Photo: DreamHack
The household names of the Hearthstone scene won Group A of the inaugural StarLadder Hearthstone league together, leaving StanCifka and Kalaxz out.
Technical difficulties and match delays plagued the opening day of StarLadder’s first ever Hearthstone endeavor but ultimately the late night of June 17th saw the completion of Group A. Aleksandr “Kolento” Malsh was the first to make the playoffs, 3-1’ing Maxime “Kalaxz” Thierry in the opening match. The Frenchman showed promise, making it to StarLadder through the open bracket – his second qualifier success after earning a seed for HouseCup #3 the same way – but ended up last in the group behind the other Hearthstone titans. In the winners match, Kolento had to fight his way through DreamHack champion Stanislav Cifka, and the Czech pushed the series to all five games before he kneeled defeated.
Second in the group came Cong “StrifeCro” Shu. The Cloud 9 player lost the opening series to Cifka after almost engineering a 3-2 comeback but recovered in the losers and deciders matches, 3-0’ing Kalaxz and the Czech both to join Kolento in the playoffs.
StarLadder continues today with another five matches from Group B where Jon “Orange” Westberg, Yevgeniy “Neirea” Shumilin, Sebastian “Xixo” Bentert and Russian underdog Alex “lostov” Lostov will vie for the next two playoff spots. Opening matches are as follows:
18:00 CET – Orange vs Lostov
19:00 CET – Neirea vs Xixo
Follow every second of StarLadder with our coverage hub.
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