IEM Katowice 2022: Round-of-24 Groups Stage
Group A &B Preview

by Wax

After a day of fierce play-ins behind closed doors, it's time for the gates to open and the main event to begin! The first matches the audience will be treated to are Groups A and B of the Round of 24, with the top three players advancing from each group.


While there are a handful of players that look like locks to advance, IEM Katowice is looking a lot less predictable than before. We don't even have to go far back as Trap's implosion in last year's group stage—think about what just happened in Wednesday's RO36 play-in stages! Will things play out as expected, or will we once again be reminded that you can't take any result for granted in SC2?

Group A: Rogue, Cure, Solar, Neeb, Dream, Spirit

Rogue - #2 EPT Korea: Group A is headlined by perhaps the greatest big-match player in StarCraft II history and the only ever two-time IEM World Champion in Rogue. The legendary Zerg heads into IEM Katowice not only looking for a massive $170,000 payday, but a career capstone trophy that would put all the greatest-of-all-time disputes to rest— once and for all.

Of course, the question for Rogue—as it often is—is will he show up? The answer is not as obvious as it seems for a player with such a reputation for coming through in the clutch. On one hand, he's 11-1 in offline BO7 matches (with Zest having dealt him his only loss in Code S last year), which seems like almost irrefutable evidence of his killer instinct. On the other hand, he doesn't always get to play that offline BO7, because he's out after suffering a deflating defeat in an earlier BO5 round. While not offline, last year's online version of IEM Katowice was an example of Rogue failing to live up to the hype, as he was smashed 3-0 by Maru in a tepid quarterfinal series.

Overall, the 2021/22 season was one of Rogue's most consistent ever, at least relatively speaking. He started things off with a bang by winning the championship in Code S Season 1 in a huge "upset" against Maru, and picked up a couple mid-major trophies in Super Tournament 3 (2021) and TSL8, and placed high in most of the events he participated in. Mind you, I said "relatively" speaking—it wouldn't be Rogue without a couple of head-scratching eliminations as well. In the lead-up to Katowice, he went out in the first round in both GSL Super Tournament 1 (2022), as well as DHM Last Chance.

Yet, despite this weak finish to the 'regular season,' everyone should still be afraid of Rogue. The narrative that Rogue's big victories are always preceded by a bad result doesn't really hold up, but looking at Rogue's career results, it does seem safe to say that he's immune to negative momentum. The strongest, world championship version of Rogue can come out of nowhere.

Overall, one has to think that we're going to see the fully-focused, well-practiced version of Rogue at this event. Last year's IEM Katowice had a reduced first-place prize due to its online nature (the money was controversially redistributed to DHM events not the GSL), which may have sapped his motivation. Also, Rogue has given several interviews throughout the year where he's tried to reassure everyone that he's consistently practicing hard, trying to dispel concerns about his tendency to fall into complacency. Given Rogue's track record at offline IEM Katowice events, we have no choice but to take his word for it and place him as a top title contender.


Cure - #5 EPT Korea: Among the highly seeded players at IEM Katowice, Cure might be the most difficult one to rate. He was absolutely incandescent during his Code S Season 3 championship run, stomping all the best Protoss players in Korea with clever build order choices, insidious mind games, and all-around great mechanics. That combination of skills was reminiscent of the great Terrans throughout the history of StarCraft, from iloveoov all the way up to Maru. It was the brilliant culmination of a decade-long career full of peaks and valleys, which ultimately led to a major championship.

If the EPT worked out so that the World Championship was held soon after the final GSL season, I'd have called Cure one of the favorites to win it all. However, there's nearly five months between Code S and IEM Katowice, and a lot can happen in that time. In the case of Cure, it was a precipitous drop-off that coincided with the changing to the current map pool. Going by his Aligulac.com ratings, it wasn't too surprising to see his TvZ decline—many other Terrans suffered a TvZ hit in the new patch. But his decline in TvT—which shouldn't be so affected by the maps—gave much more cause for concern. Only Cure's PvT has remained at around the same rating.

Cure's tournament results after Code S Season 3 also tell a rather grim tale. He bombed at a number of events, getting eliminated early after giving up upsets to the likes of Scarlett (DHM Winter), Zoun ('22 Super Touranment 1), and Spirit (TSL8). And while he did play well to go deep in Super Tournament 3 and DHM: Last Chance, those runs ended in crushing sweeps defeats against Rogue and Maru, suggesting he couldn't hang with the "true" title contenders.

Still, when a player shows you a sustained run of brilliance just one time, you're always tantalized by the possibility that he might be able to reach that level of play again. While Cure has admitted to struggling with nervousness issues in the past, he's absolutely a world championship caliber player when he's composed and locked in.

