The first day of competition at Take’s apartment is over and some dishes were quick to be eaten while Idra and Sase emerged as the best performing players of July 5th.
Nerchio secured two quick victories against Naama and ToD to give start to Group A but before he was to play Socke as his last match, the German had already scored two losses. This allowed Nerchio to skip the series and keep his position as a division leader with a 4-1.
In the same group, Naama’s seemingly random style did keep him afloat just enough to graduate as the runner-up. The mix of all-ins and unpredictable and borderline strange build orders brought him a total score of 5-4, a clear indicator of how close was each series that Naama played.
These standings unfortunately meant the end of the tournament life of Fnatic’s captain ToD and aTn’s Socke. The latter was regarded as one of the favorites in the group based on his recent MLG successes but all he managed to do in Krefeld was take one map off of Naama.
Group B marked the rise of Idra to one of the best performing players of the tournament thus far. EG’s zerg, who’s been in a deep slump for the past couple of months, displayed nothing short of perfection and dropped just a single game to Bly to top the group with a 6-1.
The real drama would not come until later, however, with BlinG in the main part. Being 1-1 in series, BlinG had to play Cloud in the last match and desperately needed a win to save his tournament life. The Brit took the first game but Cloud turned the series around, nailing down BlinG 2-1 and putting him in what seemed like a tournament elimination scenario and for a few moments the protoss could do nothing else but sit in his chair, sulking.
An unexpected present was handled to him just a few moments later, however, and this reinvigorated BlinG’s spirit. According to the set count, BlinG had made it to the runner-up spot with 3-4, leaving Bly and Cloud behind, each with 3-5.
The first of the Koreans fell after the matches in Group C. Similarly to the Bling scenario from Group B, Real ended up inferior to Happy and Ret, having one set loss more than them. The Korean was called “the Korean Naama” on a couple of occasions for having a wild and often unexplainable playstyle which got him through Happy and InControl but which finally let out air, punctured by the unimpressed heavy macro style of Ret.
After all matches were played out, the two Europeans were enjoying their advancement to the Ro16, with Happy taking the leadership position thanks to his direct victory over Ret.
Even more German players fell at the end of day one as DarkForce and Goody were pushed towards the very bottom of Group D. The home-turf players did not take even a single map from the group leaders and quickly joined the group of eliminated players.
Most appropriately, Dimaga and Sase were left to wrap up the first playday. The Ukrainian once again picked the baneling-centric builds as his playstyle of choice but the efficiency of those was greatly reduced in the face of Sase’s 2-base immortal opposition. Similarly to what happened at DreamHack Summer, Dimaga’s strats proved vulnerable against well-timed mid-game pushes and Sase convincingly took #1 in the group with 6-1 in sets.
| HomeStory Cup Ro32 Day 1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Group A | Group B | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Nerchio | 2-0 | 4-1 |  Idra | 3-0 | 6-1  Naama 2-1 | 5-4 |   BlinG 1-2 | 3-4 |  ToD1-2 | 3-4 |  Bly1-2 | 3-4 |  Socke0-2 | 1-4 |  Cloud1-2 | 3-5 | Group C | Group D |  Happy2-1 | 4-2 |  Sase3-0 | 6-1 |  Ret2-1 | 4-2 | Dimaga2-1 | 5-2 |  Real2-1 | 4-3 | DarkForce1-2 | 2-4 | InControl0-3 | 1-6 | Goody0-3 | 0-6 | | ||||||||||||||||||
One Korean's down already but the second day of HSC V will be a lot more heavy on this flavor. Kicking off at 14:00 CET tomorrow, the tournament resumes with players like MC, Sleep, Golden and the four-times GSL champion Mvp. Mana, Sheth, HasuObs, TLO, NightEnd and more will be there to defend the foreign base and make sure the Korean presence in the playoffs is as rare as possible.
Before going to bed, be sure to visit our COVERAGE HUB for detailed results of every match as well as photos and videos brought to you in cooperation with our friends over at Definitive eSports and mymTw.TV.
