Grandmasters' second season of 2020 kicked off last weekend. The field was already cut in half during midweek off-stream Swiss rounds, and the remaining 24 players entered the weekend hoping to gain foothold for a spot at Division A. You can re-live the action with our spoiler-free post below.
Top 4 Decklists
These were the players that made it into the final day in each region, respectively.
VoDs
Here are the VoDs from the three days of competition. Links to individual match VoDs have been provided in a spoiler below the video if you're only interested in certain matches.
Day 1:
———- Asia-Pacific ———-
———- Europe ———-
———- Americas ———-
Day 2:
———- Asia-Pacific ———-
———- Europe ———-
———- Americas ———-
Day 3:
Results
The results in full, including the preceding off-stream Swiss rounds, can be found here.
Group A
Group B
Top 4
Group A
Group B
Top 4
Group A
Group B
Top 4
Discussion
Poor Uther. After spending the entirety of last Season on the sidelines, Paladin's good early performance in Scholomance gave hope for increased involvement but eventually only seven players decided to include it in their lineup. Warlock reached the same popularity, while the previously popular Demon Hunter and Hunter fell down to 4 and 3 picks, respectively. No Shamans were seen this time either.
On the other end, Druid was the most popular pick with 44 players giving it a go. Priest was not far behind with 42 picks, and Mage got to a respectable 36 selections as well. The latter was especially popular in Europe where everyone brought it. Whereas other regions had a lot of variety in their lineups, Europe was quite unanimous in their picks beyond Mage as well: Druid, Priest, and Warrior could also be found in almost every lineup.
So, how did the newcomers fare this weekend?
In APAC, Alan870806 got the questionable honor of becoming the first player with a positive win-loss ratio (4-3) who didn't make it out of the Swiss. Another newly promoted Taiwanese TIZS wasn't able to do any better, and he was left out of top 8 as well. The third new Grandmaster Bankyugi, on the other hand, had a dream debut as he was able to take home the victory with an "old meta" inspired lineup that included Highlander Mage and Galakrond Rogue. Che0nsu came close to beating him in the final with a lineup that included Soul Fragment Demon Hunter as its most curious inclusion, but was not able to get a win with his Highlander Priest.
In Europe, AyRoK had a debut to forget as he was left last in the Swiss with a mere 1-6 record. Warma fared a little bit better in his first steps in the competition, finishing with a 3-4 record and 10th place overall. Their fellow debutant and compatriot xBlyzes had a more upbeat weekend, as he was able to live up to the high expectations and crown himself as the Europe's winner of the week, blasting through his turns with confidence. Even though Rdu lost the tightly contested final, he can be very pleased with his performance this week considering that he failed to make it out of the Swiss phase every week during Season 1.
Despite having one more new Grandmaster compared to the other regions, Americas wasn't able to make it a weekend full of debutant triumphs. If AyRoK's debut in Europe wasn't successful, the same can be said about Briarthorn who failed to record a single win, and also found himself at the bottom of the table. Another newcomer killinallday got only one place above him, and Rami94 wasn't far from them either. NoHandsGamer was able to make it out of the Swiss but got knocked out in the group phase. In the end it was muzzy who secured the first place with a win over languagehacker in the final. Both players had some curious selections in their lineups, with muzzy having a low-curve but yet not outright aggressive Rogue deck, and languagehacker having the less popular Galakrond Warlock in addition to the only Big Warrior of the weekend in his arsenal.
The biggest talking point of the weekend, however, was the game that was not played. Firebat was disqualified from top 4 and a 3-0 match win awarded to muzzy as he failed to be present when the match began due to it being ahead of the expected schedule. He was also fined $1,000 from his winnings in accordance to the competition rules. The official check-in time was before the match began, but as fellow Americas GM Eddie (who almost also missed his semifinal due to the first semifinal being cancelled) pointed out on Twitter, the check-in times are rarely realistic when compared to actual match times. According to Sottle, extensive efforts were made to reach Firebat but to no avail as he was assumably still sleeping after his very late 5-game Decider match the day before against bloodyface.
Grandmasters will continue next week, and the format will switch to Last Hero Standing. Don't forget to tune in!
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Comments
This was Firebat's fault, but Blizzard should adjust their match scheduling so that each region starts at a set time. Then players would only have to be on call within a region's scheduled time, as you wouldn't have, for instance, NA's starting time decided by another region's playing speed. People in NA probably only want to watch NA matches, and it should be easy for viewers to know when those will happen.
