SBENU GSL
Season 2 Code S Ro8

Ascension to the Top
Maru vs Rain

Betting Your Life

Brackets and standings on Liquipedia

by stuchiu

Going into this season, 4 players stood head and shoulders above the rest. Life, Maru, herO and Parting entered as the GSL champion, SSL champion, Kespa Cup champion and GSL runner-up respectively and gave off auras of near-invincibility over the last few months. Each had reached a point where their prestige overshadowed any possibility of failure; all options besides victory seemed intolerable.

If this was another game or any other tournament, we could have seen these 4 face off in the semifinals. But there is a reason why we inherently view GSL as the single most prestigious victory in SC2. No matter how dominant you look, no matter how in form, no matter how skilled, if you slack off there will be another dozen players waiting to tear you down. In this GSL Life was destroyed by his own hubris as the two players he chose for his group immediately dispatched him. herO was taught a lesson by Curious on what it meant to be Code S and was sent tumbling into Code A for daring to cross paths with the gatekeeper.

And now we are left with Maru and Parting. With both players on the opposite side of the bracket, a clash in the finals seems inevitable. In the last 6 months. Maru has only lost 5 Bo3 sets this year versus Life, herO, Parting, Dream, ByuL. Parting has only ever lost one PvT Bo3 in 2015...to Maru. For the two of them it will be finals or bust. No other outcome is acceptable. And for the Jin Air Terran this could be his crowning achievement. 2 years ago, I posited that Maru was a prince that would be eventually become the king of his race. Back then he had come off a fresh OSL win, making his first step into becoming one of the greatest players of the HotS era. While the titles haven’t exactly flooded in (he only added 1 SSL to his trophy case so far), you cannot find a more consistent player in the game. Since his ascension Maru has been a top 3 Terran, and usually the best, post-OSL victory. He has proven his tournament win was no fluke and that he will remain a presence for years to come.

Maru is affectionately known in Korea as 'the little psychopath'. In his 2013 OSL victory, Maru showed that rare combination of traits that belong to the legends: incredible micro, great game sense, diverse builds, innovative unit compositions and nearly peerless late game (though rarely since everyone he plays dies before then.) Since then he has refined his style towards more aggression. The patches and changes to the meta have only made him more dangerous in PL and individual leagues. He is a monster who tears apart the hopes and dreams of his opponents. Sometimes he made them cry (see Myungsik and Creator).

When Maru plays there is no back and forth, no exchange of initiative. There is only attack, attack, attack. While some may see this as a flaw in his approach, only 5 players in the entire world have taken a full set off him this year. So there is no more appropriate time to ascend the throne. He has chafed too long from the leash of being the prince of Terran. Here is the time to claim his rightful spot as the king. The first big step is slaying the primeval victim, the one he sacrificed to become the OSL champion.

Fall from the Peak

After the initial few months of HotS, Rain looked like he would be the best Protoss player de facto. All he needed to do was confirm his claim by defeating Maru in the OSL finals, a finals that was supposedly in Rain's favor by a wide margin. On that fateful day, Maru revealed his true potential and destroyed Rain 4-2. The distraught Protoss never quite recovered from what seemed like a sure win. By the end of the year sOs and Dear surpassed him as they won Blizzcon and GSL/WCS Finals respectively.

Yet Rain remained a relevant part of the discussion. When he won Hot6ix Cup at the end of 2013, it looked like the first step towards reclaiming his place at the top of Olympus. But just as Rain was building steam in GSL Season 1 2014, he once again met a player rising to the top. This time it was Zest. Once again Rain was killed in ritual sacrifice as Zest whooped his ass to proceeded to earn his reputation as 2014's Player of the Year.

Now here we are, a year later. Rain hasn’t been in the discussion in the top 5 Protoss list since the start of the year. Others like herO, Parting, Zest, Stats, Classic, and sOs have clearly reached a new level. Many call Rain's lack of results a slump; others point to his departure from SKT to mYi as the chief cause of his fall. Rain even joked about his fall in status in group selections as he called himself, Innovation and sOs “has-beens”.

Yet Rain stands in the Ro8. He has outlasted both Life and herO so far and is determined to reclaim his old glory. But the one who stands in his way is the one who denied him before. It is none other than Maru, The Boy Prince, the Little Psychopath, the player that beat Rain so harshly that Rain claimed Terran was WoL Bl/infestor era of imbalanced...in the midst of the 2014 Blink Era, no less.



