ESL to stage $150,000 Hearthstone team league

ESL will run a massive Hearthstone team league next year, with some of the biggest teams in esports already signed up.

The ESL Hearthstone Trinity Series will get underway in January with eight invited teams competing for $150,000.

CompLexity, Virtus Pro and Tempo Storm have already been announced for the league, meaning appearances from the likes of Jan “SuperJJ” Janssen, Peter “Gaara” Stevanovic and Ole “Naiman” Batyrbekov. 2014 world champion James “Firebat” Kostesich also confirmed that he would be competing in the league alongside his Cloud9 teammates Cong “StrifeCro” Shu and Andrew “TidesofTime” Biessener.

The G2 Esports trio of Adrian “Lifecoach” Koy, Dima “Rdu” Radu and Thijs Molendijk will also take part in the competition according to manager Jakub “Lothar’ Szygulski.

Teams will play each other once in seven weeks of online league play, followed by live finals from ESL’s California studios.

The matches will be played in a best-of-eleven format with two bans, with each team bringing one deck for each class to every match. All three players will be playing every game with open communication, in the vein of the popular Red Bull Team Brawl events.

The event is the largest Western team league since 2015’s incredibly popular Archon Team League Championships, and is the first major Hearthstone project for ESL since the ESL Legendary Series.