viewer fun.

The winners match on pole star is also very good. We get a sense that herO is fully dialled in, when he scouts the sneaky floated factory. Mutalisks do a fair bit of damage when a platoon of marines get stuck on the neutral egg at the expansion.



herO's control is sublime, mutas pick off tanks with casual ease, the Terran pushes are delayed seemingly forever, only to get surrounded and wiped out before they can do any damage. The first defiler gets a lurkers under dark swarm into the Terran natural.



But somehow sSaK holds on with solid macro and sheer bloody-mindedness to execute a decent mech transition on four bases. And this provides the perfect showcase for herO's late game abilities, his crisp defiler control, great macro and excellent tactical play with small groups of units. Another beautiful game.


[center]4. tulbo and Action slug it out on a split map.

Group F keeps on delivering. The first game was so-so, with hero's ZvP just too good for tulbo but at least it had a cute cannon rush at the Zerg third base, which did kill the hatchery.



The losers match on metropolis really delivered. tulbo survives the early hydra pressure by oscillating judiciously between making and cancelling cannons based on good scouting. Both players get up to four bases without much fuss, and Action breathes a sigh of relief. This is the kind of game he loves to play. Where he can have three evolution chambers clumped together for easy upgrading and tons of hatcheries. (Remember the game against Best on Nemesis?)



Protoss keeps up the pressure and both players deny each other a fifth base for a while. Upgrades get churned out and supplies go up. Dragoons get plagued, defilers stormed and feedbacked. Many spells are cast and the map gets split. Action tries to get cute with a hidden hatchery in tulbo's freshly acquired sixth base.



When that doesn't work, Action opens the floodgates to unleash a never-ending torrent of teeth and claws and spines, and microbes towards the Protoss main.




3. Stork vs Jaedong Redux.

Stork vs Jaedong on Eclipse. A match-up that looked initially like a tribute to a by-gone era. Like the reunion tour of an aging rock band. But, hats off, this was great a game. Both players neutralise each other nicely in the opening. Stork scores a few small wins with zealots and corsairs, but Jaedong holds on with some cute moves.



JD sets up a soft lurker contain while Stork's zealots roam the map looking for an opening. The merry band of zealots successfully cuts off the reinforcing and with judicious (and delicious) storms Protoss manages to break out.



This allows Stork to take his third and we head into an action-packed mid-game. Stork keeps up the pressure with a DT run-by, zealot hit-squads and a large army camping on Jaedong's side of the map. Jaedong tries the usual mutalisk switch, but Stork somehow hides his templars well enough to defend the massed hydras. From here on Stork has the experience to hold on to his advantage and close it out. It must feel nice to roll back the years occasionally.


2. Bisu toys with his fans' hearts.

Blending the sublime and the ridiculous might be the holy grail of entertainment, and this week nobody did it better than Bisu. He starts strong, by playing a well-controlled aggressive game against Killer. Zerg is on the backfoot after zealots take down the hatchery at the fourth base. The corsair control is spot on and with two stargates the mutas don't do much. The Protoss army is scary enough that Killer has to cancel his second, third and fourth attempts at getting his fourth gas. There are a lot of scourge, but two old-school archons provide cover.



Killer does the only thing he can do on even bases: make many hydras. All Bisu needs is a few decent storms. His templars are pretty much safe from being picked off. What a beautiful game. Twelve corsairs! Bisu is back, baby!

Two templars get sniped, but there are six more. The hydras are clumped. This is the moment! Wait... Why aren't they casting? Oh...



After this painful and exasperating loss, Bisu (and Bisu fans) can't have felt good. But, life has this special lesson it likes to role out just when everything seems really bad: things can always get worse.

And sure enough, Tyson gets a decisive build order advantage (see above). Bisu's plan was to go shuttle into observer, but in the moment he suddenly slotted in a reaver. Instead of being miles ahead with a well-timed observer, the (former) Revolutionist loses 18 probes and is on the brink of elimination.



If this was a ladder game, tapping out wouldn't be wrong. But with his tournament life on life-support, Bisu sends his shuttle to Tyson's main and finds four well-placed dragoons, basically no defenders. The reaver kills six probes and disrupts mining for a good while.



