Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 Season 1 - Week 5 Recap

The Round Robin phase of Hearthstone Grandmasters continued last weekend with Week 5 of the competition. You can re-live the action with our post below.

Selected Decklists

As this phase of the competition consists of individual matches rather than mini-tournaments, there are no "winners' decklists" to show; instead, we'll showcase some interesting deck choices from selected players.

Staz's Zoolock

Zoolocks are going through an evolutionary phase (at least in the tournament environment), where multiple players are trying out variable amounts of charge minions, enchanted by the buffing powers of Imprisoned Scrap Imp. Staz decided to include the entire trio of Stonetusk Boar, Bluegill Warrior and Wolfrider into his version, with the deck performing on a 50% winrate (2-2) over the weekend.

Swidz's Scam Mage

Swidz brought the first non-Highlander Mage of the Round Robin phase as he selected this list over the regular singletons. Its nickname comes from the fact that your main gameplan includes cheating out a big spell (Deep Freeze, Power of Creation, or Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron) early with Dragoncaster, not to mention the "scammy" nature of Puzzle Box in itself. The RNG wasn't on Swidz's side against Jarla as his Mage got sweeped, but he was able to pull off the ultimate scam against BoarControl's Highlander Mage in an entertainingly random match.

Languagehacker's Highlander Priest

The rise of Priest also saw the first Highlander version of the Galakrond list as languagehacker chose to give up on the second copies to gain access to the limitless powers of Zephrys the Great and Dragonqueen Alexstrasza. The loss of duplicate board clears turned out to be too much as languagehacker was defeated his only Priest match against bloodyface's Demon Hunter.

VoDs

Here are the match VoDs from the three days of competition in spoilers. I've again embedded a couple of my personal favourite matches from the weekend.

Results & Standings

The individual match results can be found on the official site. Current standings within each Division can be found in spoilers below.

Discussion

Blizzard's newest nerfs come right on time, as the competition was starting to be heavily dominated by Demon Hunters and Warriors, the two classes that everyone brought this week. It remains to be seen how big of an impact the nerfs will have, if any (e.g. most Demon Hunter lists didn't even run Priestess of Fury), but at least they should entice players to try new stuff rather than just stick with the old.

Rogue's bad overall performance last week saw its pick rate dramatically drop especially in Asia-Pacific, where only 3 players brought it this week compared to last week's 14. Each region had their own way of dealing with the need of lineup change (which was relative in the two other regions as 11 players still brought Rogue in both regions). While APAC players picked Zoolock more often than last week, Europe saw a surge in the amount of Face Hunters and Americas in Priests. No one was desperate enough to play Paladin or Shaman this week either.

Result-wise, things are still quite even across all regions. In Asia-Pacific, glory has continued his good performances and has already guaranteed his place in the playoffs with an undefeated 4-0 record, with bloodyface achieving the same feat in Americas. Others will have to continue fighting for their place, although the amount of playoffs-bound players is likely to rise heavily after next week's matches with so many spots available in the Division As. The respective Division Bs are still contested territories, with some of them seeming to become so close that many players are unlikely to learn their fate before the fourth week of Round Robin phase.

Grandmasters continues next week with some more Round Robin matches. Don't forget to tune in!