by Poopi and Wax
The underdog energy from the RO36 play-in stage carried over to the first two groups of the main event, as we saw Dream and Ryung earn surprise advancement from Groups A & B on Thursday.
Now we head onto the second day of RO24 matches, which features two very different groups. Group C might be the most even of all three groups, where a Ryung-esque upset seems impossible if simply for the fact that no one actually has underdog status. Then, there’s Group D, the consensus group of death. While Maru, Clem, and Reynor are enormous favorites to advance, the first two days of games suggest that even they may not be safe.
Group C: Trap, Zest, HeroMarine, Bunny, Lambo, Astrea
Trap comes into the group as the first place seed, having enjoyed a very good 2021/2022 season overall with the best results among Protoss players. By winning championships in Super Tournament 2 (2021), NeXT Season 1, and TSL7, as well as earning runner-up finish in Code S Season 2 and the DHM Fall Finals, he finished the season with nearly 900 more EPT points than #2 Protoss Zest (2897 points to 1976).
Yet, as his time to play in the World Championship approaches, he is probably remembering last year’s tournament where he suffered a painful group stage elimination despite being the #1 ranked Protoss as well. The big difference between 2021 and 2022 is Trap’s form in the months leading into the event. In 2021, Trap won several tournaments in a row ahead of Katowice and seemed like one of the favorites to win it all (if not THE favorite)—In 2021/22 he slumped in the latter part of season, and was overtaken by Zest as the top Protoss in the eyes of many. While it’s obviously bad to be slumping ahead of a major event, the silver lining is that Trap won’t have the burden of expectations on him this time around. Maybe, just maybe, this will help Trap perform as well as he did earlier this season when he pulled off a string of championship runs in “tier 2” events.
While Trap still hasn’t won that elusive “tier 1” title, he might be flying under the radar headed into Group C. Despite drawing three difficult mid/low-seeds in HeroMarine, Lambo, and Astrea—all players who have upset him in major competitions—I still think he should be able to get out of the RO24 alive.
For the majority of the season, we thought #2 seed Zest would not be able to participate in Katowice because of his impending military service. But after one anticlimactic ‘farewell party’ in Code S Season 3, where he lost to Cure in the finals, it seems like he will have one truly final shot at going out with a bang. Indeed, we all thought Zest might retire after the last Code S, and marveled as he accomplished a historic feat by stopping Rogue’s insane win streak in offline BO7 matches in the semifinals, winning in dramatic fashion with a basetrade for the 4-3 victory. Unfortunately, Cure had the TvP match-up all figured out at the time, and won this GSL title with TvP victories over PartinG, Trap, and Zest consecutively. Still, this result from Zest before his supposed military service equalled, or maybe even surpassed the “military retirement” of Classic at BlizzCon where he made it to the semifinals during an unfavorable PvZ meta by defeating Rogue with an audacious blink-DT build in game 5.
But Zest’s career has actually continued on several more months, and despite a brief slump in November-December, he seems to have worked himself back into great form. Not only did he return to dominating the ESL Open Cups as usual, but he won the first GSL Super Tournament of 2022, notably taking a 3-1 victory over peak-form Maru, as well as winning a narrow 4-3 victory against Dark in the grand finals. Similarly to Trap, I see him as one of the favorites to get out of this group, and would even go as far as to predict him to come out with the #1 seed given his recent form.
Speaking of ESL Open Cups, there is another player in this group who has become synonymous with those weekly events. That’s none other than the king of EU cups himself, HeroMarine. Big Gabe had been the winningest player in the cups for the longest time, but his routine of playing in only the EU cup recently caught up to him as the uber-grinding Zest (sometimes even trying all three server cups) surpassed the German’s mark of 40 cup wins with 43 of his own.