Solar - #7 EPT Korea: Similar to Cure, I can't help but be intrigued by the best version of Solar. Sure, for the StarCraft II audience at large, his most memorable moment of 2021 was probably getting nuked into oblivion by Maru at IEM Katowice 2021. But for me, it was a different Solar vs Maru match that stood out: Solar's comprehensive late-game victory in the Code S RO16. Sure, Maru went on to win the series 2-1 with some early-game attacks, but that's besides the point. Going up against the supposed best late-game player in the world in a major tournament match, Solar was able to take an extremely convincing victory. Damn, why can't he play like that all the time?

Going by Solar's interviews throughout the years, that's probably a question he asks himself a lot as well. He had another initially encouraging run that ended short of a championship at the recent DHM: Last Chance tournament, defeating Dark, Clem, and Reynor in impressive fashion before losing to Cure in the semifinals. Alas, that's a rather familiar story for Solar—all of his best games come in the early and middle rounds of a tournament, but he falls apart when the situations get tight.

Well, we'll worry about that later. For now, I feel like Solar actually had a great chance of winning Group A straight up, even with Rogue and Cure in the fray. I might never bet on Solar to beat Rogue in semi-final BO5, but in a BO3 group stage match? Sure, sign me up! Similarly, I think Solar can overcome Cure in this setting, even though Cure did defeat Solar in their high-profile showdown in the semifinals of DHM: Last Chance. Solar recently said he's practiced harder than anyone ahead of this event, and I think that at least in Group A, he's going to show us exactly what that entails.

Neeb - #2 EPT North America: Neeb isn't just the mystery man of Group A—he's the mystery man of the entire tournament. He hasn't played a single official tournament match since November, staying "inactive" for so long that he's actually been delisted from the rankings on Aligulac.com. Neeb is certainly one of the all-time great foreigners, but how good is he now in 2022?

While Neeb has been a regional powerhouse during the online era of the ESL Pro Tour, winning three out of six DHM: North America championships, he largely struggled in international competition. Besides one splendid run to the top four of the DHM Winter Season Finals in 2020, he was eliminated from nearly all of his international events without advancing a round. That was the story at IEM Katowice 2021 as well, when he was bounced from the group stage with a 1-4 record.

It's fun to imagine how this group would go if Neeb showed up to this group after months of training, removed 100lb of training weights (or whatever the equivalent is in StarCraft II), and proceeded to surprise everyone by playing like a peak-ability Neeb. Unfortunately, his past results suggest it's more likely that he'll be hard pressed to get out of this group.

Dream - #9 EPT Korea: Dream has the unique distinction of being the only player at IEM Katowice 2022 who also participated at the original IEM Katowice in 2013. Back then, he took second place at a markedly different version of IEM Katowice—it was just one of the many stops on the IEM Circuit (the World Championship still took place in Germany), with just a paltry $6,500 first place prize compared to 2022's $170,000. How might Dream do in his return? Well, to answer that, I'm going to have to ramble a bit (although what part of this is NOT rambling?)...

Of all the recent military returnees, Dream might have been the most fascinating one of all. When he originally left StarCraft II in early LotV, it felt like he was leaving some unrealized potential on the table. He was an upland coming Terran who had made some strong runner-up runs in the SSL towards the end of HotS, but following a rough adjustment period in LotV, he called it quits at a relatively young age.

Fast forward many years to early 2021, and Dream was in the midst of making one of the most exciting comebacks out of all the former military players. Sure, ByuN had already been the most successful in a sense, winning ASUS ROG just months after being discharged. However, ByuN was a player who already had a BlizzCon title under his belt—it was almost expected that he'd be able to win a mid-major online tournament. On the other hand, when Dream made it to the semifinals of GSL Code S, it felt like he was picking up where he left off, coming back to SC2 years later to see if he had been fated for greatness all along. Dream ended fighting his way to the verge of achieving something that was previously thought to be impossible: defeating Rogue in an offline best of seven. He even had a leg up in terms of build orders in the final game, but gave up a heartbreaking loss due to some errors in the final moments of the game. Despite the loss, it felt like a moral victory for Dream—surely he would learn from game seven and fulfill a greater destiny?

Alas, it hasn't quite panned out that way. Whether due to a shifting meta or drop in motivation (Maru slyly said "he's a different person now" during a recent Team NV preview of IEM Katowice; both Solar and Maru predicted him to get eliminated as well), that one semifinal run and almost-recording-breaking performance was the height of Dream's comeback run. While Dream hasn't exactly fallen off a cliff, he's definitely regressed toward being more of a middle of the pack player. In a stacked group like this, that's probably not going to be enough to save him from elimination as his colleagues predict.

