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How to transform conquest into a great format

Hello, Rdu here, professional player for G2 Esports, and today i want to present you an idea that 2 guys in my twitch chat had about what the 'best' Hearthstone format would look like.

First, this video is a basic explanation on how conquest works, which is the current format for the HCT tour.

If both players have 3 decks for a BO5 conquest match, there are a total of 9 possible match-ups between the 6 decks that the players brought. Since the series is a BO5, only 5 out of the possible 9 match-ups will be played. Blind picking is the best unexploitable strategy for conquest in order to avoid having a pattern that your opponent can abuse. This can lead to situations where one player gets all the favorable match-ups which gives them an unfair advantage from the start.

The other popular format played is Last Hero Standing which almost eliminates the randomness in pick order except in game 1, which sometimes is enough to still give an unfair advantage to the player that wins the 'dice roll'.

Now , let's get to the suggested format, which takes the best aspects out of both formats and eliminates most of the negative aspects: Both players bring 3 decks of different classes. There is no ban of a specific class but each player will get to ban 2 out of the possible 9 match-ups; For example you can bring Freeze Mage in your lineup and only have to ban the Mage vs Warrior match-up instead of bringing Freeze Mage in strategies that already ban warrior. If both players would ban at the same time, there would be situations where they could both ban the same match-up. To eliminate that, the players will take turns when banning the match-ups. Since each player is almost always going to ban his own bad match-ups, there won't be any overlapping bans so it doesn't matter which player bans first. Since the order that the 5 remaining match-ups are played in is irrelevant, the only relevant aspect is what player gets to have the coin 3 times and who has it twice which can be determined by who has the higher seeding in the tournament.

To make it easier to understand, here is an in-depth example of how the pick/ban stage would work out:

• Bob brings Warlock, Rogue, and Warrior

• Jack brings Warlock, Priest, and Druid

Here are all the possible match-ups with the 6 decks they brought:Bob's Warlock vs Jack's Warlock, Bob's Warlock vs Jack's Priest, Bob's Warlock vs Jack's Druid, Bob's Rogue vs Jack's Warlock, Bob's Rogue vs Jack's Priest, Bob's Rogue vs Jack's Druid, Bob's Warrior vs Jack's Warlock, Bob's Warrior vs Jack's Priest, Bob's Warrior vs Jack's Druid.

Bob has the higher seed so he gets to ban and pick first:

Ban Phase

• Bob bans his Warrior vs Jack's Druid
• Jack bans his Druid vs Bob's Warlock
• Bob bans his Warlock vs Jack's Warlock

• Jack bans his Priest vs Bob's Rogue

  The 5 remaining match-ups after the bans are: Bob's Warlock vs Jack's Priest, Bob's Rogue vs Jack's Warlock, Bob's Rogue vs Jack's Druid, Bob's Warrior vs Jack's Warlock, Bob's Warrior vs Jack's Priest.

In total, Bob has to play Warlock once, Rogue twice and Warrior twice while Jack has to play Priest twice, Warlock twice and Druid once, mixing the good aspects of LHS and Conquest and creating a good variety that is not random like in conquest or annoying like in LHS where you can often see the same class 3-0.

Pick Phase

• Bob picks his Rogue vs Jack's Warlock and decides to have the coin
• Jack picks his Druid vs Bob's Rogue and decides to have the coin, denying Bob the coin on Rogue(super important for the class)
• Bob picks his Warlock vs Jack's Priest and decides to have the coin
• Jack picks his Warlock vs Bob's Warrior and decides to have the coin

• Bob picks his Warrior vs Jack's Priest and decides to start first since that match-up is going to fatigue and you don't want to draw any extra cards

  This format may seem difficult to implement but there are 2 ways for it to be done:

1) This is unlikely to happen and hard to execute, but Blizzard can design a tournament mode in which the players select 3 decks when they join the tournament and are not allowed to make any changes to them until they are eliminated. When a tournament round starts, all the 9 match-ups are listed in the middle of the screen, with their In-game name before the class(e.g: Bob's Warlock) to make it simpler to read and to cut from the confusion. From this you can initiate the pick/ban phase for match-ups and to decide who gets the coin/starts first.

2) A simpler thing that Blizzard can do is to make their own version of a tournament site(e.g:Strivewire/Battlefy) which would help tournament organizers and admins to run tournaments without having to manually ask the players for their picks/bans. They don't even need to make their own site for this to happen, they could just assist the current tournament sites in making the interface required for a smooth pick/ban experience for the players. In addition, they would need to change how the current way the coin is being distributed when a challenge is initiated to always alternate the choice of coin/starting first before every game, starting with the player that initiates the challenge(the player with the higher seed in the bracket).

Tl;dr: I can't make a short written explanation, you'd have to read it to understand everything about how the suggested format would operate. I tried to explain it in as much detail as possible.

Thanks to Pandamic and Mofawca for coming up with some of the ideas and to GreenSheep for helping me with editing and formatting. If this idea is liked by the community, I will try to somehow make a tournament with this format to showcase it.

You can follow me on twitter and twitch if you want to be notified about other content like this, thanks for reading :) .

P.S. : If the coin thing is too hard to implement, it would also be ok-ish to just play the 5 games as it is right now and have the coin randomised every time; but i think it would be a great addition to the friendly battles in HS to give players the option of choosing if they want coin or not after they select the deck they want to use.

Edit: Photo explaining the pick and ban between Bob and Jack made by /u/rybicki : http://imgur.com/a/DggmC

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