Hearthstone's elite competition, Grandmasters, begins this weekend with Season 1 in an all-new format. A total of 48 players from three regions will start their 8-week journey which will see three players from each region relegated and one from each to advance to Global Championships. You can find everything you need to know below.
Outs and Ins
Last year's Grandmasters ended almost half a year ago, so let's do a quick recap on the relegated players. All three regions were divided into two groups, and the player ending on that dreaded last spot in each group was relegated. In addition to these six players, Amnesiac also left Grandmasters as he quit competitive Hearthstone.
The players we won't be seeing again this season.
The players to fill the shoes of these competitors were chosen based on their performance on last year's Masters Tour events. The new faces are
- Empanizado (Mexico), languagehacker (Canada), and PapaJason (USA) for Americas.
- kin0531 (Hong Kong) and posesi (Japan) for Asia-Pacific.
- Felkeine (France) and Zhym (France) for Europe.
The New Format
This is a long one, so I'll let Blizzard themselves explain.
Quote From Blizzard Weeks 1-3: Swiss into Group Stage
During weeks 1-3, players will compete in matches in a Swiss format on each Wednesday and Thursday to earn placement in the weekend Group Stage. Points from these weekend rounds will be used to determine two Divisions in each region for round-robin weeks. Different gameplay format each week.
- The 16 players in each region will compete against each other off broadcast in 7 Swiss rounds during the week.
- On Thursday, after Swiss play has completed, the field is cut in half based on standings and the Top 8 per region will play in a dual tournament format live on YouTube across Friday and Saturday, with the top-4 finals played out on Sunday.
- Gameplay format changes every week:
- Week 1: Conquest with 1 Ban
- Week 2: Four Deck Last Hero Standing with 1 Ban
- Week 3: Ten Deck Conquest with 6 Bans
Weeks 4 - 7: Round Robin
Weeks 4 –7 will consist of round-robin group play within the two divisions in each region—much like the previous seasons of Grandmasters.
- Following weeks 1-3, players will be sorted into two divisions based on their points standings. Division A is comprised of the top-8 point-earning players, and Division B will be point total ranks 9-16.
- The two divisions compete in round-robin group play over four weeks. The standings at the of conclusion of these weeks will determine who will go on to compete in Playoffs, and who will be relegated from Season 1.
- The format will stay consistent during round-robin weeks:
- Bo5 Conquest (4 decks, 1 ban)
Week 8: Season 1 Playoffs
Round-robin weeks lead into Week 8 Playoffs, which will qualify one player per region to the World Championship at the end of the year, while three players from each region will be relegated.
- Top 6 from Division A automatically make it into Playoffs.
- Top 4 from Division B compete in a play-in round to determine who will join the top 6 from Division A in a dual tournament bracket for Playoffs.
- The 7th- and 8th-placed players in Division B at the close of round robin are automatically relegated from Season 1 of Grandmasters.
- Final relegation will be determined via a 3-match Play-In involving the 7th- and 8th-placed from Division A, and 5th- and 6th-placed from Division B.
- The winner of Playoffs from each region will qualify to the Hearthstone World Championships later this year.
TL;DR What you should know for this week is that when the matches are streamed, the Grandmasters have already played 7 rounds of Swiss in each region, respectively. What we get to see is the Dual Elimination bracket for the Top 8 of each region. The format of the weekend tournament changes every week, and we'll open with the classical Conquest format.
Stream Schedule
Blizzard hasn't exactly shared a lot of information regarding the schedule. All we know for certain is that APAC will start the games at 2 AM PDT (5 AM EDT/11 AM CEST/6 PM KST). If they're keeping the schedule from last year, it'll look like this:
- Asia-Pacific starts at 5 AM EDT (11 AM CEST, 2 AM PDT, 6 PM KST)
- Europe starts at 10 AM EDT (4 PM CEST, 7 AM PDT, 11 PM KST)
- Americas starts at 2 PM EDT (8 PM CEST, 11 AM PDT, 3 AM KST)
The matches, results, and decklists can be found on the official tournament site.
Asia-Pacific Grandmasters
Alutemu
Che0nsu
DawN
Flurry
FroStee
Ryvius
SamuelTsao
Shaxy
Staz
Surrender
Tom60229
Tyler
blitzchung
glory
kin0531
posesi
Europe Grandmasters
BoarControl
Bozzzton
Bunnyhoppor
Casie
Felkeine
Jarla
Kolento
Pavel
Rdu
Seiko
SilverName
Swidz
Viper
Zhym
Americas Grandmasters
ETC
Eddie
Empanizado
Firebat
Fr0zen
Gallon
Justsaiyan
Monsanto
Muzzy
Nalguidan
PNC
PapaJason
Purple
Zalae
languagehacker
Watch Live
You can watch all the action on the official Hearthstone Esports Youtube channel.
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Comments
Will this be getting drops?
No packs for watching Grandmasters, I'm afraid.
Shame. Hope its a good compo.
Languagehacker looking mighty dapper in his picture
I should probably change that to make the images more uniform now that Blizzard has put up the official Grandmasters portraits.
Change all of them except languagehacker
There's already very few hearthstone tournaments, and what with this virus around we're basically stuck at home for most periods, and then the idea is to ensure that we get to watch only the very final moments of the entire thing?
That's a bad move in my opinion. I was looking forward to grandmasters since DoD, and to find out now that its no longer a round robin throughout and that I don't get to watch the majority of the matches. Is twitch charging you to broadcast games?
Killed all the hype for grandmasters for me. I'd rather they show this instead of that inn-vitational.
Also, what happened to that self deck ban concept that came with conquest the last time round? I thought that was a good idea instead of regular conquest.
EDIT: Okay, I've gone around searching a little. It appears that youtube is still scheduled to broadcast the grandmasters. Not really sure what is happening here, but it may yet be some hope that we can still watch some parts of the grandmasters aside from the final brackets.
Hoping we can watch all of it, fingers crossed, even if they're not live.
From Week 4 onwards they'll stream all the games. Just the three initial weeks have the Swiss portion that won't be streamed.
Its the return of the Twitch Drops - Yay!
Blizzard signed a contract with Google to broadcast their eSports on YouTube. Perhaps disappointed by the lower viewer numbers, it seems they moved all their promotional streams back to Twitch, but I don't think they'll be able to do that for Grandmasters until the contract expires.
So.. I think I can summarize this season layout withone word . What??
I am surprised to see that I actually recognize quite a few of the Europe and Americas GMs, but am only familiar Blitzchung from the Asia-Pacific list.
Tom60229 is a former World Champion, while Surrender and Tyler have won HCT events. They're not familiar outside their region as streamers perhaps, although Tyler does stream in English.