2025 GSL Code S Season 1

RO8 Group B Preview: Classic, Reynor, GuMiho, Maru

Friday, May 16 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

Wax

With herO and Cure advancing to the RO4 from Group A, it's time to see which players will claim the other half of the semifinal tickets.



After selling the idea that the Korean scene would lock in following the announcement of EWC back in April, I have to admit I've been somewhat disappointed in the overall level of progress. However, there's one player who I'd like to thank for helping me keep selling the narrative: Classic. The veteran Protoss has been on the rise since the start of April (right around when rumors started circulating we'd have EWC and GSL again), stringing together strong performances in various online competitions. The highlights include two WardiTV Monday cup wins—with finals wins against MaxPax and herO, no less—alongside direct qualification to the GSL RO8 with wins against Rogue (x2), Reynor, and herO in the preliminaries.

Translated into Aligulac standings, he's moved up from 19th place in early April, to 12th place at the time of writing. On one hand, 12th place isn't that high in the current SC2 environment, placing one firmly in the middle class and outside of realistic championship contention. The intrigue with Classic is his trajectory—how much higher can he climb from here? While 2024 was largely forgettable for Classic, we have to remember he hit an impressive peak in 2023 where he finished top four in Code S and top eight at Gamers8. It's unlikely that he becomes a player that can string together the multiple BO5+ wins needed to win a championship, but I can see him becoming a threat to eliminate anyone in a single series.

Another wildcard with a lot of upside is Reynor. There's not much new to say about him since last week's RO12 preview, when I said he was looking rusty after having just recently returned to full-time SC2. His RO12 matches didn't change the assessment, as he got an expected win against another recent returnee in sOs, and split a pair of very close ZvZ's versus Solar. In fact, had the win-loss order of those ZvZ's gone in the opposite order, we might be talking about how Reynor is still several weeks of practice away from being back in true competitive shape.

Actually, I'm going to claim that's the case anyway. While I think we'll see a very strong, potentially championship-contender version of Reynor in the coming weeks, I'm skeptical about what he can show in this shortened season of Code S. Despite his reputation and resume, I think he'll have to wait for Season 2 to make a realistic run at becoming the first non-Korean Code S champion.

A throughline of this season has been how it's hard to assess everyone's skill level after such a long break, but GuMiho stands out in particular as someone who's nearly impossible to rate. On the one hand, he won one of the biggest events of the off-season in impressive fashion, winning HomeStory Cup 26 with victories over Maru and Clem in the playoffs (Clem playing his off-race Protoss). On the other hand, he's been quite mediocre in smaller online cups and competitions, achieving essentially zero notable results outside of HSC.

To confuse us even further, GuMiho somehow managed to bring his A-game in the GSL qualifiers, beating SHIN, herO, Solar, and Maru on his way to clinching a direct RO8 berth. Overall, these last few months encapsulate what post-military GuMiho has been like: extremely inconsistent, but a finalist level player when everything goes right.

Does that leave Maru as the default favorite in the group? Despite his dreadful off-season results, the GSL GOAT picked up right where he left off by crushing Trigger and Rogue to advance from his RO12 group in first place. Winning two matches against unfavored opponents doesn't negate all previous concerns, but nonetheless, it was encouraging to see him win in largely one-sided fashion. Rogue did manage to push him to the brink of defeat with a Roach-Ravager timing on one map, but in a certain sense, it was a credit to Maru that he could turn the game around after being punished for his greedy start

While I'm going to give Maru the benefit of the doubt and predict him to advance in first place again, it's worth pointing out that his first match against GuMiho could be surprisingly tricky. Maru is currently in the midst of a four match losing streak in TvT, his longest such streak since 2015. What's more, three of those losses have come against GuMiho himself. Now, given Maru's extremely long run as the top TvT player in the game, combined with GuMiho's humdrum performances against other Terrans in recent months, I'm inclined to say this is just an insane statistical fluke. But if GuMiho actually has an inexplicably psychological edge against Maru, and the strong version of GuMiho happens to show up on Thursday night, then the Group B proceedings could get very interesting…

Predictions

Classic 2 - 1 Reynor
Maru 2 - 0 GuMiho
Maru 2 - 1 Classic
Reynor 2 - 1 GuMiho
Classic 2 - 1 Reynor

Maru and Classic to advance