[ASL19] Ro8 Day 4

On May 06 2025 14:30 Simplistik wrote:
Alternatively, imagine Rush winning this ASL by beating, in order SK, Snow and Light. That would be incredible.

On May 06 2025 16:27 Peeano wrote:

Then he would earn a credible ASL title!

On May 06 2025 16:46 Simplistik wrote:

How would it compare to Mind beating oov, Saviour and Bisu, or Flash beating Jaedong, Bisu and Stork?

On May 06 2025 17:10 femtehjulet wrote:


Or Effort beating Flash - Last - Rain in playoff after beating Snow and SK in gruopstage

On May 06 2025 17:10 femtehjulet wrote:


Or Effort beating Flash - Last - Rain in playoff after beating Snow and SK in gruopstage

On May 06 2025 18:52 Peeano wrote:
I dunno, but at least it would be a whole lot more credible than the golds Rain, Royal and JYJ got lol

On May 06 2025 19:11 Peeano wrote:
^But why would anyone watch a league player if you can watch the best zerg ever instead?

On May 06 2025 19:42 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Rush is seems really bad at baiting out and micro against lurker spines lol

On May 06 2025 19:45 BLinD-RawR wrote:
still a good redirect and getting a cancel on SK's 4th

On May 06 2025 19:47 BLinD-RawR wrote:
one thing I really applaud SK is that he manages to keep his defilers back just enough to never get hit by irradiate for the risk of getting scourged

On May 06 2025 19:54 Peeano wrote:
I actually wonder why Rush made another Barracks instead of earlier factory. Was he that afraid of ling flood or so confident he can break the contain without tanks (like he did do).

On May 06 2025 19:53 gravity wrote:
Rush was controlling his army very well early but totally fell apart later game. Do pros ever get restore for their medics or is not worth it? I wish they'd at least repair the 1 hp Sci Vessels.

On May 06 2025 20:05 Peeano wrote:
Coulda been worth if he actually used target fire instead of spraying on attack move like a CS noob.

On May 06 2025 20:26 Peeano wrote:
If Rush wants a chance at advancing he HAS to win next game.

On May 06 2025 20:50 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Fr tho how does Terran deal with Dark Swarm? Defilers being able to consume and just mass them out instant is nastyy. Toss has storm at least so if they clump under it they can get wiped. Terran got nothing T.T

On May 06 2025 20:50 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Fr tho how does Terran deal with Dark Swarm? Defilers being able to consume and just mass them out instant is nastyy. Toss has storm at least so if they clump under it they can get wiped. Terran got nothing T.T

I say this as a toss player and someone who rags on Arty all the time for balance whine, but man that is tough to deal with.

On May 06 2025 20:53 Zergxhx wrote:
Who can stop SK? Snow? Light? Best?
I don't see any chance

On May 06 2025 20:53 Zergxhx wrote:
Who can stop SK? Snow? Light? Best?
I don't see any chance

On May 06 2025 22:08 Simplistik wrote:
On the plus side, this feels like the correct four players made it to the semis.

On May 06 2025 22:20 Uldridge wrote:
Snow shines when he can prepare, so while he's not favored, he can absolutely go toe to toe vs SK. Light has always been a TvZ specialist, so he should be able as well... but he's also (still?) a bit of a choker.

On May 06 2025 20:53 Zergxhx wrote:
Who can stop SK? Snow? Light? Best?
I don't see any chance

On May 06 2025 20:53 Zergxhx wrote:
Who can stop SK? Snow? Light? Best?
I don't see any chance

On May 06 2025 20:50 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Fr tho how does Terran deal with Dark Swarm? Defilers being able to consume and just mass them out instant is nastyy. Toss has storm at least so if they clump under it they can get wiped. Terran got nothing T.T

I say this as a toss player and someone who rags on Arty all the time for balance whine, but man that is tough to deal with.

On May 07 2025 03:55 Ideas wrote:
Soulkey's scouting and reactions are so insanely good. After game 1 rush couldn't do anything without SK knowing about it and having the perfect response.

On May 07 2025 14:54 Highways wrote:


Light has the best chance. Has the strongest TvZ and has beaten Soulkey plenty of times on ladder

On May 08 2025 06:01 G5 wrote:
What's wild to think about is how SoulKey has somehow avoided Zergs for the most part on this potential 4-peat run and ZvZ does seem to be his weakest match up.

In the past 4 ASL's (including this one), he has only played 3 matches against Zergs.

Hero where he won 4-3

Hero again where he won 2-1

And Calm where he lost 0-1

That's 6-5 in ZvZs with only a winning rec over Hero and it's just barely a winning record. Obviously this way worst than his ZvT and ZvP records which are ridiculous.

Obviously he is great ZvZ and can go toe to toe with anyone but it is his worst MU by a mile (boasting 51% lifetime win rate in it) and he's somehow primarily faced only Protoss' and Terrans on his way to such dominance. I guess it helps when you get the last group switch every year but still, it's pretty fortunate for him.


