2023 GSL Code S Season 1

RO16 Group A Preview: Maru, TY, Classic, Bunny

Start time: Tuesday, Jul 04 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

by Wax

A new season of GSL Code is set to begin, now returning to full, in-studio play thanks to fan support of the GSL's crowdfunding efforts. Last season, we saw Maru break his own record and win an incredible sixth Code S title—could number seven be in his future?

The first round could be an unusually thorny obstacle for Maru as he pursues the 'GS7.' After having shown some recent vulnerability in TvT, he's drawn a RO16 group with two Terrans—both of whom have vexed him in the past.



Let's get serious here: what's the chance that Maru actually gets eliminated from the RO16 on account of his TvT?

The once unbeatable mirror-master racked up a concerning number of high-profile losses in the last seven months, being defeated by ByuN in the Super Tournament (Dec '22), HeroMarine and Oliveira at IEM Katowice (Feb '22), and Cure in the Code S RO8 groups (May '23). However, when it came to brass tacks in the Code S Season 1 playoffs, he blew past both Bunny (3-1 win) and Cure in a rematch (4-2 win) to clinch his sixth Code S title.

Reputation restored? Not quite.

Maru's TvT troubles came back to haunt him in a big way at the recent ESL Masters Summer, where GuMiho dealt him a 3-2 loss in the knockout bracket and forced him to settle for a RO12 finish (VOD). To defend Maru a bit, GuMiho's unorthodox Viking-Tank mech style seemed to really tilt him—he actually fast-GG'd out of a seemingly playable game five after GuMiho's Tank-Viking army set up in an aggressive siege position. No one in the world plays quite like GuMiho, so it's quite possible that he dominates this group the same way he crushed everyone in last season's playoffs.

Yet, it's still concerning that Maru suffered FOUR offline TvT losses in the last 7 months—the same number as in the three YEARS prior (I'm not kidding; what a ridiculous stat). Throw in the fact that TY and Bunny account for two of those old losses, and this group starts to become surprisingly scary for Maru fans.

At the end of the day, I'm obviously going to pick Maru to advance from this group regardless. A weakened Maru is still one of the best players in the world, and Aligulac reflects that by giving him 90%+ odds of advancing from this group. But while I occasionally quibble with the accuracy of our friendly neighborhood stats website, this time that 10% looms larger than normal.

(Apologies to Classic for not even touching on a potential PvT vs Maru; that's as about as doomed a match-up as I can think of right now).

I should have mentioned there is one big presupposition behind this Maru doubt—I'm assuming that TY is close to being back in form. One of the main reasons that Maru was able to claim the title of undisputed TvT tyrant for two years was because TY was in the military during that time. Before then, the two formed something resembling a big two in TvT (although they weren't heads and shoulders above the rest), with TY actually having the upper hand in the biggest of matches (most notably beating Maru in the Code S Season 3 finals of 2020).

So, why am I assuming that TY will play anywhere close to his old level? After all, he failed to make the qualifier cut in Code S Season 1, when even the (allegedly) barely practicing INnoVation managed to slip in. Perhaps, you might suspect, that my judgment has been clouded by a few best-case returnee scenarios such as ByuN's and herO's?

I gotta say, possibly. I would have loved to have gone through TY's qualifier replays (available for GSL Patreon subscribers), but some unfortunate computer issues got in the way at the time of writing. Still, he had a reasonably good qualifier run if you just look at his record, beating Scarlett, Classic, and Armani along the way (losing to Scarlett as well in the winners bracket). But, we know the GSL qualifiers have become rather soft in recent years, and I don't want to read too deeply into that.

What I'm counting on is TY's unrivaled ability at planning for offline matches. Lest we forget some of the more impressive championship runs in Code S history, think back to when TY won both Season 1 and Season 3 in 2020. Going by his performances in the multitude of online tournaments during that pandemic era, you would have thought he was on the fringes of the championship picture (although he was still very good). Yet, when it came time to play in the Code S, the only remaining offline tournament and one with ample prep time between matches, he was easily the best player of the year. TY only topped out as only the 7th ranked Aligulac.com player following both of his championship runs, showing the difference in his caliber of play between low and high-priority events.

You can't take advantage of preparation and special strategies unless you have a high enough base skill level, and merely making it through the present-day GSL qualifiers doesn't necessarily prove that you do. Still, I'm going to go with my heart here and say TY will show his GSL expertise and make things difficult for the other players in this group, although I can't pick him to advance outright.

Somehow, Classic is an even bigger question mark for me than TY. On the surface, his current competitive profile seems pretty straightforward. After returning from military service and spending most of 2022 as a fringe Code S player (a normal-ish length of time to adjust after serving), he really hit his stride in 2023. With a top 6 finish in the last Code S, a top 8 finish at ESL Summer, and some good online results all around, he seems to have become a solid playoff contender—a path akin to fellow returnees DRG and Dream.

Yet, even looking at those major tournament finishes, and even seeing him rise to a respectable 11th place in the Aligulac.com standings, I'm not totally convinced what I'm seeing is real. Every time he reacts too slowly to harassment or commits a micro error, I feel like there's a limit to what this old soldier can achieve. We haven't seen a blunder as egregious as his Disruptor self-destruction at IEM, but I can't help but worry that something similar is lurking around the corner.

Classic's steadily improving results do suggest my fretting is unfounded. There's a chance that he's a bit of a Zest heir—a player whose multi-tasking and micro were… …questionable at times (at least for post-KeSPA, second-peak Zest). It turns out if you make enough good big picture decisions, and have a really good sense for when to perform Zealot runbys, you can become a championship caliber player even with some mechanics that are rough around the edges.

Ultimately, these are musings that are more relevant for a later round. Classic has established himself as a playoff caliber player, and arguably the next best Protoss after the MaxPax-herO duo. He should find himself in a close race against Bunny for second place in the group (unless TY were to muck things up…).

Rounding out the group is Bunny, whose great performance last season was unfortunately overshadowed by Maru's G6L. Prior to running into the Maru TvT deathtrap in the semifinals, Bunny was having a fantastic tournament with BO3 wins against Classic, INnoVation, Solar, and Dark in the group stages. None of those wins should have been surprising to anyone who followed Bunny in 2022, where he soared up to become a legitimate championship contender (even finishing runner-up at DreamHack: Atlanta).

Unfortunately, Bunny's latest outing at ESL Masters Summer was rather disappointing. There, he got his sole victory of the tournament against Scarlett before being eliminated in the RO16 with losses to Solar, Maru, and Lambo. Personally, I don't want to read into the loss too deeply. The 2-3 against Lambo was his only 'bad' loss (depending on how you think Lambo would do in GSL), whereas losing BO3's to Solar and Maru could happen to anyone. However, given that Bunny rarely plays in online events, that's the last result we have to go on, and it leaves me wondering if it's a sign of some actual decline.

In the end, I've decided to index on last Code S more than DreamHack Summer and give Bunny the nod to advance.

Predictions

Despite all the complications, I've decided to go chalk and pick Maru and Bunny to advance from this group (Liquibet users like Bunny in second place by a small margin; Aligulac favors Classic slightly). However, I'm going to commit hard to my prediction that TY will get at least a single series win with his preparation, and I've picked Classic to be the unfortunate victim. TvP is ripe for exploitation with nasty timings, and TY already got the better of Classic in the qualifiers.

Maru > TY
Bunny > Classic
Maru > Bunny
TY > Classic (!)
Bunny > TY

Maru and Bunny to advance.

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