Hive Workshop Cup 2020 – main event

[Nightmare2077]

Here are the relevant details about the upcoming main event of the 2020 Hive Workshop Cup, the professional Warcraft III tournament played on the community-made maps:

Format
Double elimination. All games are Best-of-3, except the Grand Final which is Best-of-5. Discord link.

Map bans
Each player gets to ban one map only (none in the Grand Final). The players then take turns vetoing maps to determine the first map. The player who is higher in the grid gets to ban/veto first. After the first map is played, the loser picks subsequent maps.

Maps
The mapool consists of the 5 winners of the 6th Melee Map naking contest, namely Tortoise Haven, Shattered Exile, Talonrift Coast, Zul'Alor, Last Snow, as well as Brightwater Oasis and Gold Port from last year. Download the special, zoomed version of all 7 maps >> here <<. Big thanks to WC3Champions for providing the zoom feature!

Participants
Three medalists of last year's cup were invited, Happy, Foggy and Hawk. 5 more players qualified from the 5 open qualifiers: Neytpoh, Sonik, TGW, Sheik and Blade. Just before the main event, Foggy declined his invite due to the need to practice for WGL qualifiers. Two unqualified finalists played one another in a wild-card match, Cash and Starshaped. Cash emerged victorious, securing the replacement slot.

Start times
Games start on 18:00 CET on both 12th November and 13th November.
On the 12th, first the upper half of the grid is played: two Quarterfinals simultaneously, then the Semifinal, then Loser's round one. Afterwards, the lower half of the grid is played in the same way. This concludes day 1.
On the 13th, all games are played sequentially. Starts with two games of Losers round 2, then Losers round 3, then Winner's Final, Loser's Final and Grand Final.

Grid and seeding
The players were seeded from two pots of 4 players, using the current Elo ranking.
The quarterfinal pairs are as follows: HawK vs Cash, Neytpoh vs Sheik; Happy vs Sonik, Blade vs TGW.

Prize pool
Prizepool of 500€ distributed as (place\€): 1\240, 2\120, 3\60, 4\40, 5&6\20.

A recap of quailifers
5 qualifier were played during from 26.October to 9.November. Each of the qualifiers was centered on one map (e.g. on 26 October it was Tortoise Haven) and featured a prize-pool of 50 euro, all going to the winner. See here for a report on those.


Special thanks to the amazing Back2Warcraft for being partners and co-organizers of the tournament!

Onto the Hive Cup! Long live Warcraft!

 

[Nightmare2077]

Please download the maps from the attachment to this post. The maps were modified to have the zoom feature supported. (Thanks to the WC3Champions team for providing that!)
This link is final and official.

 

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Qualifiers report:

Qualifier #1 took place on the sun-bathed isles of Tortoise Haven, a map made by Kaer. The invited judge of the 6th Melee Map making contest, Neytpoh, took the very first qualifier, securing the spot in the final event. MisterWinner's famous human rifle push felled another prominent Night Elf player, Sonik, but he couldn't win agiainst Neytpoh in the semifinals, despite winning map #1. Neytpoh then proceeded to beat the undead TGW in the finals. >Replay pack.

Qualifier #2 was centered on the 4-player Shattered Exile. The map was made by mafe, whose another map Brightwater Oasis will be featured in the main event. Sonik again met MisterWinner, this time in the semifinals, but luck favoured the Night Elf in his second attempt. In the finals, he beat TGW, who won in an Undead mirror against Sheik a round before.

Qualifier #3 was decided on the windswept hills of Talonrift Coast, Cigaro's creation. For the third time TGW played in the final against a Night Elf player, this time the Swede Starshaped. On his third attempt, the luck finally shone upon the Scourge as TGW secured the spot in the main event. MisterWinner, the only player to play in all 5 qualifiers, was less lucky and again lost to Night Elves – Starshaped beat him 2-0 in semifinals. >Replay pack.

Qualifier #4 saw Zul'Alor to be it's main map, the grim, circular battlefield of Mr.Henci's making. Sheik would reign supreme, beating two prominent players of other races. First the orc Cash, who won against MisterWinner in quaterfinals, fell to the Russian Undead. The finals ended in Sheik defeating the human Blade 2-0, even if the Moldovan player lamented his unstable internet. >Replay pack.

Qualifier #5 was the final qualifier, to be played across the thawing valleys of ossavi's Last Snow. The semifinals for the second time saw all four races: Cash played against the French Undead Krav, while Blade battled with Night Elf Stranik. Whereas Cash managed to beat the undead, Stranik again lost the semifinal to the more experienced human. So it was Blade and Cash clashing in the final battle, and after a close series of three games, the victory went to Blade. >Replay pack.

Wild card game. Just before the main event, Foggy declined his invite due to the need to practice for WGL qualifiers. On 11.November, two unqualified finalists played one another in a wild-card match, Cash and Starshaped. Cash emerged victorious 2-1, securing the replacement slot. >Replay pack.

 

[Nightmare2077]

Day 1 has conluded! Great games all around. All has been very positive!
And good number of viewers - B2W's stream has over 20,000 hits and was watched by 2k at a peak, which combined with various Russian-speaking streams means around 4-5k viewers at once!

See the broadcast by B2W: here
A WIP replay pack: here

Grid as of now

Thanks to all, especially the mapmakers and casters!

 

[Nightmare2077]

The event has ended!

The Results

See also The Liquipedia Page

It's been a very positive expericence and we had all-round univeral acclaim for the event.
A few map-makers got onto Back2Warcraft's stream to give short interviews (I too was briefly interviewed about organising the event).
Replay pack attached to this post (thanks to mafe for helping compile it).
Back2Warcraft's stream of Day 2.

Thanks to all, especially the map-makers!
Long live Warcraft, long live Hive