While HeroMarine consistency in those cups has earned him a solid number of points, the main reason he enters as the #3 seed in the group and #4 seed from Europe is because of his consistency in the main DreamHack Masters tournaments as well. HeroMarine has been incredibly steady, going top 3, top 4, and top eight in the three DHM Europe tournaments, and also taking top eight in both DHM Season Finals he participated in. That allowed him to take the #4 seed in Europe with around 1600 points, which is far above MaxPax’s 940 (who forfeited his spot), or ShoWTimE’s 752.
The online audience may have been a bit shocked when he advanced to the playoffs in Katowice 2021, even defeating title favorite and elite PvT player Trap 2-1 in the opening match of their group. This time, no one will be taking HeroMarine lightly. The group draw is quite decent for him overall, especially compared to the other groups. While I would not label him as a favorite to go through, no one should be surprised if he achieves back to back playoffs.
Bunny is one of the darkhorse players who makes this group so difficult to predict, even though he’s one of the lower seeds from Korea. He’s improved considerably in the 2021/22 season, which is measurable in a lot of ways. He got his best Code S placements ever, getting top 4, top 8, and top 16 in three seasons. In terms of EPT points earned, he jumped from 593 (#20) in 2020/21 (#8) to 1240 in 2021/22. In terms of Aligulac ranking, he went from being around a 20th ranked player in the past to a top 10 player at his best (though he’s recently come back down again to around #15).
Despite coming into IEM in the top form of his career, it won’t be easy for Bunny. Indeed, Zest has dominated him throughout their career with a 40-9 match record, and he comes in with a losing record against Trap as well (though by 15-20, not as severe a margin). Bunny has proved that he can craft builds to get himself upset wins against strong opponents, but he’ll probably be looking toward the foreigner trio of HeroMarine, Lambo, and Astrea for his ‘safe’ wins. Statistically, he’s even or slightly favored against all three of the players, but they play each other so sporadically that it’s hard to project how the games will go this time around. I can see Bunny getting to the playoffs—it all might come down to a handful of do-or-die matches in the final round of games.
Lambo is the last RO24 seeded player, earning his spot despite losing a tough points race against ShoWTimE in the last few weeks of the season. While the Protoss narrowly edged Lambo out by a margin of just 12 points, MaxPax’s forfeiture granted Lambo a spot anyway. Given the group draw, Lambo might actually be happy to have the lower seed. Whether by his own acclaim or by Aligulac.com rating, his best match-up has been ZvP for a while now. He’s especially confident against the Korean style of play, and he’s historically recorded a lot of upsets against them in individual tournaments as well as in team leagues. In particular, he won an ‘unofficial BO7’ against Trap in the World Team League Summer playoffs back in mid 2021, helping Shopify make a deep underdog run. In the most recent WTL Winter season, Lambo’s strong PvZ contributed to the Rebellion earning a fantastic 2nd place finish in the regular season)
In terms of individual tournaments, he had two breakthrough performances in 2021/22. One was a top 3 finish in DHM Europe Summer, where he made a spectacular losers’ bracket run by beating ShoWTimE, Serral and HeroMarine before barely losing 2-3 against Reynor. Toward the end of the season, he finished 2nd in NeXT Season 2 with an even more impressive run: 2-1 vs Rogue, 2-0 vs SpeCial, 3-0 against Zoun, and 3-2 against Dark before barely losing 3-4 against Serral in the finals. I expect Lambo to make Group C pretty chaotic with his strong match-up versus Protoss, which could bring either Zest or Trap dangerously close to the middle of the pack. Still, I have to favor both Terrans over him—this could really turn into a group where no one is qualified or eliminated until the last round of games is over.
Astrea joins the group from the RO36 play-in stage, having defeated Creator, Probe, SKillous, and uThermal along the way. The level of competition ramps up significantly from the RO36 to the RO24, but you can’t count out Astrea just yet. One thing that pops out immediately is that he’s in a group with Zest and Trap—the same two players he defeated in last year’s IEM Katowice group stage! While Astrea’s tournament results on paper have gone down since then—earning three straight 3rd place finished in DHM: North America—he told TL.net in a recent interview that he’s actually improved overall since 2021.