Spirit - #11 EPT Europe: Spirit's exploits in the play-in stage should be fresh in everyone's mind: he took down DRG, Astrea, and Nice consecutively to earn his spot in the group stage. While his incredibly hectic and incredibly entertaining series against Nice was certainly the most memorable part of his run, I was actually more intrigued by two late-game sets he played against DRG and Astrea. There were two games against those players where he managed to put himself in his preferred late-game turtling position, but the endings were quite different. Against DRG, he closed the game out relatively calmly. Against Astrea, he was unable to apply the finishing blow with his Battecruiers, and ended up fumbling the bag from what seemed like a dominant position.

Going even further back to TSL8, Spirit showed he could put himself in winning positions against players like Cure and herO, but had trouble finishing them off and getting the win. While Spirit looked much improved in that regard during the RO36, and I think his ability to close games out will be absolutely critical in the group stage. While the group is too stacked to predict that Spirit will advance, I do hope that he pulls off a great main-stage win for the fans in attendance.

Prediction: I ended up eating dirt in the RO36 after making some rather safe and unadventurous predictions (besides a sentimental nod to Elazer), but I'm going to stay the course and go with the obvious trio of Rogue, Cure, and Solar to advance. Even though the play-in matches served as a stark reminder of how unpredictable BO3 matches can be, the history of IEM Katowice shows that the favorites usually advance in the round robin format (Trap's elimination last year was an enormous outlier).

Predicting who will end up in first place is a much trickier matter. Rogue, Cure, and Solar can be quite inconsistent—especially Rogue who's given up a really alarming number of BO3 losses to underdogs over the 2021/22 season. Thus, I'm going to go with Solar to win the group and seize the direct spot in the quarterfinals. I don't even think this is much of a surprise pick—we all know that Solar has championship-tier skills when he's on his game, and those skills tend to come out during the early and middle rounds of a tournament.

Solar advances in 1st place, Rogue and Cure advance in 2nd/3rd.

Group B: Serral, Dark, TIME, SpeCial, ShoWTimE, Ryung

Serral - #1 EPT Europe: In a sharp departure from his usual diplomatic tone, Serral actually expressed a great deal of confidence in his recent, pre-tournament interview with TL.net. To sum it up, he feels extremely confident in his ZvP and ZvT—even in a potential rematch with Maru. However, ZvZ still seems to be a point of concern, which isn't surprising given the one-sided losses he's given up to Rogue, Dark, and even DongRaeGu in recent tournaments.

Overall, that should be encouraging news for fans of the Finnish Phenom. Putting Code S aside due to logistical reasons, the lack of an IEM Katowice trophy is the one major blemish on Serral's otherwise sterling resume—the one flaw that stops all the GOAT arguments dead in their tracks (any reasonable person would understand this, but we live in an unreasonable age). While I doubt Serral is concerned with those kinds of historical fan arguments, the meaningfulness of the IEM World Championship trophy can't be lost upon him—remember, the only time that steely exterior cracked was when he lifted the trophy at BlizzCon. I imagine lifting the IEM trophy would elicit a similar reaction.

It will be very interesting to see how Serral performs in the group stage given the unprecedented degree of outward confidence he's expressed. It's not really the box score that interests me—he was already the favorite to advance in the group stage, and a 5-0 finish wouldn't really surprise anyone. What I'm looking to see is the quality of his games—'modest Serral' has put in some dominant displays in the past, so how much better might a swaggering version be?

Dark - #4 EPT Korea: Similar to Serral, Dark is another all-time great Zerg player who only needs the IEM World Championship trophy to complete his collection. After last year's Katowice group stage, it seemed like it might finally be Dark's turn, as he destroyed his opponents (including Serral, who was also his groupmate then) to record the second ever perfect 10-0 group result in IEM World Championship history. However, Dark couldn't ride that wave of momentum very far—he was immediately swept aside in the playoffs as Reynor made his dramatic run to the championship.

Headed into the 2022 World Championship, Dark seems to be in a great position to redeem himself for blowing his series against Reynor and claim that final trophy. Don't let his string of top eight finishes since September fool you: Dark has been very unlucky in terms of where he's met championship-class opponents in the bracket. A typical Dark result would be 'beat Rogue in the group stages and lose to Maru' (DHM Winter), or 'beat Maru in the lower bracket then lose to Reynor' (TSL8). Overall, he seems to be on even footing with—if not superior to—many of the title contenders at the event. This is where I find a tool like Aligulac.com to be especially useful, because Dark is still ranked #4 in the world (at the time of writing) while playing largely in major events without much cup tournament filler.

