The first Season of 2021 continues! With the second Masters Tour event of the year behind us, it's time to return to Grandmasters with another round of Specialist! 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-three Specialist.
- 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. You can find the current points standings here.
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 if you didn't do so during the last two weeks already!
Top 5 Moments with Darroch:
The Curve with Raven:
Hot Takes with TJ and Sottle:
Mull It Over with Jia:
Comments
As a reminder, here is the schedule of events and rewards (including the new Battlegrounds Brawl announced today):
(Those marked with an * are shared rewards, i.e. you can only get 2 Year of the Phoenix packs at most from all those weeks altogether)
Thanks for this. I didn't know there was a battlegrounds drops thing next week.
Well, I certainly did not expect to see both nohandsgamer and tom60229 get eliminated early.
Specialist needs some rework honestly. Its kinda boring to watch, but I guess that's because like the last time nearly everyone is just playing mage. Get ready for the eye rolls on turn 2 all over again.
By L0rinda's calculations, it's 18 Mages, 17 Priests, and 12 other classes for this week...for those that still wish to see who plays when:
Eliminated on Thursday, no stream time:
Deciders on Friday:
Straight to Saturday by winning initial group:
And that meta breakdown is why this Hunter/Warrior main can't be bothered watching.
Especially as the bulk of "other" players are in Asia Pacific, so Europe and NA will be incredibly dull.