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The Code S Reader says...YOU ARE CODE S
– ST_Curious and Woongjin_Soulkey advance out of Group C.

Curious continued the Startale streak last night, moving on first in his group to make Startale 3/3 in Code S so far. The night started with a one sided beating from Curious as he dismantled MaruPrime. Everything Maru tried was futile as Curious seemed to have all the answers. Maru would try a pre-brood lord timing, only to be met with brood lords. He would try to stall the brood lord push, but would get held off as Curious came casually knocking on the front door. With Curious on top of his production, Maru had to give up the first game. The second game didn’t go any better for Maru as the game started standard - Curious' forte. Curious then got lings into Maru’s base, forcing hellions and banshees to turn back to defend, ruining any chance Maru had of detecting the mutalisk follow-up until it was his SCV line was getting raided. Curious did critical damage and then finished off the young Terran with a ling/bane bust.

The next series against Liquid`HerO was a much tougher challenge for Curious, going all three games. It was a strange series as Hero tried to use Parting’s soul-powered immortal-sentry push twice. The first time was in game one where he was able to kill Curious' third, but not much else. The game continued on to become slugfest as both players would sacrifice large portions of their armies to keep trying to break each other. This would eventually lead to Curious’ taking the game with a superior economy and a broodlord/queen/infestor push. The last game had Hero going for an immortal all-in once more, but apparently HerO did not have enough of PartinG's 'soul' behind it. Curious cut off reinforcing sentries with a ling/roach backstab, and then killed the main army with mass roach. With the all-in thwarted, Curious was able to counter attack for an easy win.

Soulkey's tale

Soulkey started the night off badly against Liquid`Hero, losing to Hero’s clever stargate and proxy stargate strategy. He was caught off guard by the three void rays mass phoenixes and looked helpless as he broke the first rule of ZvP, you never make hydras. The second game was equally one-sided as Hero opened with 4 phoenix into collosi and a third. He was able to do a good deal of damage and saw that Soulkey was investing everything into economy and tech. So Hero just hit a 2 collossi gateway timing that Soulkey had no answer for. With a humiliating loss to Hero, many viewers were suspecting that by the end of the night, Curious would jump onto the stage and point at Soulkey yelling, "YOU ARE CODE A."

Soulkey was able bounce back as he beat down Maru. In the first game he kept the pressure on with some ling bane infestor while doing some infestor harass in Maru’s main. By the time Ultras were out, Maru was too far behind and died to the push. Game 2 was much more even into the late game as Soulkey wasn't able to get as much harass in the mid game. Instead, Soulkey got up to his broodlord corruptor infestor army and crushed Maru’s 4th base and army with little to no losses. By the time Maru was able to clear up Soulkey’s push, Soulkey was up 100 supply and with no recourse, Maru had to GG.

The deciding game of the night was between Soulkey and Hero - I imagine being a hardcore Hero fan is much like watching a Greek Tragedy. Hero is the noble protagonist, who you can’t help but cheer for. He has the looks, the gameplay, the heart. Every time he plays the game you can hear his units sing, “I am Hero, this is my Protoss.” And then tragedy strikes and the gods come down and snatch away victory from defeat by arming his enemies with infestors (very Greek).

Everything was looking well after Hero took the first game. And then Soulkey went full Leenock. The game started normally enough and then ended with Hero doing massive amounts of harassment while Soulkey started a death push. Hero didn't play the base trade right as he didn’t kill all of the spine crawlers before they uprooted. His mothership got caught by a neural and that led to a slow excruciating death for Hero. In the last game, Soulkey threw a curveball and opened with a 6 pool. This put Hero a bit behind, especially as Soulkey followed up with a speedling attack that canceled Hero’s natural. From there, Hero would try a few moves with his ht/archon/gateway army and try to keep in the game, but the economy and tech advantage was too much as Soulkey would keep attacking with mass roach infestor attacks and busted Hero’s front.

With that victory, Soulkey is now the first non ST/TSL player to make it to the ro16 as well as the first Kespa player. While his wins weren’t the cleanest and many non-Zerg fans will be unhappy with how the last 2 games played out, he did get the wins. With that said, among the 6 players to have have gotten into the ro16 so far, Soulkey looks to be the weakest link. He will have to practice hard if he wants any hope of getting any further in the GSL.


Code S Reader says....YOU ARE CODE A

Maru: Very disappointing and underwhelming play.

Hero: Very close both times. But you tried to do the Soul push and failed. For that reason, PartinG has found your soul to be lacking and therefore your wonwonwon build, fraudulent. Curious made no comments about the last set.

