Day two of the pre-DreamHack PLAY Cup sponsored by Steelseries and BigFoot Networks has come to an exciting end.

Last night started with 32 teams going into a single bracket with each match being a BO1. Tonight, eight teams remained and there was some very entertaining matches. 

The night kicked off with the 3rd Round which was the last BO1 round, so there was still room for an upset. The rest of the Round three games started an hour later in order to give the viewers more hours of HoN to watch. 

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Round 3

HONCAST began the evening by casting WWE Vs. Online-Kingdom which was the biggest Round three match. The action began at 20:00 CET and over 1,000 people tuned into the live cast where Breaky was joined by FnaticMSI.n0tail for the evening. WWE got off to a very promising start which perhaps startled Online-Kingdom, forcing them to pick their game up in the late game where they had the stronger carries. Along with a very beneficial and wise purchase of Null Stone by SemiJew and h4nni secured their victory and their place in the Semi-Finals.

 Jessica 'Pew' Olsson, Manager of World War Entertainment was happy to give a statement regarding the match:

First of all we got a bad seed because I think we should be seeded 2nd in this turnament but I can accept it because we are a new team but I think the "real" final was WWE vs OK! We are a new team and havent scrimmed for more then 3 hours together, I'm really happy how the game started off and scandal did a great job middle like wehsing solo top we didnt have the best trilane and the cordination was bad (lack of scrims takes time) so the trilane was kinda lost. We shoulda pushed and warded the map 100 % more then we did and I think we woulda won that game in 25 minutes but OK is one of the best teams in world so they are pretty good at locking players down so they won because they had more carries and more team play then us they are the better team. I Wanna thank all the players for doing a great job and FnaticMSI for providing the Cup.

The other three matches were played simultaneously as Online-Kingdom patiently awaited their next victim. The 2nd Round three match was the Russian team Cats-Gaming Vs. unZ from Sweden. The Russians were able to take this game showing some great, stable and threatening play. 

Next up it was time for the Americans from sgty to take on Team Wahlin from Sweden. Wahlin were using a stand-in tonight due to a player not being able to make it, since both team are allowed one substitute, this was not an issue. However, the American's seemed to be on a different level than the Swede's and beat them with clear confidence securing their place in the Semi-Final.

The final 3rd Round match was something you don't see often in HoN, the battle of the Brit's. Two British teams were through to the 3rd Round and found themselves facing each other. Team vitalGaming.HoN and UltraViolet Multigaming put on a great match, It was a long, tiresome clash, which had a tragic ending. Towards the one hour mark, UV's Flint Beastwood unfortunately disconnected, giving vG a huge advantage since it was far into the late-game.

 Adam 'ardnuT' Woosey, Manager of vitalGaming.HoN gave a statement regarding the match:

We haven't played UV before and have seen them in do quite well in various tournaments, so the initial plan was to simply turtle and out rice them. They kind of know us for doing this, though, and they late picked a Flint. We stuck to the plan though and after 30 minutes the game got quite interesting with 3 heroes over 500gpm and 8-9 buy backs used in clutch fights. We had to surrender Kongor a few times which wasn't great (shoutout to Hellbourne!) but we did okay to hold them out a few times. It was sad one of their carries DC'ed during a teamfight and much respect to UV who're a great team to play.

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Semi-Finals

After some great Round three action, it was time to find out who would go through to tomorrow's Grand Final. The first match were favourites Online-Kingdom Vs. Cats-Gaming, which was a very entertaining BO3 series. Online-Kingdom took the first game in a fairly surprising fashion, everything was going in Cats-Gaming's favour until OK decided to set Valkerie and Chipper roaming across the map causing havoc and frustration to the opponents. This eventually turned the tables and put OK up 1:0. The second game was extremely one sided and after 10 minutes or so, it was clear OK were heading into the Grand Final. After a tri-lane Aluna down lane completely dominating, giving Wildsoul complete freefarm, there was no way back for the Russians. 

The final match of the evening was vitalGaming.HoN Vs. sgty from America. With sgty the clear favourites to go into the Grand-Final, vG were hoping to give it their all and see how they do versus one of the worlds best. The games were pretty one sided and saw sgty advance to the Grand-Final in a confident fashion, resulting in an epic clash tomorrow evening.

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The Grand Final between Online-Kingdom and SGTY will be LIVE tomorrow night at 21:00 over at HONCAST. They will also be supplying VoD's for todays games.

The 3rd place match between vitalGaming.HoN and Cats-Gaming will also be played at the same time.

By Harry 'hxd'Wiggett