We say it every season because its true, but this is probably one of the most stacked Ro16 groups ever where its no way obvious who will make it out. This week we have Group A featuring Soulkey starting his run for the unthinkable 5-peat going up against one the toughest terran rivals Rush, A very capable BarrackS and his biggest danger in ZvZ EffOrt.

Group B featuring the close runner up of last season BeSt facing against his former teammate and ace Bisu, the shock of Ro24 BTS and the one who feels the most comfortable in this group Queen

Recaps by Simplistik

Liquipedia

Group D
I'd love to know the thinking behind cooking up this group. Guarantee two Zerg eliminations?

Match 1: Queen <Dominator SE> HyuN
Queen opens hatch first, while Hyun opts for a fast spawning pool. There is a very small timing window when the pool opener can get more lings to their opponent's natural base, but Hyun fails to get anything out of that. Most importantly, he fails to kill even a single drone. Queen knows he's safe from ground now, and he has a big economic lead, so he just needs to survive the first half dozen mutalisks. Two spore colonies each at both his bases ensure that survival. There was another tiny opening when Hyun's flappers could have sniped the drone about to dissolve itself to be reborn as a creep colony. This would have left Queen's natural vulnerable, but it didn't come to pass. Hyun then proceeds to miss his opportunity to set up his own natural, and then the top seed blows him away with superior numbers in the first air engagemen.

Match 2: EffOrt <Dominator SE> Calm
Effort opens overpool and Calm gets a slight lead with his 12-pool. This lead translates into a quick-ish second hatchery at the natural. This in turn means Calm has more lings at around four minutes, which is perhaps why he doesn't morph a sunken colony in his main. But then, of course, he can't let any hostile lings slip through. And sure enough Calm's lings are extremely busy guarding the area above his ramp. They are so 'busy' in fact that they let the enemy brood shred his natural hatchery for relatively little cost. This blunder forces Calm to counter. Three mutas and two sunken colonies limit the damage. Nevertheless, Effort's economy is reduced to six drones. The counter also left an opening for a run-by which cost Calm a drone or two, but he's still on a much healthier eleven. It's no use though, as Effort's first four mutas and two scourge arrive just as Calm's third flapper is hatching. The Brain Zerg then misses one volley against the scourge, and taps out shortly after.

Winners: Queen<Roaring Currents> EffOrt
With the long rush distance, both players feel safe and we get two identical 12-hatch, 11-pool into gas openings. Queen morphs a third hatchery just above his natural ramp while Effort hatches a large brood of lings. Some of those lings hang back in the main base and only dash out once Queen's forward overlord has moved out of the path. The Effort-lings are half-way across the map by the time they are spotted. Queen-lings have set up a little barrier and the hatchery also helps to narrow the space, but Effort slaughters his way through and gets into the natural. Queen tries to regroup at the choke to the main, but he doesn't pull enough drones, so Effort wins the fight. The nine victorious lings trip over the exposed spire on their way deeper into the main, and quickly tear it down, getting revenge for stubbed toes everywhere. I have to say, this spire position looked very strange to me, all out in the open, as far away from the mineral lines as physically possible. Take this is a lesson kids: Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your spire closest of all.



Queen throws his head back and groans as the spire implodes in a shower of blood. Wait. Does he physically feel that pain? We should do a DNA test, just to make sure he's not actually an invasive alien species... The former double champion morphs an emergency evolution chamber, and manages to stall with his own five mutalisks until two spores finish at the natural. But all this does is push the invading mutas into the main, where the spores are not up yet. And so Effort returns to the group selection, two years after his previous appearance and almost seven years since his memorable title run.

Losers: Calm <Litmus> HyuN
Hyun opens 11 hatch at his natural, while Calm pulls out a fresh opening: 12-pool-gas, followed by a second hatchery tucked away at the top edge. With superior numbers, Hyun-lings fight their up the ramp and slaughter a drone, partly because Calm's sunken was late. With fresh reinforcements, they come back and wipe out a few more. Calm's only hope is that his five mutalisks get some serious work done, ideally enough to level the economic situation and to maintain air dominance. We get a very tense micro battle. Initially Calm does well, sniping scourge, driving Hyun's flyers back and killing quite a few drones. But with the better economy, Hyun manages to squeeze out just enough air units to win the decisive engagement and send Calm home.

