Bellum Gens Elite: Stara Zagora 2025

On June 04 2025 21:32 WombaT wrote:
Bracket watchTM for EWC qualification time!

For those unaware, this event awards an EWC qualification slot to the winner. If the winner is already qualified, it goes to the runner up. If the runner up is qualified, to one of the Ro4 players, etc. I feel the qualification battle isn’t going to come down to an event winner, or a finalist, but whoever is the best placed and hasn’t already qualified (Serral, Clem, Reynor, Zoun, trigger).

Of those, three are, if in shape a class above this field. I’d say Zoun and trigger are better than quite a lot of it, but not to that degree.

So with that said, I think a hell of a lot of how that qualification spot is determined is going to be quite influenced by brackets and paths.

Bracket Loser(s) - Definitely Lambo. Oof. I know it’s double elim, and I know stranger things have happened, but chances are realistically he’s going to lose his upper bracket life immediately to Serral and have to run the gauntlet from step one.

Bracket Winners(s) - The trio of Ryung, Gerald and Kristianer. It wouldn’t blow my mind if one of them beat Zoun. I’d favour him certainly, but I feel he’s the most vulnerable already seeded player, that’s gettable early. And this path doesn’t include another already qualified player for a little bit.

It’s no guarantee, but the further you get in the upper bracket, the better your shot and this is the easiest path IMO

Even if you get to just the upper bracket semi to be dismantled by Serral, you’ll still have fewer rounds. And it’s not impossible that one of the big hitters drops into the lower bracket to make your competition’s path even harder

On June 04 2025 21:50 Harris1st wrote:
A semifinals appearance is basically a guaranteed spot at EWC.

My money is on Showtime (best non-qualified player IMO) or Ryung (best bracket)

On June 04 2025 21:32 WombaT wrote:
Bracket watchTM for EWC qualification time!

For those unaware, this event awards an EWC qualification slot to the winner. If the winner is already qualified, it goes to the runner up. If the runner up is qualified, to one of the Ro4 players, etc. I feel the qualification battle isn’t going to come down to an event winner, or a finalist, but whoever is the best placed and hasn’t already qualified (Serral, Clem, Reynor, Zoun, trigger).

Of those, three are, if in shape a class above this field. I’d say Zoun and trigger are better than quite a lot of it, but not to that degree.

So with that said, I think a hell of a lot of how that qualification spot is determined is going to be quite influenced by brackets and paths.

Bracket Loser(s) - Definitely Lambo. Oof. I know it’s double elim, and I know stranger things have happened, but chances are realistically he’s going to lose his upper bracket life immediately to Serral and have to run the gauntlet from step one.

Bracket Winners(s) - The trio of Ryung, Gerald and Kristianer. It wouldn’t blow my mind if one of them beat Zoun. I’d favour him certainly, but I feel he’s the most vulnerable already seeded player, that’s gettable early. And this path doesn’t include another already qualified player for a little bit.

It’s no guarantee, but the further you get in the upper bracket, the better your shot and this is the easiest path IMO

Even if you get to just the upper bracket semi to be dismantled by Serral, you’ll still have fewer rounds. And it’s not impossible that one of the big hitters drops into the lower bracket to make your competition’s path even harder

On June 04 2025 21:55 WombaT wrote:

Ryung’s definitely in the best bracket quality wise IMO, although I dunno what shape his TvP is in these days. He’s certainly basically perpetually dangerous in TvT

Agreed on Showtime too for sure, although not a huge gap between him and some of the best of the rest

On June 05 2025 13:04 Die4Ever wrote:
Day 2 starts way earlier than Day 1 did, in

On June 05 2025 16:30 Kreuger wrote:


1200 cest. 1300 local time.

Says so on my screen. So 1h earlier then yesterday?

On June 05 2025 22:31 MJG wrote:
Infestor/Brood Lord.

*internal screaming*

On June 05 2025 22:50 WombaT wrote:
Interesting little tidbit from Nitix that he played Toss in the qualifiers.

I wonder when the last time, if ever, it was that someone’s qualified for a pretty big tournament and played a different race in the main event

On June 05 2025 22:36 WombaT wrote:
Showtime doing his usual of playing pretty well and looking good but not quite enough against a better player

On June 05 2025 07:36 Waxangel wrote:
If all the results go chalk in the next round, then we could see all the EWC seed-hunters get a 'fair' start in Losers' Round 2.

Obv if anyone gets a winners' bracket upset that gives them a major adv

On June 05 2025 23:08 Blitzball04 wrote:


That’s pretty much his career. He will give you a flash of brilliance here and there against top players or take a game or 2 off them

But he will never beat any top dogs in any tournaments

On June 06 2025 08:30 SharkStarcraft wrote:
Definitely a strange choice to have such few games per day of the event and to start so early. But great, entertaining games, a nice atmosphere, and the beautiful city make for a great viewing experience.