It’s also worth noting that Astrea also shared a group with HeroMarine in 2021, and ended up losing their match 0-2. That might have been the ‘winnable’ match that made the difference for Astrea back then, with HeroMarine reaching the playoffs with a 3-2 record while Astrea was unfortunately eliminated in fourth place. It’s not unreasonable to think that Astrea will be in the mix for a playoff spot once more.
Group D: Maru, Clem, Reynor, Scarlett, Zoun, ByuN
Maru comes into the World Championship as the #1 overall seed with the most EPT points of any more, but that status has done him no favors. The IEM group draw system puts players in pools of four, with each group randomly getting a player from each pool, Maru’s draw was quite unfortunate to say the least. Clem is the best Terran from Europe, Reynor is the reigning world champion, Scarlett had a revival of form lately, and Zoun has proven himself capable of beating Maru in a Code S Group stage BO3. To make things even worse, the strongest RO36 player in ByuN was also drawn into this group.
Despite all that, Maru is coming into this group as the favorite to finish in first place, as he is one of the favorites to win the event as a whole. Although he did not win a single GSL Code S in the 2021/22 season, he still managed to rack up the points everywhere else. Even without a Code S, this was his best year in LotV after his legendary 2018. During his ‘bad’ half of the 2021/22 season, he got second place in Code S Season 1, second place in the DHM Summer Finals, and 3rd place in NeXT Season 1. But what makes Maru one of the favorites to win it all was the ridiculously high level of play he showed in the months leading up to Katowice. Since September, he won DHM:Last Chance, DHM: Season Finals, ASUS ROG Fall, and King of Battles 2 on the back of a nearly invincible TvT and TvZ, combined with just barely weaker TvP. In the process, Maru beat just about every supposed title contender at Katowice, be it Rogue, Dark, Serral, or Reynor. Being in the group of death is obviously not easy for any player, but Maru is in such good form that you can’t help but think he’ll top the group anyway, and maybe even go on to win his first World Champion title at last?
The 2nd seed from group D(eath) is none other than Clem, the French Terran that had been promising for several years before finally becoming super successful during the online era. Since 2020, Clem has cemented himself as one of the top 3 foreign players, capable of going toe to toe with Serral and Reynor, even beating them in Premier tournaments. During the 2020/21 season, Clem was not as successful in international tournaments as in Europe, having some troubles beating the best Korean Protosses and Terrans. During the 2021/22 cycle, Clem became even more dominant domestically, winning both DH:EU Summer and Fall and finishing 2nd in Winter, but still could not find as much success internationally. However, he’s become more well rounded in every match-up—TvP and TvT are no longer such glaring weaknesses, and he can hold his own against most of the top players from those two factions. Recently, he put in a very impressive all-around performance in the WTL playoffs, reminiscent of the day when TaeJa carried Team Liquid.
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er a short slump in November-December, Clem is looking quite strong lately, dominating the ESL Open Cups again with 3 EU cup victories in a row before departing to Katowice. Maru might be out of his league as their head-to-head record does not favor Clem at all, but he can legitimately beat Reynor, and he should be the favorite versus both Scarlett and Zoun. ByuN is definitely a worrisome RO36 wild card given Clem’s history of struggling against Korean Terrans, but he’s definitely much better in that match-up than in the past. I don’t think Clem will disappoint as the 2nd seed from this group and should advance.
Reynor is the primary reason why Group D is considered as the group of death. The reigning World Champion seemed to slack off a bit after winning the 2021 title (his peers have directly and indirectly alluded to his inconsistent work ethic), and he somehow ended up falling into the Tier 3 pool of players for the group draw. Obviously, he’s the scariest player in that pool, capable of beating any of the Tier 1 players in the tournament. In terms of EPT points, he’s just barely behind the lowest Tier 2 player Zest (1976) with 1914 points of his own, and quite ahead of the three other Tier 3 players HeroMarine (1573), Solar (1369), and TIME (1333). In fact, Group D has the players with the most points for each respective tier except for Zoun, the last place point-getter in Tier 5.