It seems pretty clear that Dark will join Serral in advancing from the RO24—the only question is whether or not he'll defeat him to take first place once more.

TIME - #1 EPT China: With Serral and Dark sitting as overwhelming favorites to go top two, the storyline for Group B is that the remaining four players will be in a tight race for the final ticket. But is the race really that close?

If we go by international tournament results in the 2021/22 season, TIME clearly has the best case. Players from the so-called "minor" regions are often torn apart when they play in major international competitions, but TIME has constantly proven that he can hang with the big boys. Not only did he survive the group stages at internationals such as DHM Summer, DHM Fall, but he even went as deep as the top four in January's DHM Last Chance before being stopped by a masterful Maru. None of SpeCial, ShoWTimE, or Ryung have international results that come even close to this in 2021/22.

Some might argue that TIME still hasn't proved himself in a world championship-class event, but he kinda did. Back at BlizzCon 2019, he upset Maru 3-2 in their initial group stage series—even if Maru came back to win the decider match, it was a great indicator of TIME's ability to perform under pressure. To get in a requisite terrible ID pun: is it time for TIME to get more than a token upset at a world championship, and actually make it to the playoffs?

SpeCial - #1 EPT Latin America: SpeCial's uber-dominance in the Latin American scene continued for yet another year, with his clean sweep of 2021/22 bringing him up to fourteen consecutive regionals won under the WCS &EPT systems.

However, while SpeCial's grip over his home region remained firm during the online-era of the EPT, he didn't make much of an impact on international events. Despite playing in all six DHM Season Finals, he failed to make it out of the group stages even a single time. That's not to say he was hapless—he did manage to take series wins off the likes of Astrea, Clem, and MarineLorD over the seasons. However, when you combine that track record with the fact that he's never made it out of an IEM Katowice group stage, you can only conclude that his chances of advancement are grim.

One has to wonder if it ties into the entire meme-that's-actually-real about SpeCial excelling when he gets to prepare. Let's put those bygone BlizzCons aside—Special's best international events from 2020-2021 were actually the TeamLiquid Starleague events, where he got to prepare for one opponent at a time. In that setting, he managed to reach the top 12 in TSL5 and hit the top eight in TSL7.

Unfortunately for SpeCial, I don't see the IEM Katowice format changing any time soon, so it's likely to remain a difficult event for him.

ShoWTimE - #6 EPT Europe: I find it quite amusing that ShoWTimE comes into the group with the third highest Aligulac.com rating out of all the players (he stands at #10, and then there's a huge fall off until TIME at #24), but also has the worst international tournament resume in 2021/22 out of everyone except Ryung.

I know this is going to drive some of TL.net's resident Korean elitists crazy, but I think it's a strong indicator that "Europe"—I mostly mean DHM Europe & the EU Weeklies—is a very competitive, semi-enclosed ecosystem that's very close to Korea's GSL in stature. Thus, even without a notable international tournament result under his belt in 2021/22, I think ShoWTimE's success in DHM: Europe Winter and the recent ESL Weekly cups could be a strong predictor of success at IEM Katowice.

Ryung - #25 EPT Korea: Despite being the last place seed out of all the players in the tournament, Ryung managed to survive the play-in bracket and reach the group stage. In the RO36 preview, I explained that Ryung's EPT point total was deceptively low due to him improving rapidly toward the end of 2021, long after the chances to earn big points in the GSL had passed. But while I thought he would outperform his seeding in the play-in, I hardly expected him to play well enough to get a group stage berth!

After surviving a grueling bracket, Ryung had a sense of humor about being drawn into a group with Serral and Dark, joking "what's the point?" But there is some truth behind the joke, as his RO36 run was built entirely upon TvP wins over Probe, Creator, herO, and Nice. With not even a day to rest and prepare before his next games, one has to wonder how he'll deal with a one-Protoss group, especially when that one Protoss player happens to be ShoWTimE. At this point, I feel like Ryung has already exceeded expectations, and anything else he gets done here is just gravy.

Prediction: I had to make two close decisions when predicting this group: Who do I favor in a ZvZ between Serral and Dark for first place? Do I take TIME's superior international tournament track record and put him in third, or do I side with Aligulac.com which places ShoWTimE far above TIME?

In the end, I picked Dark over Serral for first place due to the latter's recent ZvZ woes. As for third place, I'm going to place my trust in Aligulac's formula and say ShoWTimE's EU-forged skills will overcome the opposition.

Dark to advance in 1st, Serral and ShoWTimE to advance in 2nd/3rd.

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