Big thanks to MacEG for the awesome banner!

Hello and welcome to the very first Giant Bomb Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm Community Tournament!

This tournament is open to all players regardless of skill level. You're also welcome to come observe games if you don't feel like playing.

Previous Tournaments:

Giant Bomb Community Tournament #1 won by Domorin. (click to view bracket)

Format:

Together with my fellow tournament organizers(Harris, Hennet_sim and Moztacular) I've decided to change up the double elimination format we used in Wings of Liberty tournaments.

A group stage will precede the bracket. Players will play against people in their own group and the players with the most wins will advance to the bracket stage. The size of the groups will probably lie between 6 and 8 players per group, which means everyone will get to play a minimum of at least 5-7 matches.

The number of groups and number of people who get to advance to the bracket stage is very dependent on the number of participants and will be determined by me before the tournament once I get an idea of how many people will participate.

We've decided to make this change to make sure people get to play more games against one another. We hope you will enjoy it.

All matches in the group stage will be played as a best-of-1.

The bracket stage will be played as a single elimination bracket.

Quarter finals (and any matches before) are best-of-1.(Or they might be best-of-3 if we have enough time left)

Semi-Finals are best-of-3.

The Finals are best-of-5.

Changes to this format may occur in tournaments after this one, depending on what I, my fellow organizers and you, the players, think works best and is the most fun.

Rules:

- No use of hacks or exploits is allowed.

- If a player drops from a match, you can restart from a replay.

- Please only spectate other people's games if you're eliminated from the tournament or are waiting for your match. Due to the nature of a group stage, it's important everyone plays their games as soon as possible in order to prevent holding up the rest of the tournament.

- Please be courteous enough to leave other people's games if you're lagging while spectating. (General rule is that you should leave if it happens more than once)

Map pool:

This is the map pool for this tournament:

• Newkirk Precinct LE
• Neo Planet S LE
• Bel'shir Vestige LE
• ESV Cloud Kingdom
• Daybreak LE
• Whirlwind LE
• Akilon Wastes LE

The only non-ladder map is ESV Cloud Kingdom, which should be very recognizeable for most people considering it's been a map in the GSL and numerous other tournaments.

Map to play on for the group stages:

• Group stage, round 1: Whirlwind LE
• Group stage, round 2: Newkirk Precinct LE
• Group stage, round 3: ESV Cloud Kingdom
• Group stage, round 4: Daybreak LE
• Group stage, round 5: Neo Planet S LE
• Group stage, round 6: Akilon Wastes LE
• Group stage, round 7: Bel'shir Vestige LE
• Group stage, round 8: Whirlwind LE

In the bracket stage the first map will be detemined by me. If the games are best-of-three or best-of-five then the loser will pick a map from the map pool after the first game.

Map to play on for the bracket stage:

• Bracket stage, round of 8: Daybreak LE
• Bracket stage, Semi-Finals: ESV Cloud Kingdom
• Bracket stage, Finals: Newkirk Precinct LE

Official sign-ups:

The official sign-ups will be done on the day of the tournament itself. I will post a link to the sign-up page in this thread and in this post when that time has come. We'll be using Binary Beast to organize the tournament. Please prepare a personal account there so you're ready to quickly sign up once you're able to. (It's free!)

Please let me know in the thread if you're willing to participate so I get an idea of how many players will show up. (Remember, posting in the thread does not automatically sign you up for the tournament. See above.)

When and Where:

The tournament will start on Saturday, April 27th 19:00 GMT, 20:00 CEST, 14:00 EDT, 13:00 CDT, 12:00 PDT (Check your timezone here)

Please make sure you sign-up before that time, otherwise you won't be able to participate.

When you log in to Battle.net, make sure you log into the US Server as we'll be playing our games there.

Once you're logged in, join the 'Giantbomb' chat channel on Battle.net in order to set up matches with eachother.

Prizes:

One participant in the tournament will win the raffle. Each contestant will be given a random number and once the tournament is complete I (or Moztacular) will generate a random number using random.org. Whoever's number gets picked will get to choose a single game from the following list:

• Serious Sam 3
• Deus Ex: Goty edition
• Payday: The Heist
• Dungeon Defenders
• Binary Domain
• Trine 2

Raidcall group:

We've got a Raidcall group now where you can hang out in and talk to fellow Bombers if you want. The group's called 'Giant Bomb SC2' (Group id: 5863394).

Tournament streams:

As usual, Moztacular will be streaming his games and will commentate as many games as he can.

You can find his stream here.

If you're also willing and able to stream, please let me know. I'll add a link to your stream in this post.

GHLB!

Hope everyone can make this one, we had a great set of games last time!

I'm a scrub, but I'll be there :D

Count me in. I may get some co-workers interested in participating too if that's OK.

Sure, that's fine. As long as they know what Giant Bomb is. :)

I think I can make it to this one too :) Happy to see them continue.

(Just got promoted to diamond shortly after the last tournament :D )

I should be able to make this one and stay for the duration of the tourney.

Added the map pool. Only added one non-ladder map, which probably won't cause you any problems, because it's been featured in many tournaments by now and you will have probably seen it at least once.

This time I will make it! It's been so long since I played in one of these.

Sweet, didn't realize this was going on. Nice map pool, hope to see a bunch of people this saturday.

Coming up this Saturday now would be be the best time to get in some practice :D

Tournament is still a go as far as I'm concerned, although I might be forced to go back to the good old double elimination format if we don't get enough players to run a group stage format comfortably. Hope to see you all tomorrow!

Hmm, my SC launcher gets stuck at "checking for updates", anyone know of any fix ? (besides the IE one, that does not work)

@jixashauser

I can't really help you with that. Maybe try a full reset or check the Blizzard tech support forums to see if someone else is experiencing the same issue.

http://binarybeast.com/xHotS1304271

Sign-ups are now live! The tournament will begin in a little under 4 hours from this post on.

Looking forward to the tournament today. Probably going to die in the first round, but I'm ready to compete, learn some strategies and builds, and have fun.

Tournament is now a double elimination tournament, by the way. We've got 9 people right now and that's not enough for anything like a group phase. Double elim should still work fine however, let's hope we get a few more people joining in in the next half hour.

There are no people in the Giantbomb chat right now

Go to the US Server, we're all over there.

@thule I am on the US server, can't find the room though. Can you add me? Jixashauser #659

starcraft://group/1/1799

Thanks for playing everyone, we're going to do the finals tomorrow same time as today (21:00CEST, 15:00 EDT) at the request of both finalists.

That was a lot of fun. Looking forward to the finals tomorrow.

Finals just finished, Fluxwavez beat Chronologist 2 - 0. Thanks again everyone for playing, let's hope we get a better turnout next time. I'll try to not plan it during any major tournaments next time.

Sorry I couldn't make this one :/ I was really busy last weekend. Are you planning on putting another one on?

@psych:

I'm not sure yet, we had 8 people last time, that's not really indicative of a lively community. I'll think about it for sure and ask the other organizers, but I'm not sure there's a sizeable enough SC2 community remaining on these forums for it to be viable.