Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #2 (16th-22th December)

Previous weeks:

• #1 – 8th-15th of December 2016

Introduction

Thank you for the comments last week, we’ll try to improve the site the best way we can. For now, I present the second installment of Hearthstone Weekly Roundup. It’s the series targeted at more casual players, who aren’t constantly looking for new things that are happening around Hearthstone. We’re going to do it for you!

This week wasn’t exciting compared to the last one when it comes to game news. No breakthroughs, no crazy stories, no announcements that are important for the average player. Still, we’ve tried our best to compile whatever we found!

General/Game News

• GosuGamers: Blizzard bans Bo3 as eligible format in 2017 HCT ruleset, changes Last Call – Only tournaments with at least Bo5 format (first player to win 3 games) will be able to hand out the HCT. That’s a big improvement to a consistency, as Bo3 (first player to win 2 games) isn’t enough in Hearthstone – a game with such a big variance. In addition, instead of a Last Call invitational tournament, players with the most HCT points gathered throughout the whole year will get straight to the Championship. It promotes the consistency among the players and makes high ladder and tournament finishes even more desirable.
• Hollywood.com Esports: Misfits Announces New Hearthstone Team – The eSports organization with already established League of Legends, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm and Super Smash Bros teams has created a new Hearthstone team. And not just any team – first three players are Georgec, Pokravac and StanCifka. Each one of them is very well known in competitive Hearthstone community.
• Blizzard is looking for a new duo of casters for the Hearthstone Collegiate National Championship – All you need to do is find a casting partner, download a video of a Bo5 series of Hearthstone games and show your casting skills by commentating it. Upload the video to YouTube and tweet it at @PlayHearthstone before the 13th of January!
• ShackNews: Hearthstone: Making the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan – Shack News takes an inside look at the creation of Hearthstone’s latest expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, with Blizzard designer Matt Place and art director Ben Thompson.
• This week’s Tavern Brawl is Clockwork Card Dealer – If possible, you draw a 1 mana card on turn 1, 2 mana card on turn 2, 3 mana card on turn 3 etc. If you don’t have any card of such a mana cost in your deck, you draw a random card instead. Oh the definition of curvestone. Warning: Only Standard cards.

Ladder/Decks/Meta

• TempoStorm: Meta Snapshot #18 was released – Tier 1 without many surprises, with Aggro Shaman, RenoLock and Miracle Rogue put in there. There are still a few questionable positions later, with Control Warrior and Jade Druid both put in Tier 2 and Reno Mage down in tier 3, but overall it looks much better than last time.
• ViciousSyndicate: Data Reaper Report #30 was released – Aggro Shaman, Pirate Warrior and Dragon Warrior are top 3 decks overall, while Aggro Shaman, Dragon Warrior and Miracle Rogue seem to be the strongest ones in Legend.
• MetaStats: Meta Snapshot (Week 50) was released – Another site with meta overview gets more and more popular. Just like Vicious Syndicate, it’s based on the hard data with a quite big sample size.
• SectorOne: New Rank 1 Legend Decks for Gadgetzan was released – Featuring Midrange Shaman, Miracle Rogue, Reno Warlock and Dragon Warrior.
• Stonekeep has created a Crafting Guide for the Gadgetzan meta

Tournaments

• SeatStory Cup VI took place between December 15th and 18th – 32 well-known Hearthstone players fought for their share of $20,000 prize pool. If you like a very casual atmosphere, players doing the casting, a lot of jokes & memes, you should definitely watch this tournament. On top of that, of course, hours of great gameplay footage. One of the best tournaments of the year! You can watch the VoDs on TaKeTV_HS Twitch channel.
• Skype Hearthstone Academy took place between December 19th and 21th – It’s a pretty unique event, where pro players act like “coaches”, each having students under themselves. In part 3, teams of Coaches + Students (each team is 1 Coach + 2 Students) compete against each other. You can watch the VoDs on OneNationOfGamers Twitch channel.

Community/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: Value Town #100, The Angry Chicken #188, Golden Wisp #105, Lightforge #72
• GotDrums has created a full Christmas-themed Hearthstone Adventure (trailer + all the cards) called “How the Lich King Stole Winterveil”
• Similarly, Frostivus has created a Christmas-themed Hearthstone Expansion called “Winterveil Wonderland”
• VivaLaDirtLeague released a Public Service Announcement for all Pirate Warrior players
• FireBat talks about the current state of the game/meta in his Bat Wisdom 30
• Trolden released a new Funny and Lucky Moments – Hearthstone (206)
• Hysteria showcases a creation of a slightly bigger than usual Edwin VanCleef
• Dane released a compilation of his best moments in 2016 Hearthstone
• Legend Stuff summarizes all Hearthstone classes in 1 minute

Closing

If there are any more news from last week we might have missed, let us know in the comments. And, once again, if you have any suggestions for this series (or for the site in general!) we’d really appreciate if you’d let us know.

Good luck on the ladder and until next time!