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.
-
-
Quarter-Finals
Jan 20-
DocPwn 2
-
JasonZhou 3
-
-
-
Sintolol 2
-
Fr0zen 3
-
-
-
SamuelTsao 1
-
Tom60229 3
-
-
-
Surrender 3
-
ShtanUdachi 1
-
-
-
-
Semi-Finals
Jan 21-
JasonZhou 0
-
Fr0zen 0
-
-
-
Tom60229 0
-
Surrender 0
-
-
-
-
Finals
Jan 21-
0
-
0
-
-
-
-
World Champion
-
-
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!
I picked Fr0zen because there were no corridor creepers.
Well I picked Kolento since I don't know anything about most of these players and he was a recognizeable name. Maybe that wasn't the best decision lol
Picked Purple, 2 packs.. Nevermind, i always shop like Richie Rich #200packsbetterthen6 #nopoverty
Kolento, Ant and Hoej were such easy bullets to dodge really..the only one I'm surprised about how he didn't make it farther is ShtanUdachi.
Anyway, I went with Tom because he was very convincing before and he did deliver
Always pick Fr0zen. Michigan boys represent!
Free packs with Surrender baby, as always. I am a fan of him and he is extremely good in all what has to do with this game, and watching him win while getting rewards makes it even better. Go Surrender!
This is gonna be good tho: tom60229 is doing really good. In glad that Demon Zoolock made it to the quarter finals (but it was banned). #TeamSurrender
Picked JasonZhou for the second time in these things although I am from NA (was so close in picking Ant). Learned of him a while back while scouting some of the names I knew nothing about and I liked his calm, studious, approach.
1st time I picked him was during the deck submission cluster "mess" which basically made his - and the other Chinese players - decks unplayable (the Shanghai tourney one?). Then got a Pavel-pack in between. This time went back to him. Should be interesting...
Im not following the pro scene. But i always pick this Kolento guy. Damn shame i did it twice now... He didn't come far this 2nd time..
glad i picked fr0zen...free packs free packs! i mean.... USA USA USA!!
Even though Surrender's draws were extremely good to the point of bullshit (keleseth+perfect curve for rogue,all combo pieces for raza priest by turn 7,etc) he did pilot them really well. ShtanUdachi vs Surrender was the best match after Frozen vs Sint0lol in an otherwise really boring series.
I really respect both ShtanUdachi and Surrender, great players and humble personalities. Even though i voted for ShtanUdachi, i feel satisfied with the game.GG boys!
If you want packs, pick an asian :)
sadly, thats how i chose surrender.
dude omegazero is asian and basically never made it far in these tourneys, pavel is not asian either.
didn't Docpwn, Samualtsao and Sinotol have to lose twice or am i missing something?
thats weird. then why let tom, frozen and jason play again at all if its treated that way?
Group Stage
Everyone takes part in group play. Each player gets paired with another to fight against. After that initial fight, the two players who won their games fight each other and the two losing players fight. The player who wins in the winners battle moves on to Single Elimination automatically since they are now 2-0. The player who loses the losing players fight is eliminated from the event since they are now 0-2. The final two players left in the group are tied at 1-1 and will now fight each other as the last fight in the group with the winner moving on to the SE portion.
Single Elimination
The players are seeded based on their placement. Each person who won their group is paired with another player who came in second in a different group. Group A and Group B players are paired with each other - Example: DocPwn (GRP A Winner) & JazonZhou (GRP B 2nd). The match directly below them in their half of the bracket will do the same for the winner of group C and second place Group D. The second half of the bracket is the same thing, but the inverse. By seeding it this way, the only way the two people who advanced from the same group can eliminate each other is in the championship match - it allows players to fight different opponents to get a real determination of skill.
Honestly, I'd like to see Double Elimination instead of SE for the final phase, but DE takes a lot of extra time and by doing so they likely wouldn't broadcast all the matches.
ah i see. Ty for breaking that down for me (or at least copy pasting for me). Still, feels like the winners from the group stage got robbed a win. But at least I understand why now.