The first qualifiying round for the MSL draws to a close

This is the season of preliminaries. Just recently the OSC offline preliminaries were played and this time around the MBC offline preliminaries were up. Just like the OSC prelims, there were a few players who on paper should've breezed through but instead got taken down.

These games mark the beginning of the new MSL season. The players who qualify here move on to the Survivor tournament, where they shall face the players who made it further in the tournament last season. Note that there were 26 groups this time around, as Anytime and Goodfriend decided not to participate this MSL. So, without any further ado, here are the players who move on:

The Maps

Ro8: Athena - Troy - Blue Storm
Ro4: Troy - Blue Storm - Athena
Finals: Blue Storm - Athena - Troy

The Winners

Edit - two mistakes were made, Leta and DarkElf qualify in group 18 and 20 respectively, not han and Thezerg.

Day 1

Group 1:

Stork
Group 2:

Tempest
Group 3:

BackHo
Group 4:

Clay[fOu]
Group 5:

koala_v_
Group 6:

Iris
Group 7:

Dongrae

Group 8:

Bul_T
Group 9:

Baby
Group 10:

Hades
Group 11:

Study
Group 12:

SangHo
Group 13:

hyvaa

Day 2

Group 14:

Nal_keke
Group 15:

maGma
Group 16:

Sea.Really
Group 17:

HyuK
Group 18:

Leta
Group 19:

Spear
Group 20:

DarkElf

Group 21:

ZerO
Group 22:

Ruby
Group 23:

go.go
Group 24:

Haran
Group 25:

ZergBOy
Group 26:

Nbs[gm]

The Upsets

As mentioned earlier, there were a couple of surprises this time around as well. In group 2 Tempest managed to triumph over the Golden Mouse winner July, striking him down 2-0. The hot SKT terran Midas was taken down in a similar fashion, 2-0, by koala_v_ who happens to play for MBCGame Hero. koala_v_ has only four recorded games in the Minor League and only one of them a win, for the record. Sorry BoxeR fans, The Emperor won't be going any further either, losing against Dongrae 0-2 in the Ro4.

BeSt joins the list of people who won't make it as well, losing two straight games against a terran named KizoO_Major, who in turn got taken down by Nal_keke. Rock, Nal_rA and XellOs will also miss out on this season.

Although not an upset per se, a record was broken during these qualifiers. WeMade Fox's Baby is now the youngest player ever to make it past this point in the history of the individual leagues, beating Flash by an impressive 10 months.

More information about the preliminaries and the MSL in general can be found at Teamliquid.net below.