The second Grandmasters Season of 2021 has begun! The players started their questing in Stormwind 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.
Note that the section discussing gameplay format is no longer accurate. Weeks 2, 4, and 6 will be played using Last Hero Standing and every other week will use Conquest.
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.
This Week's Pack Drops
New section because I'm sure this is the thing that interests people. As speculated, the pack distribution has been confirmed to be the same than last season:
- Grandmasters Week 1: United in Stormwind (max 2 packs)
- Grandmasters Weeks 2 - 7: Year of the Phoenix (max 2 packs)
- Grandmasters Playoffs: United in Stormwind (max 2 packs)
As this is the opening Week of the season, everybody should be watching the stream to get their Stormwind packs. Don't miss your chance!
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
AlanC86
Alutemu
Bankyugi
blitzchung
Che0nsu
DawN
GivePLZ
glory
grr
lambyseries
okasinnsuke
posesi
Shaxy
Surrender
TIZS
trahison
Europe Grandmasters
Bozzzton
Bunnyhoppor
Casie
Felkeine
Floki
Frenetic
Gaby
J4YOU
Jarla
Leta
Rdu
Seiko
Viper
Warma
xBlyzes
Americas Grandmasters
CaelesLuna
DimitriKazov
DreadEye
Eddie
Eggowaffle
Fled
Fr0zen
killinallday
languagehacker
lunaloveee
McBanterFace
Monsanto
Muzzy
Nalguidan
NoHandsGamer
Rami94
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
I left it playing during the morning and now I just got my 80 dust.
Only 3.6K watching. It's still not popular on YT I guess.
They still do a pretty poor job of advertising it, too (aside from YT's flaws when it comes to live streaming and community engagement). If they really cared, they could've sneaked in a small in-game notification. It gets a small mention on the Battle.net client, but you would need to scroll down for it while other past news appear at the top.
Aren't people at work on a Friday morning ? ^^
Thanks so much for these articles. I'd have totally missed this otherwise.
<3 OOC
Does anyone know (or remember) whether the free pack drops are distributed right after watching the HS streams every 2 hours? I honestly cannot remember how it went with previous GM seasons. I know that Twitch drops are distributed immediately after claiming them.
EDIT: After reading the old comments of the referenced thread, it seems that the Youtube drops are NOT distributed immediately. Bummer!
I've watched 3 hours now, just logged in to Hearthstone and got my first pack. It should be quite fast.
I have the stream opened in 1 of my browser tabs since the stream started (showed the countdown initially) and no free pack has arrived yet in-game. I guess it does not happen for everyone simultaneously. I am in EU region by the way (added remark for comparison).
There's this weird theory (unconfirmed) that the stream have to be open and active, meaning you cant just leave it in one tab and work on another. Just for added good measure, dont mute youtube, mute the browser instead.
I personally watch on and off, got my pack. 2 more hours to go.
It's very much confirmed, and you only need to pay attention to two things: make sure the "Live" button next to the sound icon is active (that is showing as a red dot; if it's turned grey, you are out of sync with the stream and it's not counting) - you are right in that muting YouTube seems to also eventually turn off the "live" part in your tab.
I tend to switch and minimize tabs a lot otherwise and that on its own doesn't seem to immediately desync and turn me off the "live" mode, but I like to check every once in a while it's active when hunting packs.
The other thing is just to check one is watching on the correct YouTube account (classified as personal and not brand, for some reason) and that the "connected" text shows right next to the upvove/downvote buttons.
Thanks! Since there is still plenty of time to test this unconfirmed theory, I will now open a new browser and leave it open as the only active tab in the background and keep it unmuted. I did not have it muted prior by the way.
Did you receive your first free pack already?
Yup got it, one down one more to go.
Finally received my first free pack.
Not really sure what fixed it though, because I tried a few more things simultaneously like disconnecting and reconnecting my battle.net account with YouTube again.
I also had to reinstall HS on mobile because of the go to Google play store infinite loop bug.
EDIT: Second free pack also received. Closed the stream immediately afterwards.
Awh, poor GM streams. No added love beyond the packs.
Well, I normally would watch some matches in the weekend. Especially if one of my favorite GM's is playing.
However, the current early meta is like playing solitaire which is not really enjoyable IMO.
If its any consolation, I think this is perhaps one of the better GM weeks Ive had the pleasure of watching (and listening because its hearthstone) in quite a long time. I think its because the meta is so filled with combo decks that no one knows what to ban, and unlike other metas we're seeing only warlock being the class everyone is bringing.
Mage is busted like hell, as expected. But not many GM are bringing it, perhaps because nearly everyone is teching against mage. Cult neophyte being pasted everywhere.
Will certainly be watching until the end. TJ and Lorinda actually being good for a change, though it did took about an hour for them to start going.
Very much so. I may not be a fan of the general power level of Warlock/Mage (funnily enough I kind of like Lifesteal DH with the quest, whereas I used to loathe the Skull version and the archetype), but there have certainly been a lot of interesting, high level matches. I learned a lot about how to play these things, especially when it's Europe GMs and Sottle offers insights.
The last few times it was granted after two hours. But it did made us wait 3 days the first time it was implemented.