EPTTournament Spotlight:
Stay At HomeStory Cup #4 - Take Off
by WaxSo, you see, the plan was to do a little preview of StayAt HomeStory Cup #4 to give fans a heads up on the upcoming tournament and hype them up as we head into the weekend. The thing is, less than twenty-four hours out, we still don't know half the players who will be competing at this thirty-two player event, nor do we even know what the prize pool is. Typical TakeTV.
However, there's another thing that's 'typical TakeTV': this lack of details doesn't affect the level of excitement one bit. For nearly a decade now, TakeTV has made a great case that it's the most creative and consistently entertaining entity in StarCraft II. By now, StarCraft II fans have come to know that TakeTV + HomeStory Cup = good shit.
Anyway, what DO we know about StayAt HomeStory Cup #4?
The most notable feature of SAHSC is that it will be the first major European event to have a live component since the global pandemic, with live audience tickets being sold and a portion of the players planned to be in live attendance. So far, Reynor, Kelazhur, Lambo, Elazer, PtitDrogo, and HeroMarine have been confirmed via TakeTV Twitter to be present live (seven in-person players is the theoretical max according to TakeTV posts on TL.net). It may not be the DH Open LAN event that we all hoped for at the start of 2021, but it's still a big step toward restoring the full energy of live events.
Schedule: Stay at HomeStory Cup #4 runs over four days from October 21st to 24th. The start time for the first day of games is 12:30 GMT (+00:00), though this may change for later days.
Format: Like regular HSC tournaments, SA-HSC #4 is a 32-player invitational comprised of two group stages and a double elimination playoff bracket. Both group stages are held GSL-style as 4-player double-elimination groups (8 groups of 4 in the RO32, 4 groups of 4 in the RO16). The top 8 players from the RO16 stage play in a double-elimination playoff bracket for the championship.
Prize pool: Who knows?
Roster: At the time of writing, seventeen players were confirmed.
Things to look forward to (that I wrote without knowing half the roster)
New maps: We got a taste of the new map pool in Wardi & Rotti 3, but this will be the first 'full' event under the new map pool.For many fans, this will be the first and last time they get to enjoy the 'creative' aspects of the new maps before progamers figure out they're horribly imbalanced and ban them from every single series. Enjoy!
The asymmetrically-tooled furniture building contest: Look, I don't have any inside information, but I'm going to be extremely disappointed if TakeTV don't make the live-attendees engage in some kind of furniture building contest with different sets of tools. Just give all the players the same IKEA bookshelf to assemble, but hand PtitDrogo a power drill, give Lambo that cruddy IKEA hex-wrench, and force Kelazhur to use only his teeth. C'mon, the content produces itself.
The Dennis Gehlen "thank you fans" speech that's heartwarming at first but gets awkward because it's too long: If TakeTV really wanted our money, they would just set this segment to be one hour long to start, and lop five seconds off of it for every donation they get.
Pizza-making contest with Big Gabe and Riccardo Romiti: In one corner, we have HeroMarine who almost burned TakeTV down trying to cook a pizza. In the other corner, we have Reynor, an Italian and badge-carrying pizza cop. These two shouldn't be settling their difference on Battle.net—they need to fight it out in the kitchen.
The actual StarCraft competition: Oh yeah, that should be pretty good, too. I mean, they surely wouldn't lie to us after putting out tweets like this?