Final: Queen <Radeon> HyuN
To finish off the group, we get close-spawn mirror builds: 12-pool, 12-gas into hatchery at the natural. Hyun seizes the early positioning advantage and gets to camp outside his opponent's natural. This also forces Queen to morph a sunken colony, giving the challenger a slight economic lead. And then Hyun missteps by attacking in and losing a bunch of lings for nothing. Queen plays it safe from here, building up air parity while getting his lings in position for a combined attack. This overwhelms Hyun's ground forces and costs him the natural. The desperation muta-counter fails and another former champion returns to the group selection. This is turning out to be quite the reunion. It's a real shame that Flash and Rain aren't playing.


Group E

Match 1: Rush < Dominator SE > ParalyzE
We start with a rather curious TvP between top seed Rush and Paralyze, who qualified ahead of Bisu on day 1. Both players are very cautious during the opening stages of the game. Paralyze tries to slow down his opponent at various points, but never fully engages. Rush spends just about the minimum number of vultures to keep up a semblance of pressure, but there are plenty of dragoons and cannons. A quarter of an hour into the game there is a stand-off, with the two armies camped on adjacent high-ground slices next to the Protoss mineral only. Instead of trying a pincer, or some harassment, or even just taking the rest of the map, Paralyze send his maxed out ground army through the ditch to attack an entrenched position. WW1 tactics at their finest. You can guess the outcome. After this failed attack Rush is in a great position and proceeds to lock Paralyze into his main while taking down the Protoss economy to secure a straightforward victory.

Match 2: Jaedong <Dominator SE> Mong
Valkyries are apparently en vogue and Mong can't resist the fashion. He does a good job keeping his first four valks alive, which allows him to push back the mutalisks decisively. But Terran has neither the muscle or timing to deny Jaedong from taking the free natural. By the time a small ground army arrives, lurkers are already in position. Mong tries to use his air dominance to secure a drop into the Zerg main, but it gets spotted and doesn't do much damage. After this, both players sit back and gear up for a big late game. Mong fully transitions to mech while expanding towards his opponent along the South, going up to five bases. Say what you want about Mong, but he sure knows how to out-expand his opponents if they are passive. Jaedong opts for a strategic counter and hatches eleven queens, while his ultralisk upgrades are evolving. Mong maxes out first. But the Zerg swarm pours forth, attacking multiple locations at once, with broodling support, and washes away the spread out Terran defenders. The queens reduce the tank count and the ultras crush-trample the rest.

Winners: Rush <KnockOut> Jaedong
This game is a decent candidate for game of the week. Jaedong finds himself in vertical close positions, so he opts for heavy mutalisk pressure on two bases. Rush battles to cling on churning out short-lived marines from four barracks as the mutalisks shred turrets and SCV's. At some point only four workers are mining at the Terran natural. Behind in supply, Rush sends out two infantry platoons to pull the mutalisks away, but the Zerg main is sewn up tight with sunkens, and the third is still morphing, so can just be cancelled. This lets the mutalisks back in for more damage.



Despite all this, the infantry manages to deny the second Zerg expansion attempt as well, with a very timely stim charge while lurkers are still morphing. Jaedong's economy was also slowed down by morphing this many sunken colonies and staying on two bases for a long time. With irradiate pressure, Rush still has a chance to break the third and fourth bases. One dark swarm keeps the infantry at bay while a nydus canal slowly morphs, with reinforcements queueing up on the other side. Rush realises that he's running out of time, so he orders a small group of infantry to make a dash for it...

