The first half of the Ro24 has shown that the level of competition displayed in ASL19 was not a one off, everyone has stepped up their game and it shows. Especially on the new map pool. This week features the hotly anticipated All Zerg Group D, Star studded Group E and a well rounded Group F to cap off the Ro24.

Recaps by Simplistik

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Group A
By and large the first week went as expected. And thankfully we got a bunch of decent games, too. I'm quietly hopeful that the quality of the previous tournament will carry on for a little longer. The most surprising development came right on the first day, with Larva making it out in first place. He had looked rusty in the runup to the tournament, but sometimes class endures.

Match 1: Sharp <Dominator SE> Ample
Opening the tournament with a TvT is perhaps not ideal, but at least it was a decent slug-fest. Ample gets the better opening, but then throws his advantage away by making too many vultures that don't get anything done. Sharp counters with his usual very good harassment to take a solid lead into the mid-game. After that Ample gets stuck in the bottom left corner while the top seed takes the rest of the map, with entirely predictable consequences.

Match 2: Larva < Dominator SE > Stork
Season 11 champion Larva returned after a four-year break and immediately got his favourite match-up. He decides to open with heavy air. But Stork's initial corsair control is on point and Protoss wins the early sky battles decisively. But then the pirates venture in too deep and get ship-wrecked. Facing slow templars, and having secured air dominance, Larva keeps up the pressure with waves of hydras to secure material superiority. Stork manages to hold on against seemingly overwhelming numbers, but he can't prevent his opponent from getting a booming five base economy. A cute DT snipe on the sixth hatchery keeps Protoss in the game for a bit. In the climactic ten minute battle over the Protoss mineral only, the battle-zerg army eventually overpowers Aiur's defenders to take the game.

Winners: Game of the Week: Sharp < Roaring Currents >Larva
Our first look at this season's Cinderella map delivered the game of the week. After a slow techy opening, Larva turtles behind many sunkens at his natural while taking two of the islands. Sharp tries is best to harass, but he doesn't seem to pick the right targets. Instead of stamping out the islands, he faffs around trying to drop into the Zerg main after having been spotted. This doesn't go well. His eraser shenanigans are entertaining, but ineffective. While Terran carries on with small drops, Zerg is mining from four geysers to gear up for a huge ultralisk explosion. Another Zerg island grab is stamped out by battlecruisers. The game ends when Sharp sends out something like four control groups of bio and Larva counters, Attack-on-Titan-style, by dropping a bunch of giant monsters onto the infantry. After that, the cows stampede to victory, and Larva returns to the group stage.



Losers: Ample < KnockOut > Stork
Ample takes an early lead thanks to defending well against some aggressive reaver drops. Stork expands to a second corner of the map and gets up to a healthy army count, but Terran can churn out tanks on four bases with almost no interruption. While Ample is gearing up for a push his vultures deal quite a bit of damage. When the Terran army moves out there is a crazy number of tanks. One thing Ample definitely knows how to do is macro. Stork does a decent job slowing down the cross-map push, but Terran still sets up a solid position that takes down the fresh natural. A few aggressive storm drops keep the Terran economy in check, but leave the main army somewhat short on fire power. In the end Ample succeeds in keeping up the pressure on the new Protoss bases. Ultimately, Stork runs out of resources first to become the first player to be eliminated. It's a shame because he didn't play badly in either game, but just wasn't quite sharp enough when it mattered.

Final: Sharp < Pole Star > Ample
Day one ends with a rematch. This is another entertaining TvT. Unfortunately, for Ample, this game showed perfectly the gap that exists between really good ladder Terrans and the actual top players. Throughout the entire game, Sharp's control and decision-making is simply sharper better. His forces slowly and methodically take control of the centre, arcing all the way around to the opposite corner. This strangles Ample by denying him access to easy expansions. The underdog hangs in there with, once again, very good macro and also some damaging drops. But ultimately, Sharp out-positions and out-harasses his opponent and thus books his group selection ticket fairly comfortably.

If there was such a thing as 'a solid Ro24 player', Ample would be one example. And so would sSak. They do put up a fight, and they have very good mechanics and solid understanding, but they just don't quite have that little extra which the real top players bring, that edge in micro, multi-tasking and game sense. Better luck next time.


Group B
There were no serious upsets in this group. The two predicted players qualified, the highest elo ranked player in first place. And the lowest elo ranked player was eliminated without winning a game.

