The Round Robin phase of Hearthstone Grandmasters has concluded this past weekend with Week 7 of the competition and with that, six unfortunate players got relegated from Grandmasters. 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.
Shaxy's Combo Priest
With no stakes left (from his side) for his sole match of the weekend, Shaxy was free to bring something unusual with this Priest list. The deck relies heavily on getting a minion stick early and buffing it with cards like Power Infusion and Inner Fire. The deck turned out to be the weakest link of his lineup as he had to try three times before he was able to take a win against SamuelTsao's Druid, relegating him from Grandmasters.
DawN's Bomb Tempo Warrior
Swidz had brought a Bomb variant of the Tempo Warrior every week until now, when he decided to swap to a more regular build. However, three APAC players picked up the Bomb list, likely expecting to see a lot more heavily-drawing decks with the rise of Quest Warlock. While Flurry went with a smaller Bomb package, both DawN and Ryvius made bigger changes to the deck with cards like Bladestorm, Hoard Pillager, and Brawl added in as well. Unsurprisingly, Warriors were banned every time in the trio's matches so the decks' performance remains a mystery.
Viper's Highlander Hunter
As Viper was the only player with guaranteed safety in Europe's Division B, he had the chance to try out something different. Viper decided to tinker with some tech cards, like trying out Alexstrasza in Galakrond Rogue or Archmage Antonidas in Highlander Mage. Arguably his weirdest experiment was adding Grizzled Wizard (and Dragonmaw Sky Stalker) in his Highlander Hunter. The tech choices didn't make a difference in Viper's two Hunter games, going 1-1 against Rdu with it.
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.
——— Asia-Pacific ———
- Alutemu vs che0nsu: VoD
- kin0531 vs Flurry: VoD
- glory vs Ryvius: VoD
- Surrender vs Posesi: VoD
- FroStee vs Tyler: VoD
——— Europe ———
- Bunnyhoppor vs Jarla: VoD
- Viper vs Rdu: VoD
- Felkeine vs Seiko: VoD
- Swidz vs SilverName: VoD
- BoarControl vs Hunterace: VoD
——— Americas ———
- Nalguidan vs justsaiyan: VoD
- Eddie vs Monsanto: VoD
- Zalae vs Fr0zen: Zalae was awarded a 3-0 victory as Fr0zen missed the match.
- PapaJason vs ETC: VoD
Results & Standings
The individual match results can be found on the official site. Final standings within each Division can be found in spoilers below.
Discussion
The high stakes of this week's matches were quite evident as players generally took no risks with their lineups. Everyone brought Demon Hunters and only Viper chose not to bring Warrior. Quest Warlock had a huge surge in popularity after going 11-1 last weekend with 29 players bringing it compared to last week's 10. Priest, in turn, took a hit in popularity as the 15 Galakrond Priests of last week turned into the 1 non-Galakrond list that Shaxy brought. As there were only two Highlander Mages and no Paladins or Shamans (once again), the matches were mostly played with only six classes represented.
The weekend was not happy for six players as they got relegated from Grandmasters. In APAC, despite having a strong start to Round Robin phase with a 2-0 record after the first weekend, Staz found himself from the last place of the final standings. In stark contrast, SamuelTsao had been struggling the whole time but came agonizingly close to dragging himself to (at least temporary) safety. In the end, he was relegated alongside Staz with inferior tiebreakers to FroStee and DawN.
In Europe, everything came down to the wire as all players had the possibility to affect their fate in Sunday's matches. The former world champion Pavel was the player in greatest danger but his victory over Bozzzton gave him a glimmer of hope, only to be taken away in the very next match as Thijs beat Viper and sealed Pavel's fate. Kolento shared a similar story with Staz, being in the 2-0 club after the first week and then failing to record another victory, slowly descending the table to the last place. He had every chance of getting himself out of direct relegation spots in his last match but eventually lost to Rdu 3-0.
In Americas, PapaJason struggled already in the Swiss phase and was unable to turn his fortunes in Round Robin matches either. This meant that his visit to Grandmasters lasted only one Season. PNC's situation may have looked fine before the weekend, but as he was unable to win either of his matches, he fell down to the dreaded auto-relegation spots. Having played in the World Championship last year and almost making it to Division A earlier this season, his relegation was one of the harshest of the Season.
