Which victory is sweeter? A chance to become the first 5 time ASL champion or to finally win your first after being denied several times at the last hurdle?

Soulkey is on the cusp of doing something that not even Flash was able to do and win a 5th ASL, something that Soulkey himself didn't think he would be doing after he told people that he lost his motivation.

Though from the way he's been playing this season seems like quite the lie to sell a false sense of security with his opponents, Rush is one tough opponent for sure even for him but he's always managed to beat him.

For Rush this has to be the final he's been in, his first crack was against Mini at a time when Mini was at his absolute best, his 2nd shot was against Royal in ASL14 which was his best chance to win but he just couldn't by the end.

Now to go up against Soulkey who he's never beaten in a series offline and at the peak of his ability, well Rush has his work cut out for him. But should he win? its going to be one sweet victory.

Liquipedia

The Grand Finals give us Rush vs Soulkey, and Soulkey is looking to add a fifth ASL trophy to his collection. After winning every season from ASL 16 through ASL 19, he watched Soma take the next two championships. Soulkey has now taken care of Soma himself, and only Rush stands between him and another gold.

It hasn’t been a straight road back. Soulkey went out in the Round of 16 in ASL 20 and the Round of 24 in ASL 21. For someone who had just won four consecutive championships, those were some pretty big upsets. This season started better. He beat BarrackS and JyJ to finish first in his Round of 24 group, then ran into trouble against hero in the Round of 16. After losing his opening game, Soulkey swept JyJ 2-0 and got another chance against hero. He won the rematch 2-0 and finally made it back to the playoffs.

Leta was next, and Soulkey sent him home 3-0.

In the semifinals, I predicted Soma would win that series, and after the first two games, things were looking pretty good. But Soulkey hung in there. He got his first win in a messy base trade on KnockOut, then won on Aiolos to tie the series. After taking Odyssey, he finished things off on Colorless Fate with early Zergling pressure against Soma’s hatchery-first opening. Four straight wins turned a 0-2 deficit into a 4-2 victory and ended Soma’s hopes of a third consecutive title. (Soulkey just loves doing things in fours!)

In his postmatch interview, Soulkey credited Calm with preparing his builds for all seven potential games. That included the three-Hatchery-before-Pool opening on Odyssey. Calm was convinced Soma wouldn’t open with a fast Pool and told Soulkey to trust him. Soulkey also admitted he got emotional about reaching another final. After thanking Calm for the help, he joked that he would handle the Terran matchup in the final himself.

His results against Terran give him good reason to feel that way. Counting ASL main-event matches through this season’s semifinals, Soulkey is 27-11 against Terran, including best of ones. Once we look at Bo3s and longer series, that becomes 11-3. His Bo7 record is 4-1, with wins over Rush twice, Light, and Sharp. The only loss came against Royal in the ASL 14 semifinals, and Royal needed all seven games to finish the job.

Soulkey has also won all seven maps he has played against Terran in this season’s main event. BarrackS lost one, JyJ lost three across their two meetings, and Leta lost three. Rush is a much bigger test than those results alone suggest, but he is facing someone who hasn’t given a Terran a single map this tournament.

The head-to-head makes things even more uncomfortable for Rush. In their ASL main-event meetings through Season 21, Soulkey leads 6-0 in matches and 14-4 in maps. He beat Rush twice in the ASL 6 Round of 24, then swept their Bo3s in ASL 12 and ASL 18. Their playoff meetings were more important. Soulkey won 4-3 in the ASL 16 semifinals and 4-1 in the ASL 19 quarterfinals. Rush has already had two chances to stop a Soulkey championship run, and neither worked out.

To be fair to Rush, he has beaten Soulkey in ASL wildcard competition. He won 2-1 in the Season 11 wildcard final and 2-0 in the Season 14 wildcard semifinal. Those wins count for something, but Rush has yet to repeat them against Soulkey in the main tournament. Doing it for the first time in a Grand Final would be a pretty good way to fix that record.

Then there is Soulkey’s finals history. Four appearances, four championships. He beat Mini 4-1 in ASL 16, hero 4-3 in ASL 17, Sharp 4-1 in ASL 18, and Best 4-3 in ASL 19. He has won a final against every race and has shown he can finish a close series as well as a comfortable one. Rush is trying to give him his first ASL silver.

Soulkey currently has four ASL golds, tying Flash, who won Seasons 2, 3, 4, and 8. A victory here would put Soulkey alone at five. That comparison is strictly ASL titles, but passing Flash in any championship count is a pretty big deal. Rush would probably prefer that Soulkey find a different weekend to make history.

Rush deserves credit for beating Light to get here, and I don’t expect him to go down without taking a game. Still, Soulkey has the head-to-head advantage, the stronger finals record, and a perfect ZvT map record this season. After watching him recover from 0-2 against Soma, I’m not picking against him again.

Soulkey wins 4-1 and claims his fifth ASL championship!

