The second Masters Tour event this year took place last weekend, and not quite without complications caused by the current coronavirus situation. In the end, almost 350 hopeful players battled it out in an online tournament over three days for their share of the prize money and for the enticing prospect of getting invited to Hearthstone Grandmasters.
Top 8 Decklists
These were the players that survived the nine Swiss rounds and made it to the final day.
Bankyugi's Decks
Casie's Decks
Liooon's Decks
Nalguidan's Decks
NoHandsGamer's Decks
Thijs's Decks
TNCAnswer's Decks
xBlyzes's Decks
VoD
The stream for the first two days was cancelled, but you can find the VoD of Sunday's Top 8 matches below. Timestamps have been provided (by HSEsports) in a spoiler below the video if you're only interested in certain matches.
Results
You can find out how the Top 8 single-elimination bracket played out within the spoiler below. The preceding Swiss results can be found here in full.
Recap
The stats don't lie: Priest was by far the best performing class of the tournament, heavily carried by Combo Priest's success (59+% winrate in unofficial stats). The only deck to come even close was Aggro Shaman, but Shaman, in general, wasn't a popular pick as it ended up having the least games played of all nine classes. In the other end of the spectrum Warlock was a clear runaway as well, having to settle for 45% winrate. All other classes stayed close to the magical 50% winrate line, with the exception of Druid falling slightly further down to 48%.
Another big story was the Chinese player TNCAnswer who grinded his way to the tournament through massive Chinese online qualifications. After fighting his way through the Swiss with a 7-2 record he went on to eliminate Nalguidan, the only unbeaten player from Swiss, after a crucial misplay from the Argentinian. He then went on to avenge Liooon's fate and advanced to finals. His Paladin, which had been struggling the entire Sunday, would eventually be his downfall, with xBlyzes reverse sweeping it for the title.
The esports year will continue with Masters Tour Jönköping in June.
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Comments
Its really terrible that we dont actually get to watch the pros play. Hopefully this virus goes away in time for the next masters tour.
This shouldn't affect grandmasters. Hopefully not. I've been looking forward to it for half a year now.
youtube + corona is killing competitive hs they need to move back to twitch asap
As much as I believe both factors were at play - along with last minute rescheduling and relocation of the event, combine with uncommon casting coverage - it is hard to assess any patterns in such an unprecedented time.