Starcraft 2 WCS Heats Up as Namshar and ShoWTimE Qualify for Dreamhack Montreal 2017
It was an exciting day of WCS Starcraft 2 Challenger today [Friday] as the Europe Contenders were playing for 4 Qualifying spots for Dreamhack Montreal in September. Today was Day 1 of Qualifiers. As the best in Europe were vying for a piece of the $10,000 Prize Pool and 1000 WCS Points on the Circuit. Dreamhack Montreal is the last Major Tournament for Starcraft 2 Pros before the Grand Finals at Blizzcon in November.
Lets get right into the action as Elazer [Zerg] faced off against DNS [Protoss] in the first match up of the day on Twitch.tv. It was exciting right out of the get go as DNS tried an early rush with Adepts. He took one game on Elazer but that would be his only win of the Match up. Elazer is known for his incredible Zerg play and as a Winner of a WCS 2017 Major you knew that he was good. He would win the series [3-1] but would later fall to Namshar [Zerg] in an upset. Namshar would go on to be the first Qualifier from Europe as he would win, in another upset against the Norwegian [Zerg] Pro Snute.
The day had some incredible matches, like Serral [Zerg] vs ShoWTimE [Protoss]. These match-ups were part of a best of 5 games and boy were we in for a treat. Two of the matches went +30 minutes long. It was late-game heroics. On one side there were Motherships and mass Carriers. On the other side there were mass Brood Lords and mass Infesters. They battled back and forth over map control. Counter-attack after counter attack. At one point Serral [Zerg] successfully Neural Paracited the Protoss Mothership. It was insane the way he executed it perfectly. Suddenly the Carriers started attacking themselves. The whole Army was destroy that way but ShoWTimE [Protoss] was resilient and survived it. These games are worth watching again and again on replay. The Micro of both players was just superb.
ShoWTimE [Protoss] would end up clinching the Second Qualifying spot and move on to tomorrow’s WCS Challenger Semi Finals. His Win against Nerchio [Zerg] was pure dominance. He took the early worker lead and never looked back. He was able to counter Zerg Rush after Zerg Rush. He will be someone to watch for and cheer on tomorrow.
Some other notable games were HeRoMaRinE [Terran] vs uThermal [Terren]. We got to see some early “Cheese” play. Both players tried the “Two ‘Rakk Reaper” rush with great success. uThermal at one point killed off several Hellions as he forced an early “GG” quit from HeRoMaRinE. Then in a very cheeky way, HeRoMaRinE did the same thing to uThermal. It was early game madness, something everyone should watch for while playing Ranked and Ladder. It is something that even happens to the Pros. HeRoMaRinE [Terran] would go onto Win the Match Up [3-1].
Now tomorrow, Day 2, there will be 2 more spots up for grabs for Dreamhack Montreal. The Lower Bracket goes: Nerchio [Zerg ]vs Guru [Zerg], Snute [Zerg] vs Serral [Zerg], and the Upper Bracket go Namshar [Zerg] vs ShoWTimE [Protoss]. It will be live [Saturday] at 12 pm ET on Twitch.tv. WCS will continue on to DreamHack Montreal on September 8-10.