The relegation woes are not over yet, as four players from each region will have to play through a three-match Play-in to determine the third relegated player from each region. It will work as follows:
- Match 1: Bottom 2 of Division A goes head-to-head, the winner is safe.
- Match 2: The loser of Match 1 faces the player who finished 5th in Division B, the winner is safe.
- Match 3: The loser of Match 2 faces the player who finished 6th in Division B, the winner is safe and the loser is relegated.
As can be seen from the format, Division A players have the huge advantage of basically having three tries at getting to safety, while the 6th place in Division B only gives the player one shot to save themselves.
It's not all doom and gloom though. Ten players from each region will be looking forward to next weekend, as the Playoffs will be taking place simultaneously with the relegations. The prize of winning is nothing less than a spot in the 8-player World Championship later this year. Given the significantly larger prize pool and the chance of cementing their name in the Hearthstone history, the players will give it their everything to take home the title of Seasonal Playoff champion.
Grandmasters 2020 Season 1 concludes next week with Relegation and Playoffs matches. Don't forget to tune in!
Comments
Doe anybody know the reason there are so many games off-stream? I mean, fine, you don't have to show the entire swiss every week (also pretty impossible as there are several games going on together), but not showing the preliminary games that determine who qualifies to Playoffs? I womder what's the reasoning there.
I was surprised as well. Granted, there are some placement matches in the mix with a bit less importance, but the Division B pre-Playoffs are a real thing that could've been streamed.
As someone who likes to watch these tournaments even post-twitch drops era, I feel like not streaming is a really bad call.
Happy for Purple. Dude had a rough season.
I think Blizzard need to do more to shake things up during the GMs. The decks each week were identical with very little innovation (why risk things?) and it got very stale towards the end. Glad to see BoarControl win the group A for the EU and fingers crossed for Thijs to make it through the relegation playoffs. Disappointed to see Kolento go.
I think malygos quest warlock was only a thing literally a week ago. Even malygos druid, a viable alternative to spell druid, made it to several lists a weeks ago as well, and who'd ever knew that rogue looked so shaky throughout this week's run. Let's not forget shaxy's priest, which although I thought was absolute garbage, can actually hold its own against questlock and druid, which was probably why he brought that lineup in the first place.
Though we are more or less assured that dhunters and warrior will be there, with a warrior ban 90% of the time, I wouldn't go so far as to say that every week's identical without any change.
Europe division B was pretty exciting, going on to tie breakers to eventually doom Pavel to joining Kolento with automatic relegation. Kinda harsh really, considering that they were virtually tied on points upwards to the very end.
Pavel's tiebreaker situation was indeed brutal. He had an equal tiebreaker with Zhym before Rdu vs Kolento, but if Rdu won, it would bump Zhym's tiebreaker up and relegate Pavel, and if Kolento won, he would surpass both Pavel and Zhym and relegate them both. That's why he really needed Thijs to lose.
Another tight tiebreaker situation is still ongoing in APAC, as FroStee and DawN are tied at 5th and they have to play a separate match to determine who actually gets the 5th place, as it has a huge effect on the relegation bracket I talk about in the last spoiler.
I genuinely didn't know that frostee was tied...at tiebreakers...with dawn. He should be counting his lucky stars; so many things happened on that game with tyler.
I really hope blizzard just review this tiebreaker stuff so its doesnt feel like someone was sent down because they happen to get a lucky win off a high scoring opponent. Especially since those who are already safe might just happen to bring what seemed to be a subpar lineup.
Luckily there was no clear "taking it easy" lineups, apart from maybe Shaxy's Priest which almost saved SamuelTsao. The issue with tiebreakers is that they'll never feel completely fair, yet having to play extra matches between people with the same amount of wins doesn't sound like a good plan either.
I still think the system would need some sort of intermediate esports level, so that the relegated players wouldn't just drop on nothing (so it would feel less awful to go out with such small margins), and the Masters Tour highrollers wouldn't go straight to the elite tier competition. Although with 3 relegations and promotions each Season, you don't even need to highroll: reaching top 8 once is likely going to be good enough in many regions, and Americas might even get one GM that never reached top 8 in this Season's Tours. I'll discuss more of that situation in a future esports post.
At the end of the day, the much hyped Spell Druid seems to be unable to hold its own against the field. Ramping is strong but its payoff seems to be unreliable.
And basically the old-style Control decks seem to be too limited at what they're supposed to be good at.
I wonder how next phases will develop.