The Return of the King! After having to look on as usurpers sat on his throne for several weeks, HeroMarine finally returned to reclaim his 'rightful' place at the top of the ESL Open Cup EU. On the other servers, his Terran colleagues were equally successful. Let the #TerranPatch memes become reality, for the age of humans seems to be upon us!
Seeing his fellow Terrans falter repeatedly in the Korean server cup, Cure must have felt compelled to return to the tournament after three weeks of Protoss domination (and his online competitor Zest winning two of them). The player from Dragon Phoenix Gaming is the only Terran to win the Korean cup so far, and now achieved this feat for the second time—though it was a victory he had to fight hard for, since Hurricane came out with a surprisingly strong performance. After a row of PvP wins, he brought Cure to the last and deciding game of their Bo5 series until the Terran could weather the storm(s). Not a bad run for someone only reaching the top 4 of these cups for the first time!
Coming in the wake of a stacked TSL5 qualifier, the European ESL Open Cup felt like a continuation of that tournament, but offered some very intriguing twists: Reynor faced an unusual early elimination at the hands of goblin, and the gods of fate seemed hellbent on delivering another duel between Clem and HeroMarine to the fans. And as in the TSL5 qualifier bracket, the German was victorious. Here's the kicker: all this happened in the same bracket! On the other side, riding on the momentum of his TSL5 qualification, Liquid's uThermal blazed a path into the finals, overcoming three German players. Revenge for them was nigh, however, as Big Gabe also reached the finals after having defeated the usual onslaught of unorthodox aggression from Bly. The king of Europe reclaimed his throne with a clean 3-0 sweep after five weeks of interregnum.
Do not weep for uThermal, though! The Dutchman continued the fine tradition of EU finalists making their way into the finals of the ESL Open Cup NA, where he eventually was victorious, banking points from both cups this weekend. The bracket was dominated by Europeans once more after last week finally saw Future take one home for the USA. This week, there were big surprises once again: Neeb was taken out byRotterdaM, whose adopted 'son' goblin made another big splash by taking out regular finalist Clem this time around. The young Croatian continued his run this time, taking out Nice and TLO (the games against the German Zerg were... #creative, to say the least, definitely worth checking out) before having to bow out to uThermal in the finals. What a weekend for HeroMarine and uThermal! But it might have been more meaningful for goblin, who might be on the cusp of a real breakout performance.
ESL Open Cup winners earn $100 in prize money and 10 ESL Pro Tour points. Players who finish second earn 5 ESL Pro Tour points. Week #17 of ESL Open Cups is set to take place on May 3rd.
Really enjoyed these cups, in the eu cup the best game had to be Reynor v Goblin who ended the series with a cannon rush into mass phoenix and a couple of voidrays which kept Reynor on 3 bases and eventually he had to "XD" out of the game.
As I havnt got anything better to do atm here is my recap from todays NA cup for you peeps who where asleep:
The NA qualfier started and even though I'm from eu and it was 11PM I thought I would just hang out for a bit and hope to catch some entertaining matches. The fun all started with Rotterdam beating Neeb 2-0 and pretty much every sc2 streamer watching the end of that match on their own stream and laughing in disbelief of what just happened. In that same ro32 Disk also managed to upset Mana 2-1.
Then in the ro16 we saw some vintage Parting rage after Cham managed to best him 2-0 in another huge upset. Even though Rotti's run ended this time Goblin stole the limelight by besting Clem 2-1 showing massing phoenixes and carriers against terran isnt a bad idea even though twitch chat thinks otherwise.
In that same ro16 Nina (formerly known as Puck) handily defeated Lambo who after laughing at Mana's loss against a NA player had the same happen to him. In the quarterfinal Goblin managed to work his magic against Nice by proxying 2 gateways in front of Nice's natural, pressuring with zealots and containing the Taiwanese player with cannons and batteries. Nice probably still shellshocked from the first game quite easily lost the 2nd which let Goblin advance.
In the semi's the 2nd game between TLO and Goblin was probably one of the craziest games we have seen this year and I would urge you to watch it back on Pigs/Basetradetv twitch channel as I cant even explain what exactly happened there.
After all that I had to stay up to watch the finals as well which started with a quick 2-0 for Goblin and ended with a 24 minute game in which uThermal finally managed to win the marine v interceptor battle to win his 2nd NA ESL cup.
By this point it was 5 AM and after watching both uThermals first perspective and Pigs commentary for the majority of the tournament I hadn't regretted a single minute of it. It was really great to see 100+ players sign up for both tournaments with little to no walkovers.
This game is still alive and kicking and with one of the most memorial ESL cups just behind us I'm exited for what the future will bring. GG
This whole day was seriously one of the best sc2 tournaments I've ever watched. Kind of odd to say that about a weekly but it's true. Maybe goblins coming out party as a top toss with beating reynor and clem and making the finals in na.
On April 28 2020 00:01 ssg wrote: This whole day was seriously one of the best sc2 tournaments I've ever watched. Kind of odd to say that about a weekly but it's true. Maybe goblins coming out party as a top toss with beating reynor and clem and making the finals in na.
Absolutely agreed. Lots of nail-biters, upsets, and all-around crazy games.
On April 28 2020 08:52 zeusintheair wrote: Where can we download the replay pack?
You can't (unless you're a caster/content producer).
On April 28 2020 11:26 Scarlett` wrote: nice to see lots of people playing like maru these days
All the balance Whiners, that said Zerg was OP the last 2 years, because of different Z Champions in Dark, Serral, Reynor, Rogue, where are you now, complaining about it? More seriously I fell like the only bad matchup right now is PvP, everything else works for me, balance wise. With the hugh upset potential in PvP, the good P get kicked out early way more often (by weaker P, who then get defeated easily next round) and thats why they are less consistent at the top of the tournaments..
Goblin eliminated both and clem. Interesting. Isn't he also really young? Maybe he'll be the creator to their life and taeja except maybe he'll actually deliver.
On April 28 2020 20:42 royalroadweed wrote: Goblin eliminated both and clem. Interesting. Isn't he also really young? Maybe he'll be the creator to their life and taeja except maybe he'll actually deliver.
I think he s 18, so about the same age as Clem (18) and Reynor (17) Not crazy young like MaxPax (15) but still one of the youngest Pros around.
On April 28 2020 11:26 Scarlett` wrote: nice to see lots of people playing like maru these days
So, let's check the top players, shall we? Trap lost in PvP. I didn't see Rogue in the brackets. I didn't see Dark in the brackets. I didn't see Serral in the brackets. (I may be blind and they participated) Reynor lost in PvZ. (and I'm not sure what's his current form).
I am not mentioning MAru for obvious reasons
I don't know, we're missing both current WC in the tourneys, the last HSC winner and the last ST winner. Hard to tell how punishing vT is without the top players playing.
At this time the big tourneys were won by 2 Z and 1 T.
Also where have you been with the whine when everything left and right was won by Zergs?
EPT
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/ept2020_21/eptbanner734.jpg)
HeroMarine finally returned to reclaim his 'rightful' place at the top of the ESL Open Cup EU. On the other servers, his Terran colleagues were equally successful. Let the #TerranPatch memes become reality, for the age of humans seems to be upon us!
