The first Hearthstone Masters tournaments occurred this past Saturday. The tournament is a nice little bonus to the top players with a $5,000 prize pool paying out to the top four players. This is the second event to take place after the December nerfs, and the first event for these players.
Casper “Hunterace” Notto walked away the victor from this tournament. After struggling in the latter half of this competitive year, he reaffirms himself as one of if not the current best player in the game of Hearthstone.
The Playing Field
17 players were qualified and invited to participate in the Masters tournament as they had at least 150 HCT points. Those players are:
- Casper “Hunterace” Notto (231 points)
- David “Justsaiyan” Shan (200 points)
- Christos “Fenomeno” Tsakopoulos (196 points)
- Linh “Seiko” Nguyen (193 points)
- Muzahidul “Muzzy” Islam (185 points)
- Jaromír “Jarla” Vyskočil (180 points)
- Tyler “Tyler” Hoang Nguyen (171 points)
- Kevin “Casie” Eberlein (163 points)
- Joffrey “Swidz” Cunat (162 points)
- George “BoarControl” Webb (162 points)
- Jerome “Monsanto” Faucher (161 points)
- Elias “Bozzzton” Sibelius (158 points)
- Wu “Bloodtrail” Zong-Chang (158 points)
- “Ryvius” (156 points)
- “Shaxy” (152 points)
- Maxime “Kalaxz” Thierry (151 points)
- Eddie “Seohyun628” Lui (150 points)
Of these 17 players, 14 were able to participate in the tournament. Those not in attendance were Bloodtrail, Monsanto, and Justsaiyan.
From this field, four rounds of Swiss would be played in the standard best-of-five Conquest format with one ban. This would result in a top four playoffs to decide the victor.
Unfortunately the game was not streamed by a Blizzard channel, so some of the players in the tournament banded together to stream the tournament from their perspectives with a delay. Hopefully next time Blizzard steps up to provide a broadcast.
Road to the Final
The four rounds of Swiss didn’t divide the remaining players into a perfect top four, but since the tournament was designed to be a one day event, it would have to be decided on tiebreakers.
Only BoarControl finished the Swiss rounds at 4-0. Hunterace, Bozzzton, Casie, and Fenomeno all finished at the 3-1 mark. Unfortunately, Fenomeno lost on tiebreakers and did not advance.
The semi-final matches would be BoarControl versus Casie and Hunterace versus Bozzzton. Boar streamed his perspective of the series and Fenomeno casted alongside Muzzy in the Bozzzton and Hunterace series.
Boar would lose game one with his Midrange Hunter into Casie’s Deathrattle Hunter. Game two would see Boar’s Even Paladin barely make it past the Cubelock. Then Boar would close out the series with his Hunter and the Control Priest.
Hunterace nabbed the first game against Bozzzton with his Midrange Hunter against Bozzzton’s Deathrattle Hunter. He came back in the second game and beat Odd Rogue with his Even Paladin. He lost two games in a row with his Even Shaman against Odd Rogue and Clone Priest. Hunterace was finally able to beat Deathrattle Hunter with the Even Shaman.
Grand Final
We were able to see the final set from BoarControl’s perspective. Game one was Even Paladin versus Midrange Hunter. In the game Boar got farmed by a single Scavenging Hyena on the side of Hunterace with no immediate answer.
Game two was Boar’s Odd Rogue against the Odd Rogue of Hunterace. It was a very hard fought battle for board control through the whole game. With the help of some clutch draws Hunterace pulled out game two.
The last game was another mirror, but this time with Even Paladin. Hunterace was able to utilize Armani Berserker to its full potential. He got the attack buff then used Argent Protector to give it Divine Shield. Boar had a Pyromancer plus Equality answer but shortly fell behind on board again. Boar was drawing dead in the end and Hunterace swept the set 3-0.
Takeaways
What we saw in this final series is that the Hunter for BoarControl probably wasn’t the best. He opted to take two Plated Beetles over two Scavenging Hyenas which seemed to be costly. BoarControl went for more late game value on his Even Paladin list with Tirion Fordring and Val’anyr. This got beat out by the more early game oriented version Hunterace had with Armani Berserker and Spellbreaker.
What we know for sure after the December nerfs is that Hunter is the top competitive class. It was already strong before and the nerfs to the control archetypes only makes it better. Odd Rogue is really good against most other meta decks and Even Paladin is taking over as one of the top dogs since Odd Paladin’s nerf.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via BoarControlHS’s twitch channel.
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