Six slots are filled for the World Finals, and big names are posted on the marquee. On Friday legends like stayGreen, Bad Monkey Gaming, or the two-time HoN Tour Champion from Southeast Asia - Made in Thailand.Sorry Sorry. To complete the field for the spectacle in the BITEC Convention Center, eight wildcard teams have to go through additional matches for the honor of participating in the biggest HoN event to date.
Here four teams from an online qualifier and two national champions are looking to challenge the two favorites, preventing the teams from making the run to the World Finals.. Indonesian champion DC Fabulous and Malaysian-Singaporean runner-up national champion bRix are the only two teams seeded as of yet - on opposite site of the brackets. The seeding is designed to avoid clashes between either the national championship teams or the two HoN Tour semifinalist teams before they actually go to the World Finals. Each of the four teams will face off with a team coming out of the 512 team online qualifier portion, all from the HoN nation - Thailand. Those will be the quarterfinals - get ready for some shattered dreams.
The quarterfinal matches against “random” online teams might not turn out to be a walk in the park for any seeded team - you only need to take a close look at the online qualified teams to see that. Both Nok 2 Hua and Kimochi.Tt eSports have had great success in the Thai HoN Tour, a performance that led Kimochi.Tt eSports in the playoffs in Cycle 1 and to the Garena Star League 2024. N2H didn’t make it to that massive offline event, but they redeemed themselves in the Thai HoN Tour Grand Finals by making an incredible run from the first round to the 7th/8th place. That miraculous run was ultimately stopped by Kimochi.Tt eSports themselves, securing their entrance to the Top 6 of the first HoN Tour version on Thai soil.
In the SEA version of HoN Tour both teams have not enjoyed the most success; they’ve both spent of the time in D1. Neither team of the promising Thai squads ever saw playing time with the big boys of G-League, and Kimochi.Tt eSports even failed to get into the D1 playoffs throughout the four cycles. N2H didn’t falter in this regard, and even came within one victory of actually getting the promotion to G-League in Cycle 2. That dream ultimately was shattered by the rising stars of ROCCAT Air Quality and jadT, a pair that sent N2H back to play with D1 teams once more.
The other two teams who emerged out of the online qualifier straight into the wildcard bracket are TaJi and SI3F. Neither team rings a bells right off the bat, but TaJi is actually the new and improved version of KaiD - a team very respected and known in the Thai HoN scene. Back in the Thai HoN Tour KaiD was one of the big four teams, never failing to secure a playoff appearance in the in the cycle stage and even riding that momentum to a 3rd place finish at the Grand Finals event. The placement there did not translate into better performance down the stretch though, as KaiD was one of the major disappointments in SEA HoN Tour. Alongside MiTH.s2y they failed in the qualifier, but like their Thai colleagues they were also promoted into G-League right away. In contrast to the other World Finalist team, they stayed in the bottom of the G-League standings, constantly fighting against demotion. Tenth place with 18 points was their best outing in three cycles of SEA HoN Tour action, gathering 45 points overall - just four more than ADN Gamer collected in just the second cycle. With the new name, hopefully they can find new success coming their way, maybe even a run to the HoN Tour World Finals.
Last is SI3F, or Style I3oss Farm 50 Minutes as the tag spells out. Contrary to the other three teams, this team is completely new in the Thai scene and hasn’t even come close to the G-League, D1 playoffs, or any notable accomplishments in GSL or Thai HoN Tour. While the audience might not know what to expect, this could be an advantage for the young Thai team with the surprise factor on their side. Maybe they can catch one of the big teams off guard, eventually even two - the storyline of this team going through would perfectly fit in the month of March.
The quarterfinals will kick off March, 27th with all the eight teams gathering in the Neolution eSports LAN stadium. The four winners will move on to the actual site of Garena Star League 2024, playing the important semifinals in the BITEC Convention Center on Friday. The winners of those matches advance straight to the group stage of the World Finals, while, the losers will have played their last match of HoN for the 2024 HoN Tour season.
