Over thirty people in one apartment, gathered around StarCraft and promises of barbecue and, all in all, four days of pure fun. How does it get better than this, you wonder? How about if Take throws in $15,000 of additional stimuli for those 32 of the SC2 elite to fight for?

The great powers octet

Axis and Allies

From Omaha to Krefeld

The Haegun Corps

HomeStory Cup is heading towards the most correct of directions. In its earliest seasons it was much more an innocent LAN party with a random girl dancing in the background than an actual StarCraft 2 tournament. It brought a homely atmosphere to the event and made it unique yet not much different than all the small invitationals that were so popular in those days.Four seasons later, the prize pool has grown from 500 EUR to 15,000 USD. The players are thirty two, coming from all three major SC2 eSports regions – North America, Europe and South Korea. There will still be friendly hugs and chatting around freshly baked sausages but there is no denial that an actual war is be brewing behind Take’s walls. And not just over the aforementioned sausages.Every tournament has its favorites and HSC 4 is no exception. A look at the groups gives away a seemingly large skill difference gap across the player pool so, naturally, most eSports writers and fans alike won’t have much trouble pinpointing an accurate estimate of the top eight.Thorzain easily wins the right to reach the top eight although we are still to see if he can actually do it. With a first place at the NASL 2 open tournament and fourth at the main event, top 16 at ESWC and gold medals at TSL 3 and Across the Galaxy, the talented Swede is for sure one of the best terrans in Europe, period. His run at the NASL 2 in particular showed that Thorzain can spring back from a very disappointing tournament performance (DreamHack Winter), so there are no grounds to worry, right?MC, MarineKing and HerO come as the terrors for the foreign players. If we look at MC’s run last season we shall recall a very deep run for the Korean, ending with a top three finish behind two of world’s best protosses – HuK and Naniwa. Without them at the event, however, and with WhiteRa cancelling his participation, MC’s chances fora top 8 finish seem very real.HerO is one of those players that can both instill great respect for the protoss race one day and perform questionably at best in the next. After getting 6th at Raleigh, winning DreamHack Winter and finishing second at NASL 2, HerO went on to stun his fans with a disastrous performance at the BlizzardCup, although being counted among the favorites precisely because of what he accomplished just weeks before. Could this have been a temporary hiccup? Perhaps, plus it only seems Hero gets such when fighting on home ground, but when abroad the Liquid player is a scary, scary force.Lastly, MarineKing is a guy thatperforms on the highest of levels. His numerous top two finishes at the most prestigious of tournaments are proof enough. But believe it or not, this time I am actually scared for that young and very emotional player. He shares a group with HasuObs and, more importantly, ViOlet and both of them are not obstacles to be taken lightly. A top 8 finish is still very probable, though.To my personal delight (yes, I can be very biased at times), there is a very strongly defined zerg powerhouse trio of Stephano, Dimaga and Ret. Every single one of them has been known and seen to deliver high octane games, perform on par with the best of Koreans and just handle the zerg race each in its own unique way.With four gold medals in three months, Stephano quickly rose to become one of the most valuable foreign players and a carrier of the beacon of hope for the Western world. He was about to deliver a great show at the Blizzard Cup as well but Mvp put a stick in his wheels in a very direct (and even ugly to observe) way. Figuring out Stephano's style and crushing it lightly was easy for Mvp, but for zerg's sake let's hope his group-mates are still researching the matter.Dimaga and Ret will also have it hard jumping over the Ro16 in my opinion. I know that it is peculiar to say such a thing considering their previous accomplishments but this is how I feel it. They are definitely a top 8 material but it will depend very much on what group they are distributed to as I am very skeptical when it comes to them facing MC or HerO or MarineKing.The last player is very much a mystery to me. A day ago I would have said WhiteRa but since the Ukrainian is staying at home I will have to put JYP. That is in part of him coming into the light recently by being picked by Evil Geniuses but there is also the factor that he got one of the easier groups in the tournament. Sure BlinG 6-0’ed his group at the WCG 2011 but one should have in mind that Bo1 is totally different from a Bo3. DarkForce will be JYP’s biggest worry, considering his positive record versus protoss and that he is on a nine-out-of-ten streak in his last ZvPs.There’s a particular reason I picked such a title for this preview. There are so many French and German players in one place it’s unreal. The two countries will very possibly meat head to head in the tournament though their representatives are so conveniently far away from each other in the Ro32. After all, it’s Poland that falls first, right (sorry, Nerchio)?Come January 5th, however, the homeground players will be on the hardest of marches, much unlike the German army of the Third Reich as they have drawn one tough lot.From where I stand, DarkForce has the best chances of moving on to the second line of offense. JYP and Bling are two very wild cards in Group E so a success for the German zerg is highly probable, as his compatriot should not be too much of a challenge as well. Goody’s future also seems a bit brighter if he can find a way to go past Grubby and Destiny, both of whom are established names on the pro-scene but are not exactly the players one would associate with a kilometer-long list of achievements. Ret is Goody’s real