The nydus falls, but not before the all-important defiler slips through, and the base is secure. Rush keeps up the pressure with drops, but Jaedong doesn't crack. Eventually ultralisks hatch and the Zerg economy starts humming. The game ends when the first ultra-defiler attack hits the Terran natural. I thought this was a very interesting and impressive game by Jaedong. Oddly enough, he looks very serious after the game. Ever the perfectionist?

Losers: Mong <KnockOut> ParalyzE
This is another very curious game. Paralyze gets away with a cross-spawn nexus first, but Mong, sensing that Protoss is not going for a big early attack, just expands his heart out. With a Terran going up to four on-location bases, you'd think there should be some openings for Protoss. Protoss attempts a few shuttle bombs and some storms, but Mong's macro is off the charts. Paralyze tries to take another natural, but vultures deny it, because he's not putting on enough pressure. Both players end up taking a fifth base at the same time. Storm drops are OK, but Mong maxes out first. Paralyze had opportunities to prevent Terran from taking another main, but he realised far too late that it was already mining. Mong proceeds to churn out army like there's no tomorrow and steamrollers Paralyze out of the tournament.

Final: Rush <Pole Star> Mong
Rush goes for a forward rax, but Mong blocks it well. On close positions we get a small vulture race. Mong almost loses, but his first tank rolls off the assembly line just in time. Rush decisively wins the next battle in the centre with superior vulture numbers, but loses his surviving tank to a mine. Still, the vultures force Mong to abandon his natural until he can get siege mode researched. Rush comes out of the opening with a good 25 point supply lead and an earlier third base. Mong does manage to secure the high-ground between the two players, but Rush starts out-positioning him in the centre. After a few failed attempts, the top seed manages to deny Mong's fourth base, but another drop into the main fails. Still, the supply gap creeps up to 40. Rush drops into the main again and this time Mong struggles to clear it out. In a furious finale Rush wreaks havoc with his drops, while Mong counters with a large attack into his opponent's natural, and starts putting a dent into the economy as well. Ultimately the supply gap is too big though, and Rush can start more fires than Mong can put it out. And so both favourites make it through, as expected.


Group F

Match 1: hero <Dominator SE > BTS
Both players open 9-pool speed into lair. BTS tries a backstab, but ends up losing three drones without getting enough compensation. He does have more lings leftover, but herO comfortably holds the first attack. Perhaps catching the top seed off-guard. BTS goes for another large ling attack and manages to break through into the main. Mutas are morphing, but, miraculously, the BTS-lings slaughter all but one drone. herO bids his one remaining drone to mine both enough minerals and enough gas to be able to just afford a round of scourge, and then proceeds to spawn zerglings from his one-drone economy. BTS has a few lings leftover, and they scamper to hide from the only four mutalisks that will hatch this game. Initially our plucky underdog sets up for a spore, but then changes his mind and goes pure scourge. A herO-ling kills a couple of drones while BTS is busy micro-ing on the other side of the map. BTS-lings finish off herO's last drone, and we are down to single digit supplies. herO-lings chase away the last harvesting workers and from then on neither player has any income. The game hinges on whether herO can out-micro the scourge. But his mutas get blindsided and he loses one straight away. Then the mutas try desperately to flap away across the map as one gets hit by a single scourge, then another, then the third, until all three are critically injured. The mutalisks are forced to arc back home to protect a fresh drone from lings, and die in the process. herO taps out at literally zero supply. What a great ZvZ. Utter madness.

Match 2: Royal <Dominator SE > BarrackS
RoyaL opens with a very unusual 13-rax on top of the ramp, into a quick command centre. I guess this is a bunker expand version that is safer from BBS? Barracks on the other hand betrays his name and goes for quick double factory before he even knows where his opponent is. Royal is still busy completing his second and third factory, when his bunker is literally under siege. Then the game goes crazy almost as much as the previous one. Royal lifts his rax after his first bunker falls and Barracks sends a few vulture into his opponents main. Those vultures don't do too much there, but they are definitely missing when Royal pulls the boys to try and overwhelm the tanks. He gets one tank, but loses most of the SCV's from his natural. Still, this gives our fallen champion the opportunity to get one of his tanks up the ramp. The tank almost dies to marines and a vulture, but is saved by a hero repair. More units trickle in from both sides and we see that Royal cancelled his third factory. Instead he's building a starport. Royal's CC is getting shelled and after sneaking a few more tanks up the ramp he decides to pull the trigger to try and break out. It's very close, but Barracks wins the fight, and thus the game, with a tank and a goliath to spare. Royal's control wasn't quite crisp enough as three of his tanks were clumped.

