After an exciting group selection, ASL22 resumes with the Ro16 featuring the reigning champion Soma in Group A. While Leta starts his ASL22 run after earning his seed last season in Group B.

Soma may be the best player on the field right now but even he'll admit he's facing tough competition between BeSt and Rush, let alone whatever that trickster Shuttle has in mind after that group selection ceremony. All we can say is that you do not want to miss this.

Group B features a retreading of ASL21's Ro24 Group F with almost the same lineup as last season for Leta, Jaedong and Queen, will things play out the same or will ggaemo play a factor in how this whole group shakes out?

Liquipedia

Well not exactly meeting God since FlaSh isn’t in this group (or playing for that matter anymore). But Soma is probably as close to Starcraft god right now as anyone else ever was ever since FlaSh took up the mantle. Soma also nicely crafted a group with no ZvZ, swapping out Jaedong with BeSt, who joins Shuttle and Rush as the group rounds itself out. A fairly decent group given how many upsets we saw in the Ro24 again, this group certainly feels like players battling for 2nd place. Who will fight there way into the bracket, or will there be another crazy upset?!

Soma - Well, is there really anything to say about Soma right now? The dude is just absolutely on fire. 2nd in the ELOBoards right now at 1439 ELO (though a lot of that was from his recent thrashing of Leta 17-1). He’s bossing it in every match he plays, whether its proleague, KCM, or Escore. He’s also taking a page out of FlaSh’s book, retreating from proleague and online matches to prep offline. When you’re at the top, you need to hide every strategy possible as everyone is going to be analyzing your play with a microscope. I fully expect him to go down the Soulkey route and start his own string of wins.

Shuttle - A surprise to be sure, as Shuttle managed to climb out his Ro24 group in first (albeit made that game against Rush on Odyssey extremely close and sloppy when it should’ve been an auto win after a point). However, against 3 qualified opponents and going into Bo3 format, Shuttle’s chances of making it out of another group seems very slim. He’s only sitting at 1055 ELO right now, on top of struggling hard in proleague while barely breaking even in K-league. Now granted, I’ve been wrong a ton in my predictions this ASL so far, but I really just don’t see how Shuttle is coming out of this group alive.

BeSt - BeSt has definitely shown signs of improvement since I last wrote about him. And maybe I was a bit too harsh on arguably the second best Protoss in the field. He’s had a decent string of results in proleague so far, and coming out of his group over Jaedong certainly helps his confidence. A nice 3-kill with strong games over Light, Larva, and Speed means BeSt feels positioned well here. And if he were to need to find a path out of the group, a PvT against Rush certainly feels like a matchup he would take.

Rush - Rush comes out of his Ro24 group in 2nd place behind Shuttle, who maybe he’ll get his chance at revenge here. While losing a weird game on Odyssey, he looked very comfortable against Hm and Bisu, though the former really didn’t have a game against him. Rush has looked good on the new season of maps so far, boasting some strong winrates on most of the map pool. While the last few TvZ series against Larva and Queen haven’t gone his way, overall Rush has been really strong the last week, at one point going on a 10 game win streak, all 2-0 victories over 5 players. While he might consider a potential matchup against Soma as a throwaway, he will be able to prepare well for his TvP matchups against Shuttle and BeSt.


Soma <Aiolos> Shuttle

Surprisingly Aiolos isn’t that bad of a map for Protoss, with 52.3% PvZ. But the map certainly pushes Zerg to open muta play against Protoss who likely needs to opt for more corsairs to defend the aerial threats. It’s also worth mentioning that Soma’s style of ZvP (and the meta in general) has really shifted towards doom dropping frequently which Aiolos also heavily rewards with ferrying units from the center into the bases. However, Zergs have also been caught with Protoss is prepared, storming under the overlords and wiping out the Zerg forces before they can even get any damage done. I expect that style of game to evolve with Soma taking this map comfortably.

Soma wins.

