Season 2 of the Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 saw its first week this weekend. 48 of the best players in the world began the eight week event with a total of $500,000 and a ticket to the World Championship on the line. The action featured the same format as last season, which saw players start with Swiss Rounds on Wednesday and Thursday. Players were then divided into groups and completed the Group Stages on Friday and Saturday. This led to a 4-man single elimination tournament for each region which wrapped up Sunday.
This first weekend saw the most familiar format in Hearthstone Esports: Best of 5 Conquest, 4 decks with 1 ban. The way it works is that both players bring 4 decks, and both players ban 1 deck of their opponent. They then choose to play a deck of the remaining decks to play with and every time they win with a deck it gets eliminated and can't be used again. Which means that winning with each of your 3 non-banned decks will get you the series win.
Firebat Controversy
Firebat was disqualified from his Semi Final Top 4 Americas for failing to show up on time for his match with Muzzy, which happened an hour ahead of schedule. He was apparently also fined $1000 for not showing up on time. Many people on twitter reacted to the news with surprise and anger.
Firebat had played a game 5 hours beyond the schedule last night and his opponent from that match, bloodyface, added "Ngl if I beat firebat yesterday I probably would’ve overslept too. America’s has the most variable time schedule since we depend on everyone else to finish. Hope we can find a better way to accommodate these scenarios in the future :/"
The whole affair was a black mark on what was otherwise a great weekend of competitive Hearthstone.
Video Recaps
Since we are posting our article close to the ending of Day 3, not all of the matches have been put onto YouTube yet, so check the official Hearthstone Esports YT Channel for the uploads later here!
- Asia-Pacific Week 1 Finals: Che0nsu vs Bankyugi.
- Europe Week 1 Finals: xBlyzes vs RDU.
- Americas Week 1 Finals: Muzzy vs Lnguagehackr
- Full Sunday Recap, All Regions.
Results
Americas
Firebat was disqualified from his Semi Final Top 4 Americas for failing to show up on time for his match with Muzzy. See for more details and quotes above under "Firebat Controversy".
Europe
Asia-Pacific
Road to Playoffs
You can see below how the Grand Masters is going to work for this stage and the first 3 weeks in general. It starts with the points being given out, where everyone that even made the weekend play will receive 3 points. We then have the graphic displaying how the Divisions and the road to the playoffs will work.
In every Region the players will be divied up according to points from the first 3 weeks. Meaning the Top 8 points players will go into Division A and the Bottom 8 points players will go to Division B. They then fight it out within their Division over the next 4 weeks before the Playoffs and Relegation matches will be played.
- First place: 6 points.
- Second place: 5 points.
- Third and Fourth place: 4 points.
- Fifth through Eighth place: 3 points.
- Ninth through Twelfth place: 2 points.
- Thirteenth through Sixteenth place: 1 points.
According to the above, it is pretty safe to say that this weekend's winners, Bankyugi, xBlyzes and Muzzy have made great strides towards being in their Region's Division A, with all of them getting 6 points. We will publish the standings after this week with our Preview post next Thursday!
Decklists
Americas
Muzzy's Americas Grandmasters Week 1 Winner Decks:
|
|
|
|---|---|
Minion (14)
|
Ability (16)
|
| Loading Collection | |
Lnguagehackr's Americas Grandmasters Week 1 Runner-Up Decks:
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
| Minion (18) |
Ability (11)
|
Playable Hero (1) |
| Loading Collection | ||
Europe
xBlyzes' Europe Grandmasters Week 1 Winner Decks:
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
| Minion (14) |
Ability (15)
|
Playable Hero (1) |
| Loading Collection | ||
RDU's Europe Grandmasters Week 1 Runner-Up Decks:
|
|
|
|---|---|
Minion (14)
|
Ability (16)
|
| Loading Collection | |
Asia-Pacific
Bankyugi's Asia-Pacific Grandmasters Week 1 Winner Decks:
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
Minion (15)
|
Ability (12)
|
Weapon (3)
|
| Loading Collection | ||
Che0nsu's Asia-Pacific Grandmasters Week 1 Runner-Up Decks:
|
|
|
|---|---|
| Minion (10) |
Ability (20)
|
| Loading Collection | |
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)The Firebat controversy really doesn't look good on paper for Blizzard. Presumably the rules were written and followed to the letter, because if they just pulled a thousand dollar fine out of their butts, then that's ridiculous - especially for a (presumably) first offense. I'm a fan of Firebat, and hope he bounces back from this.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)*"failing to show up on time" for the hours ahead of match-time check-in, that was rescheduled the night prior (during his delayed match that night); but where he actually still showed up in time for the originally scheduled check-in, and in time for the actual match, despite its start time being accelerated. (& Where, I've heard, his only direct notification of the acceleration was a private message on discord.)
