The first Grandmasters Season of 2021 culminates on the Playoffs week! Top 8 players from each region are fighting over the coveted spot at the World Championship later this year. 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.
- Two Dual Elimination groups with top 2 players advancing.
- The two top ranked players from each region get an automatic win for their first match.
- The 7th and 8th ranked players from each region get an automatic loss for their first match.
- Top 4 play through a single-elimination bracket to decide the winner.
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
Europe Grandmasters
Americas Grandmasters
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!
Top 5 Moments with Darroch:
The Curve with Raven:
Hot Takes with TJ and Sottle:
Mull It Over with Jia:
Comments
And the final reminder, here is the schedule of events and rewards:
(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)
Quite interested to see decklists this time. Players have had less than 24 hours to experiment with the new cards, so it's likely they'll stick to old decks
On a quick glance Mutanus the Devourer has found its way to many control lists, as has Kresh, Lord of Turtling. Definitely haven't seen all the lists though, maybe there's even more.
I think they missed an opportunity with the entrance sound for Kresh, Lord of Turtling.
"I AM KRESH, I AM A TURTLE!!!!"
For those that wish to see who plays when:
*Starts from the winners' bracket **Starts from the losers' bracket
Group A of each region on Friday:
Group B of each region on Saturday:
Top 4 matches on Sunday.
Oh and this week we should have new YouTube drops finally... 2 more packs
Got Barak Kodobane in my first pack, he was on my shortlist to craft so I'm happy!
I got TWO legendaries from my first pack (Overlord Saurfang and Varden Dawngrasp), which has happened to me maybe once before. These were some lucky packs then.
Yep! Time to have a tab on mute in the background of everything else!