Winners :BarrackS BTS
And so both underdogs have made it to the Winners match and one of them will go through. I hummed and hawed about this group until it was actually too late to place my own liquibet. I guess the results show how hard it was to call. Barracks continues the early game shenanigans with an e-bay block. And then he proceeds into a straightforward 1-1-1. Meanwhile, BTS has plans. While Terran is calling in a valkyrie, Zerg is hatching hydralisks and evolving lurker aspect. 1-1-1 can do almost anything, but it doesn't have quick scanners. And without getting a vulture in, or an early wraith to scout, the build is blind. Zerglings push back the vulture and three lurkers get to the Terran wall completely unspotted. Barracks doesn't manage to pull off the micro to hold and is forced to tap out. And so BTS goes through in first place. Incredible really, given the players in this group.

Game of the Week (for pure nostalgia reasons if nothing else)
Losers: hero < Litmus > Royal
RoyaL despises normal openings, so he goes for a forward rax hidden at three o'clock and an e-bay block, which forces herO to misplace his second hatchery. The first four herO-lings spot the marines and consider to fight the bunker rush, but then they just lope away for a counter as the drones pull back. HerO also cancels the displaced hatchery. The lings find no units, and no factory, but they don't really have the numbers to fight SCV's head on. Meanwhile the marines have forced a second hatchery cancellation in favour of a sunken at home.

The Zerglings eventually get quite a few SCV's trying to build the factory. Marines come home to deal with the threat, which means other lings can easily clear out the bunker. With three marines and a vulture hiding behind two SCV's on top of the ramp, Royal looks completely safe. But then he gets greedy and tries to sneak his vulture down. Lings dash up the ramp and massacre the marines. The vulture just barely lives long enough to thin out the xeno-critters enough for Terran to survive.

When the dust settles, herO finally gets a hatchery up at his natural, although a vulture prevents mining for some time, while also morphing a spire. RoyaL decides to hang tight on one base and calls in a wraith, who shoots down an overlord causing a brief supply block. The first mutalisks arrive at the Terran main and start poking away at the various defences. Royal's buildings are all over the place, but he sort of holds on. herO tries to pull the trigger with some zerglings. They tear down the bunker, but it's not quite enough. This is such a strange game. What kind of army is composed of one vulture, three marines and two science vessels that don't have irradiate? Mutalisks and scourge dive to kill one of the vessels and the remaining irradiate only kills one injured muta. herO is macro-ing up behind this, so it looks like RoyaL's chances are fading fast. But the next two irradiates are better and RoyaL is actually slightly ahead in supply.

The first lurker attack almost sneaks around the small group of marines who are in a forward position, but is ultimately forced back by the threat of irradiate. And then the game actually transitions. Zerg gets a third base and starts morphing a queen's nest. And Terran finally expands at 14:20.

With five vessels, Terran feels comfortable to get out on the map. The swarm decides a frontal assault is unwise and tries the backdoor. There is a spotting marine, but somehow RoyaL doesn't react at all to the lurkers destroying the stasis chambers. Instead he orders a counter with a bunch of tanks and marines which destroys the Zerg natural. Many SCV's die to lurkers but the science vessels and reinforcements slowly clean up in the Terran main. The Terran army has enough stamina to also destroy the Zerg third, so herO is reset to one base, while RoyaL manages to secure both of his bases. The swarm tries another backstab, but this time the defenders actually send the lurkers packing pretty quickly and the writing is on the wall for herO. He doesn't have the resources to hold the next push, and so the top seed goes home in last place.



