Hearthstone Grandmasters Season 2 Week 5 is getting closer and closer to the end of the season. Players are really starting to feel the pressure of relegation, and losses hurt a lot. There are only two weeks left until the regular season of the first year of Grandmasters comes to a close.
Asia-Pacific
Kim “che0nsu” Cheon Su continues his reign of terror in Asia-Pacific’s Division A, going 2-0 once again this week. Now a dominant 9-1 on the season, he is three games ahead of second place Liu “Shaxy” Wei-Chieh. Che0nsu rolled out with a very similar lineup as last week, but has dropped Zoo Warlock in favor of OTK Paladin. Like many other Grandmasters, he has leaned on to Combo Priest quite hard.
The rest of Division A has been a real battle, with second through sixth place being separated by just one game in total. With Wu “BloodTrail” Zong-Chang in last place at 1-9, he would have to win out to try to avoid relegation, at which point he still has to hope for others to lose out. It has been extremely rough going for him, after finishing a respectable 7-7 in Season 1.
The race in Division B is much closer at the top, with three players at 7-3. Kenta “glory” Sato lost his lead this week after dropping both of his matches, including one to Chen “tom60229” Wei Lin. Jang “DawN” Hyun Jae continues his winning ways going 2-0 once again to join glory and tom for a three way tie.
Both tom and glory brought Combo Priest without Bownsamdi the Dead this week. Tom banned glory’s Priest but as glory protected Control Warrior, tom protected his Priest. Tom predictably took game one with his Priest over Quest Shaman. Glory came back with his Quest Shaman in game two to force a game three, but tom won the Control Warrior mirror to take the set.
Europe
Casper “Hunterace” Notto did not let his one loss last week slow him down one bit. He came right back this week and won both sets, including one over second place Aleksandr “Kolento” Malsh. Radu “Rdu” Dima and Torben “Viper” Wahl sit in last at 3-7, but both players could easily make their way out and avoid relegation.
The set between Kolento and Hunterace was still quite close. Both players opted to not protect their Combo Priest, and had both of them banned out. Game one was a Quest Druid mirror which Kolento won because he always had initiative. Kolento’s protected Highlander Hunter could not get a win however, losing to Quest Druid and OTK Paladin.
Jaromír “Jarla” Vyskočil and Raphael “Bunnyhoppor” Peltzer remain neck and neck at 8-2. Both players go 2-0 this week, and increase their lead by an additional game over Pavel “Pavel” Beltukov at 6-4. The first place spot in the Division could be decided by a final week showdown between Jarla and Bunnyhoppor.
Chris “Fenomeno” Tsakopoulos finds his second win over the continually struggling Linh “Seiko” Nguyen. Both players are now 2-8, but Seiko seems to be quite deflated in his Grandmasters matches. Seiko is going to have to recover from the bashing that Hearthstone fans have given to him to try to avoid relegation in the coming weeks.
Americas
Eddie “Eddie” Lui catches up to Facundo “Nalguidan” Pruzzo in Division A this week as both players are now 7-3. Eddie won a critical match against Edward “Gallon” Goodwin this week to create a one game separation between the two.
Eddie made quick work of Gallon, winning the set 2:0. Game one was a Combo Priest mirror. Eddie navigated the early game to compete for board and keep card advantage. Gallon ran out of draw and just couldn’t compete. Game two was Eddie’s OTK Paladin against Quest Shaman. Eddie was able to stall and Gallon couldn’t do enough damage, resulting in guaranteed lethal from the combo.
David “justsaiyan” Shan still leads division B at 8-2. He lost to William “Amnesiac” Barton, who is on the come up, winning five consecutive sets. He has made a tremendous comeback this season, going from 1-4 to 6-4. Still in the playoff cut off zone as well are Brian “bloodyface” Eason and Frank “Fr0zen” Zhang.
Amnesiac made quick work of saiyan, winning the set 2:0. Amnesiac took game one with his Combo Priest over OTK Paladin. Then game two the roles were reversed, but Amnesiac won with OTK Paladin over Combo Priest.
With two weeks to go, these guys are the most likely to vie for the Global Final spot in the playoffs.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via their official website and the PlayHearthstone Twitch channel.
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