This weekend saw another Hearthstone tournament, this one sponsored by HTC, a Taiwanese smartphone and tablet manufacturer. There were 16 players with a single elimination format, determined by best of 5 matches. Forsen fought his way to the top to beat Tides of Time in the final match.
A link to all the VODs from the tournament can be found here.
As an invitational tournament, there were no play offs to get to the tournament. The contestants were all established and relatively well known Hearthstone players. Each player brought 3 decks, and decks were picked using the Conquest format. This format means that the players are free to pick whichever of their decks they want. However, once the deck wins a game, it is unavailable to be played again. This format is very popular and prevents 1 very strong deck from sweeping all others, like when Firebat went 3-0 with his druid deck in the 2014 World Finals.
While many players brought standard decks, there were a lot of off beat options. Tides of Time made it to the semi-finals with a murloc zoo warlock, and one of Forsen’s decks was mech shaman, which most players in NA and Europe consider the weakest class in the game right now.
Unfortunately for Tides, the murloc deck didn’t serve him well, falling behind Forsen’s mech shaman and demon zoo warlock so quickly that neither game lasted beyond turn 6. Tides’ murloc deck did finally beat Forsen’s mech mage, but Forsen came back to win a close final game against control warrior.
The matches and production are quite good and definitely worth watching. This was a casted tournament, the commentators being Gnimsh and Monk. Although Gnimsh’s puns often fell flat, their analysis was usually insightful and can be quite helpful for players still learning the game.
