It has been a tournament of much needed recovery for ThijsNL.
The multi-format Celestial Invitational (NSL) is about to see its group stage completed. The tournament went from Standard Conquest and three rounds of different Wild configurations to end with the good old Standard Last Hero Standing to wrap up the round of 12.
Four players are already guaranteed to be contesting the second half of the $60,000 prize pool: Haiyun “Eloise” Tang, Thijs “ThijsNL” Molendijk, Sebastian “Xixo” Bentert and Bohan “Lovelychook” Zhang. The rest will be determined by the end of next week when the remaining five matches will be completed.
This has been an important event for a number of players. Fan favorite and best player of 2015 ThijsNL struggled this entire year and ended his HCT run with a first round ousting at Blizzcon. Eloise been almost the sole banner bearer for Tempo Storm in 2016 and will look to bring the team a long awaited new championship, coming hot off of her first place finish in Group A.
For Lovelychook and Xixo, the path to victory continues. Xixo is in his third consecutive month on the top of the GosuRankings, while Lovelychook is now driving a Ferrari commemorating the first challenge victory of China over Europe.
The winner of Radu “Rdu” Dima and Zhang “ZhangBo” Bo today will determine the fifth playoffs participant and the loser will have to depend on having better tiebreaker against Adrian “Lifecoach” Koy. In Group B, Aleksandr “Kolento” Malsh and Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk are both searching for the win that will guarantee their spot in the top 8.
