Last week the Group Stage of the Gold Series Heroes League, the premier Heroes of the Storm league in China, came to a conclusion with four teams eliminated out of the original twelve that qualified. Among these teams were well-known esports clubs including eStar, EDG, Brave Heart, and even North America’s Cloud9, who were invited after their victory at BlizzCon. Unfortunately, due to tensions between the regions, Korean teams were not invited again in spite of contributing heavily to the tournament roster in seasons past.

With the Koreans out of the way, the remaining teams set out to determine the top dog in China, and in Cloud9’s case, to see how the World Champs stood up to the competition. Unlike the tournament formats commonly seen in North America and Europe, Gold League consists of a grueling three-week round robin that allows teams to plan and prepare for their opponents more than a week in advance. The playoffs are another two-week endeavor through a sprawling double elimination bracket to determine the winner of the tournament. This unique league format lends itself to more varied and targeted strategies, and teams that seem unstoppable in rapid-fire, weekend-long tournaments can be easily dethroned by strategies designed specifically to counter them.



In Group A, we saw both eStar and EDG tear through the bracket undefeated until their confrontation in the final week, during which EDG asserted dominance and continued out of the bracket in first place. Both teams displayed solid drafting, pristine mechanics, and excellent decision making, all of which made the battle between these two giants undoubtedly the best series of the tournament thus far. Other teams in the group did not fare as well. NeXT and AG, while playing valiantly, were struck down by superior teams and forced to walk away empty handed with low scores. The Taiwanese team ahq -- whose roster now includes GoDDog from GIA, the qualifying Taiwanese team for BlizzCon -- played some messy but effective games, barely clenching out the last qualifying place in the group with an unfortunate negative score.



Group B was more evenly matched. During the first few weeks, Zero and YL asserted dominance with aggressive and reliable play. YL and Zero Gaming easily secured their spots in the playoffs early while SPT was the first team knocked out, leaving Cloud9, Brave Heart, and X-Team in an all-out brawl for the last two spots on the final day. Cloud9 came off of a huge victory at BlizzCon, but looked shaky for the first few rounds, nearly dropping the series to SPT and stumbling against Brave Heart and Zero. After some soul searching and reorganization, the team began to find its stride again in the final week by defeating X-Team decisively and securing their place in the playoffs.



As the tournament moves into the playoffs, EDG, eStar, and Zero Gaming look like the favorites to win, but with BlizzCon contenders Brave Heart, YL, and Cloud9 as well as the underrated but fierce Taiwanese team ahq, victory won’t be an easy road. “I don’t think we have any special strategies for eStar. We’re just going to play regular and crush them,” says Cloud9 captain DunkTrain, eager to prove the World Champs are still the best in any region. This week the competition ramps up as teams compete in a double elimination bracket to decide a tournament champion.


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