Code S RO16 Preview - HerO, Reynor, SoO, GuMiho

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RO16 Group B Preview: herO, Reynor, soO, GuMiho

Thursday, May 09 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

by Wax

herO, what have you done? As far as we can tell, the top Korean Protoss made the boldest GSL group selection pick since 2013, directly picking Reynor to be his first opponent in his group.

Days of such youthful bravado seemed far behind us, giving way to the boring pragmatism of veteran players. What caused herO to take on such a challenge? We’ll learn when GSL shows us some clips of the pre-recorded group selection prior to the group, but this pick makes you really miss the days when the selections were done in a live, in-studio show.

Add soO and GuMiho to the mix, and Group B becomes an unusually difficult group for the first round of the GSL. Maybe it’s not a true ‘group of death,’ but it will force at least one playoff-caliber player to depart the tournament prematurely.

Speaking of herO, one can partially understand the confidence behind his pick (if it was indeed confidence that caused it). He now looks fully recovered from his long slump where he couldn’t play worth a lick in offline events, finishing runner-up in the latest season of Code S. While herO did lose 1-4 to Maru in a rather one-sided Code S final, he did manage to give the champ his only loss of their tournament in their RO8 group (a convincing 2-0). Overall, herO is back to being the clear #1 Protoss player in the world, and is just behind Maru as the #2 player in Korea.

Even so, one has to hope he won’t come to regret facing Reynor in his very first match of the new season. While I won’t go too deep on Esports World Cup qualification scenarios, it will suffice to say that herO has a good, but hardly guaranteed chance of qualifying for the $1,000,000 event. Bombing out of this event won’t directly doom herO to watching the richly prized tournament from home, but finishing as high as possible would help him cover all his bases.

As perplexing as herO’s choice may be, I have to say I love it on a personal level. Right now, my head cannon is that herO had an epiphany during a grueling practice session, where he thought back on why he became a progamer in the first place. As a boy, there was no worrying about making money, charting hypothetical paths in a tournament, or calculating qualification scenarios to the next event. No, it was just about enjoying the game for its own sake, and there was no greater enjoyment than beating a strong opponent. Then, he came to a realization: If he were to forget that joyous feeling entirely, then what meaning was there to this path he had walked for over a decade? In that moment, he knew what he had to do… …Look, just let me indulge in this fantasy for the next thirty hours or so.

Amusingly enough, my fanfic actually does describe the reason Reynor came to Korea—at least partially. Sure, Reynor has talked about how he enjoys spending time in Korea, and I imagine he would never have returned for a third GSL attempt if that wasn’t the case (he’s spent multiple stints in Korea since he was 16 years old). At the same time, he’s also talked about how he simply wants to win the GSL (albeit, I wish he had used more corny, inspirational, anime protagonist verbiage), and he sacrificed a golden opportunity to win $15,000 in the Serral-less EPT Europe to do so.

With such compelling motivation behind him and a sterling tournament resume that includes IEM Katowice 2021 and Gamers8 world championships, Reynor’s return to Code S for the first time since 2022 is being justifiably hyped up. But as great a competitor as Reynor has proven himself to be, his last nine months in StarCraft II haven’t exactly seen him play at that world champion level. In particular, he had some awful lowlights in the winter months, dropping out of EPT Winter/Atlanta in the top 24 (albeit, he was one of the pros laid low by the illness going around at the event), and he was one of the victims of the IEM Katowice 2024 group of death. Reynor has cracked jokes about being “washed” at his own expense, but one has to wonder how seriously this ‘slump’ is gnawing at him at a deeper level.

herO has been one of the contributors to Reynor’s woes, knocking him out of the online Master’s Coliseum 7 tournament and dishing out one of the losses that resulted in the Katowice catastrophe. Looking at the content of the games, I’m not sure if there’s enough there for herO to feel like he has the edge against Reynor—at least to an outside observer it looked like two closely matched players faced each other and one just happened to be better on the day. Still, herO will have run into Reynor quite a few times on the ladder since he traveled to Korea to practice, so perhaps he has good reason to think he has the Italian’s number.

