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 third weekend is a different format than last week: Best of Three Specialist. The way it works is that both players bring 1 deck, and both players are allowed to bring 2 variations of that deck with up to 5 cards difference from the main deck. They then play with their Primary version in their first game but can change up their deck in later games to match up against their opponent. Losing twice will eliminate the player and lose them the series.
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: blitzchung vs DawN.
- Europe Week 1 Finals: Viper vs Seiko.
- Americas Week 1 Finals: killinallday vs Eddie
- Full Sunday Recap, All Regions.
Results
Americas
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: 8 points.
- Second place: 6 points.
- Third and Fourth place: 5 points.
- Fifth and Sixth place: 4 points.
- Seventh and Eighth place: 3 points.
- Ninth through Twelfth place: 2 points.
- Thirteenth through Sixteenth place: 1 points.
We will publish the standings after this week with our Preview post next Thursday!
Decklists
Americas
Eddie's Americas Grandmasters Week 3 Winner Decks:
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Minion (23)
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Ability (6)
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Weapon (1) |
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killinallday's Americas Grandmasters Week 3 Runner-Up Decks:
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Minion (15)
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Ability (15)
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Europe
Viper's Europe Grandmasters Week 3 Winner Decks:
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Minion (24)
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Ability (6)
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Seiko's Europe Grandmasters Week 3 Runner-Up Decks:
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Minion (18)
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Ability (11)
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Playable Hero (1) |
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Asia-Pacific
DawN's Asia-Pacific Grandmasters Week 3 Winner Decks:
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Minion (14)
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Ability (16)
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blitzchung's Asia-Pacific Grandmasters Week 3 Runner-Up Decks:
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Minion (17)
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Ability (13)
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Specialist is fine in moderation (like now, where is only for one week).
Specialist for an entire season is boring AF. Remember last year, season 1 where every game was a warrior mirror? Ugh.
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)For me the most interesting format so far is, when players creates all 9 class decks, and 5 of them are banned. So everyone is playing classes that usually are not played in GM. Those are most interesting matches you don't see ever again. In this case Shaman, Hunter, Paladin.
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Everytime I look at this topic, or previous ones I wonder, why there is no Divisions shown? I mean, this it the most important thing in GM for me. How those divisions look like, who is in Division A, who is in B? Instead it's the easiest made topic, copied, nothing more.
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Well I would have added those if Blizzard had either shown the official group A, Group B standings on the broadcast for each region OR if they had updated the final standings on their website in a timely manner.
As it is though, they did neither. THey only showed the standings BEFORE the matches of yesterday and the standings on the website have still not been updated (I just checked).
And this is not a new development cause this has happened before, which is why we always have the current standings in our Thursday preview post, cause by that time we can at least be sure that Blizz have updated everything.
So, I'm sorry they are not included, but we would kind of have to guess at the final results to present them right now and that's not something we are comfortable with.
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Blizzard is so poor in matter of any proper news about Grandmasters. It's like they don't care as well. I don't know if it's only about Hearthstone, or they don't care about other esport games. But it is a shame, really.
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Oh Thijs lost so early.....
Anyway decks are good :P~~~
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Posted Aug 30, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Nice nice
Pls never play specialist again ffs
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)Best format by far.
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Posted Aug 31, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)I agree. It's nice to see some of the tech cards finally get some use. The one potential downside I see is that it will be hard for any weapon-centric or secret-centric decks to make the cut, because they're so easy to tech against.