This will be the first of many tests on his road back to greatness. Will Rain once again be the sacrificial lamb to another player’s triumph, or will he rise up and get revenge on the boy who sent him tumbling down?

The Clash at the Pass

Two years ago, Rain was the champion, the favorite, the strongest. And in that OSL Finals, Maru killed him and took his own spot on the mountain. Two years later, the scenario has been reversed. Today it's Rain’s turn to challenge an established powerhouse. But it is more than just a battle of revenge or a battle for glory.

It is a battle of time. Maru is fighting for his future, the place as the rightful heir to the Terran throne. Rain is fighting for his past, a chance to clothe himself in newfound glory and show that his era is not yet finished. For Rain this is everything. A battle nearly two years in the making as he rematches the child that shoved him off the peak all those years ago. Here is a chance to reclaim what was once his.

Maru 3-1 Rain




For most pro players, there is no triumphant end to ta career. Some legends like Boxer or iloveoov get an appropriate send-off but for the rest of the players out there, they fight day in and day out to stave off irrelevance. They play and play and play to qualify one last time so they can play on that stage; another appearance is proof of their existence, dedication, and years of hard work. Yet when they fall off and retire, there is no accompanying celebration. Just a small news or forum post noting their departure from the competitive scene, a scene that had shaped (hell, dictated) most of their young adult lives.

So when a player does bet everything on one final stand, you see that rare instance of existential culmination. In such circumstances, they can transcend public opinion and their past. Remember when Duckdeok bet his soul at Blizzcon preparing for the final games of his life against the best Terran of 2013. Although he won one of the greatest underdog matches of all time, his story ended in tragedy. He never got that recognition, he never got that fame, never even got to hear the roar of the crowd, and was regulated to a dark back room to be forgotten.

Nearly 1.5 years later, Curious would do much the same as Duckdeok. He also bet his soul on this GSL announcing that this was his final stand, his personal Thermopylae. If he failed here, he would retire from pro-gaming and finally take on military service. And in the ro32 it looked bleak for Curious. He was stuck in a group with sOs, MMA and Sacsri. While he was of similar skill to Sacsri, both sOs and MMA were in much better form at that point. sOs hadn't been in championship-winning form since the end of 2014, but he was still a threat in Proleague and considered one of the better Protosses in the world. MMA had just come off a semi-finals run in GSL. Both were favored to win the group, yet it was Curious who won out.

And his just reward was being chosen to enter the group of death. He entered a group with herO, ByuL, and Dream, three of the hottest players in the world right now. herO had just won Kespa Cup; ByuL had dominated Proleague and got to the Ro4 in Kespa Cup; Dream was the finalist of SSL Season 1 and recently beat Life in one of the great series of the year in SSL Season 2. All three of them were considered potential favorites to win the entire tournament. Poor old Curious was written off as the underdog again, and it looked like he would be packing his bags after the end of the night. And again he won. He topped the group and found himself in the playoff rounds of a GSL for the first time in 2 years, more than 4 years since he started playing the game.

And now here he is in the Ro8, the culmination of Curious' career. In 2011, Tastosis considered him hokey and wondered why ST kept using him in team leagues. In 2012, he spent the entire year trying and failing to get past the Ro16. He was written off in 2013 as an ESF castaway, a player that would inevitably fall off as the huge influx of KeSPA players came into the scene. During 2014, he spent the entire year futilely trying to prove he was still a top player. And now in 2015, in what should have been his final hurrah, Curious stands in the Ro8. All of his pain and suffering and hard work for this one moment, the fruit of 4 dedicated years to his game.

In this final hour, Curious again faces a challenge he seemingly can't overcome. Rogue has quietly been one of the better Zergs in the last 6 months, getting dual Ro8s in GSL/SSL Season 1 and reaching the playoffs of this GSL season. There is no reason to believe Curious has what it takes to beat him. Rogue has been in incredible form, and has already pulled multiple miracles to make it this far. It shouldn't be a stretch to change water into wine one more time.

Predictions: Rogue 3-2 Curious

Bonus Message from Curious. Sorry, Solar, Dark, Ragnarok, Trust, soO, Panic, Creator, TY, HERO, Symbol, Yoda, Flash, Patience, Sacsri, MMA, Bomber, Life, Bbyong, INnoVation, herO, Dream, Fantasy, Gumiho.

Writers: stuchiu.
Editors: CosmicSpiral
Graphics: shiroiusagi.
Photo: GOMeXP.
Stats: Aligulac