And slowly but surely, Bisu starts clawing his way back into the game. From here on he completely outclasses Tyson in control, decision-making and game sense to squeak into the final match.

For extra added drama, Bisu bumps into Killer again in the decider. This time our Zerg is looking a bit sharper and doesn't let his opponent get a serious advantage early on. The corsair numbers are less threatening and he goes for mass hydras much earlier.



When the observer shows us that Bisu has warped in two templar archives my heart sinks. Although, on the positive side, it's probably much harder to forget storm if all your bases are saturated with archivists. Or maybe he's working on the next revolution, the maelstrom-storm-rush.

The first big hydra attack almost breaks through, but this time the conclave doesn't betray Bisu. A few templars hide smartly from the mutalisks. The storms are just good enough to hold, and, still on even bases, Killer eventually runs out juice.



Being a fan of an ageing, somewhat volatile, professional is surely not good for my heart.


1. Action comes back from from the dead.

The final match of Group F tops off the best Ro24 we've had in a long long while. In probably the game of the tournament so far we are treated to a sublime comeback by one of the true masters of the late game. The opening goes poorly for sSak, as Mutalisks briefly force him to abandon his natural. But at least his marines find Action's hidden cross-map base.



With good timing and excellent micro, the Terran infantry outmanouvres three lurkers and reduce Action to two bases. The mutas are badly bruised. sSak tries his best to capitalise on this advantage, by containing Zerg on two bases and keeping him busy with drops.

But we all know that Action can't lose in the Ro24. (Because he has to lose in the Ro8, of course.) What follows is as scrappy as it is beautiful. For a late game monster, Action manages this low income game incredibly well. With delicate defiler control he slowly wrestles his way back into the game. sSaK plays his part and pushes Action to the limit with some damaging drops, without ever delivering that knock-out blow.



And eight long minutes after losing his third, Action manages to take another base, although he is still almost 40 supplies down at this point. But once he gets to four gas, we all know what happens next.

If you haven't seen this game, you should watch it now. If you've seen it already, watch it again. What a great way to wrap up the Ro24. I have high hopes for... wait. Let's not jinx it.

Long live the ASL!

We are finally into the Round of 16 where our defending champion, Soulkey, hopes to set a historic 4-peat in the ASL and tie Flash on total number of ASL wins. He’s picked himself the consensus weakest player in the field, Scan, while utilizing his swap power to trade hero and Light to give himself an all ZvT group, making his preparation easier. BarrackS rounds out the group as the final Terran in what will be a TvT fest. Hopefully, we can see some exciting TvT on Death Valley!

Game 1: Soulkey Scan

Not only is this the most lopsided matchup in the entire Ro16 (the defending champion against a first time Ro16 entrant), but it’s also on the worst map possible for Scan. Metropolis is by far the most balanced map thus far this season, with a perfect 50% winrate in the TZ matchup. With the map setup with the large mains, Soulkey’s mutalisk control will definitely control the matchup unless Scan can do something to really mess with Soulkey’s preparation.

Soulkey wins.

Game 2: BarrackS Light

Light, as is tradition, had a very wobbly start to his ASL campaign, having a very weird game against Tyson where he defeated him by the skin of his teeth after a very poor 2 rax against a gas steal. But he recovered nicely against Killer to advance from his group. BarrackS on the other hand had two very close, but controlled games against Mind and BTS to advance. I’d have to say that purely on form, BarrackS would be the favorite here, but Light’s incredibly strong TvT is likely to push him through on this map. I do expect that with this being played on Metropolis and a Bo1, that we might see something pulled out here by one of these two players, especially given the quirky main layouts. I’m predicting a Light win here, but don’t be surprised if BarrackS catches him off guard.

Light wins.

Likely Winner’s Match: Soulkey vs Light

Soulkey has Light’s number last ASL where he defeated him soundly 4-2 in the Ro8 (and also knocked out Light in ASL15). Unfortunately for Light, I don’t anticipate anything being different here, as Soulkey has still shown his dominance in the scene. However, I do expect the games to be fairly competitive. Also, since Metropolis is being played in the Bo1 games, it means it cannot be used in the Bo3 stage, which will definitely benefit Light as the best ZvT map will be removed from the pool. Light still needs to throw in some cheeky strategies to try to throw off Soulkey, even though Soulkey’s intelligence makes tricky play difficult to pull off. But don’t be surprised if he opens with some 1-base play or fast tech to try to gain some slim advantages against Soulkey out of the early game.