problem here and I would say the Dutch is almost impenetrable force so the German Panzerführer will most probably have to settle for second place in the group.On any other given day I would say that from out of the entire homeland contingent, Hasu and Socke are the ones most favored to reach top 16, but at HSC 4 things stand a little bit different. Both protosses have been shoved into the arguable groups of death with Socke sharing a pool with Nerchio and Thorzain and Hasu being stuck between two proven Koreans – Violet and MarineKing. Germany’s brightest men might just need to step back this day and lick their wounds at the end of the fight.Yet this is all just half of the main belligerents. France has recruited four of its finest generals to lead it to victory and this time they are here to bite back.Stephano is definitely the ace of the French army but we talked about him in detail in the previous section. What is more sad is that he will face fellow Frenchman Moman (who initially had to be in Group B) and with a 66% ZvZ win ratio there is little doubt about the outcome of this particular mirror. German conspiracy one might say and it would be true if this did not lead to Hasu having to beat Delphi in the Ro32.Thus, with Moman possibly out of the picture, all eyes turn to Adelscott – a player long praised by Day[9] for his intelligent and crisp build orders and a player that protoss users should not hold back when it comes to copying openings. Unfortunately, the TLPD statistics reveal a very shaky PvP win ratio for Adel and with two more tosses in the group (KawaiiRice has switched places with Attero) there is a big question mark hanging above his head. By the end of tomorrow it might just fall upon him and bury him deep underground.Oh, and one more non-French, non-German thing. Watch out for NightEnd and Naama. Remember DHW 2011!If you have watched at least one Hollywood World War II move, you know that Americans are the badasses that land at beaches, shoot at people and save private Ryan. HomeStory Cup is to bring a different perspective to those backgrounds, however. Much, much different.One cannot blame North America, though, as they are trying their best while their top players are otherwise engaged. Sadly, this does not change the fact that the continent has sent a squad of underdogs.InControl, Attero and KawaiiRice are heading toward a grim tunnel and there’s slim to no chance that they will make it out of the Ro32 (even “slim“ is pushing it). This leaves Destiny as the top North American contender and the major nominee for the “Dwight Eisenhauer award of avoiding a 0-3”.I mourn at this section being this short but landing in Europe is not the same as conquering it. Next war maybe…Isn’t it funny how war shifts in the course of the action? You are chilling at the battlefield, minding your own business and craving for those sweet sweet prize money at the end of the conflict when BLAM! – Asians come and bomb your s**t.HomeStory Cup is about to experience that exact thing. It almost happened last season when the only Korean MC went deep in the tournament, grabbing the bronze medal, falling to eventual champion (and Korea-trained warrior) HuK in the losers bracket final. You don’t need to be a mathematical genius to figure out that with the number of easterners having rose up to seven, the odds of seeing at least one South Korea flag in the top three is marginally higher.The Korean navy troops are led by three generals – MC, MarineKing and HerO, whom we discussed in the first section of this article. Their right hand is ViOlet – a zerg that had a 100% win-rate in mirrors back home and who holds 74% win ratio in ZvP at international events. The absence of any major finishes usually puts him outside the spotlight but this might quickly change by the end of the week, especially if he can find a way to defeat his superior MarineKing in the group stage.But we always talk about the Korean elite. Before, during and after a tournament. All the time. Much more interesting are the rookies that will tag along the heavy hitters and will try to prove that they have some fighting spirit in them too.ReaL is a player who has a very even win ratio across the board and although he enjoys a fair success at PvZ, the fact that he will face Dimaga himself brings his chances back to 50/50. To his credit, he did secure a place at DreamHack Winter but had to end his run during the first group stage. Being in a small foreign team further cuts down his chances for success and Dimaga and Adel (and even Attero) should find him an easy prey.Sound comes from the respected Korean team StarTale but he is yet to show results. Any results. Very few statistics are available to his account, the most stunning being the very low overall win ratio of 27% in South Korea. Stephano will eat this guy for breakfast, spit his bones out and grind what’s left into a homogenous and very French-like cream soup.Finally, JYP is the guy that a large part of the community is discussing whether he was the right pick for Evil Geniuses. The former TSL protoss has a decent vZ and vP win ratios but his PvT is at the appalling 21%. Yet he still managed to qualify for Code S and was a Code A regular three seasons in a row so there is definitely a reason to follow his performance at Krefeld. His group is not the toughest one so a Ro16 is almost guaranteed but I have some huge doubts that once the top sixteen are distributed along the second group stage, JYP will be in for a treat. As mentioned previously, though, his Code S achievement makes him an appetizing candidate for the top 8.When I look back to what I've written I realize I lied. It IS all about the barbecue, the beer, the friendly chatter, the homely atmosphere and the general eSport camaraderie. I've been talking about war and WW II analogies all that time fooled by what $15,000 might do to a player.I understand now that I was being an idiot. Those guys are bigger than this. HomeStory is bigger than this.Tune in tomorrow and check if I was right.