While REynor has been far less dominant overall than in his championship season, only getting 2nd place and two top six finishes in DHM: Europe, he still managed to win a Season Finals by beating Rogue 3-1 and Maru 4-3 to take the Summer championship. That’s the kind of result that tells everyone it would be very unwise for anyone to sleep on him, as he’s a player who can rise to the big occasion similarly to Rogue. While he is at risk of not advancing in such a difficult group (it’s not encouraging that he was giving up upsets to SKillous in some of the ESL Open cups in the lead-up), he can also beat anyone in there and is even favored against Scarlett, Zoun, and ByuN. Even if he ends up losing to Maru and Clem, he seems favored to take third place anyway. Remember, Reynor wasn’t in good form during the months ahead of Katowice 2021, but he whipped himself into shape just in time to win the championship. Could he do it one more time?
The other Zerg in this group should not be slept on either. Scarlett had a very forgettable IEM Katowice 2021 where she was bounced from the RO36 without a single series win, but she enjoyed a somewhat of a ‘comeback’ season in 2021/22. This year, she enters the group stage directly, having claimed the #1 seed from North America. While she only won a single DHM NA championship compared to Neeb’s two, she was much more successful in international events. In particular, she made a top four run in the DHM: Winter Season Finals, beating Zest 3-2 and barely losing 2-3 to Rogue (though Rogue called it a 0-5 in his post-match interview). In terms of team competition, she was in fact the most successful Zerg statistically in the regular season of WTL Winter, even performing better than players like Dark and Rogue.
Scarlett’s recent form suggests that she is a dark horse in this group, capable of beating both Zoun and Reynor to maybe qualify as 3rd seed. Beating Maru and Clem seems out of reach even in BO3, but a qualification would not be that far-fetched.
Zoun is the lower EPT ranked player who is directly qualified for RO24, earning the international wildcard from the combined standings. Yet, this last place player has picked up two runner-up finishes in the Super Tournament, as well as a top eight in Code S—truly a testament to the level of competition in the RO24. While being in a group of death is probably not making him too happy, he probably finds some comfort in the fact that he is the sole Protoss representative. Headed into the event, Aligulac judged his PvP to be his weakest match-up by far, while his PvT was top 6 and his PvZ was top 8.
Sure, given the quality of his opponents, this is not necessarily enough to advance, but Zoun was able to beat Maru as said before during Code S season 2 group stages, and the best Korean Zergs Dark and Rogue in his Super Tournament 2 run. Thus, I see him as capable of beating anyone in the group—albeit as a long shot in most cases. Similarly to Scarlett, Zoun might grab a spot with one or two clutch upsets and solid performance in the only match where he could be seen as the slight favorite / even (ie. vs Scarlett or ByuN). He might benefit from being the only Protoss, as he should have been able to focus his practice accordingly.
Finally, the five players are joined by a final death-maker in ByuN, who blew through the RO36 play-in bracket with wins against Percival, Ryung, and uThermal. He was the only player in the RO36 who truly looked like he didn’t even belong there, racking up a 7-1 map score as he took an express ticket into the group stage.
ByuN’s post-military career has been a roller coaster, starting off brilliantly with a championship at ASUS ROG Fall and a top 3 run in TSL7. However, he fell into a deep slump afterward, struggling to even make it into GSL Code S for a few seasons. However, he’s one of the players who has picked up momentum at the right time, and he’s clawed his way up to being the #4 Terran on Aligulac ahead of Katowice.
The most encouraging thing for ByuN was that he got through the RO36 without any of his wrist issues afflicting him, suggesting that he’s now able to fully wield his skills in a live setting. ByuN’s last appearance in an IEM Katowice booth infamously ended in tears—this time, it might end with a signature fist pump and a smile.
