HoTS GSTL Pre-Season Day1: On the Eve of Battle

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Source: Thisisgame.com

As the first HoTS GSTL pre-season games got underway today, fans' attention was gripped as two of the leading ladies of Starcraft, AZUBUs' Eve and Startales' Aphrodite, were chosen to open the first team league match of the year

Having recently expanded their SC2 roster with a slew of established players, AZUBU faced their first challenge as they took on GSTL veterans Startale in the inaugural Heart of the Swarm matches.

Despite sustaining early damage from Eve's 3gate + Voidray attack, Aphrodite was able to endure due to her additional early Barracks and economy, riding out Eve's aggression until her attack finally ran out of steam

Game 2 saw Supernova begin his day by denying Aphrodite her second televised win with incredibly efficient banshee harass before picking apart her team mate Hack in a similarly effective manner in the following game. Little known Protoss TREME gave Supernova a master class in HOTS strategy as he used his proxy Stargate to gain an early advantage through Oracle harass. Supernova fought well to restablish some footing in the game but fantastic storms in the final engagement ended any hopes the AZUBU Terran had of a comeback.

Although TREME put his team one game away from victory following a quick mirror matchup win using early Stalkers supported by the Mothership core against San, he was unable to close out the series as he lost in a similar fashion in the next game against Genius.

Having evened up the score to 3-3, only Bomber remained to stand in the way of AZUBUs' first GSTL victory. In an extremely close game, Bomber used his aggressive map presence to secure his third expansion faster than his opponent but failed to react in time to Genius' switch back into Collossus. Coupled with his great use of storms, Genius was able to edge out his opponent and clinch a spot in the Semi-Finals for his team.

GSTL HoTS Pre-Season Ro8 Day1

AZUBU 4:3 Startale