I didn't even watch it, but I'm throwing an opinion about this firebat issue here. I think it was partially Firebat's fault to ignore the check-in ... but a 1000$ fine? Who the hell would want to join a tournament that fines you 1000$ if something wrong happens to you and you don't show up. That's just ridiculous to me, yet again Firebat got a lot of money, maybe he doesnt bother? Am I the only one who thinks 1000$ is too much?
Edit: I thought they held Firebat in a high regard. Wasn't he always gonna be "their first"? Kappa
Yes, he missed a check-in message sent 30 minutes after he finished his match that went 5 hours overtime to 1 am when he had to be on again in less than 12 hours. That's surely all his fault, right? /s
I know that the game was somewhat late the previous night, but still enough time to wake up bf america's start i would think. Feel bad for Firebat as he is my fav grandmaster in that he will often take risks on decks/card inclusions the others wouldn't. Sometimes it works brilliantly, others it flops, but it's part of the appeal.
I think one solution to this would be to actually start the America's GM at the same time every day (11am or 12pm Central time maybe?) regardless of when the other region finishes(the actual gameplay). And then stream the games on a delay as the European region finishes. That way, the players run less of a risk of being stuck playing games at midnight and they will always know when to be available. Blizzard may already be doing something similar to this and not make it known, but it couldn't hurt.
I agree, just have three different streams with fixed start time, one for each region. They could even do some regions during the week.
I'm as big a Firebat fan as anyone, but the rules are pretty clear. And they spent about an hour trying to contact him.
There's definitely room for both sides to improve here. Blizzard should probably figure out a way to keep to an actual schedule, even if something goes long. It's not that hard. The NFL, etc. do it all the time.
And Firebat should probably figure out a way to turn up the volume on his fucking phone so he can hear when Dan, TJ, and Simon are frantically calling him.
It totally sucks for him, in particular the fine. Especially b/c, looking at the rules, it feels more like a $500 fine rather than a $1000. He did show up. The decision "not to participate' was Blizzard's, not Bat's.
He was absolutely going to lose to Muzzy anyway.
Pretty unfortunate what happened to Firebat with all the time zone differences but at least Sottle made the effort to personally contact him. The $1000 fine is quite harsh to, but guess regulations need to be adhered to.
On a lighter topic, Magtheridon made it into GM! :O who would've thought!
I think we need to compare Firebat's issue with the way some sports are organised. In Tennis players need to be ready to play "after" a game is done, that could be 1 hour or even 4. So in that way, Firebat should've been ready when they told you, even though scheduled match was over an hour later.
That being said, the organisation needs to have someone check on the player to know if they are ready to play at least half an hour before the game... not that hard to do.
The Firebat call was still terrible on Blizzards part. Bumping forward a schedule without proper notice, only to dq AND fine someone for missing out? It’s ridiculous..
The problem with the schedule is that unlike previous years, they broadcast APAC, Europe and Americas one after another with a minimal break between, so the starting time for Americas varies a lot depending on how long the other regions took. If Bunnyhoppor had been in the Europe top 4 instead of xBlyzes, Firebat would have been on time ;)
It should be noted that the check-in time did not change. The start time of the match was bumped up, but it was Firebat's decision to ignore the check-in time. I'm not one to side with Blizzard on many issues, but rules are rules. There is certainly an argument to make adjustments here, but until then, just get up in time for the check-in, dude. As stated in other posts, there are plenty of examples in sports where the players have to adjust to a rapidly changing schedule. It's nothing new.
People are not machines though. Firebat played the last match on Saturday and that one went very late, so I don't blame him for ignoring what is usually an unrealistically early check-in time on Sunday.
As a person in the same time zone who watched his final match against Bloodyface (and I believe it's on a delay for viewers), he was done @ 12:30 AM. That is more than enough time to sleep a full 8 hours and check in on time. And let's be honest, many of us go to work on less sleep than that regularly.
FWIW - Blizzard messaged all semi-finalists Saturday night, listing check-in times for participants. He had ten hours to sleep, and apparently chose to sleep one more, accepting but ignoring the pretty obvious consequences. You don't have to be a machine to simply arrange to have someone wake you up, if the matches start earlier than you'd hoped . . . there's honestly nothing "unrealistic" about any of this.
I meant "unrealistic" not as it being impossible to meet, but in the sense of being very theoretical: in Eddie's example, there was 5.5 hours between the check-in time and the actual match.
Yeah, he took a risk by ignoring the formal check-in time and instead estimating when the match would start. But if he had gotten up early and had to play hours later while not being properly rested, he might have lost the match to that instead.