World champion Pavel comes up against Rogue secrets for the first time at Seat Story Cup

Pavel Beltukov is the current Hearthstone world champion. That title comes with a certain amount of gravitas and cache—but that doesn’t mean he won’t have fun playing the game, too.

At the Seat Story Cup that is currently going on, Pavel had a bit of a problem. He was coming into the event straight from another tournament on the other side of the world—just as the new expansion had come out.

That meant he had basically no time to prepare for the event, or test new decks and cards.

So Pavel came into the event not really even knowing how his decks worked. That was always going to go well.

In his opening match against Haiyun “Eloise” Tang, Pavel was playing some of his very first games since the expansion, and his first games with the decks he had brought. His Big Hunter deck in particular he knew would draw some laughs, especially with the inclusion of King Krush. Pavel looked over to the casters, and both sides began laughing.

However, this lack of knowledge of the new set caught up with him pretty quickly. He seemingly didn’t know about one of the big new additions to the game—Rogue secrets. When one was played, the laughter began again and you could see Pavel trying to figure out what the secrets could be.

In the post-match interview, Pavel clarified that he did know that Rogue had secrets—he just couldn’t remember what they all were.

Though he lost this match 0-3, Pavel has just won his losers match 3-2 against Stanislav Cifka. That means he could still get out of his group—setting an improbable run with an untested lineup.