Won't Stop

After the shocking results of Group A, it’s time to turn our attention to Group B. Zest’s failure to advance in a group with two terrans was bizarre, but can our second starleague champion of season 1 succeed where his counterpart failed?

Dark sure looked impressive yesterday, comfortably strolling past TY in the SSL quarterfinals. Notably, TY played for the lategame throughout the series. It’s been a common thread of Korean TvZ this year that terran wants to end the game before zerg gets ultras with chitinous plating. Yet time and time again TY opted for heavy liberator usage, letting Dark tech up to whatever he wanted. That’s not to say that TY sat back and turtled to skyterran: hellion/banshee and drop pressure throughout was a constant, but Dark’s queen-heavy compositions softened the impact far better than we’ve seen in the past couple of months. The big question though is how he’ll cope with a terran who doesn’t let him play to his strengths. Cure loves mid-game timings while ByuN’s developed into a much more aggressive terran in Legacy, and I can’t see either playing the same style of late game macro war.

ZvP is the other big question of the night. It’s a matchup that the SKT zerg has looked wobbly in recent weeks. He started the year by destroying all protoss challengers (especially with his dual wins over Stats in the SSL), but ever since his results have tapered off. Stats took both of their rematches while Dark’s also lost to pretty much every big name protoss since. 2-0s over Hurricane and Trust aren’t informative; Zest has been struggling against zerg (and terran as well now, apparently). His loss to Dear in Shoutcraft Kings July captured his unwillingness to take on protoss in the lategame, and it’s likely that he’ll bring the same attitude here against sOs.

Enough of Dark then. How do the other three line up against each other? The big enigma is ByuN. He might be the most dominant player we’ve seen in 2016 in online events, but there’s still a question mark over his offline credentials. Falling in the SSL group stages didn’t particularly help with that, and his loss to Solar in particular was shocking. He is unbeaten against the Samsung zerg online in their past six meetings (16-6 map record), and yet his loss on the big stage will only add to the sense of ‘not quite’ that’s pervaded his performances this year. This is his final chance of the year, as it is for sOs and Cure too, and he’s still as inscrutable as he was in season 1.

Online, at least, his form in TvT is imperious—a 73-4 record in matches played since April (169-28 in maps)—and while that might be boosted a little by inferior opposition, that’s not to say he’s had a complete dearth of serious challengers. GuMiho, Ryung and aLive have all gone up against him time and again, and his records against all three are impressive (14-8, 6-1, and 21-5 respectively). Up against Cure—a terran with a sub-40% winrate in the same timeframe—there should be little contest if ByuN turns up in form.

Finally, we come to sOs. He’s a player from whom we expect nothing and everything; a player who’s been utterly unpredictable this year, as in all years. He fails when we expect him to succeed, and succeeds when we expect him to fail. His recent performances have been seriously impressive—wins over TY and Super in the first GSL group stage, as well as beating Zest and TY again in the Proleague Round 3 Finals—but that’s come off a long stretch of poor performances in Proleague and the SSL. His showing in that Challenge group summed up his whole year—starting slow, finishing hot, before completely bungling the crucial playoff game that sent Trust onwards to the Round of 16.

Still though, it has to be noted his PvT has been extremely good. He’s unbeaten in the past four months, with three wins over TY, one each over Ryung and Dream, and a 1-1 draw with GuMiho in SSL. He’ll probably be too much for ByuN, who looked increasingly ragged against Classic in their SSL clash, while his match with teammate Cure will be very interesting to watch.

Predictions

I think Dark will have too much for all three players here. Cure’s likely going to be the big test for him. If he gets past the Jin Air terran, then he’ll probably ease past the winner of the second opening match too. I'll bank on sOs to beat ByuN (who’ll probably get flashbacks of the spanking he received at IEM Taipei). While he might lose to Dark, the Jin Air protoss’ PvT will likely carry him through in second place.

Cure < Dark
sOs > ByuN
Dark > sOs
Cure < ByuN
sOs > ByuN

Dark and sOs advance to the Round of 8.