Interestingly, the two geysers in the mains really made a difference in this game, so I wonder if we'll see more nostalgia-inducing low-base-count high-tech games.

Final: Royal < Pole Star > BarrackS
In the final game of the group we get a more standard TvT. Royal tries an early starport, which mainly results in Barracks getting a unit and a territorial advantage. Some decent harassment and good position breaking keep the ASL14 champion in the game, but his opponent always has more units and also manages to expand faster. So fast in fact that Royal is, for a while, 'defending' an expansion that Barracks is already mining from. Royal falls further behind to a wraith attack that is big enough to take on isolated turrets. And after the wraiths come the dropships, which Barracks uses to great effect both offensively and defensively. It helps that he has way more cargo planes than the his opponent. A big drop into Royal's main ends up delivering the killing blow. Barracks returns to the group selection, becoming a fairly regular Ro16 player recently. This also completes the full underdog sweep of the group, as every game was won by the lower seed. And as for Royal... his poor Ro24 form continues for yet another season. What are the odds that he'll pull himself together at some point in the future?

With a fairly calm Ro24 with only a couple of upsets, the seeded players make their way into the tournament, and we start, of course, with the biggest story of the tournament: can Soulkey win an unprecedented 5 in a row? But those he chose into his group no doubt wanted to make his life as difficult as possible, as the rest of the group is still rounded out with the strong talent of BarrackS, a returning Effort, and Rush (who was swapped in for soma). The Round of 16 starts now!

Soulkey

As usual, with the first pick and swap advantage, Soulkey’s lined himself a reasonable group to advance out of, including swapping out probably his biggest threat of elimination in soma, for a player who he should be comfortable facing in Rush. Effort definitely wanted to make Soulkey a bit nervous with some ZvZ craze when he selected soma into the group, but Soulkey wisely sent him to the other side of the group stage into Group D.

Now, Soulkey has been in a bit of an online slump as of late, falling all the way down to sub-1300 elo. He’s uncharacteristically dropped a few more games than you’d expect from the supposed best player in the world, but Soulkey has never had the online dominance quite like other players like Snow and FlaSh. That being said, he hasn’t played any online games since August 23, which generally indicates that he’s been grinding and preparing offline for two weeks leading up to his tournament entrance. But perhaps his online results are also a result of burnout and the lack of motivation. After all, it’s hard to constantly stay at the top, and with FlaSh not joining the tournament, it’s possible Soulkey doesn’t feel like he has a worthy challenger to contest him. All that being said, I still have immense faith in Soulkey to continue his ways and at the very least return back to the bracket.

BarrackS

BarrackS has continued to be one of the Terrans to look out for as he continues to improve in form and quality. Although he didn’t make a second trip to the bracket last ASL, you can cut him some slack given that he was shoved into a group with both Soulkey and Light in it. Unfortunately, he’s got one half of that duo again in this group, and faces Soulkey first, and on a map like Knock Out where it’s hard to do some kind of cheesy bust with the low ground ditch protecting Zerg’s front. He did demonstrate some impressive TvT play, so beating Rush isn’t out of the question should the two face off against each other. That all being said, I think given the strong group that BarrackS finds himself in, emerging unscathed may be a bit more than he can wish for.

EffOrt

Soma isn’t the only exciting Zerg to return to the ASL this season, as EffOrt has made a long awaited comeback himself. And in an all ZvZ group, he decimated his opponents with sound, decisive play, crushing both Calm and Queen. His ZvZ looked very sharp, something that could spell trouble for Soulkey, who really hasn’t been too severely tested in his ZvZ in his four-peat (his only real test was the finals against hero in a 7 game thriller). EffOrt has also made a very solid run in his online play, pushing himself up to 11th in the ELOboard, which honestly is quite difficult considering that he hasn’t been a feature of the major proleagues. He’s been mostly showing up in K-league instead, so while his online results have been decent, the quality of opponents maybe isn’t testing him as much as he needs. Still, EffOrt’s signature decisive play is back and perhaps he can make a solid run in his return.

