Maestros of the Game - Offline Finals/RO4 Preview

Start time: September 27, 12:00 GMT (+00:00)

by Wax

Live StarCraft II competition is back this Saturday, thanks to ComebackTV and the French Community. The $20,000 Maestros of the Game tournament has been played online up to now, but the grand finale will take place live in Paris with Clem, Reynor, Serral, and herO contending for the title.



+ Show Spoiler [Click for group stage results] +

The build-up to the final four has been filled with what I might paradoxically call 'normal' surprises. ShoWTimE and Bunny popping off in the group stage before getting filtered in the BO5 of the playoffs? Sure, we've seen it before. Serral sent down to the lower bracket on account of ZvZ? You can pencil that in to happen once or twice a year. Maru crashing and burning in the group stage? An increasingly regular occurrence over the last year.

This trend could very well define the final matchday as well. herO and Reynor may be minor underdogs compared to Serral and Clem, but they've shown they're more than capable of taking a BO5+ series off of their illustrious foes. The only true shock would be either herO or Reynor winning the title while dominating the other players—but even then, one might say that potential was always within them.

Anyway, let's take a look at how all the confirmed and potential match-ups might go.

Upper Bracket Final: Clem vs Reynor

The longtime rivals are set to have yet another high-stakes offline clash, having recently played a series of deep playoff matches against each other at July's FEL Krakow. The Polish LAN showed the duo to be quite evenly matched—Clem barely came out top in the grand finals by a 4-3 scoreline, but Reynor prevailed in overall map-score for the entire tournament (3-0 in the winners semi + 3-4 in the grand finals).

It's a bit worrying that Reynor has shown some signs of soO-itis in his recent ZvT matches, struggling to defeat Terrans who can drag things out into the late-game. In particular, mech really seems to make Reynor lose his will to play SC2 (even when he wins), with his recent matches against Maru and Cure in RSL Season 2 serving as stark demonstrations.

As crazy as it may seem, I think Reynor might prefer to play Clem over those pesky Korean Terrans. Of course, Clem can do it all in TvZ, including grinding opponents down in battles of attrition. However, that's generally never option 1A for Clem—of the ten games between Clem at Reynor at FEL Krakow, only a single game went over the fifteen minute mark (the one game where Clem played mech).

No one has ever been delighted by the prospect of facing Clem's overwhelming bio-style that starts with a single Reaper and can easily end with Marines and Medivacs razing all your bases before the 10 minute mark. But given how much it seems to pain Reynor to play against mech, he may consider facing Clem to be the more tolerable ordeal.

Prediction: Clem 3 - 2 Reynor

Lower Bracket Final: Serral vs herO

Whatever you want to say about the state of Protoss balance at the moment, EWC 2025 proved that the protectors of Aiur still have one, extremely weak match-up: Protoss vs Serral.

The basic dynamic of the match-up isn't too different for Serral compared to other Zergs—you try to kill the Protoss or deal heavy damage before they get too big. However, the sheer fury of Serral's early/mid-game attacks completely changes the psychological framing. It's no longer the Zerg fretting about needing to get some damage in—instead, it's the Protoss panicking about simply staying alive. On top of that, Serral also happens to be the best late-game ZvP player in the world, giving him a pretty damn good 'back-up' option of just controlling a Hive deathball like no other Zerg can.

Serral's convincing 4-2 win over herO earlier in the MOTG bracket suggests that this rematch will go in his favor, but it did give us the outline for a potential upset. The series had a number of fairly conventional games, but both players were quite willing to go outside the box. Serral's gamble on a 12-pool, Drone-pull all-in paid off, but he couldn't quite get a fast Hydralisk all-in to work. As for the usually aggressive herO, he took a map with a well-masked Chargelot timing, but didn't find any success with a peculiar Blink-DT strategy.

If both players feel like they need to take early-game risks to maintain a strategic edge, that naturally introduces more variance than usual. The coins are weighted in Serral's favor due to his diligent scouting and best-in-world defense, but a series of winning flips theoretically does exist for herO.

Prediction: Serral 3 - 1 herO

Potential match-up #1: Clem vs herO

I don't expect this match-up to happen given the uphill battle herO is facing against Serral, but it's definitely the one I want to see most.

In the weeks leading up to the MOTG playoffs, Clem seemed to be going through a complete crisis of faith in TvP. He largely abandoned standard bio in favor of mech mech, and even resorted to playing off-race PvP in some matches. However, when the MOTG playoffs actually came around, Clem resumed playing bio as if nothing had happened, and proceeded to defeat both herO and Classic—the best two Protosses in the world—by 3-1 scores.

While the upcoming patch is going to soft reset the state of balance, I would be greatly amused if the final chapter of the great TvP debate in 5.0.14 was Clem ultimately discovering the solution.

Prediction: Clem 4 - 3 herO

Potential match-up #2: herO vs Reynor

Reynor has been the best Zerg of the non-Serral class when it comes to ZvP, and comes in with a handful of impressive recent wins against both Classic and Zoun. Going back even further, Reynor got the better of herO in both RSL Season 1 and DreamHack Dallas, earning what were surprising 3-0 sweeps at the time.

While I'd favor Reynor over herO in a vacuum, for this match-up to happen at MOTG, herO would have to beat Serral first. Having such a win under his belt would change my perception of herO quite a bit, so I'll give him the narrow edge in this hypothetical duel.

Prediction: herO 4 - 3 Reynor

Potential match-up #4: Serral vs Reynor

There wasn't much to glean from Reynor's 3-0 over Serral earlier in the bracket—Serral lost to some fantastic Mutalisk macro play from Reynor in game one, and then came out on the losing end of all-in offense/defense in the next two games. It's the kind of thing that happens to even the best ZvZ player in the world from time to time, given the chaotic nature of the match-up.

This one is almost too close to call, but I'll pick Serral to narrowly win a rematch.

Prediction: Serral 4 - 3 Reynor

Potential match-up #3: Serral vs Clem

Assessing the Serral vs Clem match-up after the infamous rout at EWC 2024 is a bit tricky. The overall match score is clearly in favor of Clem, who has gone 6-1 against his old nemesis after winning the '24 world championship. However, the individual series have often been decided by tight scorelines, and the content of the individual games has been very close.

I can't justify calling it a 50/50 match-up given the fact that Clem has won the lion's share of matches, but it sure does feel that way when I watch the games. I'll take Clem to narrowly win in a hard fought series.

Prediction: Clem 4 - 3 Serral

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