The Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) began on March 23, 2017 in the Bahamas and is the first Championship event of 2017.
Fans can catch all the action live over on the official Hearthstone Twitch channel, with a host of the top stars taking part, along with their best decks.
The Winter Championship uses the Conquest format, meaning a best-of-seven matches format and the ability for each player to ban one of their opponent’s classes — meaning competitors must bring five different classes total.
There’s a total of sixteen Hearthstone players taking part at the two-stage tournament in the Bahamas.
“The group stage breaks the players up into four groups of four. Each group plays out in double elimination format. The top two players from each group then advance to a single elimination playoff bracket stage,” a message from Blizzard explains.
“Players are competing for a $ 250,000 prize pool and a spot in the Hearthstone World Championship. Regardless of their home region, the top four finishers in the tournament will qualify for the 2017 Hearthstone World Championship.
“This will also be the only event in this HCT cycle played using the current Standard format as part of the Year of the Kraken, as the Spring season and the remainder of the 2017 Championship Tour will fall within the Year of the Mammoth.”
Previous Hearthstone World Championships players included in this year’s event include: Greensheep, Neirea, OmegaZero, Tarei, Yulsic, and the defending world champion, Pavel.
Blizzard have confirmed that the European region statistically has the most difficult path to qualification (requiring the most HCT points to compete in their playoff tournament).
They face some of the best players from China — like OmegaZero, who won China’s 2016 Gold Series grand finals.
The full list of top Hearthstone players includes:
- DocPwn
- DrJikininki
- Fr0zen
- Tarei
- Lovelychook
- Lvge
- Omegazero
- WeXHope
- Yulsic
- b787
- Palmblad
- SamuelTsao
- Pavel
- ShtanUdachi
- Neirea
- GreenSheep
James “Greensheep” Luo of the United Kingdom headlines Group D and is the only player from the UK at the tournament, favouring an Aggro Shaman, Jade Druid, Pirate Warrior, Tempo Mage and Water Rogue builds.
Blizzard have confirmed that all deck lists are now locked in and shared, with no two players are running the same five deck styles.
The only two players who ended up bringing similar rosters are DrJikininki and Lvge, who are both running comparable Priest and Warrior decks, but noticeably distinct Rogue, Shaman, and Warlock decks.
“Europe is broadly avoiding Priest, with only Pavel bringing a Dragon Priest deck,” Blizzard add.
“The other European folks are erring toward winning early with Shaman or late with Druid. By contrast, all the Americas player brought a variant on Reno Warlock, and every Chinese player brought a version of Miracle Rogue featuring Questing Adventurers for the powerful swing turns they can pull off.
“Some of the regions also have unique secret weapons: Asia-Pacific players are the only ones bringing the Stealth-heavy Rogue list style that took Dwayna (a.k.a. TheBasedGod) to the top of the ranked leaderboard in February.”
We’ll have more on the Hearthstone Winter Championships as they unfold this weekend.
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