A Special F2P Friendly Hearthstone Mercenaries Tournament With Prizes is Near - The Pauper Open From 'The Fighting Pit Podcast' Crew

As it happens, there is another unusual tournament for our fledgling game mode scheduled to take place later today, quite unlike what we have seen before. It's perhaps not the most fortunate timing with the big World Championship broadcast around the corner garnering most of the public attention, but it's also one unique alternative presented for avid Mercenaries players out there - so it would be a shame not to highlight the special event at least in passing. 

The Pauper Open arrives courtesy of The Fighting Pit Podcast people: that is Tangster, ZombiesGoNomNom, and Mullahoo. If you are somewhat familiar with the Mercenaries community and at least occasionally visit social media, you might recognize the names as some of the regulars within the scene. Their show tends to focus on "the competitive PvP aspects of Hearthstone Mercenaries", and by extension everything adjacent to such topics. 

The idea here is to present something that would be more accessible to the player base at large - especially those on a budget and without infinite time on their hands to be able to grind tasks and coins en masse. As such, all Legendary Mercs and all Task 7 Equipment are BANNED. That naturally eliminates any of the usual PvP ladder strategies and encourages extra creativity when it comes to putting everything together. 

Quote From The Fighting Pit Podcast

Legendaries and Task 7s are BANNED?! The Fighting Pit Podcast's first tournament, a PAUPER Mercenaries Open, is Dec. 18th, 7pm EST @ http://twitch.tv/mullahoo (with prizes to top 4!)

Format, Schedule, and Rewards

Everything is set to take off at 7 pm EST (4 pm PST, 1 am CET). This is being hosted on the Americas server, so unfortunately anyone without a good all-rounded Mercenaries collection over there wouldn't be able to participate (but the viewing experience is still available for all of us!). Otherwise the event is open to anyone willing to try their chances:

• The Battlefy page contains all the usual tournament info and the way to sign up.
• As mentioned above, Legendary Mercenaries and Task 7 Equipment are BANNED (bringing a Legendary character means instant disqualification; using Task 7 equip results in a game loss with an opportunity to correct the mistake afterwards). 
• There is a full ban list available, so a quick word search is helpful when double checking and in doubt. 
• Best of Three Double Elimination. Each player brings a core team of 6 Mercenaries with a 2 Mercenary sideboard. Players must use their core 6 for game 1 and may switch with their sideboard for games 2 and 3. Equipment may also be swapped between games.
• Players must join No Pros Here Discord as the tournament channel will be used for day-of coordination.
• The action will be covered on Twitch, as hosted by Mullahoo and ZombiesGoNomNom.

If anyone is still unfamiliar with Battlefy, it's a really simple process - you can sign up with your Battle.net account (it's officially authorized by Blizzard and being used for various Masters Tour Qualifiers and events over a few years now, meaning it's all completely safe). There is no specific support for the Mercenaries mode there, but the registration form allows to manually add Mercs names, and keep editing the answers up until the starting time (if prompted to add a Standard deck code at step nr 4, the "Skip" button is readily available). The check-in happens 30 min prior. 

There are some nice prizes up for grabs as well. The top 4 competitors will get their choice of the following from the prize pool. 1st place will have the first pick, then 2nd, and so on:

• 15 Mercenaries Packs
• 7 Mercenaries Packs
• 1 Month of Discord Nitro
• 1 Month of Vicious Syndicate Gold

It all looks very worthwhile, on top of a creative fun format more geared towards players on a budget and with limited time for developing their Mercenaries. Pauper as a term - aside from its literal meaning - has actually originated within Magic the Gathering, just like several other card game words we tend to use regularly. It meant limiting the accessible card rarity pool (in case of Magic, to commons), and proved to be quite popular. 

If you'd like to have an added audio explanation from one of the minds behind this Mercenaries tournament, you can look here: 

Lineups & All The Rest

There is a handful of people signed up at the moment of writing (Battlefy registrations tend to spike during the final few hours or even minutes), and it's safe to say you shouldn't be expecting large crowds - the game mode is still fairly new, which means it's much harder to maintain an eligible Mercenaries collection than it is to keep a few viable decks for Standard lying around, for example. I've talked before how it's possible to do so for Ranked even on two separate regions with only moderate time investment, but I could never imagine achieving this with the Mercenaries the way things currently are. Grindy tasks aren't too player friendly. 

That's all the more reason to step in and give it a try if you are able to do so yourself! You shouldn't worry about not having maxed every single ability or Task 2/Level 30 equipment on your Mercs of choice - not everyone out there is likely to have done so either. But also don't expect much success if they are way too underdeveloped. 

As for potential lineups, that's where some creative team building can shine. Without Legendaries and certain powerful equipment pieces in the mix, various other strategies become more accessible as less familiar synergies are explored. The Fighting Pit crew has actually shared a few theorycrafts to start hopeful contenders off:

And they also talked about the tournament, the recent Mercenaries ladder meta, MMR changes, and more in their most recent podcast episode, should any of that be of interest: