Beginning Saturday March 26th, Game Arena hosted their Great Odin’s Raven Online Heroes of the Storm tournament, and it was exactly what the local HoTS scene needed. The tournament ran from the Saturday through to Monday April 4th, where it culminated in a final best-of-five battle between the familiar faces of White Rabbit Gaming and Bravado.

The tournament acted as a sort of preliminary event for Game Arena’s Odin LAN, as those teams who placed in the top 3 secured themselves a ticket and a place in the upcoming event, which will run June 16th – 18th, and judging by recent tournaments the HoTS competition is looking to be pretty tight.

Group Stages

The group stages kicked off March 26th and we saw some familiar faces as well as some new and promising teams participating. There were however no upsets during the group stages and Bravado Gaming had a relatively smooth ride after beating both Thunder Munkeys and Reversal eSports 2-0.

On the other side of the bracket old rivals WRG and Ventus would find themselves battling it out for a spot in the finals however this time it would be WRG to prevail after claiming the first map and Ventus having to forfeit the next due to technical issues.

3rd Place Match

Before the grand finals was the 3rd/4th place match between Ventus and the seemingly up-and-coming team of Reversal eSports who made their HoTS debut playing in this event. In what could be seen as a slight upset Reversal eSports were able to pull out the victory and claim 3rd place in a close 2-1 series, proving that there is some strong new competition in the local HoTS scene.

The Finals

The final series between Bravado Gaming and White Rabbit Gaming took place April 4th, and although there were some initial issues organizer a live stream, Weekly Level Up stepped up and provided great commentary for what proved to be an exciting finals.

Game 1: The series kicked off on Infernal Shrines where WRG went for a push oriented composition using Sylvanas and Zagara, which gave them an advantage as they were able to take a very early fort at 4 minutes. They were able to keep the momentum going and by 9 minutes they were up 3 forts to 0 over Bravado Gaming and held a 2 level advantage. However after winning a few scrappy team fights Bravado were able to gain map control back and push down several of WRG’s forts. At 21 minutes we would see the final fight of the game over the central shrine and although WRG managed to take down Bravado’s damage dealers they in the end lost the fight and Bravado unleashed the punisher on their base resulting in a 1-0 lead for bvd.

Game 2: Game 2 was played on Cursed Hollow and we saw Bravado stick with their Zeratul composition while WRG would opt for an Illidan/Abathur combo. After some successful engagements over the first few tributes Bravado gained the first curse and took down 2 of WRG’s forts and gained significant map and objective control. Eventually this lead resulted in Bravado stealing WRG’s boss and pushing their core at 19 minutes putting Bravado 2-0 up.

Game 3: In Game 3 on Dragon Shire it was Bravado who went for the Illidan composition utilizing Tassadar as a secondary support. The game started off with both teams in a back and forth struggle between the shrines, but at 7 minutes Bravado would claim the first Dragon Knight and push down 2 of WRG’s Forts giving them a massive advantage in experience and map control. After being forced to concede the next few Dragon Knights WRG’s base was left open and at 20 minutes Bravado pushed their core after getting a pick off on the Sonya. Bravado takes the series 3-0.

Closing thoughts

Thank you to Game Arena for hosting the tournament and to Weekly Level Up for providing the casting and well played to all participating teams. Hopefully we will be seeing more events like this in the future as the HoTS community in South Africa continues to grow.

Make sure you visit the official Game-Arena Website, Facebook Page and Twitter for future events. Also check out the Weekly Level Up Website, Facebook Page and Twitter for more information.

A huge shout-out to our sponsors: Alienware, Intel, Razer, Courier-It and Apex interactive for giving us all the opportunities to continue working from strength-to-strength.