The third and final Masters Tour event took place last weekend in Bucharest, Romania. Almost 300 hopeful players battled it out over three days for their share of the prize money and, perhaps more importantly, for the prospect of getting invited to Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020.
The Top 8
These were the players that survived the nine Swiss rounds and made it to the final day. The Swiss results in full can be found here.
Brox's Decks
DeadDraw's Decks
Eddie's Decks
hone's Decks
hunterace's Decks
kin0531's Decks
Orange's Decks
totosh's Decks
The Results
This is how the single elimination bracket played out. For full match stats and VoDs, visit the official site.
The Recap
Based on Battlefy's stats (from the Swiss part), there were no runaway classes in terms of winrates as every class could fit within 10% of each other. The top spot was claimed by Rogue (54% WR), slightly edging out Shaman (52%). Warrior completed the above-50 trio with a 51% winrate. A lot of players put their faith on the Light with Priest and Paladin, and were able to pretty much break even with 49% winrates. Mage's performance didn't top the lists this time, falling last with a mere 45% winrate.
How did our newly relegated Grandmasters fare? As you probably noticed, Orange put up a fierce battle to regain his spot but as he needed to win the whole thing, getting eliminated at quarterfinals also meant the end of that dream. The only other former Grandmaster to even make it to Day 2 was Rase, who was able to reach a 5-4 record. Both Feno's and BloodTrail's competition was cut short as they failed to reach the 3-win limit, both ending up at 2-3. Pathra and StrifeCro didn't participate.
Americas was the first region to get their new Grandmasters as the only player to reach top 8 was the already-Grandmaster Eddie. This meant that languagehacker and Empanizado (both 7-2 in Swiss) would be the two players to get the invites to the league. Asia-Pacific followed suit as posesi (7-2 in Swiss), who was already leading the regional list, guaranteed his spot when the APAC players who reached top 8 got paired together for quarterfinals and therefore couldn't both pass him. As kin0531 emerged victorious from that fight, he also secured another spot for Hong Kong in Grandmasters.
For Europe, Felkeine was quite strongly heading to GM as the winner of Masters Tour Seoul and was able to avoid all weird scenarios where he wouldn't get a spot. The fight for the last invite took a bit longer as there were three Europeans in top 8. Orange was eliminated by fellow European totosh, who was in turn eliminated by kin0531, both needing to win the tournament to get in. DeadDraw "only" needed second place and he got agonizinly close, just one game away, but got his Warrior reverse sweeped by Eddie after a rollercoaster match. These results meant that the runner-up of Masters Tour Seoul, Zhym, got the coveted second spot.
The new Grandmasters.
The esports year isn't quite over yet. The next stop: BlizzCon.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
If someone didnt catch the fall of the trophy it is clipped here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAGbxXdzoU
No one gonna mention the made in china trophy?
No because it's not worth mentioning. It's designed to come apart to fit in suitcases.
It's designed to come apart and cause embarrassing moments. AND fit in suitcases.
Eddie was balling out! He read DeadDraw like a children's book. Really impressed by his play.
I like the idea of the League system, where you can weekly root for and follow your favorite players and consistently watch high-level play. I do think that the bottom end of how the GM system works needs some work. IMO, they may be better served by having 2 spots relegated in each regional division instead of 1 each season. This increases the tension/stakes and allows the possibility for more players outside of GM to break through. Additionally, similar to Premier League soccer, a lower tier would be cool to relegate from and to. They don't have to stream those games live on twitch, just maybe have almost like a recap show of the highlight moments for the weekend.
I actually, like the idea of the after show for the GM coverage in general, a weekly highlight type show similar to what you might see on ESPN or NFL network that after each weekend gives a casual fan an overview of how the weekend played out with results, highlights, commentary, on past and future matches, etc and maybe ends with a replay of the best series over the weekend? This would be good as oppose to watching for hours on end to catch all of the action (unless that's your thing, obviously you are free to do that.).
I also, like the idea of alternating formats between weeks. Conquest, Last-Hero-Standing, and even Specialist (i know, boring). You are trying to find the best HS players, so giving them different scenarios that change is a good test of that rather than experimenting for 3-ish weeks, then netdecking the rest of the way with very few changes to the decklists.
Just putting some thoughts out there.
There was a show called "The Curve" which was a recap (more or less) on the HSEsports Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/-4iK6Zfebzs
But they could do it in a bigger fashion...
Some sort of lower tier would definitely be useful, something so that relegated Grandmasters don't just drop into a whole lot of nothingness. It would also serve as a tier where more players that perform well at Masters Tour could be invited into, and from where they could get promoted to GM. You could let the players stream the games themselves as the official channel has a lot of stuff during GM weekends.
It's popular to rip Hearthstone right now (and understandably so), but this was an incredible tournament. Great players throughout the Top 8. GM spots on the line. Hakkar in multiple decks. A completely deserving winner.
Just awesome.
Not everything has to be for everybody. If you don't dig competitive HS, that's cool. You do you.
No, but you're probably commenting on the wrong post to find like-minded people.
BTW, "still having a sour taste in your mouth" over a format that ran for a single season and was so vocally criticized by practically the entire player base including the GMs themselves and was retired as soon as it was possible, suggests it doesn't matter the meta, format or game, you're just not into watching competitive play, and that's OK and very legitimate.