Recap and Results for Day 3 of the Hearthstone World Championship
Blizzard has published another recap article, this time focusing on the action from day 3 at the Hearthstone World Championship. In addition to that, we've got the results from day 3 the group stage and brackets. Day 4, January 21, we'll see the final portion of the single elimination bracket played out, culminating in a champion being crowned.
If you are interested in watching a vod from the third day, we've got that right below.
A recap of the first two days is available here. For our main post, see our World Championship Survival Guide.
Day 3 World Championship VOD
Schedule and Warning
West Coast PST (UTC -8) |
East Coast EST (UTC -5) |
Europe CET (UTC +1) |
Korea KST (UTC +9) |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Jan 18 | 23:30 (Jan 17) | 02:30 | 08:30 | 17:30 |
Jan 19 | 23:30 (Jan 18) | 02:30 | 08:30 | 17:30 |
Jan 20 | 23:30 (Jan 19) | 02:30 | 08:30 | 17:30 |
Jan 21 | 07:00 | 10:00 | 16:00 | 00:00 (Jan 22) |
Warning: Spoilers below with results from the event.
The Single Elimination Bracket
Visit the Survival Guide if you want to see the latest version of this. The bracket below is a snapshot.
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Quarter-Finals
Jan 20-
DocPwn 2
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JasonZhou 3
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Sintolol 2
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Fr0zen 3
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SamuelTsao 1
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Tom60229 3
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Surrender 3
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ShtanUdachi 1
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Semi-Finals
Jan 21-
JasonZhou 0
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Fr0zen 0
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Tom60229 0
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Surrender 0
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Finals
Jan 21-
0
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0
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World Champion
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Day 3 Recap
Quote from Tom MatthiesenWhen the Beurs van Berlage opened early Saturday morning, enthusiastic visitors rushed to get front-row seats. Amongst them were two friends of Jon “Orange” Westberg, who kicked off the day against Chen “tom60229” Wei Lin. “Jon’s easily winning this. He’ll make it to the semifinals today,” one of Orange’s friends said. Despite the support Orange received, tom60229 eliminated him and moved on to the quarterfinals.
Jason “JasonZhou” Zhou and Muzahidul “Muzzy” Islam raced toward the finish line next. A tense match between Control Warlock and Dragon Highlander Priest had JasonZhou’s Dirty Rat pulling Prophet Velen out of Muzzy’s hand. Though Muzzy pushed a lot of damage, JasonZhou stabilized a few turns later—and would make it to the playoffs without dropping a game.
The audience—wide awake from the competition’s speed—had no time to regain their breath. Group C’s final match featured Ryan “Purple” Murphy-Root and Alexei “ShtanUdachi” Barsukov, and they didn’t let fans wait long for a result. ShtanUdachi’s lineup crushed Purple’s, making him the second European in the quarterfinals.
When asked if he felt any pressure being one of the two European representatives in the playoffs, ShtanUdachi said: “Europe had six people at the HCT World Championship, so it’s still strong. To me, the pressure is the same as ever—I just want to make the people who root for me proud.”
Rounding out the group stage were Zheng “OmegaZero” Lin and Frank “Fr0zen” Zhang. In an iconic game, OmegaZero picked Eye for an Eye against Fr0zen’s Big Spell Mage, preventing a low-health Fr0zen from damaging OmegaZero. The clash went the distance, but Fr0zen came out on top.
The quarterfinals took off immediately, as Canadian Julien “DocPwn” Bachand took on JasonZhou. Showing no signs of slowing down since, JasonZhou navigated his line-up past DocPwn’s. The audience applauded an exhausted but thrilled JasonZhou—the very first Hearthstone player to make it to two HCT World Championship semifinals.
The battle of Taiwan followed, with tom60229 facing off against Samuel “SamuelTsao” Tsao. A mirror between both players’ Tempo Rogue decks determined the outcome of the series, and after a long fight for the board tom60229 dealt the fatal blow.
Pondering on the match, tom60229 later stated: “Of course I’m sad that I had to battle another Taiwanese player. On the other hand, it guaranteed one of us would be in the semifinals! No matter what the outcome would be, I just hoped for that person to make it far in the tournament.”
Though all matches had their unique twists, the third quarterfinal was the most memorable match of the day. In game five between Fr0zen and Thomas “Sintolol” Zimmer—Fr0zen’s Big Spell Mage against Sintolol’s Dragon Combo Priest—Sintolol created large minion after large minion, only to find them getting annihilated by Fr0zen’s removal. When there appeared to be absolutely no way out, Sintolol obtained a copy of Fr0zen’s Frost Lich Jaina, completely changing the strategy. The crowd roared when Fr0zen found his way to victory.
Exhilarated, Fr0zen sighed all of his stress away: “We both had no idea what we’re doing. This match up wasn’t practiced much, let alone this crazy situation!”
The final ticket to the semifinals was up for grabs for ShtanUdachi and Jung-Soo “Surrender” Kim. Perhaps fatigued from his earlier match, ShtanUdachi struggled with his Jade Druid. Knowing the ins and outs of Highlander Priest, Surrender burst his opponent down—and vowed to make his supporters even prouder on the final day.
With the top four players locked in for the semifinals, all that remains is the crowning of a new World Champion on Sunday. If the past days are any indication, it will be epic, so make sure you catch all the action!
Spoiler from the future: Tom wins.
I wished that Kolento had won...
Sad Shtan didn't make it. Well, still a canadian lumberjack to cheer for.
Really good job Fr0zen! It's a pity that it didn't work out in the finale...but thank you for the packs!
When will we get our packs for this tourney?
Lol at all those complaining of card draw RNG in a championship.
What did you expect, a chess tournament?
I'm personally very glad for Firebat. He's not the weakest World Champion anymore. Officially
Firebat relatively weak? HAHAHAHaha
The winner is the one with the luckiest draw but frozen did not play around leeroy in the jade vs rogue deck, RIP frozen.
I don't believe Frozen could've comeback in that game. He knew there might be a Leeroy but thought he had better chance to win by ramping rather than surviving for another turn with 1 health.
The winner will be the player who have the more cancerous deck.^^
Spoiler alert!
Frozen got iced by Tom!
Wow what a final
SPOILER ALERT
I am still shocked by the turn 3 10/10 Edwin and I loved the Jade Druid mirror on the deciding match
I don't like how world championships are decided by pure draw RNG but I am very glad somebody defeated that arrogant Frozen.
He always tries to outsmart everybody with weird decks and this time he even said repeatedly that he should just win cause his decks are the best and all that . He should be more modest .
I like the fact that the final match had no aggro decks and that one of the two Mages.was present in the finals and won its matchup
Brode surely blessed Tom a little .
Surrender drew Patches in every rogue game he played (even after specifically muliganing him).
Tom drew prince step on 2.
Nice game of skill.