A long and exciting day at DreamHack Summer 2013 is over, saving the best and most exciting for last. GosuGamers is walking through the most important things that occurred during the 13 hours of HoN coverage.
The Streak is gone
The day started slow with several short and decisive games, but the last match of the day was an absolute highlight. Vietnamese Dream Team started out with a loss, but in the end they got the win - the biggest win so far. In a long and close match the Swedish representatives edged out the top favorite of the entire event, showcasing their abilities to have a massive impact on this event.
The match between the two teams was close throughout the game, but in the end a pivotal team fight victory and an absolute monster of Gemini shattered the win streak in pieces. The team fight featured a great initiation by Rally and Gemini, an incredible Keg by Engineer, setting up one hell of Magmus Erruption. All of a sudden the neck-to-neck contest had a massive upside for the Swedish competitors.
The longer the match went, the scarier the Gemini got. One Shrunken Head and Assasin's Shroud later, plus a Token of Life provided by Kongor, he was seemingly unkillable. vdT could just charge into the rows of Stay Green and come out on top of the fights with lopsided kill counts. sG was down, sG lost the middle Barracks and vdT even felt comfortable enough with their lead to go deep into the enemy base to chase more and more kills. One fake-cc and another won team fight by vdT later the win streak was history and Vietnamese Dream Team all of a sudden became a serious contender for the DreamHack crown.
The bottom line from both teams first day is simple. Vietnamese Dream Team are a force to be reckoned with, especially because Pewe is just playing out of his mind with two splendid Monkey King games (one broke the 800 GPM mark with ease) and his skills on unorthodox heroes like Gemini or Swiftblade.
For Stay Green the winning streak might be over, but now they once again have a fire sparking and have received a wake up call to not take this event lightly. Huge matches against compLexity and their inner rival of Stay Green Europe are just the stage to bounce back and make a statement to all the community. They might not run through the tournament with a flawless record, but they are not out of the competition at all.
sG.eu cruising
While the day of Stay Green ended in a downer, the whole first day of Stay Green Europe was a high. The squad around Mynuts had no problem with any of their opponents, starting with a demolishment of iMpunity in the first game of the day. After that KungFu Gaming, MiTH.s2y and even compLexity Gaming fell victim to the reigning and defending Champion.
As the only team that walks out with a flawless record, the team is in a perfect spot to get into the Upper Bracket of the Championship Bracket, while also showing off their impressive skills without much pressure at first. They have a rather "easy" match ahead of them with iTS to pick up momentum for Day 2, followed by the "Upset Kings" of Vietnamese Dream Team and the internal battle against sG to end the Group Stage.
The emotions, the communication, the performance and the vibe the team gives out is absolutely remarkable and positive, with every player on the same side and in perfect sync. The players are enjoying themselves, making fun and having a banter during the game, but know when to flip the switch and turn on the heat for their opponents. The match against compLexity Gaming was not only clutch, but they also silenced every doubter and hater out there, that might have thought that they were taking the leisure approach in the last couple of weeks after being invited to DreamHack Summer 2013.
Deep fall of iMpunity
Last but not least the first day of the DreamHack competition also delivered the deep fall of one of the dark horse teams heading into this event. The Singaporean squad with Malaysian parts started with a fairly decisive loss against the reigning and defending DreamHack Champs of Stay Green Europe. After that the team almost fell apart and frustration was clearly building up. The next match misplays of teammates were just internally commented with "..." in team chat, sighs and almost resignation snuck into the prominent roster.
The communication broke down, the frustration grew and grew and found it's summit in the last match of the day against MiTH. Players were stomping out of frustration, no one wore a headset, communication was quite at best and a couple of times the coordination and calls were delivered in text form via chat. The fact that the match was still incredibly close against the Thai team shows the potential of the squad, but also shows more than clear that some friction inside the team exists.
Rhonn, Air and the rest of the iMp boys need a turnaround on Day 2, when they want to make an appearance in the final day. Currently it looks more than grim with them even switching up on the drafter spot. The squad looks distorted, uninterested to play and totally unfocused at the tasks at hand. They moved from dark horse all the way down to the bottom of the standings after Day 1 - as one of only two teams that could not record a single match victory so far.
All the Rest
The other notes of the first day are no shockers. The expected losing streak for the CIS team of iTS came to fruition, coL looked strong against the early opponents and was only stopped by their arch-nemesis in Stay Green Europe, the Chinese team is flirting with the bottom of the standings after a very rough opening schedule and MiTH.s2y is hanging in there with the potential of maybe challenging for an Upper Bracket seed for the Championship Bracket.
Totally unrelated to standings or anything is the sportsmanship that is shown throughout every single team. Fair handshakes and greetings after each match are not an exception, but a norm for this matches. At the early part of the day it was NoVa and KheZu who started with it, at the end of the day the gathered professional players were like a unit and exchanged kind words and handshakes after every match.
