After a wild day of play-in matches, the main event groups for IEM Katowice 2022 have finally been locked in. The most jaw-dropping development was the addition of powerhouse Terran ByuN to Group D, which had already been touted by many fans as "the group of death."
Meanwhile, Group A added Poland's own Spirit, who had effectively been the "main character" of the play-in stage. Not only did Spirit make a strong run through the winners' bracket of the play-in stage with victories over DongRaeGu, Astrea, and Nice, but he also delivered a match that's an early candidate for "most entertaining series of the year." His five-map series against Nice was certainly rough around the edges, but it delivered non-stop action and a chaotic energy that few other series can match (VOD). Few fans would have picked Spirit to make it out of the RO36 when he entered as a replacement player, but he's now surely earned their respect as a potential spoiler in Group A.
Overall, upsets ran rife throughout the play-in bracket. Notably, pre-tournament favorite herO was bounced from the losers bracket by Ryung, another replacement player who found a way to take full advantage of his rare opportunity. Besides herO, Ryung took down Probe, Creator, and Nice to clinch a spot in Group B of the main event. Group C's play-in addition ended up being Astrea, who at least equals his Katowice 2021 finish by reaching the group stages.
IEM Katowice will continue with the group stages, with Groups A & B starting on Thursday, Feb 24 10:45am GMT (GMT+00:00), and Groups C & D starting on Friday, Feb 25 10:45am GMT (GMT+00:00).
Does anybody know if Ryung's builds against herO were tailored? I don't know enough about the meta, but it seems like the single fast cyclone is meant to push back the oracle, while the 3rax followup seems like it matches up well against the twilight tech, and it has a huge amount of power before the double robo colo can kick in. I haven't been following carefully, but the casters mentioned that this was Zest / DPG's preferred PvT build, so I wonder whether we just saw some really nice preparation.
Not to take anything away from Ryung's general gameplay, as I think he played it out marvelously and is in great shape. Hoping for him to go far (but not before he helps get Dark out of his group by taking out some of the others <3)
On February 24 2022 08:56 Beelzebub1 wrote: Got nothing but respect for Scarlett but she is dead meat lol
I agree, Scarlett has major upset potential against Zerg and Protoss but there are too many strong Terran in her group. Hope to be proven wrong though
Yea, I mean I don't know if she can realistically defeat Zoun who just took down Dark in a masterful B05 in a high pressure match and he's the only Protoss in the group. Reynor's weakest match up statistically is ZvZ but idk man, Reynor is world rank #.3 and Scarlett is #28, so I think that if Scarlett get's lucky she'll face off against Reynor but even then it's a bit lopsided.
Don't get me wrong I mean Scarlett is one hell of a Starcraft player it just seems she's been in kind of poor form lately from the last couple of series that I've seen and though it's up for debate I would say she is in the group of death. Hoping for a dark horse run from her just to let me relive the HOTS days though.
I've seen GSL groups that are more groupy of deathy than Group D but I think that might be the most stacked group I've ever seen at an IEM Katowice before. Just absolutely insane how strong that group is.
EPT
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/EPT/Katowice2022/ro24groups_1.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/EPT/Katowice2022/ro36bracket_2.png)