Ever the underdog going into his 3rd ASL finals, Rush has managed to climb the mountain back to the penultimate summit after 4 long years of being denied another chance. Yet, across from him seeking his record-breaking 5th ASL, is a rejuvenated Soulkey. Rush will have to turn up the heat if he is to stop Soulkey on yet another one of his destructive war paths.

The Journey Here: In the Ro24, Rush experienced some minor turbulence on the way to advancing out of the group, beating Hm, losing to Shuttle, then beating Bisu. In the Ro16, Rush lost the opening match to BeSt, then got his revenge against both Protosses, beating Shuttle 2-1 and BeSt 2-0 to advance to the bracket. In the Ro8, Rush pulled off an excellent comeback, reverse sweeping Shine 3-2 on his way to the semifinals. There, triumphed in an exciting TvT over Light, 4-2.

The Gameplan: Let’s put it bluntly, Rush is the underdog. There’s no disputing that. While his TvZ is one of his better matchups (58% on ELOboard), he narrowly beat Shine after dropping down 0-2 to start the series against what I would consider to be fairly normal muta pressure. Soulkey’s muta control is even better, and his long term game planning is also better than Shine, whose strengths primarily lie in creative openers and mutalisk pressure. His normal 2 rax academy openers really don’t seem to be a great choice against the style of play that we’ll likely see out of Soulkey, with low marine counts being susceptible to strong mutalisk pressure, leading to a mid-game snowball that makes it impossible for Terran to mount a comeback with a devastated economy and low marine count. Ironically, I would have definitely given Light far better odds on playing against Soulkey, as his go-to opener is +1 4rax, which shores up the issues with lower marine counts in the mid-game in exchange for less pressure in the early game.

Rush’s ELOboard performances against Zerg have also not been the greatest, though that’s to be expected somewhat when a player is grinding hard to practice the matchup. Since his Ro4 win over Light, Rush’s TvZ results are as follows: vs Soma, he went 2-2, 11-7, and 5-8. He beat Jaedong 2-1 and Queen 2-0, but lost to EffOrt 2-5, 1-2, and 0-3, before 2-0ing in a rematch. Adding in his Bo1s and proleague matches, he’s 31-34 in TvZ. It gets worse for Rush, as he has NEVER beaten Soulkey in the ASL, as seen from the following results:

ASL19 lost to Soulkey 1-4 in the Ro8
ASL16 lost to Soulkey 3-4 in the semifinals
ASL12 lost to Soulkey 0-2 in winners match Ro16
ASL6 lost to Soulkey twice in Ro24

But to push all the bad out of the way and to think optimistically for Rush, I think his series against Light was a really good showcase of what Rush is capable of. He has excellent ideas for creative openers to gain advantages in the early game, has decent control in the mid-game, and has a knack for sniffing out weird cheeses. His willingness to roll the dice in a very Flash-like manner, going 13cc twice against Light, is exactly what he’ll need to do against Soulkey to play mindgames and find early advantages to neutralize Soulkey’s strong muta-phase. I’m anticipating Rush to break out some 111 or funky tech builds to get Soulkey off his game, especially to try to minimize the window where Soulkey’s mutalisks are most effective. Fast valks or science vessels will be critical to neutralizing the flying shrimp.

Series Outlook: Game 1, Rush’s pick, will be on Backrooms, with loser pick the rest of this Bo7 series. Backrooms is a very interesting pick from Rush, because the weird natural base configuration makes it a bit more susceptible to mutalisks with the open back area, and plays well into Soulkey’s muta-dive style. The ditches also makes 8rax or aggressive builds like 2rax a bit worse as well, which we’ve seen Rush open with basically every game against Shine. It’ll be curious to see if Rush is going to change up that opening even if he sticks to bio, given that I wouldn’t feel all that confident in his ability to pick up advantages in the opening with it. 13cc or greedy rax CC is also possible given that Backrooms gives him a ling-tight wall, but I wouldn’t put it past Soulkey to just open 9 pool, anticipating a 13cc. If there was one thing that was Soulkey’s major weakness in BoX series that separated him from Soma, it was his predictability, which Rush might try to abuse. The rest of the map pool feels suspect at BeSt for Rush. Normally, a favorable TvZ map pool would see maps in the 55% win rate or better for Terran (think maps like Pantheon, Pole Star, and Citadel). However, outside of Aiolos (which in fairness is 58% TvZ), the rest of the standard map pool is only 52-53% in favor of Terran. Standard 4p maps like Attitude and Octagon used to be Terran heavens, but have since been taken down a notch and Zergs have found their footing. Meanwhile, Colorless Fate undoes the Aiolos imbalance with a 41% TvZ winrate. Odyssey, which everyone memed that Rush was the king of that map, is also only 53% TvZ (and ironically, the king of the map is currently 0-3 this ASL, with loses to Shuttle x2 and Light). I would anticipate Rush trying out of the box strategies on maps like Colorless Fate, Aiolos, and Odyssey, while opening 13cc into tight timing window builds like mech on Attitude, Octagon, and Backrooms. Rush will have to roll the dice several times in this series if he’s going to hope to emerge victorious and end the streak of Zerg dominance.

Rush wins and finally claims his ASL championship!

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