On June 06 2025 16:55 tigera6 wrote:
I would love to see Reynor win this tournament and booster his confidence for EWC, but the issue has been his sad record against Serral for the past 3 years, which reach Solar/Shin vs Maru level of "punching bag". I am not sure what the cause, but to go from 50/50 split into lopsided 1-10 record is just so weird to watch.

On June 06 2025 20:04 tigera6 wrote:
Current TvP is similar to TvZ in the sense that, if you cant deal major damage, and just sit back, the Protoss economy will just overtake eventually.

On June 06 2025 20:10 darklycid wrote:

I mean thats kinda the dynamics in the matchup, If you are passive in you strong Phase and let the protoss Take His 4th and 5th more or less for free then you get outscaled.

On June 06 2025 20:42 tigera6 wrote:

Yeah, but I dont think it was this sharp of a difference. Previously I feel like Terran can take a 4th and defend well, now 4th base for Terran seems like a very bad move if they play defensive.

On June 06 2025 20:44 darklycid wrote:

Maybe or they Just need to find a way to make it Work, Spirit also Played hyper Defensive vs No Aggression.

On June 06 2025 21:37 Tsubbi wrote:
Serral struggling vs Zoun, zvp is really something else nowadays

On June 06 2025 22:09 MJG wrote:
In the first game, Serral made a composition for fighting Skytoss with ground support, but he was playing against Groundtoss with sky support. Making too many Corruptors cost him the game.

In the second game, Zoun showed some amazing micro in the final engagement. The Storms were brilliant, especially to stop the Zergling surround that came in from behind, and so was the Blink micro.

So I'd say Zoun was a bit lucky in Game 1 because Serral made a rare macro mistake, but Game 2 was all on Zoun's micro.

On June 06 2025 23:14 Ciaus237 wrote:
ZvP everywhere below the top 10 players is fucking abysmal. The only reason it looks less unambiguously stupid for the top Zergs is because the skill stratification among the top players is crazy large. I.e., even with a large balance shift, you only get a small change in the top pool of players and their performance.

The matchup is very imbalanced, and has been since energy overcharge. At the absolute top level there just aren't enough players anymore that you'll get a BL-infestor Zerg or early WoL Terran type one-race lockout.

On June 06 2025 23:29 darklycid wrote:

I think the bigger issue is that zvp aint much fun in the way it plays out (also imo it isnt very imbalanced if you have monday cups without herO/maxpax zvp aint looking too bad.

On June 06 2025 23:01 WombaT wrote:
I’m still unsure what I think of ZvP balance right now. I’m so used to Serral being basically invincible that it feels odd that even he is sometimes struggling.

Equally, that series he, especially in game 1 it felt he was making mistakes and oversights that 100% should cost you the game. Whether he forgot it, or chose not to get it, not having adrenal was a bad state of affairs.

If it wasn’t Serral, I’d probably not even be asking questions, but it is Serral and ZvP, which does make me wonder.

In previous metas, it felt like Serral either scouted well or read Protoss players like a book from intuition and Starsense and was basically invincible. Guys like Dark and Reynor were super scary in the matchup, but not quite as good at making those reads every time.

My old crude calculation was Serral > herO = other top ZvPers > Most other players. Now it feels way more volatile

Now I’m finding even Serral is making bad reads way more often. It could just be his current shape, but I think an alternative explanation is that current ZvP isn’t a matter of read and react, but read and cut a corner somewhere, or gamble a bit.

Make the right call and cut the right corner, and you can get Reynor stomping herO 3-0. Make the wrong ones and it’s a Serral 0-2 Zoun.

As I said I’m not sure at all, we’ve had a strange off season with not a huge amount to go off.

I think last patch was sorta decent for PvZ. Serral gonna Serral but it’s Serral ZvP, IMO the strongest matchup in SC2 history, and below that you had a lot of 50/50 matchups below him.

TvZ feels in a pretty decent spot, where Clem on form is invincible, Maru gets close but it’s pretty 50/50 with the rest of the field.

I think we basically had that in ZvP last patch, perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

On June 06 2025 23:34 dysenterymd wrote:

I do think some of Serral's struggles right now are that he's too confident in his late game. Serral is still very good at the late game, but this meta is not like past metas where Serral would probably win if he just made it to the late game alive. Mixing in a few more aggressive builds would help him a lot.

Makes sense that after almost always winning late game for 7 years Serral would still keep trying though.

On June 06 2025 23:51 tigera6 wrote:
Most Zerg dont play straight up lategame ZvP these days, they rely on timings and tech switch to win the mid-game. Dark was one of the few who was willing to play lategame ZvP without relying on Corrupters, but he also got destroyed by top Protoss players.

