IEM Katowice 2020: Round of 24 Preview

by Wax

Over the last two days, we followed twelve players as they hacked and slashed their way through the round-of-76 jungle. While they've emerged from the trees and into a clearing, they haven't found safety—instead, they've been beset on all sides by even deadlier predators.


Alright, enough with that tortured analogy (which was extra weird, since this tournament is taking place in Poland in February). The main event, the round-of-24 of the IEM Katowice, is set to begin.

If you had wondered why certain notable names were missing during the RO76, it's because they were either seeded to the Ro24 for winning the biggest tournament in the world (Dark), or were good enough to break through the online qualifiers held in January. The Ro24 represents the cream of the crop of StarCraft II: the reputed, acclaimed, and proved best players in the world, joined by challengers who are hitting their stride in the right place at the right time.

It's time to preview the first two groups, which will be played on February 27th.

Group A: Dark, PartinG, Stats, Dear, SpeCial, Has

Start time: Thursday, Feb 27 10:45am GMT (GMT+00:00)

The Dark age is the best age.

Honestly, have we ever had a BlizzCon champion who's been as fun as Dark? Minutes after winning the trophy, he was already talking about his disappointment over not getting a chance to redeem himself against Serral. Hours later, he was talking about winning all of the other big money tournaments in StarCraft. There's no "I'll take it one step at a time" modesty with Dark—give him any bit of success, and he'll drive his own hype train all the way into the sun. I've never seen anyone explode from being too full of himself, but that might happen if Dark manages to win the Katowice championship. If only out of curiosity for what he'll say in his interviews, you should be cheering for Dark to go all the way.

Even if you hate Dark for his over-the-top bravado, you should at least hope he advances far enough to meet Serral in a playoff deathmatch. That's the match-up that has replaced Maru vs Serral as the unofficial title match between Korea and the rest of the world. This time, hopefully, that match will actually happen before the hype cools.

I can't fully describe how dead Has is.

By now, I hope I don't have to waive my Has fan credentials around for anyone to see. But for safety, let me disclaim that everything I'm going to say about the champion of cheese comes from a place of love.

Has is dead. Sooooo f***ing dead.

I could see Has' group being a 5x repeat of his match vs SpeCial at GSL vs. The World 2018. Having faced Has' cheeses at prior WCS Circuit events, SpeCial had the genius idea to actually *gasp* research his opponent. SpeCial imposed a strict ban on the having-of-fun, and collected his free-win in a boring and sad series.

Given the history of Koreans vs foreigners, I doubt everyone is this group will study Has quite so thoroughly. But while Has does occasionally catch top players off guard with his openers, they're often able to clench their teeth and power through after taking that hit square in the balls.

At the end of the day, I'm okay with Has' inevitable demise. At least for me, what makes a game a 'Has game' has nothing to do with whether he wins or loses. It's all about how weird and unconventional they are—how counter they run to common sense.

The quintessential 'Has games' aren't his victories against Nerchio or Kelazhur during his IEM Valencia finals run. They're his bouts against Maru in the IEM Gyeonggi qualifier or his run-in with Dark at the 2018 Global Finals. Both of these games began with Has taking ridiculous leads against some of the best players in the world because they were utterly unprepared to face him… and ended with him throwing what should have been unloseable advantages because he's bad Has.

I'm not holding out any hope for Has to advance or even put in a good showing. I just hope that over the course of five matches, he'll deliver to us what ends up being simultaneously the best and worst game of the entire tournament.

Players we have to mention or their fans will bother us. Also, Dear.

Katowice 2019 runner-up Stats has quietly been having a monster pre-season, putting up a nearly an 80% win-rate since the November balance patch. More than his official record, however, I'm scared of the fact that he's self-sorted himself into the "I'm too good to have to play any ESL weeklies" category. Pros are often too humble, and thus these kinds of actions (or in this case, inaction) often speak louder than any interview.

PartinG is an honorary 'returner,' despite not having gone to the military yet. His return to SC2 after pursuing a career in other games has been one of the early case-studies in how year-plus breaks affect StarCraft II skill. Things looked bleak for a while, but his playoff runs in GSL Code S and Super Tournament in 2019 suggested that eventual championship contention may not be a pipe dream.