BeSt <Aiolos> Rush

Aiolos poses a few problems for BeSt in this matchup. First, the map is 45% PvT, so not that great of a map for the matchup. Second, the way the map is laid out, shuttle reaver and carrier play is definitely encouraged, neither of which is really BeSt’s strong suit, who typically relies on cleaner macro style to beat Terrans. Third, and this was crazy to me, Rush has a 72.5% winrate on this map. WHAT?! In his most recent TvPs on Aiolos, Rush executed a clean marine vulture rush against a 12nex, and pulled apart Bisu with fast starport wraith/dropship play and abused the map terrain to his advantage. BeSt is going to be the heavy underdog coming into this match, and I don’t think he’ll have enough to overcome Rush’s decisive play here.

Rush wins.

Soma vs Rush

Rush has had a mixed bag of results against Zerg, splitting games against Larva while dropping a series to Queen. Further, it’s not helped by the fact that Soma has some incredible win rates (57%+) on most of the remaining maps in the map pool. Rush on the other hand has more middling results on these maps, and coupled by the fact that the map pool has been a lot better for Zergs in ZvT lately, it’s going to be a very tricky uphill fight for Rush. I expect Soma to deal with everything really well, as his intelligence and optimization is second to none right now, while his standard play is still sharp.

Soma wins and advances.

Shuttle vs BeSt

Luckily for Shuttle, if this draw goes accordingly, he’ll at least have some chances in a PvP. After all, he did manage to somehow pull off the upset against Bisu with some solid play too. However, Bo1 vs Bo3 are two completely different worlds, and I just don’t know that Shuttle has the quality necessary to take a Bo3 over BeSt.

BeSt wins.

Rush vs BeSt

I think on a non-Aiolos map, and potentially some better maps for BeSt to draw, I think there’s a good chance for him in this season. Only problems are… some of these maps are really just not good for PvT. I’ll leave out the expletives, but Attitude, Backrooms, and Octagon just feel like the trifecta of bad maps that are miserable for Protoss to play on. The 2p maps are also not fantastic either, as both maps prevent gas steals. Backrooms is also just terrible. Again, I just don’t think that the current meta favors BeSt’s style, as reaver utilization to slow Terran pushes was never his strong point. And I think if Rush plays his usual strong, safe, and consistent style, he’ll be able to take this series. BeSt really needs to pray that he can get both Colorless Fate and Knock Out in this series against Rush.

Rush wins and advances.

Soma and Rush Advance To The Ro8!

This is not the most exciting group by recent performance standards for the ASL, but it is one that has some history. Jaedong, Leta and Queen were in the same group in the Ro24 of ASL21 where Leta eliminated Queen in the final game. Will Queen fare better? Will Jaedong go 2-0 again? ggaemo has already taught people a lesson this season about underestimating him and he’s once again in a group with 2 more zergs.

Leta - he got the seeded spot after his ASL21 run took him to the Ro4, since losing to soma in said series Leta has been exactly where he was before, mostly playing K-League and university content which makes it pretty hard to really see how well he could perform this season. Eloboard puts his last 10 games as a part of his larger 18 match series against soma where he went 1-17. Overall, it comes down to how well he plays his always reliable 2-port wraith on this season’s maps since he only has to worry about one matchup in this group.

Queen - He’s back with a vengeance after looking at that Ro24 performance, rolling over EffOrt and Mini with great skill. Eloboard puts ZvZ as his best matchup and he’s 3-4 against Jaedong in the last month, the opening game sets the tone of the group for both players as they face off against each other and his ZvT is his weakest matchup, however since Leta is facing ggaemo in the opener, should he face Leta at any point its going to be a Bo3 which puts him in a better position, this comes down to how they play the maps.

ggaemo - Everyone counted him out when he made Ro24 but with the power of ZvZ and Ro24 being Bo1 he managed to get his solid build order wins and make it through to the Ro16. However, his opening match is against Leta and we have no clue how ggaemo would actually do in a ZvT he’s very likely ending up in the losers’ game. From there on, facing either Jaedong or Queen in a Bo3 makes it very unlikely he’s going to recover, let alone advance.

Jaedong - Jaedong is much in the same position as Queen overall, but with slightly better ZvT and same ZvZ winrates, as mentioned earlier he has 4-3 record against Queen in the last month that could put their opening match going either way from there on, he’s likely going to face Leta and Jaedong should win that series under most circumstances.

Since the group is mostly ZvZ there’s not a lot of discussion over maps, Leta will ban colorless fate in every series for sure, its the only map that zerg consistently does better against terran.

Jaedong and Queen Advance To The Ro8!

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