On June 06 2025 23:01 WombaT wrote:
I’m still unsure what I think of ZvP balance right now. I’m so used to Serral being basically invincible that it feels odd that even he is sometimes struggling.

Equally, that series he, especially in game 1 it felt he was making mistakes and oversights that 100% should cost you the game. Whether he forgot it, or chose not to get it, not having adrenal was a bad state of affairs.

If it wasn’t Serral, I’d probably not even be asking questions, but it is Serral and ZvP, which does make me wonder.

In previous metas, it felt like Serral either scouted well or read Protoss players like a book from intuition and Starsense and was basically invincible. Guys like Dark and Reynor were super scary in the matchup, but not quite as good at making those reads every time.

My old crude calculation was Serral > herO = other top ZvPers > Most other players. Now it feels way more volatile

Now I’m finding even Serral is making bad reads way more often. It could just be his current shape, but I think an alternative explanation is that current ZvP isn’t a matter of read and react, but read and cut a corner somewhere, or gamble a bit.

Make the right call and cut the right corner, and you can get Reynor stomping herO 3-0. Make the wrong ones and it’s a Serral 0-2 Zoun.

As I said I’m not sure at all, we’ve had a strange off season with not a huge amount to go off.

I think last patch was sorta decent for PvZ. Serral gonna Serral but it’s Serral ZvP, IMO the strongest matchup in SC2 history, and below that you had a lot of 50/50 matchups below him.

TvZ feels in a pretty decent spot, where Clem on form is invincible, Maru gets close but it’s pretty 50/50 with the rest of the field.

I think we basically had that in ZvP last patch, perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

In case of the winner being already qualified, the slot is awarded to the "next-not-already-qualified-player": if more than one player is eligible, Bo5 tie-breaking match(es) are to be played.

On June 07 2025 01:26 Charoisaur wrote:

I haven't seen this series yet, but from his losses vs Classic and some vs MaxPax I feel that the current patch is bad for Serral specifically.

Serral loves to play reactive macro into lategame win condition and doesn't like taking risks that much. And right now PvZ lategame is clearly Protoss favored so Serral's preferred playstyle is just inferior currently.
Is this a problem that needs to be fixed? I'm not sure. I don't think Zerg has a right to have a win condition in lategame.

Maru is another player who loves to turtle to lategame but he realized that playing passive as terran is just a no no in the current metagame, so he figured out ways to kill his opponents early which won him DH Dallas.

Maybe Serral finally feels the limitations of his playstyle and needs to adapt if he wants to succeed. If he has one weakness it's his unwillingness to take risks and in the current metagame it seems like it's finally being exposed.
I mean, against Classic right after 2 extremely difficult super-lategames he chose to go for turtle to lategame strat in the next game as well, that just doesn't seem like the optimal approach.

On June 07 2025 01:16 MJG wrote:
I lost count of how many Nydus Worms Reynor built in the third game against Clem, but they were the main reason he lost. So many resources wasted!

On June 07 2025 01:26 Charoisaur wrote:

I don't think Zerg has a right to have a win condition in lategame.

On June 07 2025 01:44 Antithesis wrote:

You probably just worded this poorly but very obviously Zerg does have the right for a win condition in lategame, just as every race should have a win condition in any stage of the game. If any race were altogether unable to win in a particular stage of the game, that would be the end of asymmetrical balance.

On June 07 2025 01:50 Charoisaur wrote:

Well, I meant right for guaranteed win condition/auto win in lategame. Which Zerg tbh never had, only Serral.
Probably the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction right now.
Still I find it interesting to see how Serral adapts when he can't force a guaranteed win in lategame. Maru is called the fourth race because he finds ways to win even in unfavored metagames, can Serral too?

On June 06 2025 23:33 Tsubbi wrote:
both zerg matchups are awful, since the patch the matchups hover around 55% winrate for p and t, one of the worst stretches in the games history

On June 07 2025 05:44 Waxangel wrote:


Eh, I think if you look at Master's Coliseum + LiuLi Cup + PiGSty from the off-season, he's pretty comfortable varying up his strategies and playing very aggressively if he thinks it's necessary (and btw, he did go for a big Roach-Ravager-Bane mid-game attack in game one vs Zoun).

I actually found the Classic series at Dallas peculiar because of how passive he played it. I'm very much inclined to defer to his judgment there, and assume that his practice prior to the tournament + his meta read told him it was fine to play for the late-game. Obviously he was wrong since he lost, but I don't think it's because he was overly stubborn.