Welcome to group of death. Sure, group E has bigger names in Mvp, Creator, and DRG (err, and Bbyong, whatever). Heck, even Group A proved to have bigger name power in the TeamLiquid.net poll, with TaeJa, Finale, Polt, and PartinG being considered a scarier group of players. But for the 557 of you that voted for Group D, congratulations. You are true StarCraft hipsters.

Let's start off with the one player that started off mainstream, and has only grown more well-known ever since. SKT1_By.Rain, OSL champion, WCS Asia Champion, and considered by many to be the best player in the world. He could be the most popular player in the world as well, but then people realize that it's players like him who prevent Zerg from getting nerfed. It's mostly self explanatory why Rain is great and why he accounts for 50% of this group's deadliness by himself, but I'll elaborate for a bit to try and placate rabid Rain fans.

Rain is one of the most complete players we've ever seen. In an age where most Protoss players are starting to blend together in their standard, macro styles, their mostly similar two and three-base timing attacks, and predictably hectic late-game warp-prism harass, Rain sticks out simply because he does all of that better than anyone else. Well, maybe we have to give PartinG the edge in two-base all-in department, but that's ALL. Against Zerg, he defends and hits three-base timings with the precision of Creator. Against Terran, he fends of attacks and harasses with the persistence of Seed. Against Protoss, there's really no comparison, as he might be the only player who understands the match-up well enough to make it more than a coinflip. Rain plays safe and standard because he knows he's the best at it, and no one can beat him in such a game.

However, his first opponent is just nearly as scary. TSL_HyuN, the King of Fighters, comes in with one of the most impressive records in recent StarCraft II history: twelve straight wins in IPL Fight Club. At $500 per win, he's effectively sponsored by IPL, and they should consider sending him a sleeve patch to wear in future games. While there were a few foreigner bashes among his wins, mostly they came against truly top class competition including Squirtle, Crank, Tear, aLive, Gumiho, ByuN, and most recently, GSL champion Life. Yeah, the '70% + ZvZ winrate in 2012' Life.

No one doubts how good HyuN is online. The problem for him HyuN is the strange curse that afflicts him whenever he enters the GomTV booth. He only made it to Code S after falling in Code A twice, and once in the Up/Downs. Nervousness, perhaps? No, according to HyuN it was overconfidence. That explanation does seem to make sense, as in his most recent Code A series against Vampire, he blew some truly epic leads to somehow suffer a 1 - 2 loss. If HyuN's mind is in the right place, there's no doubt that he will get out of this group. If.

Third in the group is LG-IM_YoDa, the weak link in the hipster group of death. Well, he has the hipster part down, even if he needs to work on the death some more. Despite being talked up by Mvp as one of the best players on LG-IM, YoDa has had trouble living up to that reputation. Sure, he's pretty good, making it into two consecutive Code S tournaments, even as they grow tougher each season. As with anything Mvp says, you have to take his endorsement of YoDa with a grain of salt - but YoDa's frequent appearances in team leagues and good online performances make you wonder if he's really than his GSL performances suggest. We already have one such player in HyuN in the group, and our last GSL champion, Life, was that kind of player at one point as well. I don't want to sell too much snake oil here, but don't sleep on YoDa in this group.

Last, but not least is FXOGuMiho, a player who is at least recognized for being extremely entertaining, if not yet for his prodigious skill as well. At times, we've had to wonder if Gumiho was too much style and too little substance. His recklessly aggressive, and sometimes sloppy berserker style saw him to the semi-finals of 2012's Code S Season One, but mediocre results afterward made it seem as if he needed a more solid base to fall back on.

For better or for worse, Gumiho hasn't changed significantly at all, and he vindicated himself at the previous GSTL final by all-killing SlayerS with his trademark aggressive play. The highlight of the night was definitely his game-of-the-year match against MMA, another famously aggressive player. The two players traded blows fiercely and evenly, with Gumiho only emerging triumphant because MMA's body hit the canvas first.

Off his GSTL performance, you get the feeling that Gumiho's three consecutive seasons stuck at the Ro32 are a bit of an unlucky streak, and that he's definitely capable of more. Gumiho is sure to entertain on the night, and the question will be whether or not he can live up to his potential.


Overall outlook and prediction

The other three players are all potential, while Rain is the only sure thing. So pencil him in to get through, bar some incredible coming out party for all three other players.

You'd have to say HyuN is favored to make it through second, as he's defeated both YoDa and Gumiho in recent tournaments, as well as being the most likely to beat Rain IF he can channel his online prowess. However, picking two players from the same side of the bracket is typically bad news, and there are still significant questions about HyuN's mentality.

In the end, I went with Rain and Gumiho to make it through, but with an extreme uneasiness about how HyuN is going to mess up my predictions.

Rain > HyuN
Gumiho > YoDa
Rain > Gumiho
Hyun > YoDa
Gumiho > HyuN

Rain and Gumiho advance.