Match 1: JyJ < Dominator SE > TY
Although JyJ appears to have dropped his skills somewhere, down a dark treacherous ravine by the looks of it, this game is not good evidence. TY's two factory opening simply produced more vultures than the former champion's one factory expansion. And on this map you're pretty much dead once a larger force occupies the ramp to the natural.

Match 2: Bisu < Dominator SE > Speed
As expected, Match 2 decided the order of the two qualifiers, and Bisu came out just ahead. This match nicely showcased the promise and shortcomings of both players. Bisu almost manages to deny his opponent's factory expansion with very good early micro. The follow-up reaver does OK, but get shots down too easily by two goliaths outside the Terran natural. Speed follows up with a two factory push to deny the Protoss third nexus. Terran turtles hard on three bases, so Bisu decides to use his almost untouched four-base economy to do a series of moderately ineffective drops (storming a science facility isn't ideal) and OK attacks up to the high-ground wedge sticking out of the Terran natural. Although the trades favour Terran, the superior Protoss economy makes up for the deficit. Eventually, Bisu takes the free main, and Speed missteps by losing a line of exposed tanks, that results in losing his fifth base. From here on the storm drops keep the Terran economy under control while Protoss can throw maxed armies at entrenched positions without any serious risk of counter-play. In the end Speed starves after his fifth base gets overrun.

Winners: Bisu < Litmus > TY
Our first look at Litmus turned out to be a short base trade. (Does that pass the test?) Without too much interaction, both players build up little 2-base armies and move out. TY's four tanks and platoon of infantry take the shortest path, while Bisu's eight dragoons, presumably deliberately, circle around the high-ground just to the West. And they miss each other like two ships in the night. The decisive difference is that Bisu has some defences ready, while TY left the front door open and the bunker empty. Protoss successfully stalls by warping in a bunch of buildings, so some of the Terran units turn around to try and save some of the dying SCV's at home. We can see that TY needs a bit more time to get up to speed (hah), when three of his returning tanks drive straight into the camping dragoons without accomplishing anything. Terran is forced to abandon the natural, but the dragoons are slowly dying to reinforcements. And then a couple of DT's slip through the warp to end the game.

Losers: JyJ < Litmus > Speed
This game starts with a swingy eight minute long vulture battle, with a sprinkling of tanks, where both players look in trouble at times, but neither cracks. The thing is, championship-season-JyJ would've somehow won one of these fights out of nowhere to take the game. As it plays out, however, Speed heads into the midgame with a slight advantage in terms of supply and economy. And he leverages this to take control of three o'clock which gives him a significant positional lead. JyJ loses the counter-engagement and, as a consequence, all the SCV's at his third, and with them the game. Afterwards he looks more resigned than unhappy, or maybe he just wanted to get home to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Final: Speed TY
The final game was pretty fun, featuring a very tense drawn out fight at TY's natural with a somewhat unusual unit composition. I say 'composition', but Speed really only makes non-stop goliaths for a good ten minutes. The builds diverge when TY opts for a couple of early wraiths. Ironically, this gives Speed an opportunity to get ahead economically by killing a bunch of SCV's with vultures. Although the wraiths later come back to even the odds somewhat.



After this we basically have Speed pumping goliaths from four factories and attacking into TY's natural whenever he has managed to get six or so across the map. TY tries to hold mainly with tanks, while countering with a few vultures, but he keeps losing SCV's at his own natural. It is entirely unclear to me why it takes him so damn long to get siege mode finished. Presumably one sieged tank on the high-ground would stop this nonsense pretty quickly. Although it is quite amusing to watch just how quickly goliaths can kill tanks. The first tank, finally, sieges at 11:17. By this time Speed has only just finished his first machine shop and has yet to own his first vehicle with treads. Think about that, we have hover bikes, space-worthy aircraft, bionic men and literal mechs before he gets first WW1 tech machine out.

The game stabilizes somewhat, but once again Speed can translate his superior early game economy into a better mid-game position. He deals a crippling blow to his opponent's economy by ransacking the third base, while TY fails to respond in kind. Surprisingly, after a lengthy mid-map positioning battle, the game still hangs somewhat in the balance. Ultimately, Speed grabs victory with a wraith switch, affordable thanks to his superior economy, that kills just enough tanks to tip the scales. Speed returns to the group selection on the back of his very good TvT. Haven't I read this before somewhere?


Group C
The third group also went pretty much as expected. Soma returns to the big stage, hoping to finally fulfil his potential by grabbing that elusive ASL title. Who would have thought that neither hero nor soma would get there during the first 19 seasons? Saber showed up decently, but was ultimately outmatched, and Mini had just too much chaos class to fall to someone like sSak.

