Master's Coliseum #8

RO16 Group D Preview: Oliveira, Clem, Zoun, Spirit

Saturday, Jan 04 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) & Sunday, Jan 05 12:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)

by Wax

Code S might be on indefinite hiatus, but last week's Master's Coliseum games gave us a GSL-esque 'WTF' moment in the group stages as Maru was shockingly eliminated. Will that be the only surprise before we move onto the playoffs, or will Group D serve up additional upsets?



Oliveira enters as the player with top billing in Group D, which is natural for the biggest Chinese star in a tournament primarily focused on a domestic audience. But has his recent play lived up to his popularity?

As is often the case with Oliveira, it's a bit complicated. Ever since his miracle championship run at IEM Katowice 2023, he's returned to being the same, inconsistent-but-talented player he was before. His EPT 2024 campaign included lowlights such as an early-round elimination from EWC, a flash of brilliance at EPT Dallas where he reached the top four while having the best non-Clem TvZ performance of the year against Serral, and everything in between.

During this post-EWC off-season, Oliveira's play has been generally positive. He earned a runner-up finish at the offline BGE Stara Zagora, and has been pretty good in online events—though definitely not on the level of cup-killers like Clem, MaxPax, or herO. Overall, he's played well enough to make you optimistic ahead of this MC8 group, but it's definitely cautious optimism when you factor in his occasional flameouts (in particular, his hugely disappointing first-round exit in the previous Chinese major of StarsWar 11).

The biggest point of interest for me is Oliveira's recent trend of playing almost exclusively 2-base all-ins in TvP. Sometimes that's a sign that a player has really figured out maximum early-game abuse (see: Maru in 2018), but it can also be a sign that a player just isn't confident at all in standard play. Seeing that Oliveira isn't using his all-ins to set up greed play, I'm worried that it's the latter. Then, taking into account that there are two solid macro PvT players in Clem and Zoun, the outlook starts to get a bit murky.

The second invited player in the group is reigning world champion Clem, whose reputation was only been further burnished after his runner-up finish at HomeStory Cup 26. Daring to play his non-main race of Protoss in the finals, Clem came within a map of toppling GuMiho and becoming the first player to ever win a major final while going off-race.

As it turned out, it wasn't a one-off. Clem seems dedicated to overcoming his old weakness of TvT by switching to TvP entirely, competing as Protoss against nearly all of his Terran opponents in the last few weeks. The scary thing is, he seems to be really good at it. Since losing to GuMiho in the HSC27 finals, he's gone on to go 6-0 in PvT matches with a combined 14-3 map score. It's not like he's farming weaker players in the lower rounds of cups—he beat Cure, ByuN, Bunny, Spirit, and Ryung in those matches. It seems crazy to say, but he has a chance to become the best TvP player in the world on BOTH sides of the match-up.

Zoun earned his spot in MC8 through the qualifiers, which was a minor milestone since he returned from the military in September of 2024. The scene has definitely become friendlier to military returnees, and Zoun has become one of the many players who quickly recovered up to the floor of being 'pretty solid.' However, making the next push to becoming a regular playoff contender has been much more difficult for this group of players, with herO being the only one to consistently make deep runs after being discharged (maybe give ByuN and Classic partial credit).

Right now, I'm not sure what to make of Zoun. I'm not concerned about his online cup results being mediocre—he was never particularly good in those competitions during his pre-military stint. Zoun was a perplexing type of player who raised his game for big matches (kind of like DRG), and we just haven't seen him play in that setting since his return. He could very well kick off the Zoun comeback tour in MC8, but it's equally likely that he shows there's still some rust that needs to be shaken off.

Spirit completes the group, also joining the competition through the qualifier. I feel like he's getting somewhat overshadowed ahead of the games, due to his early elimination at EWC and relatively quiet off-season so far. However, prior to that, he had established himself as the new #5 player in Europe behind the big four, which is no mean accomplishment considering the depth of competition in the region. A deep run might be unlikely given the density of top players in this tournament, but Spirit could easily 'surprise' and take second place over Zoun and Oliveira.

Predictions

The almighty Aligulac.com projects this group being a pretty straight-forward Clem #1/Oliveira #2 group, but I see it as a more open three-way competition for second place behind Clem. Spirit may be Aligulac's pick for last place, but with Zoun only a few months off of military service and Oliveira being generally inconsistent, I find myself actually starting to lean toward the Polish Terran's.

Then again, if I'm thinking of MC8 as more than just another online cup, I have to favor Oliveira. Surely, he would have taken his disappointing exit at StarsWar 11 pretty hard, and will try to make it up for it in the next feature event from the Chinese community?

Clem and Oliveira to advance.

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