Who should you choose as your champion for HCT Summer Championships?

It’s time for another Hearthstone Championship Tour finals, with 16 players from around the world travelling to California for a shot at $250,000.

Cash and HC points are on the line for the players, as well as four spots in the Hearthstone World Championship. But for those of us watching at home, the stakes are just as high—arguably higher.

That’s right—choose your champion has returned once again, and that means there are all-important card packs to be one for viewers who choose the right horse to back.

So who should you pick as your champion, and what criteria is worth considering?

Name recognition

Ultimately the big names are going to attract more votes than anyone else. For the Summer Championship 2018, that means one man will stand above all others—David “Dog” Caero.

Is Dog a good pick though? Certainly he has a lot of historic competitive pedigree. An actual tournament victory has eluded him throughout his career, but he does have two strong second-place finishes. He was runner-up at DreamHack Summer 2015, and also reached the final of the Insomnia Truesilver Championship in 2016. Since 2016, however, his career has been a little quieter as streaming became his focus. His only major appearance in 2018 was at the World Electronic Sports Games in March, where he went out in the group stages.

He has experience on the big stage, no nerves are unlikely to be a factor. But he also the dual-focus of streaming.

The next-biggest name is Raphael “BunnyHoppor” Peltzer of SK Gaming. He’s part of Germany’s Hearthstone Global Games team, and is competing in his second HCT championship.

The grinders

If you want to look below that top tier of names, there are a couple of others that you might recognize.

First among those is David “killinallday” Acosta. After a strong showing in a HCT playoffs last year, he achieved two strong finishes in ONOG tournaments. He’s missed out on the HCT stage narrowly a couple of times, and has been trying to get himself around as many Tour Stops as possible.

Torben “Viper” Wahl could also be a dark horse. He’s on this year’s Germany Hearthstone Global Games team, and is part of the very strong Team Genji roster.

Finally there’s Facundo “Nalguidan” Pruzzo. He first achieved success way back in 2015, finishing third is the ESL Legendary Series. He reached the Seasonal Championship exactly one year ago, and has been grinding it out in open cups for years. Along with Lucas “Rase” Guerra, he’s the first South American player to reach this stage.

The mavericks

Forget names, let’s look for the crazy people. The ones who look at $250,000 and a World Championship spot, and refuse to take risks.

Speaking of Rase, he’s the only player bringing Warrior. That’s not hugely surprising, the class kinda sucks right now. But Rase clearly has some faith in it. It’s a Taunt Warrior with Azalina Soulthief, so it could lead to some crazy games during the weekend.

Since China has its own qualification process without an English broadcast—or even a transparent English explanation of how it works—those players are always hard to get a read on. But Wu “XiaoT” Juwei stands out immediately with his lineup choice. All but three players are bringing Druid, and that’s not that surprising. But XiaoT is the only one bringing Spiteful Druid. The deck isn’t very good on ladder anymore, but there are whispers it could be a really strong tournament deck.

Ultimately, there’s always a bit of RNG involved in this. Don’t get annoyed when players lose and cost you packs either—they probably already feel bad enough. So just chalk it up to bad luck and move on.

The HCT Summer Championship takes place this weekend, June 28 to July 1.