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Group C Recap

Group D Recap

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by stuchiu

One week and already half the Ro32 is over? The Auction All-Kill Starleague continues to proceed at a breakneck pace through its first round, eager to reach the Ro16 where the 'real' OSL has always began. After an almost complete lack of upsets on day one, day two ended up producing some unexpected results.

Group C: soO and Maru advance

Underdogs prevail

In the first real upsets of the OSL, SKT_soO and MaruPrime advanced to the Ro16 over the favorites Woongjin_sOs and CJ_EffOrt. With sOs being a recent semi-finalist in the GSL and a finalist of the WCS Season Finals, and EffOrt being one CJ Entus' key players in Proleague, many expected the two of them to move on to the next stage. The exact opposite result occurred, as soO and Maru came ready to take on the group.

Preparation is king

Advancing from his group in first place, soO researched and dissected his opponents thoroughly, showing well-prepared builds for the two players he ended up playing. Against Maru, he abused the Prime Terran's tendency to not make a wall and busted him with a roach-bane all-in. The attack did massive damage, and while Maru didn't out right die, soO took a big advantage once he defended Maru's last chance hellbat drops. From there it was just clean up for soO, with one more attack ending the game.

In his second game, soO went up against sOs and abused his great preference for gateway-first expands on all non-Belshir maps by getting a small lead in build orders with a hatch gas pool. sOs opened with phoenixes and a fast third into colossus, but was easily punished by a hydra ling push. From there Soo kept the pressure up and teched to mutas. sOs tried a 2 base attack with stalker colossus, but it was easily crushed by the SKT Zerg. SoO would slowly solidify his lead as his muta corruptor flock chipped away at sOs while he took his half of the map and completed his tech tree. The coup de grace would be an ultralisk infestor attack combined with a muta flock that sOs had no chance to stop.

Maru, Prime’s last hope

With team Prime doing so terribly in nearly every competition, Maru is the one shining light that Prime fans can still cling to in these dark times. Often considered both an unpredictable and stylish Terran, Maru showed another side of himself last night as he stuck to very standard and stable styles of Terran play while his opponents tried offbeat builds against him. After losing his first game to Soo, Maru met EffOrt in the losers match. The game started strangely with Effort doing a roach attack while Maru did a double medivac drop with stim. Both players did massive damage to each other, but Maru proved himself to be in a superior position as despite losing more SCVs as he was on triple orbital. From there it was Maru’s bio tank against a strange mixture of roach-hydra-viper-swarm host from Effort. While Effort held out for a time, Maru took the upper hand in the economic game as he abused his vastly superior mobility to take expansions while starving Effort out.

In the last game of the night, Maru faced the player who had initially been the clear favorite in sOs. While Maru played standard with a reaper opening, sOs tried to get away with a fast third and colossus tech. However, that left him with too much ground to cover, and Maru was more than happy to exploit this with stim and drop play, killing sOs’ third and robo. From there Maru kept up the pressure all game as he was able to kill sOs' third over and over. While sOs was almost able to make a comeback with storms, Maru refused to overextend, eventually winning the game with superior execution and economy.

Group D: Trap and Symbol advance

Trap Card Activated

With the announcement of the bo1 ro32 format, some players were devastated. Others were apathetic. Some were happy. And STX_Trap? He must have been ecstatic. As one of the best players in the bo1 format in a group with 3 zergs, Trap was perfectly set to make it into the Ro16 with ease, and he followed through perfectly.

In his first game, Trap went for a gate expand against last season's sixth place finisher in Azubu.Symbol. The opening let him hit a 5 phoenix 4 zealot attack that canceled Symbol’s third, leaving Trap far ahead as both players geared up for a macro game. Symbol tried to tech to swarm hosts, but Trap sniffed out such devious intentions and went for a mass chargelot phoenix archon attack that forced the GG from Symbol before his defenses were set.

Trap played yet another impressive PvZ in his second game, as he met the eternal gatekeeper ST_Curious in the winners' match. Once again, Trap went for a gate expand into phoenix strategy, but this time changed the follow up from macro play into a colossi + mass gateway all-in. Thoroughly fooled, Curious over-droned and saw his roach hydra composition burnt to a crisp as Trap marched on to the Ro16.

Symbol makes his sixth Ro16

Symbol, ever the paragon of consistency, once again made it to the Ro16 in a Korean individual league. After dropping the first game to Trap, Symbol was left to rely on his sometimes suspect ZvZ to carry him through to the next phase of the tournament.

In the losers' match he was forced to go up against Samsung_Shine in a drawn out ZvZ duel. Both players mirrored each other as they went for mutas initially, but from there they swerved off into two different paths. While Shine continued to stick to mutas and air upgrades, Symbol tech switched to spore crawlers and infestors. After a lot of posturing and small attacks from both players, Symbol got to his desired infestor-roach-hydra-SH composition, while Shine stuck to the classic roach-hydra-infestor.

For a while Shine had Symbol on the ropes with constant denial of Symbol’s 4th and 5th expansions while securing his own, but Symbol retained his important units and stuck around in the game. Shine tried to break Symbol with Nydus attacks, but the theft of his own favorite weapon only seemed to anger Symbol as he responded by both destroying Shine's troops in the middle of the map, and the ones trying to invade his main. From there, Shine kept doing more economic damage, but Symbol’s army was too much. Shine tried to transition into SH himself, but it only opened himself up for Symbol to land a killing blow.

After winning a tough match against Shine, Symbol had to take one more hard fought game to secure his Ro16 advancement. His match against Curious in the final match was a slugfest, as both players put all their weight behind haymakers to try to knock each other out of the tournament.

First, Curious tried a mass baneling attack that broke through Symbol’s spine, 4 evo 4 queen wall-off, but the damage done was only enough to even up the game. Next Symbol tried to kill Curious with a speed roach timing, but Curious held it off with roach-bane, but still lost a significant amount of drones in the process. From there both players would stabilize and get thirds, but Curious was far ahead in upgrades and in tech, switching to swarm hosts far ahead of Symbol. However, fortune would end up favoring Symbol in the end. In a move that seemed to solidify Curious's Ro32 gatekeeper status, he suicided his entire army into Symbol’s concave of roach hydra, costing him the game in an instant.