2022 GSL Code S Season 1 - Round of 20

by Wax

The first week of GSL Code S must have left Protoss fans feeling utterly despondent as zero players from their faction advanced to the Round of 10. However, they shouldn't lose hope just yet, as Group D presents the best chance for Protoss to progress to the next stage. Despite Trap and Creator's obvious flaws, it seems highly likely that at least one of them will survive until the next round.

Group D Preview: Trap, GuMiho, Creator, Solar

Start time: Thursday, Mar 31 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

Trap would have been a firm lock to advance just six months ago, but much has changed since then. Few players have suffered more in the new map pool, with Trap going from winning multiple championships to being a player who's definitively (and sadly) out of the title mix. His Aligulac.com ranking has fallen all the way to #16, and he sits behind players like Bunny, herO, and ByuN at the time of writing. This slide is somewhat inexplicable—it would have been one thing if he was struggling in just PvT and PvZ, but his PvP has taken a big hit as well.

Still, Trap was at such a lofty place before his fall—he was arguably #1 Protoss in the world—that even after such a prolonged slump you still have to like his chances to advance from this group. Trap's 'poor' result of exiting IEM Katowice in the RO12 would have been a great finish for many other players, and he remains a strong, well-rounded Protoss. In particular, I still think his micro is the best of any Protoss player right now—even if the subtleties of the current meta eludes him, he's fully capable of brute-forcing his way to the RO10 on the back of his great mechanics.

Unlike Trap, Creator has been playing some of his best StarCraft II in years after the change to the new map pool. Reaching the Super Tournament RO8 might seem like a modest result for other players, but after years of being on the fringes of Code S, it was a big step up for Creator. Also, just going by the eye test, the quality of Creator's play looks much improved from the past, be it in his overall mechanics or ability to find easy wins with well-crafted builds.

Yet, much like with Trap, Protoss fans probably feel some unease about placing their hopes on Creator's shoulders. He's already been vocal about how nerves can get to him in important matches, and Code S has an additional level of pressure compared to the Super Tournament (even if it's played in the same studio). Creator's most recent major tournament result was RO36 elimination at IEM Katowice, and it's hard to know what to take away from it. Given how well he had been playing in Super Tournament and ESL Open Cups, it was definitely a disappointment. However, the player who eliminated him was Ryung, who is on an insane TvP heater at the moment. Not only did Ryung make the IEM Katowice playoffs, but he even eliminated Zest from Code S last week—maybe Creator can't be faulted for losing to him at Katowice.

Group D has another player whose mentality can be questioned: Solar. The KaiZi Zerg was basically a self-caricature at IEM Katowice, playing out the cliche narratives about himself as if he was acting from a script. He topped his RO24 group with championship caliber play, only to choke 2-3 against HeroMarine in the quarterfinals. While there wasn't a blunder that was quite as spectacular as when he ate Maru's Nuke head on at IEM Katowice 2021, forgetting Baneling speed in game five against HeroMarine was just as devastating in terms of end result.

While Big Gabe's shadow will loom over any of Solar's future playoff matches, his strength in the IEM group stage makes him look like a strong favorite to advance from his Code S group in the meanwhile. Though Solar gave up a surprise upset to Polish Terran Spirit in his opening match, he was in fantastic form as he took down Rogue, Dream, Cure, and Neeb. We've said this many times on TL.net before: Solar is just as good as Dark or Rogue when he's playing at his best, and his best often comes out in the earlier rounds of tournaments.

GuMiho doesn't have any such mentality concerns—the one-time Code S champion has generally performed at or above his skill level throughout his career. The problem for GuMiho is that baseline skill level: he's not on a hyper-accelerated post-military recovery curve like herO or ByuN, and some nine months into his return, he still has some ground to make up. He's been making steady progress, qualifying for Super Tournament and Code S back-to-back, and he's shown some flashes of brilliance in 3rd party tournaments like WTL and TSL. With GuMiho starting to beat Code S players more and more frequently in online cups, and the next step for him is to get those wins in the AfreecaTV studio.

In his current state, GuMiho reminds me of fellow returnee Classic in that his defensive multi-tasking is rather poor at times, and he's prone to falling apart against the multi-directional attacks that have become so commonplace in modern SC2. Ironically, he was one of the best players at executing such attacks in years past, before that level of offensive multi-tasking became the norm. Even now, GuMiho looks at his best when he's on the offensive and dictating the tempo. On another note, while GuMiho still loves his mech play like he always did, it feels like a bit of a trap at the moment—mech can be extremely strong in the hands of top Terrans like Maru, but to anyone below that level, it's often just a big target mark for game-ending, all-in attacks.

Predictions: Trap's extended slump and Solar's big-match jitters make it hard to take them seriously as title contenders, but it's pretty clear that they're still the favorites to advance at this early stage of the tournament. Over 80% of Liquibet user votes have been cast in favor of the duo, and Aligulac.com also projects them as the favorites with both having over a 60% chance of advancing.

However, Creator isn't too far behind them, and he lurks as a dangerous darkhorse to nab one of the RO10 tickets. Even before the Void Ray nerf, Creator never really enjoyed using the 2-Stargate style, preferring to mix up a variety of ground-based timing attacks. This approach has been surprisingly successful, and he's sneakily climbed up to #5 in the PvZ rankings on Aligulac.com. The stats website sees his match-up vs Solar as being almost dead even—which I don't totally buy considering Creator's nervousness problems—but I do see it as being winnable. Similarly, Creator has a fighting chance against Trap as well, thanks to the PvP decline of the Freecs' ace, rating in with a 40% chance of victory.

Similarly to Trap, GuMiho doesn't trail too far behind the favorites. He even has some momentum behind him after a great ESL Open Cup run last weekend, where he won the Korean cup with wins over Classic and Cure. He's the player I could see upending my predictions in the most spectacular fashion, hitting the mark with every creative build and advancing with surprising ease.

I still have to go chalk here with Trap and Solar due to their strong recent track record in the lower rounds of tournaments, but both Creator and GuMiho have a puncher's chance of advancing if they can bring their A-games.

Trap > GuMiho
Solar > Creator
Solar > Trap
Creator > GuMiho
Trap > Creator

Solar and Trap to advance.

---