Match 1:Mini < Dominator SE > Saber
Mini opens his ASL20 account with—What else?—double stargate. And with good control he seizes the skies. Saber tries a hydra counter, but runs into many cannons. And then the former champion overpowers the newcomer on the backswing.

Match 2: Soma < Dominator SE > sSak
This is apparently the group for heavy commitment to air units. Soma opens mutas of course, and sSak has decided to try his hand at some valkyrie micro. But, if you lose your first three valks, you don't get much practice in, and you put yourself in a bad position. Although watching the game back, sSak's control was actually decent, he just didn't quite pick the right time for shooting. Still, Terran survives and manages to fully transition to mech. Soma keeps up the pressure with multi-pronged dark swarm attacks, but doesn't make much progress. It does however prevent sSak from moving out. And we all know what happens when a five base Zerg can operate for a few minutes with an undisturbed economy. Terran just about holds the first wave of ultralisks, but a full control group of queens quickly ends any hopes sSak might have had of making it to the Winners Match. There was a moment when a science vessel floated past a court of queens. A well placed EMP could have turned that game. But it was probably not researched. Will we ever see that move?

Winners: Mini < Knock Out > Soma
Mini goes for two stargates again. And his control is really good, but Soma doesn't crumble like Saber. When Zerg transitions into hydras, Mini tries to counter with a large zealot templar attack, but Soma has too many units. A DT drop into the main does a lot of damage, and Mini should be in a good position. But it turns out that the low-ground ditch is a terrible liability if one has to fight out of a Zerg contain. For some reason Mini decides to attack up the ramp multiple times, a literal uphill battle, instead of heading across the Rubicon. I can only assume that's because he prefers expanding to the high-ground mineral only over expanding to three o'clock. In the end he did neither of course. Protoss does break out and the supply still looks just about playable. But Mini is literally mined out in both is bases and has only a trickle long distance income for the last minute of the game, which forces him to tap out.

Losers: sSak < Knock Out > Saber
sSak obviously enjoys ferrying heroes to Valhalla, so he opens valks again. Saber doesn't manage to neutralise the threat like Soma. But he does proceed to take another main, and for a moment it looks like a combined vulture-goliath-valk force can just wander over and flatten that base. But a big flock of scourge drive away the valks and allow their bigger brothers to clean up. When the first ultras pop, sSak has a large tank force and he almost breaks the Zerg fourth. But counter-attacks force the army to turn and then the mech army slowly gets ground down. However, Terran is already on four bases and has the better economy. Vultures slip through and massacre a big clutch of drones in the Zerg main, too. Saber also tries his hand at some broodlings. But by the time they are ready, Zerg is already too low on units and a large tank force is shelling the fourth base. Half the tanks explode, but the rest of the armour crushes through both Zerg bases in that corner and sends Saber home. I was actually pleasantly surprised by Saber's performance. Obviously he has a bit more work to do, but respect for playing straight up and looking decent.

Final: Mini <Pole Star> :sSak
In the final game of the week, Mini tries to cause some early chaos with quick DT's but sSak deals with it calmly enough. We head into a fairly standard midgame that looks pretty similar to Bisu vs Speed, except that sSak is less good at aborbing the pressure so he slowly falls behind. Unopposed, a troop of dragoons destroys the Terran fourth base, triggering a desperate counter. This should be the moment where Protoss grabs the victory... But Mini doesn't engage cleanly and loses a lot of goons. As a result some of the Terran army makes it literally all the way diagonally across the map to take out the sixth Protoss base. More sloppy engagements follow, but the chaos toss keeps up the pressure on sSak's economy with a bazillion storm drops. It's like both contestants are playing Whac-A-Mole as sSaak takes down a couple of mostly undefended bases while Mini successfully reduces Terran to a one-base economy. And Terran can, apparently, play in that state against a maxed Protoss for some time. But in this situation, even trading three to one is not efficient enough, so the superior numbers eventually grind down the plucky underdog. And Mini moves on to the group selection, as he usually does, in a messy way.

Zerg! Zerg! And whats that? MORE ZERG!

Group D features a rare all Zerg group, with Queen, the returning EffOrt, Calm and HyuN.

Historically Queen was known to struggle in the matchup until a few years ago but now it has changed considerably with him having one of the best mutalisk control of all time making him more dangerous in the more critical point of the standard ZvZ matchup.

EffOrt has been gone for over a year, ASL wise its been 2 years. Online his presence has been mostly on the K-League level only occasionally hitting the Majors level, he’s easing back in. His ZvZ is more about getting earlier wins, he’s always been more of a clutch decision making/reactive style/Starsense player than just being aggressive with his builds.

