SSL Challenge Week 2

While the SSL Premier has been pretty stompy so far, Day 1 of the SSL Challenge was a different story giving us three tight series out of four, including TY’s fresh take on skyterran with teleporting BC packs against Classic’s skytoss. This week, we’re meeting two new players in Bunny and GuMiho, and six of last week’s eight are back for more. Without further ado…

Losira vs Classic

First up are two of our big winners from last week. Both were somewhat unfancied against their opponents, but looked impressive on their paths to victory. As mentioned, the skyterran vs skytoss battle between Classic and TY was one of the highlights of the week, featuring clever play from both sides. While it started out with terran aggression—TY warping packs of BCs across the map to harass his opponent, before warping back out again—the late game saw Classic taking the initiative. Mixing plenty of void rays into his carrier composition, Classic began sniping base after base, recalling to safety and slowly grinding out a lead.

The weakness to his strategy was the mothership core (perhaps skipping the upgrade to a full mothership to keep the pressure on), and once TY sniped it in Classic’s final attempt to take out his opponent’s main, the rest of the golden armada fell in seconds. While we probably won’t see its like again for a while from Classic—at least until he next meets TY again, perhaps—that’s not to say that we won’t see something similar in a different matchup. Classic has tended to favour phoenix play in PvZ, and it wouldn’t be outlandish to see similar late-game tech in at least one game.

For his part, Losira looked purposefully aggressive in his win over Ryung—beating his opponent down with both strong muta / ling / bane play and roach / nydus early aggression—save for the lack of his traditional ultralisks on the field, a vintage WoL-esque show from the veteran zerg. His ZvP record hasn’t been great recently, with his only wins coming in online games over weak opposition (Super and Hurricane), as well as struggling Trap in the SSL qualifiers. On the other hand, Classic’s looked pretty good in the matchup, including an abusive 2-0 over Solar in the VSL, where adepts and oracles were mixed in to provide a twist on the good old immortal / sentry all-in.

herO vs GuMiho

Onto our third winner so far; herO’s another player who looks to be rising as we approach a busy couple of months for SC2 in Korea. His winrates in 2017 make interesting reading—73% winrates in both PvP and PvZ show that his newly aggressive style in Legacy is finally reaping rewards—while a huge drop to a 60% winrate in PvT shows the one gaping hole in his armoury. That’s a worry when you’re locked in a group with three terrans, with only three of the five advancing to the next stage of Challenge. Taking the win over Dear has given him a fighting shot; now he just has to beat at least one of ByuN, GuMiho, and jjakji.

While you’d normally jjakji to be the whipping boy in that case, and ByuN the final boss, there’s no doubting that GuMiho is an imposing opponent as well. A 5-2 battering of Neeb in the Ting Open offline finals last weekend was a dominant performance, and his sheer unorthodoxy is a strong advantage given the sheer range of options that terran possesses against protoss right now. In his first match of the SSL, GuMiho has a great chance to get off to a winning record.

TY vs Bunny

TY’s probably not too happy with his loss last week; taking a hard fought late game win over Classic before being rapidly bundled out of the next two with adept / phoenix play. Luckily for him, it’s not a protoss week today—with six terrans in the competition, it’s finally time for the first TvT of many.

To be honest though, it’s quite hard to see where TY stands regarding the mirror match. Given that TvT made up a healthy portion of his successful IEM Katowice campaign, not to mention his WESG win over Maru, plus his stellar reputation in the matchup, you’d have thought that he should be ranked highly in the mirror rankings. Look at Aligulac though, and an eyeraising 54% winrate tells another story. Then you remember that those matches at IEM were all finely balanced; 2-1 jjakji, 3-2 GuMiho, 3-2 aLive, not to mention his 0-2 loss to aLive in the group stages. You remember that GuMiho and aLive both outplayed him for vast stretches of those two playoff matches, and that both arguably deserved the win more. A lot of credit has to be given to him for his mental toughness in that entire tournament, but it’s not too hard to believe that we’d be sitting here bemoaning yet another failure should GuMiho or aLive found that extra edge necessary to take their series.

While this is certainly the tournament to test that matchup—Ryung is waiting for him at the end of April, while ByuN and GuMiho are contenders to meet TY in Stage 2—Bunny is probably the easiest start he could’ve got. The DuSt Gaming player has a dreadful record in the matchup—43% winrate in 2017, dropping to 36% against Korean opposition—and it’s tough to see him improving that here. He does have the odd success or two—an unstreamed 1-0 win over INnoVation in the VSL qualifiers, for example, or his recent 2-0 over GuMiho in the Olimoleague February Finals—but in general, it’s definitely his weakest matchup by far. With late game play against TY something to be avoided, expect some reaper shenanigans.

ByuN vs Dear

There are some players for whom Aligulac is a vital tool. For those whose exposure in 2017 has come purely in the odd online tournament here or there, as well as failed qualifier runs, it’s handy to find out the scores of unstreamed matches or missed online events. For someone like ByuN though, it’s practically irrelevant—I know his win percentages will be stellar without looking, just as well as you all do too, and finding out that he 4-0’d MajOr last night does little to alter that perception.

He was the rarest of the rare in 2016—a player who delivered offline even while dominating online competition day in, day out, and while there’s been a whole lot more online Korean action in 2017 out of necessity and availability, there’s no doubt that ByuN still tops the list of the most dedicated online warriors, prepared to play wherever and whenever he’s needed.

That’s in stark contrast to our last player of the night. Save for the Jin Air squad, it’s hard to think of a current player as invisible as Dear right now. Failure to qualify for GSL and IEM alike has lead to reduced opportunities in the past three months, but with both SSL and Super Tournament spots booked, April looks to be a key month for the ex-Samsung protoss.

His PvT stats for 2017 might look average (literally, at a 19-19 map record), but then you remember the 0-9 battering he took from Maru in GSLTV’s short-lived ‘The Loser Strikes Back’ event back in January, and after excluding that, a 66% winrate suddenly looks a whole lot healthier. His 9-1 sweep of Bunny, KeeN, aLive and GuMiho in Olimoleague 83 at the start of March was some of the cleanest play we’ve seen from him in a while, and if Dear plays to form this match could be a lot more competitive than expected.

Predictions

Losira < Classic
herO < GuMiho
TY > Bunny
ByuN > Dear

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