A rapid-fire round-robin group is a less-than-ideal format for player like SpeCial, who thrives on being able to prepare build orders and strategies for specific opponents. His two prior Ro24 exits from IEM attest to that. He's been unlucky as well—this makes it three straight years he's drawn Group A, giving him the absolute least amount of time to prepare. If SpeCial hasn't picked up some cram-school fast-study methods in Korea, he might be headed to his third straight Ro24 elimination.


Owch, that hits too close to home.

I'd like to remind the readers that we did peddle a different narrative for about one a month when Dear was on 20-game winning streak in PvT early last year. But yeah, [Dear is an extremely inconsistent Protoss player who was briefly the best player in the world in 2013].

Group B: Reynor, Rogue, Zest, Armani, soO, ShoWTimE

Estimated start time: Thursday, Feb 27 4:15pm GMT (GMT+00:00)

A Salute to the Champ.

For a while after soO won IEM Katowice 2019, I just assumed he had stopped trying so hard at StarCraft. He limped his way toward BlizzCon, and would not even have come close to qualifying without his IEM Katowice seed/points. And I didn't really blame him! After dedicating his life to competitive gaming and having overcome an increasingly cruel and sadistic string of setbacks, he had finally won the big one. He deserved a break.

In hindsight, I have to wonder if the level of play soO showed for the rest of 2019 was his normal level, and that IEM Katowice 2019 was just the most incredible miracle we've ever seen in StarCraft II. After all, it's not like soO had been playing particularly well headed into Katowice, nor did he play especially well AT Katowice. It seemed like he was basically eliminated in the group stage after he put up a losing record of 2-3, but he narrowly advanced by the margin of a single map in a tiebreaker.

soO was deemed dead-to-rights when he drew Serral in the RO8 of the playoffs, with the Finnish Phenom playing ZvZ on a transcendent level. But soO somehow played the best game of his entire career to win game three on Year Zero, and then closed the series out in game five. soO seemed doomed once more in the finals after he went down 0-2 to Stats. But this time around, it was his soO's opponent that crumbled in the finals. After taking two losses to begin the series, soO came back to win four games in a row to (the kong sweep).

As much talk as there is about StarCraft II being variance-heavy, and that our tournament formats aren't exactly helping (the guys who say this have a valid point, and they're also the f***ing worst), it's become exceedingly rare that we end up with a tournament champion who's unexpected—much less an underdog whose story arc may as well have come straight out of fiction. But there soO stood, lifting the trophy—the teary-eyed hero of a real-life fairy tale.

All of that goes to say: StarCraft can be weird, and it can also be as wonderful as it is weird. If soO can win it all, well, why couldn't anyone else?

Some obligatory words of courtesy to everyone else.

A player's growth is bound to level off at some point, but it's scary to imagine how much better Reynor might become before he starts to slow down. After getting eliminated from the RO76 by Creator and GuMiho last year, I imagine BlizzCon runner-up Reynor is going to do slightly better this time around. If his StarCraft II skills have improved at the same rate as his trolling skills, then he's going to one-up Serral's 2018 dynasty.

Armani enjoys the strange distinction of being more notable after his Korean military service than before. Alongside Dream and FantaSy, he's raised our expectations for how good 'returners' can be. While none of them has surpassed the "Code S RO16-ish" level as of yet, it wouldn't be shocking to see Armani sneak into the Ro12 in 3rd place.

Are you a German fan wondering if this is the time ShoWTimE finally makes a playoff run at IEM Katowice? Well, good for you! I have deceptive, cherry-picked stats that might cheer you up. According to trusty Aligulac.com, it's traditionally been Korean Terrans who have turned ShoWTimE into hamburger (incidentally, he's not from Hamburg). On the other hand, he's enjoyed much of his vs-Korean success against Zergs, three of which are in this group. Lock it in, guys.

Will IEM Katowice be the tournament where the TL.net in-joke of online-Zest finally ends? To the surprise of few, he's been beasting tournaments during the mostly-online pre-season, putting up a recording a 70.97% match win-rate (88–36 record). He's been so good online that he won one of the brutally hard IEM online qualifiers (defeating Neeb, Trap, PartinG, and TY in the process) to earn a RO24 seed. Here's the thing: Zest was about that good online last year, and still finished the year miles away from BlizzCon qualification because of his so-so offline performances. He's going to have to summon his form from 2018, when the two beings of online-Zest and offline-Zest coexisted in the same body, for him to safely advance to the playoffs.

And finally, we have the perennially very-good-player and Katowice 2018 champion Rogue. I don't have any particular observations to make about him, so I guess he'll win the entire tournament.

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