2025 GSL Code S Season 1

RO12 Group A Preview: Cure, sOs, Solar, Reynor

Wednesday, May 07 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

by Wax

All aboard! The GSL's neverending last ride has been given another last minute extension, with two truncated seasons to be held before July's Esports World Cup. This version of GSL Code S will be the smallest ever, cut down to a duration of two weeks and played with a roster of only twelve players per season.

Yet, in the current StarCraft II environment, even a heavily downsized live competition is an oasis in the middle of the desert. Code S Season 1 will be the first major offline tournament since last December's HomeStory Cup 26, bringing back some vital live tournament energy to the venerable esport.

With the four top players from the qualifiers already seeded into the RO8, the tournament begins with RO12 competition. The two RO12 groups feature a curious mix of players, including all-time greats, the last few youngsters of the scene, and a player making a most unexpected comeback…



The main character of Group A is most definitely sOs, regardless of what his realistic chances of advancement may be. The three-time world champion is a legendary figure in StarCraft II history, earning both infamy and admiration for pulling out audacious strategies in the biggest matches.

The unorthodox Protoss player has been a perplexing figure since his official retirement in 2021, neither serving his military service (to the best of our knowledge) nor completely departing from the StarCraft II scene. He embarked on an unexplained semi-comeback run in late 2023 where he played in a handful of online cups and made two failed attempts to get through the GSL qualifiers, only to fade back into obscurity in early 2024.

Then, two weeks ago, sOs reappeared on the scene like a rider of apocalypse heralding the end times of StarCraft II ("And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was sOs, and cheese followed with him. And power was given unto him over the fourth part of the earth, to rush with the Cannon, the proxy-Gate, and with the Oracle, and with the units of the Stargate"). Initially, it seemed like it might be another random qualifier appearance, with the difference being that he just so happened to make it through this time. However, the recent news that he has joined esport team Streamerzone—and the announcement's implication that he will be competing at DreamHack Dallas—suggests that he's ready for a sustained comeback run.

Well, at least sustained for this current Esports World Cup cycle. Historically, nothing has brought out the best in sOs quite like a big payday, with the cold-blooded gambler saving his most ruthless reads and calculated risks for the richest jackpots. If anything was going to bring sOs fully out of retirement, it was a cut of a $700k prize purse. Still, that doesn't explain why he decided to sit out the last EWC cycle and what he's been up to these last few years. Almost as much as his games, any GSL interviews or video content about sOs' whereabouts will be highly anticipated.

Anyway, let's get to the important part—how good is sOs right now? Unfortunately for hopeful fans of the Cheesy One, the limited public games we've seen from GSL qualifier replays and last week's PiGosaur Cup suggest he's a decent-but-unremarkable macro Protoss. His match record in qualifiers was a solid 4-2, with wins against Ryung, Khala, NightMare, and Bunny, but with losses to stronger players in SHIN and herO. From sOs's limited sample of games played—which includes an unimpressive 0-2 loss to initial opponent Cure in the PiGosaur Cup—a last place finish seems like a prudent prediction.

However, sOs has never been prudent in his play, and maybe he requires us to take up a more bold point of view. It's true that it has been extremely difficult for older players to live up to the mythos they've wrought, whether it's TaeJa, INnoVation, or Rogue right now. Yet, sOs feels like he could be an outlier, as the key to his success was never blazingly fast hands or hyper-efficient mechanics. No, sOs was a player who thrived due to his guts and guile, and those are qualities that shouldn't have eroded with time. Furthermore, 15 years of SC2 history have demonstrated that those qualities are only amplified in the GSL studio. At least, that's what fans of old school StarCraft would love to believe.

In a curious coincidence, Group A also features this season's second most interesting comeback player in Reynor. The former world champion took an extended break from SC2 in early 2025, but has returned as promised following the announcement of the EWC 2025 tournament cycle.