Side note: I think the luckiest ASL run was RoyaL's run (not saying SK's is lucky, he's clearly the best right now). But RoyaL literally avoided every Protoss all tournament and just cheesed the fuck out of every Zerg and Terran on his way to a title lol. It was a title run that made me feel gross watching.

On May 08 2025 21:36 RowdierBob wrote:
Poor Snow gonna get wrecked for the third season in a row by SK.

On May 09 2025 06:55 Ideas wrote:


Pretty crazy they’re playing each other in the semis for a 3rd time in a row. I don’t think this has ever happened in any tournament before? It’s at least very rare, even with a smaller player pool nowadays.

On May 09 2025 12:57 Severedevil wrote:
Snow, please bring reavers back to PvZ. There's gotta be a unit composition that makes them effective in the midgame. They're powerful AOE that's cheap on gas, and they even outrange lurkers!

On May 08 2025 14:47 bochs wrote:
Flash would have the best chance against SK if he had participated.

On May 09 2025 20:47 goody153 wrote:

There was a DT-Reaver timing like a decade ago iirc maybe that'll make a comeback. It looked stupid strong although idk how well it will do against modern zergs especially the current best zerg and the most dominating player

On May 10 2025 00:28 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote:
Reaver is viable on certain maps that have difficult to traverse terrain for the zerg to quickly respond to the shuttle moving around between bases. Metropolis for example is pretty good, much like how we had La Campanella being a good map for offensive reavers vs zerg. As long as the hydras can be outpaced by shuttle movement, reaver shuttle is viable.

On May 10 2025 04:21 Gippy wrote:
Game 2 was disgusting. Rush was up 51 supply (135-84) on Soulkey but couldn't break through because of fast defilers. What exactly was Rush supposed to do in that situation? 30-40 supply for each player would be workers, so Rush's army was about double the supply of Soulkey's. Then in the endgame, Rush lost the supply lead and GG'd less than a minute later.

In any other matchup, a 51 supply lead means you're going to win 9 times out of 10. It just seems totally insane that fast defilers with Dark Swarm + Consume can stall that big of an army until the macro from the extra base kicks in.

On May 10 2025 00:01 TMNT wrote:

Zerg can just suicide some units on the Shuttle and it's job done. It's not a viable strat on modern games.

There are two scenario that Snow can beat Soulkey: massive build order luck (the kind of blind 12 Nexus/ no scout builds that Mini tends to use, or what Best did to Queen earlier), or Soulkey just underperforms on that day.

If both players make no major mistakes and just play the game out in a standard manner, like in a lengthy 20+ minute macro game, Zerg wins most of the times. And Snow plays standard 90 percent of the times.

On May 11 2025 14:36 Emnjay808 wrote:
Soulkey making Rush look like chop liver. No matter what, Im always impressed with how seamlessly Soulkey gets plague off. Its a thing of art.

On May 10 2025 04:21 Gippy wrote:
Game 2 was disgusting. Rush was up 51 supply (135-84) on Soulkey but couldn't break through because of fast defilers. What exactly was Rush supposed to do in that situation? 30-40 supply for each player would be workers, so Rush's army was about double the supply of Soulkey's. Then in the endgame, Rush lost the supply lead and GG'd less than a minute later.

In any other matchup, a 51 supply lead means you're going to win 9 times out of 10. It just seems totally insane that fast defilers with Dark Swarm + Consume can stall that big of an army until the macro from the extra base kicks in.

On May 07 2025 09:49 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote:

Soulkey also has an insane level of optimization in how he places and moves his units. For example when he went in to take down one of Rush's expos, forgot which game it was, he perfectly aligned all his hydras and lings to instantly maximize damage efficiency, but also to cut off the Rush's escape path and reinforcement path. No other zerg ever does these things with this level of attention to optimization for every single scenario.
timestamped
https://youtu.be/_-dFNk7a5TU?si=E-uz_tU4H3vFYjfh&t=3473

On May 08 2025 01:14 Miragee wrote:
The first game gave me some hope for a somewhat even series but holy this was one-sided. It's insane that at this level one player makes the other one look like 2 ranks below.

I honestly don't know if Soulkey can be stopped. I personally don't think his ZvP is too hot but both Snow and Best don't seem like the kind of candidates who can beat him. I think Light has the best chances but Soulkey's ZvT looks insane with his defense being almost impenetrable. It's usually not something I say for TvZ, especially when Light is involved, but I think it's going to be an uphill battle for Light in this case.

On May 17 2025 00:30 Dante08 wrote:


Supply doesn’t matter that much in TvZ if Zerg has at least 3 base and 70 supply. Rush needed to go tanks to fight off the lurker contain which resulted in way fewer vessels to control zerg. It was just a matter of time where wears you down with defiler, gets a 4th/5th and runs you over with ultra ling.