BatStone #1: Hearthstone Differently - A Standard Tournament with Card Bans
Firebat has announced plans to create a new kind of tournament series which focuses on "weird formats". The first iteration of BatStone is bringing card bans to the inn which will restrict competitors from using certain cards chosen by the community.
Say goodbye to your tournament netdecks, this is going to be awesome.
All the currently available information on the event can be found below. We'll be providing deck lists after the event concludes and we'll be sure to let you know of any major updates.
Tournament Info
- Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2016
- Time: Games start at 12 PM ET (4 PM CET, 9 AM PT)
- Players: 8 Total (7 Invites, 1 Qualifier)
- Game Mode: Standard Conquest (1 Ban)
- Bracket: Single Elimination, Best of 5
- Casters: Firebat & Zalae
- Stream: Twitch.tv/Firebat
Card Bans
A feature unique to this event. The community picks 5 cards which cannot be placed directly into decks, but if generated through random effects, can be put on the board. The current card bans are:
- Yogg-Saron, Hope's End - 7188 Votes
- Tuskarr Totemic - 3242 Votes
- Fiery War Axe - 1154 Votes
- Barnes - 1045 Votes
- Call of the Wild - 1023 Votes
Competitors
So far, two competitors have been announced with more to follow.
Stream
Watch live below next Wednesday or head on over to Twitch.tv/Firebat.
Update with final player list plz HP staff!
Soon enough they will start banning our dicks too. I bet 100% no one will watch this clown fiesta. Who is that bloke Firebat anyway? If BlizzCon follows the same route I'm done with this game like seriously I'm not a fockin' Lannister.
Removing Barnes seems strange to me, it's a legendary so only 1 in any deck and he's not THAT strong most of the time, even when he works out.
Much rather they'd ban Flamewaker, Doomguard or Flamewreathed Faceless!
Banning Tuskarr Totemic wont stop ppl from playing Face Shaman, but I understand why you'd want it banned.
Banning Yogg-Saron, Win Axe and Call of the Wild seems good, but without Win Axe I think noone will play Warrior.
If they made the banlist include 10 cards I think this could be super interesting, now it only makes ppl not play Warrior, Yogg decks and maybe not Hunter....there are still plenty of netdecks available without those!
Zoolock, Tempo Mage and Face Shaman will still wreck hard unfortunately :(
The issue is that there are some aggro players that watch these things too. While people who look for the decks with higher malleability in gameplay are banning Yogg and Tuskar Totemic, sometimes Midrange Hunter players lose to a turn 4 Ysera from a silly priest deck. Also, Barnes does have a lot of potential to swing a game pretty hard, but at the same time unless it's some sort of deck built for maximum Barnes value it's typically not game-defining.
Love the idea, but the execution is admittedly not quite perfect. Then again, how can it be, especially when this sort of thing hasn't happened before? Better to start somewhere rough than never try at all. I'm very excited to see how it goes, but sad to know that Zoolock and Aggro Shaman are still pretty raring to go. Hopefully the nature of the tournament will be enough to sort of push that sort of atmosphere away and we'll get to see some fun matchups.
I have a dream, playing vs Hunter without surrender Turn 8
Hahaha rip warrior and hunter
A lot of good that list does. As someone else said, so this so -called "creative and new" tournament switches to everyone playing zoolock, druid, and mage with the occasional paladin thrown in. One card from each class would have actually made this more interesting.
Lock - Councilman
Priest - Onyx Bishop
Druid - You could go one of two ways here. Most likely is taunt tree, though clone beast is also an option.
Mage - Skillwaker
Paladin - Tirion
Rogue - It depends. I suppose the most likely choice would be Prep.
And...to top it off and REALLY make it interesting, they should ban four more neutral minions. That would most likely be Sylvanas, Emp, N'Zoth, and probably Brann.
Now THAT is a tournament I'd watch right there. But...we can't expect tournament players to be able to play under those conditions. They'd actually have to use their brains in deck designing! And we aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall know they're completely incapable of that. So...different bag, same poop inside of it.
you srsly want to ban a Priest card, right ? Jesus
To everyone asking for a larger ban list: please stop. I'm not interested in sabotaging every currently-viable deck because people are salty that they lose to such decks on ladder. Yogg is a must-ban in a tournament (TOO MUCH RNG), but everything else is fine.
It's less "too much RNG" and more "Shit, I lost... I guess I'll play Yogg."
RNG is fine. Definitely necessary. But having this one card that puts most competitive games into a state where a coin flip can decide the winner even one person clearly should have won the game from a combination of a solid combination of RNG and skill, the environment isn't quite healthy. Although I do agree, there's nothing we can do about it. If complaining solved all of our problems then IHOP would always perfectly cook my grandpa's eggs. He's likely gonna stay the way he is, whether it's good or not, so people should either get over it and play more Hearthstone or just move on to a different game.
That's because they aren't half as potent. I agree, it's another big swing effect that can potentially determine the outcome of a match, but there's a reason why people like Yogg less and why Yogg decks are typically near the top tier (barring silly assertions or decks that are built to have fun with the card). I played MtG back in the day so frankly, I'm used to stupid things winning games that feel unfair. And while it is true that there are other very powerful RNG effects, it's rather undeniable that Yogg isn't the most table-flippable of them. Anyone who's watched enough professional play since he's been released can attest to that.
They should ban one card from each class, and one or two neutral.
These bans are too few. At least 10 card ban would be better.
Where do you vote on the bans?
Two bad ideas in one week. First, banning arena cards that help out classes like Warlock, Priest and Warrior viable in Arena, and changing jack shit with the Paladin. Next, releasing a tournament format which bans cards, but doesn't ban the obvious broken cards like Flamewreathed Faceless and Darkshire Councilman.
Glad to know that Blizzard cares so much about the community.
This is not promoted by Blizzard though.
Update the competitors btw, number 4 is SuperJJ, number 5 is Kolento and the Qualifier is Ness.
Why Yogg? It sucks most of the times, at least for me.
You haven't been watching tournaments it seems