Reynor's career track record suggests he should have no problem getting back into peak shape in time for the world championship in July, and it seems likely that he'll be part of the title picture. However, there's still plenty of reason to doubt his abilities in early May. While he did beat Code S caliber players in Zoun and Cure during the GSL qualifiers, he showed some rust in the recent PiG Sty #6 tournament where he was eliminated from the RO16 by Dark and Bunny.

Furthermore, there's that whole problem with the GSL jinx. The Italian Zerg has been lauded by fans for being the only top 'foreigner' of the modern era to take on the challenge of GSL Code S, but all three of his previous campaigns have ended in the group stage. Granted, his first attempt in 2018 was when he was still a rising star, and it was a huge success for him to reach the RO16 as a sixteen-year-old. However, Reynor's first round eliminations in 2022 and 2024—when he had a world championship under his belt and was considered one of the top players in the world—were serious disappointments. Reynor's shortcomings in Code S are a major factor in keeping the mystique of the GSL alive, supporting the notion that games in the FreecUP studio are just different from anywhere else in the StarCraft II world. Will this be the season where Reynor dispels that aura, and shows that the GSL is just another league to be swept over by the European tide? Or will the Code S remain unconquered forever more?

That brings us to the two players I see as the on-paper favorites to advance from group A. Cure and Solar have been much more active than their counterparts throughout the off-season, regularly competing in weekly cups and other mid-size events.

Considering Cure's 5th place finish at EWC 2024, he's been somewhat disappointing. He's barely been an impediment to the herO-MaxPax-Clem trinity's domination of online competition, which is a shame considering he was once a powerhouse in online cups. Still, you get the feeling that Cure wasn't going 100% until more recently, and his play looks to be slowly improving. One of his biggest off-season wins came in March's TLMC tournament, where he foiled Clem's off-race PvT experiment with a 4-1 victory in the finals.

To me, what's most encouraging about Cure's recent play is that he seems to be getting into big tournament mode. If he had been defaulting to boring, standard play for a while, he's starting to bring the map-specific builds and cheeses that have been critical to his past success. One such example was an unusual Reactor-Liberator push against Serral in PiG Sty #6. Even though it failed against Serral's ironclad defense, it was a good example of the strategic thinking and series planning he can bring to a big tournament. While I'm skeptical about what Cure's chances are against a true A1 title contender, he may not have to confront that problem until many rounds later in this season.

Solar is in a similar situation as Cure, coming off of an unremarkable off-season where he wasn't particularly poor, but didn't really distinguish himself either. In fact, the two are right next to each other in the Aligualc.comAligulac.com standings[/url], with Solar at #9 and Cure at #8 (while this isn't a totally accurate way to interpret Aligulac, the ratings gap between the two can be explained by the fact that Cure actually DID win one of the bigger off-season events in the WardiTV TLMC tournament).

As mentioned above, I can see some unrealized upside for Cure, but I'm not quite as sanguine about Solar's chances at upward mobility. Cure can elevate himself with crafty builds and meticulous series planning, but that's never been a big part of Solar's game. His best runs have come when he's been a great all-around standard player, approaching the level of a Serral or Reynor. That's the level Solar was playing at in the second half of 2023, when he finished top 4 at Gamers8 and won his first Code S.

I've hyped up the idea of a Korean scene reawakening since the announcement of EWC 2025, but if I'm being honest, it's unclear as to how much ground players like Solar can realistically make up. Between 2023 and 2024, the scene underwent heavy stratification, and the trend only seems to be accelerating in 2025. While I certainly hope Solar and his peers can rapidly improve over the next two months, I'm not crossing my fingers.

Anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, in these lower rounds of Code S, the ever-solid Solar has to be favored to get through.

Predictions

Cure 2 - 0 sOs
Solar 2 - 1 Reynor
Cure 2 - 1 Solar
Reynor 2 - 1 sOs
Solar 2 - 1 Reynor

Cure and Solar to advance