On June 07 2025 09:03 WombaT wrote:
Also congrats to Zoun who played some bloody good StarCraft. I’ve kinda given up predicting his results. I’ll watch him have a good run, get hyped, then he bombs. Then when I think he’s in bad shape he’ll have a run.

He’s a bit like the anti-Showtime really. Showtime will basically always look good on the eye test, he’ll beat who you think he’ll beat, he won’t beat who you don’t expect him to beat. I, perhaps unkindly have referred to this as the ‘Heromarine’ zone. Zoun can vacillate between godlike and godawful in the same series, beat anyone on his day but also lose to people he really shouldn’t be losing to.

I was Aligulacing a bit, I may be wrong. Outside of Serral’s very early days, or since he ‘ascended’ anyway, least from the multitude of names I’ve stuck in so far, Zoun may be unique in the scene in having a winning record versus Serral offline.

On June 07 2025 09:28 dysenterymd wrote:

So Zoun is the latter day Hurricane?

On June 07 2025 01:15 Waxangel wrote:
Not to look past Ryung, but ShoWTimE does seem to have an adv now since him beating Reynor is more probable than SKillous or Lambo beating Serral.

On June 07 2025 20:06 Ciaus237 wrote:


The few dozen games played at a level where there's a 100MMR difference between the player of rank N and rank N+1 are not a comparable sample compared to hundreds of aligulac games over months and months where the MU has consistently been heavily protoss favored.

On June 07 2025 20:29 Ciaus237 wrote:


The odds that the whole top of ladder and aligulac's sample is massively biased by a pool of worse players, vs the odds that the handful of top players have a skew, are not at all comparable.
"The top few Zergs were just better" is much more likely than "The whole top pool of players, minus a few zergs, has consistently better protoss".

A situation where top tier tournaments have 50/50 winrates and Zerg just disappears below that doesn't look like balance. It looks like you have a few really good Zergs in quite an imbalanced game.

On June 07 2025 21:56 tigera6 wrote:
Showtime wait until Serral got +2 air and 30 Muta before dropping down the 2nd Stargate and research Phoenix range is NOT how you counter Zerg tech. The moment Zoun saw Serral Spire, he immediately put the 2nd Stargate and Fleet Beacon down to get ready for it.

On June 07 2025 21:59 darklycid wrote:

Yea and thern the zerg doesnt buil mutas
It's a very fine line of investing into anti muta but not overinvest esp because you never know how hard the zerg commits.

On June 07 2025 21:55 darklycid wrote:
I wonder if it would be better in this meta to open up charge to force roaches.

On June 07 2025 22:02 tigera6 wrote:

Thats the whole point, you want to be ready but not over-commit, dont build many Phoenix but get the Tech ready, then scout some more. Zerg saw the double Stargate and he would think twice about building mass Muta or they will get hard countered.

And if hes not building mass muta, the SG can be used later for Tempest, its a good counter move.

On June 07 2025 22:02 WombaT wrote:

I feel Manlots in PvZ are, and have generally always only been good for direct attacks or runbys

Stalkers with oracles you get map control and the ability to poke a bit with retreat potential as you grow, that feels a more versatile, natural combo

On June 07 2025 22:10 darklycid wrote:

Yea but you invest into another sg and fleet beacon which might hurt hard if the zerg instead does a brutal ground attack.

On June 07 2025 22:18 tigera6 wrote:

Zerg cant have a "brutal ground" attack if they commit to a Lair and a Spire, again its coming down to the scouting and map vision.

On June 07 2025 22:22 darklycid wrote:

THe lair aint a commitment (thewy get it anyways) the spire is somewhat but often enough you see low or no mutas into a very hard ground attack which often neough kills the protoss if the overdefended the mutas.

On June 07 2025 22:27 tigera6 wrote:

I dont think building a 2nd SG is an over-commitment as long as you dont mass Phoenix before seeing more Muta showing up, thats just my view.

On June 08 2025 00:55 Antithesis wrote:
Good. Order has been restored. Serral winning vs. protosses and we getting a Serral vs. Clem finals.

On June 08 2025 02:23 Balnazza wrote:
Zoun learned the valuable lesson today why Serral is the embodiment of "fuck around and find out".
Every top player is allowed to crush him once, but you better hope you stay clear of him for the next two months afterwards...

On June 08 2025 04:20 Tsubbi wrote:
after that terrible early game by clem its insance how this became a game even

On June 08 2025 04:46 bulldozer06701 wrote:
Great tournament again, like last year. Definitely planning on visiting it if they do it in 2026 too

On June 08 2025 04:20 Tsubbi wrote:
after that terrible early game by clem its insance how this became a game even

On June 09 2025 16:37 Charoisaur wrote:

Dark had his fair share of comeback wins

On June 10 2025 12:38 chrusher97 wrote:
anyone know if replays are released?