Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #3 (Dec 23 – Dec 29)

Previous weeks:

• #1 – 8th-15th of December 2016
• #2 – 16th-22th of December 2016

Introduction

Weekly Hearthstone Roundup is a series summarizing last week in Hearthstone. By making a compilation of the news regarding game, teams, pro players, ladder, community etc. we try to make catching up easier for those of you who don’t follow the HS news every day.

If you feel that we’ve missed something important or that we didn’t properly cite the source, let us know in the comments and we’ll fix it right away.

General/Game News

• HearthPwn: Blizzard released some trivia statistics about their games, including HS – To summarize last year in each of their games, Blizzard has released a fun, “trivia” stat. When it comes to HS, it was the number of Murlocs played – 5,829,905,234! That’s quite a lot.
• GosuGamers: Millenium disbands Hearthstone roster, players join new team – There were 5 players in the Millenium HS roster, including 2016 World Champion Pavel and Belgian player Maverick. Whole roster decided to move into another team, another French organization ARMATEAM. Let’s wish our reigning HS Champion and his team more successes!
• Tomorrow’s the 20th anniversary of the other Blizzard game series – Diablo – To celebrate that, each other game will hold some extra events. In Hearthstone, next week’s Tavern Brawl will be Diablo-themed.
• Hearthstone dev Iksar asked about your wishlist for 2017 – What would YOU like to see next year in Hearthstone?
• GosuGamers: SK Gaming releases majority of Hearthstone roster – While the team doesn’t disband like Millenium, it loses 4 players. Spo, Freakeh, MartinCreek and Powder became free agents, while two players (AKAWonder and Zetalot) still represent SK.
• This week’s Tavern Brawl is Party Portals – “The medivas are putting on a special show, and you’re the star! Summon minions with various portals to create a most excellent performance.”
• This week’s Tavern Brawl was supposed to be Gift Exchange (just like last year), but it was postponed due to technical difficulties.

Ladder/Decks/Meta

• TempoStorm: Meta Snapshot #19 (December 25th) was released (Breakdown video) – Meta didn’t change much last week, this time Tempo Storm has decided to put 5 decks in Tier 1, which is very uncommon. Those decks are Aggro Shaman, Miracle Rogue, Midrange Shaman, Pirate Warrior and RenoLock. Reno Mage just outside of the Tier 1, along with Dragon Priest, Dragon Warrior and Control Warrior.
• ViciousSyndicate: Data Reaper Report #31 was released – Aggro Shaman and Pirate Warrior still strongest decks overall on the ladder (Tier 1), followed by Dragon Priest, Midrange Shaman, Miracle Rogue, Dragon Warrior, Reno Mage and Midrange Jade Shaman (Tier 2). There was a slight shift in the Legend meta – Dragon Warrior dropped by a lot, while both Midrange Jade Shaman and Reno Mage raised by over 1%.
• MetaStats: Meta Snapshot Week 51 (Dec 19 – Dec 25) was released – I feel like the sample size is still too small in this one. For example, they list Discard Zoo in top 3 decks right now based on a very small number of games. One thing that I really like about this Snapshot is the “Most Played Legendaries” Chart. I also like charts with archetype popularity over time. It might become my favorite meta snapshot once they get a bigger sample size.

Tournaments

• ESL has announced Hearthstone Trinity Series, a new Team League kicking off early in 2017!
• Gang Wars Tournament took place between December 27th and December 29th – 16 players invitational produced by Amaz, who has focused on production after joining the NRG eSports organization quite recently. Tournament featured a unique format – Skirmish. In the format, each player has brought 6 decks and each deck could only be played once, win or lose. No bans available. Tournament was casted by Firebat, Zalae, Amnesiac, Amaz, Eloise, StrifeCro and Admirable. You can watch the full VoDs on AmazHS Twitch channel.

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• There was a huge outrage regarding HS designer team on /r/Hearthstone – It’s the biggest post, but it’s only one of the many. Players have accuses developers of, among other things, poor excuses (“we can’t do that, because it would be too confusing”), bad new players experience, not communicating their intentions well enough and not fixing the current, poor ladder system. So far there was no official response from Blizzard regarding those issues.
• Thijs was answering any questions in AMA yesterday – If you want to learn more about one of the best players and biggest streamers in Hearthstone scene, you should definitely check it out.
• Esports Heaven: Interview with SeatStory VI Champion Orange
• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: Value Town #101, The Angry Chicken #189, Golden Wisp #106, Lightforge #73
• Reddit user /u/NinjaPuker has carved the Axe of Cenarius, a weapon featured on Rockbiter Weapon card’s art
• Reddit user /u/srd_27 has released a guide on how to beat Heroic BRM in about 1.5 hours
• Trolden has released 4 new episodes of Funny and Lucky Moments – 207, 208, 209, 210
• Reddit user /u/Noperinno has created a video showcasing Pirate Warrior vs Aggro Shaman battle, based on the Hellsing Ultimate anime
• Kibler has released a video showcasing him playing a Buff Paladin deck

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!