The fifth Masters Tour event this year took place last weekend with over 320 hopeful players battling it out in an online tournament over three days for their share of the prize money and the enticing prospect of getting an invitation to Hearthstone Grandmasters. You can re-live the action with our spoiler-free post below.


Top 8 Decklists

These were the players that survived the nine rounds of Swiss and made it to the final day.

Show Spoiler

cagnetta99's Decks

0 1390013900 342 0
0 1106011060 375 0
0 1002010020 464 0

DreadEye's Decks

0 90809080 588 0
0 1298012980 441 0
0 1074010740 396 0
0 72007200 501 0

Dreivo's Decks

0 1026010260 378 0
0 1364013640 327 0
0 62406240 428 0
0 1714017140 381 0

Frenetic's Decks

0 93609360 529 0
0 1874018740 482 0
0 1390013900 452 0

lambyseries's Decks

Liooon's Decks

0 47804780 382 0
0 76807680 461 0
0 1066010660 383 0
0 1546015460 439 0

Nightning's Decks

0 91609160 542 0
0 95609560 436 0
0 1040010400 474 0

XiaoDai's Decks

0 65606560 430 0
0 1546015460 406 0
0 79607960 443 0
0 31403140 468 0


VoD

You can find the VoDs of the three days of competition below.

Day 1:

Day 1 Match VoDs
  • glory vs hunterace - Swiss Round 1 VoD
  • Kalaxz vs blitzchung - Swiss Round 1 VoD
  • Rdu vs che0nsu - Swiss Round 2 VoD
  • Gaby vs Harash - Swiss Round 2 VoD
  • Monsanto vs jrsConley - Swiss Round 2 VoD
  • Swiss Round 3 VoD
  • Swiss Round 4 VoD
  • Swiss Round 5 VoD

Day 2:

Day 2 Match VoDs
  • Swiss Round 6 VoD
  • Swiss Round 7 VoD
  • Swiss Round 8 VoD
  • Swiss Round 9 VoD

Day 3:

Day 3 Match VoDs
  • Quarterfinal 1: Nightning vs Frenetic (VoD)
  • Quarterfinal 2: lambyseries vs Liooon (VoD)
  • Quarterfinal 3: XiaoDai vs DreadEye (VoD)
  • Quarterfinal 4: Dreivo vs cagnetta99 (VoD)
  • Semifinal 1 (VoD)
  • Semifinal 2 (VoD)
  • Final  (VoD)


Results

You can find out how the Top 8 single-elimination bracket played out within the spoiler below. The preceding Swiss results can be found here in full.

Top 8 Results


Recap

Warrior was by far the most popular class in the tournament, which came as no surprise to the players as there were also multiple lineups hard-targeting Bomb Warrior and many others having at least some weapon-counters. These strategies paid off as Warrior was left with the worst winrate of all classes (45%, based on Battlefy's stats). Druid was the runner-up in popularity, with almost one third of them being Malygos variants. The class also performed the best out of the top 3 with 52% winrate. Mage was left the third with a small margin, and the rise of the Turtle continued with one fourth of the Jaina-faithful opting for Tortollans over Tempo. The overall class winrate was slightly below 50%, with Demon Hunter proving to be a particularly tricky matchup.

Blizzard successfully pulled the rug from under Gul'dan's feet with the latest nerfs, as Warlock crashed straight into the company of Paladins and Shamans in popularity. Despite (or potentially because of) the low pick rate of the latter two, they both reached good winrates, with Paladin being the best of the bunch with 54% and Shaman reaching 52% on the back of the hard-counter matchup with Warrior. Warlock was not as fortunate and was forced to settle with 47%.

Result-based Discussion

Europeans continued to dominate the top end of the result sheet. Both Frenetic and cagnetta99 had to beat a fellow European to get to the semifinals, where both took convincing 3-0 victories over their respective opponents. In the end it was Frenetic, the only top 8 player with a "mere" 7-2 record from Swiss, who continued the impressive form and took another 3-0 victory for the title. In every other region this would've meant a guaranteed Grandmaster spot, but Europe will make Frenetic wait if he'll become the first Spanish Grandmaster or not.

Frenetic was not the only one making a big leap towards a place in GM. In APAC, lambyseries' semifinal spot put him on the top of the list of contenders, and there are not many scenarios where he wouldn't get in the elite competition. XiaoDai's nervy quarterfinal loss meant that he'll need to wait for the results of Masters Tour Madrid in late October to know his fate. In Americas, DreadEye found himself at a similar position than lambyseries: thanks to his top 4 finish, he's leading the region's prize money table and only very specific results can deny him a spot. Not a bad Masters Tour debut from the American.


Grandmasters 2020 Season 2 continues next week. Don't forget to tune in!