The HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Survival Guide (Year of the Raven)
The winter playoffs continue this weekend with the Americas! The top players will go on to the Winter seasonal championship coming in late February / early March.
All the details you need for the event can be found down below.
If you are looking for decks for all the competitors, we've got a dedicated post with them here.
HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Notable Players
Looking for some of Hearthstone's best faces? Here you are! A full list of participants can be found here.
HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Schedule
The schedule for this weekend's event can be found below. If your timezone isn't listed, get out that calculator!
| West Coast PST (UTC -8) |
East Coast EST (UTC -5) |
Europe CET (UTC +1) |
Japan JST (UTC +9) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 19 |
08:00 |
11:00 |
17:00 | 01:00 (Jan 20) |
| January 20 |
08:00 |
11:00 |
17:00 | 01:00 (Jan 21) |
HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Prize Pool
The money and HCT Points are distributed as follows.
Note the first four places don't pay out since they move on to the Winter Championship and will earn money and points there.
| Place | Cash | HCT Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1-4 | $0 | - |
| 5 | $6,000 | 11 Points |
| 6 | $5,500 | 10 Points |
| 7 | $5,000 | 9 Points |
| 8 | $4,500 | 8 Points |
| 9 | $4,250 | 7 Points |
| 10 | $4,000 | 7 Points |
| 11 | $3,750 | 7 Points |
| 12 | $3,500 | 7 Points |
| 13 | $3,250 | 7 Points |
| 14 | $3,000 | 7 Points |
| 15 | $2,750 | 7 Points |
| 16 | $2,500 | 7 Points |
| 17 - 24 | $1,500 | 6 Points |
| 25 - 32 | $1,250 | 6 Points |
| 33 - 72 | $1,000 | - |
HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Format
- Best of Five Conquest using the Year of the Raven Standard format.
- Each player bans one of the opponent's four decks.
- Seven rounds of Swiss, top 8 to dual-tournament format.
- Two Dual Tournament groups with top 2 of each group advancing to the next stage (Winter Championship).
- Semi-finals and Finals will not be played.
HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Brackets
We will not be covering the brackets here but you can check them out as they get updated from the event over on Battlefy.
HCT Americas Winter Playoffs Stream
You can watch all the action on the main stream at Twitch.tv/PlayHearthstone.
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Posted Jan 20, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Thanks
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Posted Jan 21, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Yeah, Dog is one of the best players in the world but he always fails to make it on the big stage. He'll get there one day, I'm sure.
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Posted Jan 20, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Awesome guide and I watched all day yesterday. I have never felt more disconnected from this game in my life. The hatred of druidstone has evolved into the boredom of hunterstone. Outside of resurrect priest, which is at least challenging, the game just isn't fun anymore. I really hope the April rotation of the shitfest known as 2017 cards makes this game feel new, and actually fun, again.
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Posted Jan 20, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)You should have a doctor check out your salt level.
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Posted Jan 20, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Just one Hunter deck in line-ups of four winners. And two Druid decks. And once again I would like to point out great variety of archetypes (even among the decks within each class - two or three different strategies and playstyles, e.g. even, odd, OTK Paladin, or spell, midrange, deathrattle Hunter).
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Posted Jan 19, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Anyone know why so many comments are dropped on this site? Where is #1 and #3? I often see this with forum posts. Big thread and #1 is missing.
Hope it's not my jankey browser...
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Posted Jan 19, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)The reasons for that are either deleted comments or spam. For this news post, both #1 and #3 were made by our spambot friends. For forum posts it's either deleted by a mod or since the fandom move, deleted because they didn't consent to the move.
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Posted Jan 19, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)And Fib left from the tournament just after that, taking undefined break from HS...
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Posted Jan 20, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Agreed. Both were very obvious lethals as well, nothing obscure or out of the box.
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Posted Jan 19, 2019 (Level Up Nerf)Thanks for the guide once again <3