Calm historically has been one of the better players in the matchup being the ace of STX soul back in the KeSPA days, but off late he hasn’t been a threat, not in ZvZ or any matchup. His upside is that he’ll probably draw a lot of viewership for the group thanks to his University streams.

Hyun is the least likely to make it out of this group, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. This is his 4th ASL and he’s qualified for, always dropping out of the Ro24, but interestingly always after taking one win at least, so who is he going to play spoiler for?

All in all its ZvZ, the matchup is pretty coin-flippy with the number of straight up build order wins and matches being decided by openers so considering the group has both Queen and EffOrt who have a lot of experience playing standard and non standard forms of the matchup. I really hope we get to see one game go to Hive.



Queen and EffOrt Advance To The Ro16!

Group E features a compelling group of a rock solid Rush, two resurging players in both Jaedong and Mong, and a returning old face in ParalyzE.

It’s safe to say that with hero stumbling in the last ASL, Rush has cemented himself as the new Mr. Consistent. The dude just doesn’t lose in groups, and always finds a way to make it to the bracket. Almost 10 straight bracket appearances for the ever present Terran, with only a slight hiccup in ASL15. And he’s been in reasonable form lately, with an excellent all-kill in proleague 2 weeks ago, even stomping FlaSh. While he is playing a Protoss on Dominator in the first set, I expect Rush to manage this group fairly easily, with Jaedong potentially giving him some issues if they face off.

Jaedong’s Ro8 run in ASL19 was a sight for sore eyes, as the Tyrant finally managed to make a statement, showing flashes of the old Jaedong in his games, even managing to put up a fight against Light even if the final score showed a lopsided 1-4 result. However, the question for Jaedong is whether he can continue this form. He’s been featured on more and more proleagues, playing against the other top players in the scene. As the saying goes, steel sharpens steel, and while his ELOBoard stats aren’t the most impressive, the list of his opponents is. If he can maintain even 50% against the top dogs like FlaSh, Snow, and Light, Jaedong can very well be another contender to advance to another bracket stage. But his focus will still be on advancing out of this Ro24 group, with his first opponent being a returning Mong.

Mong has sort of made a bit of a comeback, managing to make his way through qualifiers to make his long awaited return to ASL after not managing to qualify in over a year and a half. He’s shown some good play, beating Queen and Piano on his way through his qualifier group, so a series win over a strong Zerg will give him confidence in his first matchup against Jaedong. Don’t count Mong out too easily, while he’s the underdog to make it out of the group over players like Rush and Jaedong, there’s some room for him to make a surprise upset and emerge from this tricky group.

Paralyze (I can never get NuketheStar’s way of saying it out of my head), or as I like to call him Afrotoss from his glorious afro back in the day (why did he ever get rid of it), has made it to his first ever ASL. And it was no easy feat, beating Bisu and Mind to make it to his first post-KeSPA tournament. Now, do I think he’s got a chance in this group? Not really sadly, as most rookies to ASL get washed out fairly quickly. But the PvT specialist (60% career PvT) has two Terrans in this group, so there’s always a chance for him to make some noise and potentially knock one of them into losers or even out of the group. Time will tell, but maybe if he grows back his afro, he’ll regain his former powers.

Rush and Jaedong Advance To The Ro16!

We end the Ro24 with hero, Royal, BarrackS and BTS. A fairly typical group makeup for the Ro24 with surprises being unlikely but, as you know anything is possible on any given day when it comes to the ASL.

He may have dipped in his stats as of last season but hero is the most consistent player in history of the ASL, one of the zergs who’s in almost every major proleague matches, his ZvT stands at a solid 50% winrate against mostly other Tier 1 players, his ZvZ is good enough for BTS. All in all he’s the favorite by a mile.

RoyaL won an ASL. At this point its like saying Casy won OSL. Whatever brilliance he showed through his ASL14 run has just not shown itself since, still he has his TvT to rely on and its against BarrackS, who is about the same level as he is in TvT and has better TvZ than him too. They’re most likely going to face each other twice in the Group, I would still give the edge to BarrackS.

BTS or TRUE as most SC2 fans would call him, qualifies for his 2nd ASL after going 1-2 in the Ro24 last season, with a surprise win against BeSt in the opener before losing to him in the final match. I expect more of the same performance wise this time around.

hero and BarrackS Advance To The Ro16!

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Writers: Simplistik, FlashFTW, BLinD-RawR
Graphics: v1
Editors: BLinD-RawR