2024 GSL Code S Season 1

RO16 Group C Preview: GuMiho, NightMare, ByuN, Creator

Thursday, Mar 14 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

by Mizenhauer

It didn't take long for this season of Code S to get very interesting, with Dark dropping out of Group B while the duo of Stats and Classic stoked Protoss hopes. 14 years in, there's still no such as a guaranteed win in Code S, making each group worth tuning in for.

Unlike Dark's group, the upcoming Group C was always projected to be a chaotic, entertaining brawl. Who will come out on top and join the RO8?



One player who could certainly benefit from Dark's absence is GuMiho. 2023 saw the Towel Terran play the best StarCraft of his post-military career, finishing top four and runner-up in the last two Code S seasons and earn a second place finish at DreamHack Summer on top of that. Even if there are questions about his series-to-series consistency, he's become a clear threat to make a deep run in any tournament.

However, he's no guarantee to escape from this group with two other players who fall into the same 'high ceiling, low floor' category: ByuN and Creator. Indeed, the duo is responsible for his most recent offline tournament eliminations, with ByuN narrowly beating him 3-2 in the RO12 of IEM Katowice while Creator took him out in the RO12 of DreamHack Atlanta.

Unfortunately for GuMiho, his play in various online competitions after Katowice has been on the poor side. His 43-36 map record isn't the most convincing, as it's wins over amateur players in the weekly cups that push him over the 50% win rate line. While he's beaten a decent number of Code S-quality players (such as Oliveira, SHIN, Creator and herO), he's given up even more losses against them (like Creator, NightMare, herO, Cure). Indeed, his record against this season's Code S players is a mere 19-29 in games and 6-11 in matches. While all these statistical signs are concerning, GuMiho deserves some benefit of the doubt in Code S. He's advanced from the group stage four tournaments in a row at this point, and overall it's the tournament in which he plays his best StarCraft II.

ByuN hasn't been quite as successful as GuMiho in Code S, finishing RO16-RO8-RO4 in last year's competitions. However, he does have the momentum of a strong RO8 finish in Katowice (again, earned through a 3-2 win against GuMiho himself). He even had a shot at reaching the final four, but had to concede a 2-3 loss to the TvT master Maru in the quarterfinals.

While ByuN missed out on the RO8 last season after a semi-baffling collapse against DRG (or not baffling at all, depending on what you think of ByuN's mental strength), he benefits this season from drawing two Protosses in his RO16 group. Aligulac.com rates him as the third best TvP player in the world at the time of writing, and has a fantastic 51-21 map record in the match-up since Katowice (22-7 match score)—including a pair of win against both Creator and NightMare.

A potential TvT against GuMiho would be tricky, as all non-Maru TvT at the Code S level tends to feel like a 50/50 coinflip where anyone could win. ByuN may have gotten the better of GuMiho in Katowice, but it wasn't a series that made any player look like the clear favorite (although ByuN did look quite solid and clutch in the deciding game five). The numbers back up this toss-up projection, with Aligulac picking ByuN as only a slight 52:48 favorite against GuMiho. However, even if GuMiho gets the better of him, ByuN will have the safety blanket of TvP to rely on.

Speaking of PvT, it’s time to address Creator. It's been a wild career ride for the Protoss who wears his heart on his sleeve, who went from long-suffering punching bag to Code S finalist, and then from Code S finalist to someone stuck in the middle of the pack. His Code S results in 2023 were a very unremarkable RO16-RO16-RO8, and his most recent major tournament "result" was getting eliminated from the IEM Katowice qualifiers with losses to the likes of Firefly, SpeCial, and trigger.

Like most of his peers, Creator is struggling in PvT with a 7-8 match record since Katowice (18-20 map record), with three of those wins coming against lower-round opponents in the ESL Open Cups. Thus, it's no surprise that ByuN picked Creator during the group selections, as he's been beating up on his former PRIME teammate for basically his entire career. Creator's Code S finals run did nothing to change that relationship, as he's 28-9 against Creator (72-40 map score) since 2022. However, Creator could have a fighting chance against GuMiho, as Aligulac sees the two as being almost perfectly evenly matched while he also has a 3-1 record against him since Katowice (including two wins in the qualifier for this very season of Code S).

The path to the RO8 for Creator looks rocky, but it's hardly a doomed scenario. After all, it's not nearly as bad as things seemed for soO against Maru or Stats against Dark. The former managed to put up a surprisingly good fight, and the latter actually beat the odds to reach the RO8. Creator's no stranger himself to creating surprises in Code S, and advancing from this group in first place would hardly be his most unexpected performance.

Finally, we have NightMare, who attained Code S regular status in 2023 by qualifying for all three tournaments. Even if that's much easier to do in the current environment of Korean StarCraft II, it was still a major step forward in his career.

NightMare might have a better chance of advancing than his brand value suggests. He's been gradually improving and getting better results, and he's actually quietly surpassed groupmate Creator in both Aligulac's PvT and PvP rankings (Creator is still ahead of him overall due to his substantially better PvZ). In this Zergless group, everyone's favorite predictions website actually sees NightMare as having a better chance than Creator at reaching the RO8. Of course, there's a seeing-is-believing factor involved with NightMare, and what we haven't seen him do is advance a round in Code S (although, we've also seen the fourth seeds do shockingly well this season…). Still, if he can catch GuMiho on an off night (fun fact, one of his few Code S wins ever came against GuMiho in 2017), there's an advancement path for him yet.

Predictions

Aligulac.com sees ByuN as the heavy favorite to advance while GuMiho and NightMare will be in a close battle for second place (GuMiho having the edge). Creator would probably have been given a better chance had the starting match-ups been different, but his brutal opener against ByuN tanks his odds all the way down to last place.

While I agree with Aligulac on the overall outcome of ByuN and GuMiho advancing, I'm not convinced with some of the details. Even if our machine overlord says NightMare has surpassed Creator in both PvT and PvP, I'm going to say Creator is actually the one who has a better chance of throwing a wrench in the works. Also, while the two Terrans advancing is my ultimate prediction, it's hardly a lock. This group is there for one of Creator, ByuN, or GuMiho to take.

GuMiho 2 - 0 NightMare
ByuN 2 - 0 Creator
GuMiho 2 - 1 ByuN
Creator 2 - 1 NightMare
ByuN 2 - 1 Creator

GuMiho and ByuN to advance.

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