StarCraft - a game that has laid the foundations of the eSports industry as a whole. A title which is one of the very few that rings a bell even with people not connected to the eSports world. As gamers we can’t overstate our appreciation towards StarCraft, it’s fans, community and professional players. And this is why…
We are proud, happy and extremely excited to announce that we are launching our own StarCraft 2 tournament - the QLASH SC2 Invitational! And it will start as early as… next week!
The players
As this is our first major event in the StarCraft 2 scene we have decided to keep things simple. All the players involved will be European and will participate through our invitation without qualifiers. Having mentioned this, we have a sick lineup of 16 players as follows:
Joona “Serral” Sotala, Artur “Nerchio” Bloch, Jens “Snute” Aasgaard, Mikołaj “Elazer” Ogonowski, Julian “Lambo” Brosig, Aleksandr “Bly” Svysiuk, Adrien “DnS” Bouet, Kevin “Harstem” de Koning, Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti, Ilyes “Stephano” Satouri, Christoffer “Namshar” Kolmodin, Théo “PtitDrogo” Freydière, Clément “Clem” Desplanches, Anton “Zanster” Dahlström, Piotr “souL” Walukiewicz, Benjamin “DeMusliM” Baker.
The format
During this time of the year there aren’t many major StarCraft 2 events and we thought it would be a good idea to utilize this period and be creative. This is why the format of the QLASH SC2 Invitational will be 2 groups of 8 players each, playing a roundrobin format in the first phase of the tournament!
As such, each player will play 7 matches and face all opponents in his respective group. After all 7 rounds have been played in both groups, the top two players from each group will proceed to the offline Grand Finals to be played in the QLASH House!
All matches in the roundrobin phase will be in the Bo5 format. The offline semifinals and finals in the QLASH House will be Bo7 and Bo9 respectively.
The groups
The dates and times
Our first stream is scheduled on the 23rd of July (Monday). After that we will be streaming a whole round from each group on following Tuesdays and Thursdays. This means that on the 23rd of July (Monday) all 4 matches from the first group will be played and on the 26th of July (Thursday) all 4 matches from the second group will be played. From the second week onwards it will be Tuesdays and Thursdays continuing every week until all 7 rounds have been played. The only exception is during the week starting on the 3rd of September, when WCS Montreal will take place and we will have no round being played. The 7th and last round of the first phase will be played on the 11th and 13th of September.
Once this is done and dusted the QLASH House offline finals will be played over the following weekend - on the 22nd and 23rd of September. To put things into perspective, the whole event will start on the 23rd of July and end on the 23rd of September. That is a lot of StarCraft 2!
All online rounds will start at 18:00 CEST and all 4 matches will be played and streamed consecutively so that we don’t miss any of the action! More information will be posted about the offline finals timings closer to the event.
Full schedule coming soon!
The casters
Such a lineup of players certainly deserves casting talent to match it. We will be broadcasting the event with the captivating English commentary of:
Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi, Jonathan “Wardi” Ward and Jos “Retjah” de Kroon!
They will cast most of the online matches with the possibility of some guest casters from time to time to mix things up! And of course, expect to see them as hosts in the offlines as well!
All games will be broadcasted on the official QLASH Twitch channel.
The prizepool
An unconventional format calls for an unconventional prizepool. We have decided to award €50 euros for every match win during the round robin phase no matter what final position each player takes in the group. As we will have a total of 56 round robin matches this amounts to a €2,800 euro total prizepool for the first phase to be spread among all players.
Of course, our offline finals call for a separate prizepool for the top players who qualify and join us in the QLASH House in Italy. The prizepool for the offline finals will be another €2,500 euros with the following spread:
Winner: €1,000 euros
Runner-up: €700 euros
3rd-4th: €400 euros
And finally
With all of this talent on board we are also happy to have secured the services of one of the most experienced StarCraft 2 event admins out there - Christian 'TrAiDoS' Städter. We have no doubt he will be of great help to us all in making sure that this is one hell of an event for everyone involved!
QLASH CEO and co-owner Luca Pagano: “In this industry you need to appreciate the importance of games like StarCraft 2 and what they have done for all of us. This is why QLASH wants to be at the forefront, supporting and creating opportunities for the community and the players alike.”
QLASH Head of Marketing Petar Tchavdarov: “It’s great that we were able to get many of the biggest StarCraft 2 names on board for our event, especially given the fact that it is our first try. I am personally a huge fan of the game and am really excited for what is to come.”