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)They’d probably wish you good luck in getting invited to another of their events, and your chosen career would likely be severely restricted.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)It's also worthwhile observing that Firebat's claim that the event "started an hour early" is dishonest - the check-in time was the check-in time. He chose to set his alarm well after the check-in time, knowing in advance he would be disqualified if matches began early. He took the risk, accepting the consequences, then bitched about it when it bit him on the ass, instead of apologising for wasting nearly an hour of everyone's time. Blizzard did more than their rules suggested they should have in order to accommodate him.
As to your point - Blizzard pays the players to play their games. Firebat didn't show up, so he doesn't get paid. They don't "collect" anything, though I'm sure they would appreciate any "good luck" you choose to send them . . .
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Could you show the decks that were banned please?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Well, that differs per match up. One player might ban Priest and another might ban Mage, from the same player, just cause it plays into their strategy better.
Unless you wanted to know it from the particular match ups we featured and not just the general overview of how people played against a certain match up?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Priest was double banned in almost every game it was brought.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Yes, I'd just like to see all five decks the players took to the tournament, so marking it as banned in the particular mathes you feature would be fine.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)They didn't bring 5 decks though. They brought these 4 we listed and then one gets banned and the other 3 must be used to beat the opponent's 3 decks in a best of 5 series. :)
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Oops - delete my posts :)
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)"late" "happened an hour earlier than scheduled".... -_-
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)why are there no african hearthstone players? or an African region, I know they usually play for Europe's server. but there is no truly black player among the gms, only a few mestizos.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)card games arent really popular in that demo it seems.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Get this SJW shit out of here.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Don't let the jackholes that downvoted you bother you--I took shit for wondering why there were no women competing. (Apparently wondering why there aren't more than white/yellow males competing makes a bunch of people butthurt.)
At least one person was nice enough to say, "Hey, I don't know if you just didn't see, but the current world champion is female."
Nope, I hadn't seen, because I'm less than two months back from hiatus. But apparently I'm supposed to keep up with every second of HS even when I'm not giving a damn.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)His question is less ridiculous that yours. More women are clearly choosing not to compete and/or don't qualify. Quite obviously. I'm fairly certain Blizzard bends over backwards to get women involved for an overly hormonal, quite often repressed viewership.
As for an African server, as someone mentioned, there would need to be a market for it. If the suggestion is that Blizzard is not open to a certain market due to some sort of racism, I assure you, they are more than happy making profits off anyone.
The downvotes are not for your "out of the box, woke thinking", they're because common sense is prevailing.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 18, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)I literally don't have the words for someone who confuses "woke" with "being a woman and wanting to see other women playing".
People who use that term are fucking self-preening morons, anyway.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)I didn't watch it, but the standings show RDU won 3-2 but he isn't shown as the champion in your graph.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)My bad. Data entry mistake. RDU actually lost the final 3-2 against xBlyzes. Fixed now!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 16, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)On the one hand, no Hunter decks, since the class didn't get a ton of love in this expansion at first glance.
OTOH, continuing the streak of no Paladin or Shaman, either. I'm a little surprised at the lack of Paladin, considering the showering of excellent cards they received. But I'm completely unfazed by the lack of Shaman, which is still too slow in almost every fashion (totem, spell damage) to be competitive.