StarCraft esports continue to bloom through the new year, with January having brought plenty of tournaments for fans to enjoy. While Blizzard will spend much of 2020 reorganizing their tournament bracket into the ESL leagues, there’s still a high number of competitions around for players and fans to participate in.
Today sees the beginning of Battle of the Americas #2, a weekly tournament organized by Online Sports Championships. The tournament is only open to North American and Latin American players, rewarding small monetary prizes, OSC points, and Qualification points to those that are successful.
If more than 16 players are participating, the tournament operates on a single-elimination bracket, with all matches being best-of-three with the exception of the best-of-five final. If there are less than 16 players, the tournament turns to double-elimination brackets, with all bracket matches playing out as best-of-three, except for the first two rounds of the loser’s bracket matches, which are best-of-one.
The maps on deck for this tournament are mostly the standard, featuring Ephemron, Eternal Empire, Nightshade, Simulacrum, Triton, World of Sleepers, and Zen. This array of maps compliments the macro-focused playstyle that many players bring to the table, providing plenty of room for harass and cheese
The tournament is bringing some familiar names that have participated weekly, including the following:
- DoctorRyan
- eGGz
- TheZergLord
- Apok
- PiLiPiLi
- Farid
- Fullheart2
- EqoR
- KaluzZ
- Pacomike
Battle of the America’s #2 has a bit of a Zerg-heavy lineup, with prominent Zerg mains like Cham and eGGz bringing their aggressive playstyle to the match. It’s a bit similar in lineup to yesterday’s Grand Platypus Open, which saw a Zerg-dominated roster. Meomaikalair managed to take the crown of this week’s Grand Platypus Open with thanks to his extremely aggressive style that saw most games ending rather quickly. It wasn’t until the final, in fact, that he lost a single round of a matchup, taking the crown in a 3-1 victory over GogojOey.
With only a handful of names participating, the tournament will move rather fast this week. Cranky Ducklings is providing the English coverage, but you can tune into Enki’s stream for Spanish, or VincentiN’s for Portuguese.
It’s only the first day of February, and 2020 has already shown a massive number of StarCraft tournaments to help esports bloom. 2020 is going to be a big year for StarCraft with the restructuring of the esports scene going on, with the esports scene reportedly remaining absent from BlizzCon this year. Given the restructuring, it’s the smaller tournaments like this that keep the scene thriving and alive.
