Litiq Weekly Tournaments Review #2 – World Championship

Introduction

Hello, I am bringing you second chapter of this weekly series. This time I will be focusing on Hearthstone World Championship @BlizzCon, because it’s the biggest and most prestigious event of the year in the world of Hearthstone! The total prize pool was 250,000$. Winner took home sweet 100,000$.

Regional Qualifiers

Let’s recap the “Road to BlizzCon” for players, who might not know how it worked. In Hearthstone we have 5 main regions: Europe, America, China, Korea, Taiwan. The road to BlizzCon started with Regional Qualifiers for each of these regions. To qualify for these qualifiers (Inception u wot m8) you had to either finish in top 16 on ladder in a given month or win a major tournament.

Regional Qualifiers structure:

Europe: 16 players, group stage into playoffs, top 4 advance

America: 16 players, group stage into playoffs, top 4 advance

China: 32 players, single elimination, top 4 advance

Korea: 4 players, single elimination, top 2 advance

Taiwan: 4 players, double elimination, top 2 advance

Groups

That means we had top 16 players from all-over the world after the Regional Qualifiers were finished. These 16 players were divided into 4 groups with 4 members each. Let’s have a look on the groups:

Group A

TiddlerCelestial

DTwo

Numberguy

tom60229

Group B

Kaor

Tarei

Nicolas

RenieHouR

Group C

Kranich

Firebat

Qiruo

Greensheep

Group D

StrifeCro

Kolento

RunAndGun

FrozenIce

Once the group were settled, players started to play their games. Only half of each group could continue in the World Championship, that means 8 players over-all. After amazing and intensive games we knew the 8 chosen names.

Playoffs

8 players managed to proceed:

TiddlerCelestial, DTwo, Kaor, Tarei, Kranich, Firebat, StrifeCro, Kolento

They were paired against each other resulting in a 3 rounds grid (Quarter-, Semi- and Finals)

Round 1 (Quarterfinals)

TiddlerCelestial vs Tarei – 3:1

Kranich vs Kolento – 3:2

Kaor vs Firebat – 1:3

StrifeCro vs DTwo – 2:3

4 players proceeded to the semifinals: TiddlerCelestial, Kranich, Firebat and DTwo

Round 2 (Semifinals)

TiddlerCelestial vs Kranich – 3:0 (Handlock ftw!)

Firebat vs DTwo – 3:2

And after these 2 series we knew our 2 finalists: TiddlerCelestial and Firebat!

Round 3 (Grand Finals)

So we got to grand finals, where China’s TiddlerCelestial and America’s Firebat clashed. Tiddler banned Firebat’s Warlock (Zoo) and Firebat banned Hunter.

Tiddler’s lineup: Druid, Priest, Warlock (Handlock)

Firebat’s lineup: Hunter, Rogue, Druid

Game 1 – Both ended up picking druid for their first game. Both got similar start (wild-growth into chillwind-yeti). Firebat was leading on board whole game thanks to smart play against Sylvannas and ended up winning on his turn 10.

Game 2 – Tiddler brought priest for 2nd game. Unfortunately Firebat had the perfect start against priest. Turn 2 chillwind-yeti into turn 3 chillwind-yeti. Tiddler managed to clear both of them on turn 5, but by that time Firebat got quite an advantage and had silence available against Tiddler’s turn 6 Sylvannas. Firebat ended up winning on turn 10 with combo and cairne-bloodhoof on board going into 2-0 lead in Hearthstone World Championship Grand Finals.

Game 3 – Tiddler queued with his last deck – Handlock. Both got very strong hands. Unfortunately in this matchup it’s way better for druid. Turn 3 twilight-drake got silenced. Turn 4 twilight-drake got silenced as well. Even after that Tiddler still had] mountain-giant to follow up. But during clearing twilight-drake Firebat managed to build his board enough to be able to kill Tiddler’s mountain-giant. The board was reset by Tiddler’s  shadowflame, which enabled him to start building up his board. Firebat had a very good string of draws ended up winning with double  swipe and also 3-0-ing Hearthstone World Championship Grand Finals. Congratulations to Hearthstone World Champion America’s Firebat for winning biggest Hearthstone event so far and 100,000$.

Deck of the Week

After watching Hearthstone World Championship very closely I found, that the strongest deck (also according to ban/pick rate) now is Deathrattle Hunter. Also known as Cancer/eBola. This deck is able to pressure heavily your opponent from turn 1 till the end. It has explosive starts with undertaker and snowballs very hard. Once out of early-game steam you threaten your opponent with savannah-highmane. There are many variations of the deck depending on the player and his style, but the core remains the same.

Stay tuned until next week! Also feel free to leave some feedback in comments I will be more than willing to answer! I have only one question: Goblins or Gnomes?

I also provide coaching for less experienced players, so if you are interested my skype is l.i.t.i.q