Hearthstone Esports' Battlegrounds tournament series Lobby Legends continues this weekend with the fourth, Fire Festival-themed iteration. 16 qualified players around the world will fight for the glory and their share of the $50,000 prize pool. You can find everything you need to know below.
Tournament Format
The tournament is divided in two days, which will proceed as follows:
- Day 1: Two 8-player groups will play three rounds of Battlegrounds, and players will earn points based on their finish.
- Winner gets 7 points, runner-up 6 points etc.
- Top 4 players from each group will advance to Day 2.
- Day 2: "Check format" tournament.
- Players will still earn points as in Day 1.
- Tournament winner has to earn more than 20 points after which they have to win a lobby.
For full tournament rules, visit here.
Participants
These are the 16 players who qualified to this Lobby Legends tournament, some of whom are familiar from the previous two events. As usual, PlayHearthstone has published another lighthearted video about the group draw of the event.
Group A
Group B
The four Chinese players were drawn in the groups as CN1-CN4 and which number represents which player has not been communicated yet.
Butterfly
KidFive
MXJF
XunYu
Stream Schedule
In case your timezone isn't listed below, check out the sidebar on the official tournament site. It should display the schedule in your local time.
| West Coast PDT (UTC-7) | East Coast EDT (UTC-4) | Europe CEST (UTC+2) | Korea KST (UTC+9) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 9 | 8:00 | 11:00 | 17:00 | 24:00 |
| July 10 | 8:00 | 11:00 | 17:00 | 24:00 |
Watch Live
You can watch all the action on the official PlayHearthstone YouTube channel or on PlayHearthstone's Twitch channel. In addition to the official English stream with Raven and NinaIsNoob as casters, the players themselves are allowed to stream the event. There will also be a bunch of community co-streams, the full list of which you can find here.
Comments
No free packs? :(
No packs from Battlegrounds tournaments for some reason.
There is some logic to not offer packs for watching Battlegrounds tournament -- Hearthstone packs only help you if you play a constructed format, and presumably, a large part of the audience is focused on playing Battlegrounds. Why give out a reward that many won't use at all?
It's also possible that Blizzard thinks that Battlegrounds doesn't need the artificial boost. It is the most popular format for viewers after all!
On the other hand, giving out packs probably costs them next to nothing, so why not offer them whenever possible?
Finally, you have to remember that the Hearthstone esports scene will change drastically next year. YouTube's exclusivity contract expires at the end of this year, and we're gonna have a whole new structure for competitive play -- both constructed and Battlegrounds -- so it wouldn't surprise me if we had a grand return to Twitch, along with strong promotional support in the form of packs, emotes and cardbacks (think of the Hearthstone Global Games, or the Team Dark/Team Light promotion they did in 2017).