Soulkey advances 2-1.

Likely Loser’s Match: Scan vs BarrackS

The problem for Scan is that TvT really accentuates skill differences between the two players. While there are some rooms and angles to gain a slight advantage, the long game times allow the better player to find equalizing positions and comeback after an early game setback. Now, BarrackS isn’t the best TvT player as mentioned in my Ro24 preview, but with his exceptional form, it’s hard not to think he’s favored. Scan though has clearly shown another level to his game, playing a very solid game against Mini that was very close, while also having a nice comeback against Shuttle and a comfortable win over Calm. I just don’t think it’ll be enough to overcome BarrackS in this match, especially in a Bo3 series.

Barracks 2-0.

Likely Final Match: Light vs BarrackS

An expected rematch from the opening game, I think even if BarrackS managed to steal the first game against Light, it would be a different story here in the Bo3 format. Light’s exceptional TvT against BarrackS’s weaker TvT is a mismatch that is going to be extremely difficult to overcome in the Bo3. BarrackS has also had a poor run of TvT form in recent proleague matches, dropping games to both sSak and Sharp (both are just as good as Light in TvT). It will be an uphill battle for BarrackS if he hopes to make his return into the Ro8.

Light advances 2-1.

Soulkey and Light advance!

Group B features Sharp, Speed, Jaedong, and BeSt. Sharp was directly seeded into the Round of 16 based on his top 4 finish in the previous ASL, while the other three had various degrees of success in the round of 24.


Player Overviews
Sharp
Sharp reached the ASL18 finals, where he lost to Soulkey. As a result of that finish, he received a direct seed into this stage. He returns to the Round of 16 with a strong track record and solid tournament experience.

Speed
Speed advanced from Ro24 Group B with wins over RoyaL and Rush. His TvT play was effective, and he handled both matches with clean execution. Speed, also live up to his name by maintaining an impressive APM through his matches!

Jaedong
Jaedong qualified from Group E in the Ro24. After losing his opening match to Stork, he won back-to-back series against Skey and then Stork in a rematch to move forward. His ZvP was shaky in the first go-around, so he opted to overcome Stork through a cleverly disguised rush.

Best
Best came out of Ro24 Group C. He lost his first match to BTS but recovered with wins over Mind and BTS in the rematch. His last game showed us hope that he could play at the level everyone is expecting.

Match 1: Sharp vs. Speed

The group opens with a TvT. Sharp’s past experience at this level gives him an edge, but Speed's recent wins over strong Terran opponents show he is well-prepared. Despite Speed’s two game win streak in TvT, Sharp dismantled Royal in his last season’s TvT matchup and looks to put the hurt on Speed too.
Prediction: Sharp

Match 2: Jaedong vs. Best

A ZvP between two well-known names. Jaedong’s Ro24 performance was extremely lackluster, while Best found success through soild gameplay to advance from the losers match. If Best doesn’t find his rhythm early again, he’s going to lose in a match where he should be winning.
Prediction: Jaedong

Winner’s Match: Sharp vs. Jaedong

Sharp had no trouble taking down hero last season. His ZvT is excellent against any Zerg not named “Soulkey”. Sharp should easily take down Jaedong who looked nothing but slow in his ASL games.
Prediction: Sharp

Loser’s Match: Speed vs. Best

Last season, Speed had an easy route to the round of 16. He faced off against Best in the first match of that season. It was at that moment we all learned just how scary his TvP was. We should expect nothing but an excellent and dominant performance from Speed..
Prediction: Speed

Final Match: Jaedong vs. Speed

Speed is finally going to get to play in a TvZ matchup. The rumor is that TvZ is actually his best match up, yet we have never seen it on display. With Sharp already through, Speed is left without any true challengers. Once again, Jaedong is destined to be stopped at the group stages and unable to reclaim the legacy he once had.
Prediction: Speed

Sharp and Speed Advance to the quarterfinals!

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Writers: FlashFTW, Simplistik, BisuDagger
Graphics: v1
Editors: BisuDagger