Rush

Rush was swapped into Group A, which unfortunately for him means a bit more difficult of a path out of the group. Still, Rush is probably still the second favorite to come out of this group, as while Soulkey likely advances out of this group as the top dog, Rush likely fancies his odds against EffOrt and BarrackS. While Rush did lose a very well played game against Jaedong, EffOrt is probably not quite as sharp as a surging Jaedong. He’s also had an absurd 11-1 record against Zergs already in September, with a strong 5-1 against Soma and 2-0 against Jaedong, reclaiming a spot in the top 10. Rush is also a very solid and tactical player, making his style very suited for TvT play, which I think BarrackS is just a bit worse than him at still. Overall, I think Rush can still consider himself as the 2nd favorite in the group.

Soulkey and Rush Advance To The Ro8!

Group B finds its way with a deadly cast of players. Three of which all were on SKT1 at the same time. This leaves Queen as the odd man out. The question begs, does Queen have what it takes to escape from a group created from the best ESport team of all time? Even better, does BTS or BeSt even stand a chance against Bisu, who holds a crazy high win rate against former teammates?

Best

Best enters this group with the most momentum. In ASL 17 he pushed into the quarterfinals by taking out the Zerg player Action before bowing out to Sharp. He stumbled early in ASL 18 with a winless Round of 24, but everything came together in ASL 19. Best carved through Zerg opposition, edging Queen in a seven-game thriller before falling just short in another epic ZvP series against SoulKey in the finals. His record shows a steady mastery of the matchup against Zerg, while his encounters with fellow Protoss have been limited. For Group B, his ability to lean on polished PvZ play makes him the player to beat.

BTS

BTS is the wild card. He was not part of ASL 17 or 18 and only emerged in ASL 19, where he reached the Round of 24. There, he showed promise but finished third in his group, dropping a crucial head-to-head against Best in the deciding match. As the lone Zerg in that group, he never had a chance to show his ZvZ. What we do know is that his first major Protoss test ended in defeat. That narrow sample leaves plenty of question marks, but it also means there is no long trail of predictable results for opponents to exploit.

Queen

Queen brings pedigree and proven ZvP dominance. Absent in ASL 17 and eliminated in the Round of 24 in ASL 18, Queen rediscovered form in ASL 19. In the Round of 16 he ran through two elite Protoss names, Bisu and Rain, without dropping a map. He then pushed Best to the limit in a quarterfinal that ended 4–3 in Best’s favor. Over the last three seasons his ZvP has been formidable, highlighted by that 3–0 stretch against top Protoss in ASL 19. While he has yet to be tested in ZvZ during this run, his recent record against Protoss still makes him a force to be reckoned with.

Bisu

Bisu carries legendary status but a recent record that tells a story of missed opportunities against Zerg. In ASL 17 he fell to SoulKey in the Round of 16 before getting swept by SnOw in a Protoss mirror in the quarterfinals. ASL 18 saw him advance again but crash out in the Round of 16. By ASL 19, things turned worse as he was placed in a brutal group with two Zergs and was knocked out after losses to Queen and Action. Across these seasons his PvZ has been his undoing, while his most notable PvP showing was the quarterfinal loss to SnOw in ASL 17. Bisu’s reputation and experience always make him dangerous, but his recent form raises questions about whether he can withstand the Zerg pressure waiting in Group B.

Best looks like a polished finalist ready to punish Zerg. Queen has shown that he can dismantle Protoss at the highest level. BTS has only just begun to test himself on the ASL stage. And Bisu is trying to prove he can still conquer his old, famed matchup. The only thing that separates these players from last season, is that Bisu has finally decided to play full screen mode and update his mouse at the advice of Flash. Can these wise words of persuasion be enough to put Bisu back on top or will the wrath of Zerg find him once more? Based on the performances of the last round, there only correct prediction for this group:

Bisu and Queen Advance To The Ro8!

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