In the big picture, I’m not seriously concerned about Reynor’s tepid run of form. Right now, he feels a bit like 2019-2022 Dark—a player whose day-to-day consistency can vary, but is good for a handful of explosive runs every year. However, I don’t think it’s guaranteed that we’ll get that virtuoso performance from him in this specific season of GSL, and a third straight RO16/20 exit in Code S remains a very real, if unlikely, possibility.

The peculiar first match between Reynor and herO has taken center stage in this group, but there are, in fact, two other players vying for RO8 tickets. Last season, soO proved he wasn’t just some washed up veteran who was only showing up to pick up the RO16 paycheck and supply easy wins to the real contenders. Okay, well, he did go out immediately in the RO16, but taking wins against him was anything but easy. He stole a map off of Maru in a straight-up macro game, and even in his losses, his mid-game macro looked quite credible before his notoriously faulty late-game play failed him in the end (well, it will fail almost anyone when they’re playing vs Maru).

Even though soO is playing more casually than during his prime, his baseline level is high enough that he’s an outside threat to advance in the right RO16 group. Beating an in-form herO seems like a longshot, but the inconsistent GuMiho is eminently beatable on the right day. And, while Reynor is the better player in ZvZ, he’s not so much better that he can’t avoid the peril of the coinflip (WTL viewers will know this well). In fact, soO very recently demonstrated this danger to Reynor in the weekly Kung Fu Cup, beating him 2-1 (and even beating ShoWTimE 2-1 after that).

Finally, we have GuMiho, who’s the real ‘victim’ of herO’s shenanigans. While soO must know he’s essentially out of Esports World Cup contention, GuMiho is trying his damndest to hold onto his provisional ticket. He’s currently set to qualify from the EPT Korea region based on points, put there’s plenty of room for other players to overtake him depending on how this season of Code S and the upcoming EPT Spring/Dallas tournament goes. Thus, the prospect of facing both herO and Reynor in the RO16 must have left him feeling quite aggrieved.

That’s not to say GuMiho can’t beat the two favorites in the group. He has a well-earned reputation as the ultimate agent of chaos, due to his love of unorthodox strategies, the extreme high-ceiling/low-floor nature of his play, and his utter lack of hesitation in triggering a basetrade the moment he thinks he’s losing.

GuMiho’s current form seems to be in that tricky, good-but-not-great zone, as he comes into this tournament with a RO12 finish at IEM Katowice and top eight finish in Code S Season 1. Yet, as has been said in many TL.net previews in the past, it feels pointless trying to predict GuMiho’s performance based off of his latest results. There was little portending his Code S runner-up run in 2023’s Season 3, nor were there many prior indicators that he’d take the silver at DreamHack Jonkoping 2023. Sometimes, you just have to roll the chaos dice and see what happens. Sometimes they come up snake eyes, sometimes it shows a “◼☸🕴ⓘ🚑🛳 ⓘ💍 🚄🚑🎁 🚲🎁?🚄,” and sometimes it results in a championship caliber GuMiho performance.

Predictions

The almighty Aligulac sees herO as a strong favorite to advance, soO as being dead in the water, and Reynor having a moderate edge over GuMiho in the race for second place. This also aligns with with TL.net user predictions, and I’m going to make it three for three by saying it’s herO advancing in first and Reynor following in second place.

I want to say that the caveat here is that this group is full of volatile players who can play extremely well at their best, so there’s plenty of room for upsets. But, we tend to write that in 50% of the Code S previews—it just goes to show there’s not that much separating the players good enough to make it to the RO16 (well, except for that one guy who won GSL nine times).

herO 2 – 1 Reynor
GuMiho 2 – 1 soO
herO 2 – 0 GuMiho
Reynor 2 – 1 soO
Reynor 2 – 0 GuMiho