| SBHL Round of 16 | ||
 QsQ |  nxL Focus eSports |
Game 1
The South East Asian region in Heroes of Newerth is viewed as a place with unconventional hero pickups and aggressive plays from all competitive teams. One of the teams out of that region showcased at least the first of these stereotypes in their first match against QsQ, as they went for Predator on carry. In the laning phase that pick and the overall strategy of nxL Focus eSports seemed to work out just fine with Predator being able to gain quite an advantage in his short lane against a Keeper of the Forest played by Jonassomfan, while Style struggled on his short lane against shampoooking on Plague Rider. That suicide Plague was actually able to kill Style twice in the early portion of the game, giving his team some positive encouragement.
Yet it wasn't enough to make a real difference as QsQ played a very routined game against the unknown team from Indonesia, build around pushing the towers early on with Keeper and Tempest. In terms of kills nxL was close for almost the entire game, but the statistical Gold lead for QsQ became bigger and bigger with QsQ applying a lot of pressure on the enemy structures. After 14 minutes QsQ grouped up to make their presence felt in the push department, getting a 6k Gold advantage out of it.
nxL showed their talent and coordination in glimpses in some minor team fights and engagements, but the overall picture of them not being able to do anything in terms of pushing towers was just overbearing. After 20 minutes QsQ was looking at a slight 9-11 kill lead, but at a 10k Gold advantage all on the heels of them demolishing tower after tower. With the Indonesians pinned back deep in their own territory, QsQ decided to go for a Kongor kill. nxL reacted and tried to mount a miraculous team fight victory with QsQ trapped between them and the big bad monkey, but to no avail. QsQ won that team fight without any major casualties and proceeded to wipe out Kongor afterwards. Rally played by Cao`Keren successfully ninja'd the kill on Kongor though, but got caught out in no mans land and immediately died to QsQ's angry mob on top of the corpse of Kongor. The bounty was gone, but a kill on Rally and the Token of Life still made this a reasonably good trade for the Europeans.
With the Token on Dark Lady and a insurmountable gold advantage of 15k QsQ was looking to finally break the base of the Indonesians to put the game away for good. The resistance was there, but the disadvantage from that mid game was just way too much to overcome for the squad of nxL. As soon as the top barracks and several of nxL players fell, they decided to concede. A convincing victory for the struggling QsQ team in 28 minutes.
Game 2
The Predator was not going to make a return to the series, but another unconventional hero with Sand Wraith debuted in the series. It was the second appearance of Sand Wraith in the entire tournament after Orange eSports already went for that pickup in their first game against Afraid. On the other side Jonassomfan drafted together a scary team with Wretched Hag, Wildsoul and Draconis on top of Tempest and Aluna.
Jonassomfan on Wildsoul went up against Sand Wraith in his suicide lane and could get a huge boost with two consecutive roots from his bear, pinning down Sand Wraith to surrender the Firstblood. nxL retaliated with a gank on Wretched Hag to level the field again, but once again QsQ gained a huge advantage with tower kills. The Tier 1 towers went down very early giving the Europeans a 7k Gold lead after just 10 minutes.
Despite that disadvantage nxL's fighting spirit was still unbroken and so they orchestrated a very nice engagement while QsQ tried to get away with stealing enemies ancients. nxL caught them inflagranti and got a 4-3 engagement out of it with only Aluna surviving for the recently demoted Gold Division team. Overall that fight was only stat makeup for nxL as the fight didn't lead to much of an advantage or any turnaround in the game. The pace of the game was slow, QsQ got huge farm on there three carries with Sand Wraith not even coming close to them. It only took 18 minutes for Jonassomfan to get the Mock of Brilliance ready on his bear, five mintutes later NoX completed his Shrunken Head on Draconis.
Those major item pickups triggered the Europeans to not only take out the secondary towers on each lane, but also force a team fight pretty soon. Said team fight went in favor of QsQ, who got the opportunity to not only win the fight, but rack the base structures on the bottom lane. The lead was too substantial to really initiate into the QsQ squad and so nxL had to sit back and see their base getting demolished by the hard-hitting Booboo and his giant paws. The Indonesian ran out of options and went for a desperation go, but got shut down hard and were left only with the concede vote after 30 minutes.
Still nxL Focus eSports made a good debut on the international scene with their fight against QsQ, who were too experienced and seasoned for the young Indonesian team. On top of that the nxL squad constantely had a ping around 320, something they won't have at the Garena Star League 2013.
In the SoundBlaster Heroes League QsQ will now face Lions eSports in the quarterfinals of the tournament, while nxL is out of the competition.
