The HCT Fall Championship has concluded and four more seats are occupied at the World Championship. Lots of close-fought battles resulted in an American-dominated Top Four, as opposed to the European-dominated Summer. Mihai “lnguagehackr” Dragalin won the tournament, which gave him 30 HCT Points and a nice $50,000 prize.
The Top 8
Zhao “Caimiao” Haixiao actually managed to get China into a top eight appearance. He beat Jowen “Akumaker” Chee and Jan “Moyen” Moy 3-2 apiece for a really hard fought spot. He was one game away from his spot at the World Championship but he was shut down by Brian “bloodyface” Eason. Bloodyface completed the reverse sweep and was able to grab a seat as the second American at the World Champs.
Wu “BloodTrail” Zong-Chang came to the HCT Fall Championship with a vengeance. He really wanted to make up for his erroneous play from last time. He advanced to the top eight in dominant fashion, beating lnguagehackr 3-1 and Eden “Hatul” Zamir 3-0. His domination continued into a World Championship spot, sweeping Tyler “tylerootd” Hoang Nguyen 3-0.
David “JustSaiyan” Shan’s hot streak continued into the top eight. There he beat Thomas “Sintolol” Zimmer 3-1 and got his spot at the World Championship. Once in the top four, he was demolished by lnguagehackr 3-0. Saiyan is happy with going to World Champs but didn’t want his run at this tournament to end in such a fashion.
The Grand Final
Lnguagehackr had defeated the favorite to win it all in the semi-finals. He had one opponent left, the other American player, Bloodyface. Bloodyface was coming off of a very close victory against BloodTrail, in which he had to complete a reverse sweep for the second time in a row. Bloodyface was definitely not favored going into the final bout.
Lnguagehackr banned out the Malygos Druid from Bloodyface. Bloodyface was running all aggro decks with the exception of that deck so it made sense to ban the it. However, it is interesting to note that Malygos Druid was the worst performing deck in the HCT Fall Championship, with Odd Rogue and Zoo Warlock following very close behind. Based on these trends Bloodyface had a very uphill battle.
Bloodyface managed to win the first game with Zoolock, but then queued his Odd Rogue three games in a row and could not win with it once. Lnguagehackr was said by some to have the best deck lineup in the tournament. He was overwhelmingly excited to have won, but held it all in until he was off camera and in the clear.
World Champs Picture
Bloodyface, BloodTrail, JustSaiyan and lnguagehackr occupy the next four seats at the World Championship. The first four to qualify were Raphael “Bunnyhoppor” Peltzer, Kacper “A83650” Kwieciński, Torben “Viper” Wahl and David “killinallday” Acosta. That group had three Europeans, two of them German, and single American.
This time around there were 3 players from the Americas, and a single player from the Asia-Pacific Region. Two more players from the United States qualified, making them the most represented country in the World Championship so far.
The Winter Season is up next and will decide four more seats at the end of it.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via the PlayHearthstone twitch channel.
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