Hearthstone's elite competition, Grandmasters, has returned for the first Season of 2021! The players started their journey with off-stream matches already on Thursday with the common goal of gathering enough points to reach the Playoffs. You can find everything you need to know below.
This Week's Format
This year every week will follow the same tournament format, with only the gameplay format changing.
- Best-of-five Conquest with one ban.
- 4 Dual Elimination groups with top 2 players advancing (only Decider matches streamed on Fridays).
- Top 8 play through a single-elimination bracket to decide the winner.
Players will be gaining points based on their performance, and at the end of the seven-week period, top 8 point earners of each region will advance to Playoffs while the bottom 4 will be relegated from Grandmasters.
For the entire competition format for 2021, check out the spoiler below.
Quote From Blizzard Weeks 1-7: Weekly Dual Tournaments
During weeks 1-7, players will compete in a Weekly Dual Tournament format, starting each Thursday, to earn placement in the weekend Top 8 Stage. Players will receive points based on total number of wins each week, which will determine final standings before Playoffs.
- All 16 players in each region will compete against each other off-broadcast in Dual Tournament Group play on Thursday.
- On Friday, the 4 Decider Matches will be played to determine who joins the Top 8 per region, live on YouTube.
- The Top 8 players compete in a single-elimination tournament on Saturday, with the Top 4 advancing to Sunday.
- Gameplay format changes every other week:
- Week 1: Conquest
- Week 2: Conquest
- Week 3: Specialist
- Week 4: Specialist
- Week 5: Last Hero Standing
- Week 6: Last Hero Standing
- Week 7: Conquest
Week 8: Playoffs
The Dual Tournaments lead into Week 8 Playoffs, which will qualify one player per region to receive an invite to the World Championship at the end of the year, while four players from each region will be relegated.
- Top 8 players advance to Playoffs.
- Players 9 – 12 are safe from Relegation but are finished with tournament play for the season.
- Bottom 4 players in each region are automatically Relegated.
- The winner of Playoffs from each region are given a chance to compete in the 2021 World Championship. Season 1 champions retain their invites to the World Championship if they are not Relegated in Season 2. Relegated Champions have their invites passed down to the next eligible player, in their region, from Season 1.
Stream Schedule
You can find the starting times of each region's streams below. The schedule is the same each day.
West Coast PDT (UTC-7) | East Coast EDT (UTC-4) | Europe CEST (UTC+2) | Korea KST (UTC+9) | |
| Asia-Pacific | 2:00 | 5:00 | 11:00 | 18:00 |
| Europe | 7:00 | 10:00 | 16:00 | 23:00 |
| Americas | 12:00 | 15:00 | 21:00 | 4:00 |
You can find all the matches, results, and decklists (including the off-stream matches) on the official tournament site.
Asia-Pacific Grandmasters
Alutemu
Bankyugi
blitzchung
Che0nsu
DawN
GivePLZ
glory
Hi3
lambyseries
posesi
Shaxy
Surrender
TIZS
Tom60229
Tyler
Europe Grandmasters
AyRoK
Bozzzton
Bunnyhoppor
Casie
Felkeine
Frenetic
Jarla
Leta
Rdu
Seiko
Swidz
Viper
Warma
xBlyzes
Zhym
Americas Grandmasters
Briarthorn
DreadEye
Eddie
Fled
Fr0zen
Impact
killinallday
languagehacker
lunaloveee
Monsanto
Muzzy
Nalguidan
NoHandsGamer
Rami94
Tincho
Watch Live
You can watch all the action on the official Hearthstone Esports Youtube channel. Don't forget that you should be following the games on Youtube while logged in for those sweet pack drops!
Comments
Is it just me or was the comment section closed for the Zalea's suspension?
There seems to be no way of knowing for how long we've watched the stream ... and there's no notification of winning a pack either !!
In addition, the packs can take up to 48 hours to be delivered ...
My God, how do we know then if we have already met the requirements to receive the packs? Are we supposed to have faith that YouTube has counted our watching hours correctly and pray that in a couple of days we get something by chance?
I honestly prefer Twitch to YouTube ...
The problem is that it is not possible to know if YouTube has correctly counted the hours we have been watching ...
For example, I have been watching the streaming for 6 hours ... however, I don't know if YouTube has taken note of that time or not.
Also, is it possible for YouTube to know if we are actually watching the streaming in person? We can not trust ... because maybe if we have the streaming in a background window, YouTube is not counting any watching time at all ...
Another danger is what happened to me this morning: streaming suffered a micro cut for a moment due to a problem with my connection and, without my realizing it, the streaming automatically went from playing it "live" to "recorded/delayed" (so that I would not have any interruption during the course of the game and I would not miss anything), obviously not computing any time from that moment on (since if we are not watching the streaming on live, YouTube do not register any watching time)
Are drops working for someone? I'm watching the stream for almost 3 hours now with my connected account but no packs yet.
Just out of curiosity, I have been watching since the start of the stream. (Most matches were quite enjoyable by the way) and just opened hearthstone and did not get any drop. Are this automatic? Are they delivered later?
What is your experience with that?
Same - still no packs.
I assume those granted via Youtube are not automatic and will be granted later. Wish they'd never gone to Youtube in the first place.
Tried watching for a bit but these Mage games are just silly in a competitive format (or any ranked format for that matter).
edit: others experiencing the same
https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/9041-drop-on-youtube
I'm watching since 1234 years, still no pack!
I'll save you the trouble and tell the summary of tournament:
HEY LOSER!
Draw your whole deck for 0 mana, remove all enemy minions, summon random minions and give them +10/10
Cast spells on minions and it's a miracle! (That's not so bad, but it's gonna happen a lot for sure)
Let's get the GM over with and see the nerfs.
Tournaments are usually slightly different in balance than ladder, so we will see.
Based on L0rinda's stats pretty much everyone brought Mage, Paladin, and Rogue so bardozan might be agonizingly close to truth there. But everyone should still watch the streams for at least the 4 hours that give you the two packs.
https://twitter.com/Bunnyhoppor/status/1379915145552531460/photo/1
Probably not.
It is a diverse bunch of players, no?
Well with lunaloveee we now have at least one female participant, that's some progress.
Wasn't Liooon the first female to have won the Grandmasters Global Finals?
My point is that she isn't the first female participant, but that doesn't mean there isn't a significant skew in the gender of the players. That said, this appears to be the case regardless of the game played.