The Hearthstone Wild Open Returns For 2019 - January & February
Blizzard is bringing back the Hearthstone Wild Open next year and has a $30,000 USD prize pool split among 8 finalists.
- Qualifiers take place from January 1 to January 30.
- The Playoffs are on February 16.
- Everything concludes on February 23 with the Finals. This will be the only portion broadcast.
- You can qualify for your region's playoffs by hitting Top 100 on ladder for the month of January.
Read on for Blizzard's announcement.
Quote from BlizzardPolish up those Totem Golems and grab a seat by the hearth with Barnes and Reno Jackson — the Hearthstone Wild Open is back for 2019!
Things are about to get Wild in the third-ever Hearthstone Wild Open because this year, the tournament is more accessible than ever. The online-only 2019 Wild Open will have qualification into playoffs via the Wild ranked ladder and boast a $30,000 prize pool split among the Top Eight.
Want to try your hand? All you have to do is place in the Top 100 for your region’s Wild ladder—doing so will qualify you to participate in playoffs held for each competitive region (Europe, Americas, Asia-Pacific). The top two players from each playoff will come together for the Wild Open Finals, with China’s finalists qualifying in directly from the Wild ranked ladder in January.
Details for deck submission and other playoff rulings will be sent to qualified players closer to the tournament. However, you’ll want to take note of the following dates:
- Wild Open Qualifiers: January 1 - 30, 2019
- Wild Open Playoffs: February 16, 2019
- Wild Open Finals: February 23, 2019
There will be no broadcast for the qualifiers or playoffs. To confirm eligibility or learn more about the tournament, check out the official rules.
Wild Open Finals
The best-of-five single elimination Conquest bracket will be played with four decks, one ban, and open deck lists. All players will compete on home soil, but we’ll be able to follow them in solidarity through the tournament broadcast.
The eight finalists for the Wild Open 2019 will walk away with the following prizes:
Placement Prize (USD) 1st $11,000 2nd $7,000 3rd - 4th $3,000 5th - 8th $1,500 Total $30,000 We’ve seen challengers from across the globe, and winners from Europe and China . . . but who will be crowned the champion the Wild this year?
Hey hey I know this topic is pretty buried but I noticed it says it runs until January 30th. Does the 31st not count?
Does this best of five means you have to win with all your decks or?
It would be more accurate to say that the high influx for large masses of Kingsbane rogues in standard ladder for a good couple weeks straight, combined with the ever present of the deck in wild since forever, was more of the nail in the coffin, not a comparatively small wild tourney. When you're getting tons of complaints about a deck in BOTH formats that is often when a nerf will inevitably get issued.
Getting top 100 will be quiet dificult.
The Wild community has been very vocal about nerfing the Kingsbane deck for at least a year, this was long overdue. Also, it's not unlike Blizzard to nerf something shortly before a tournament.
I mostly play wild, and is at legend rank. And even though most of my games are agianst Odd Rogue or Even Shaman, the Big Priest I face all have Barnes. I know that they have a chance of lowrolling Shadow Essence but the general highroll is higher than the downside.
Hey, can I get some help? If I reach top 100 in January ONCE but I fall back because I stop playing afterwards, then can I still get in the playoff or do I have to be in the top 100 for the end of the month? (I never watched hearthstone tournaments and these kind of things, I don't know how it's going here)
You have to be in the top 100 when the season ends, so yeah, basically at the end of the month.
Say your piece about Wild being unbalanced or whatever, but I'm glad this is even happening at all. After the situation with HoTS, I was all but certain Hearthstone was, at the very least, going to cancel Wild events for 2019 and beyond. The fact that the Wild Open is still happening and is being actively promoted is honestly a cause for celebration.
This is the leech poison nerf cause. Go to hell blizzard you balance the game depending your tournaments not the community. Why this balance now and not in the past?
Really? Someone is oblivious to the fact that the card was used in an infuriating package that used Coldlight Oracle for mill, and how the weapon could be easily fished out. You have no idea how infuriating playing against it in Wild was with a 10 attack permanent Lifesteal weapon that basically shat on every Control deck.
And this happens since the new expansion?
Or have been other balance changes and Blizzard only nerf just before this wild tournament?
You misunderstood my post, I never said this nerf is not necessary I said the moment of the nerf just before the tournament is a bit strange...
"Barnes is a problematic card and therefore will be nerfed." - Blizzard after the Wild tournament
WILD is coming !!!
To everyone saying Big Priest will dominate I think you are all overlooking Reno Mage. Big Priest preys on classes like warlock (if they're control and not decking in the good ole treachery doomsayer counter) and other slow decks. However, if you actually tech for the match-up (in my case using three different transform effects) it is very easy to go toe-to-toe with Big Priest if they miss the dream T3/4 Barnes into Y'Sharjj/Rag scenario.
Potion of Polymorph completely shuts down priest for an entire turn and when timed smartly removes an entire threat from the rez pool for the entire game. You also just ignore obsidian statue because the minion is a non-threat. Instead save transforms for Rag & Y'Sharjj (never kill Rag because doing so just makes you lose faster and makes spellstone potentially devastating).
Not sure what you guys are doing against Big Priest but when I stopped playing copy pasta greedy warlock decks and looked at the match-up the games got so much easier. So naturally I have optimism for players this in tourney that Big Priest won't be as universally successful as some players here think.
Big Priest is not a huge problem for me either, because I run a Even Shaman with 2x Devolve + 2x Hex. But I can see, how this deck is very frustrating for a lot of decks because of the lack of (viable) neutral polymorph cards.
The promo picture already resmes the championship, Big Priest with Barnes in hand against Jade Druid with perfect ramp, Kappa.
Ramp will always a turn slower cuz of nerfs, wait til the even shamans and odd rogues come through.. currently rank 4 wild ;)
Oh really? Reno decks have a Skulking Geist in them by default, a smart player playing against Jade Druid (if any still exist after the nerfs to Nourish and Wild Growth) will have Skulking Geist to play on curve to deny Jade Idol and limit how big the Jades get. Also remember that the Druids relied on a similar package to all the other Druid varients (Togwaggle/Star Aligner/Malygos) and the nerfs will basically cripple the deck. What I do envision is a shitload of Even Shamans running Jade packages.
Also, Big Priests usually don't use Barnes anymore, he's more of a tech option now. There is too much of a likelihood of Barnes being pulled off of Resurrect or Shadow Essence to be consistently reliable at this rate, and he's usually replaced by Deathwing due to the board presence he represents when he is resurrected.
I have never seen a Big Priest that do not run Barnes. The deck would stand a chance against aggro if they did not have highroll on 3/4. And the highroll also end matches before the other can react.