Hearthstone World Championship 2021
It is that time of the year when players from all over the world gather at a single tournament in order to duke out their skills in order to see who will wear the crown as the year’s champion. While this is certainly one of the most exciting events in Hearthstone to watch, it is also the most exciting one from the esports betting perspective as well.
When does the event take place?
The Hearthstone World Championship takes place from Saturday, December 18th to Sunday, December 19th. It starts in the early morning at 8:00 AM for everyone who is in the PST zone, which might be a bit too early, but for those who are in Europe or Asia, you will probably be awake to tune in from the very beginning of the event.
During the event, everyone who tunes in to the live stream will receive a pack from the Fractured in Alterac Valley for the first two hours of watching, and another pack for the following two. Of course, the time watching can be accumulated through multiple sittings, or you can just leave the stream open on your device.
Who are the qualified players?
Qualified players this year are the ones who managed to win either Season 1 or Season 2 of the Grandmaster Championship that was held earlier throughout the year, or for China, the winners of the Gold Series. Players you will be able to watch in the most anticipated Hearthstone esports event are:
- Facundo “Nalguidan” Pruzo – 2021 Grandmasters Season 1 Americas Champion
- Kyle “McBanterFace” Spigelman – 2021 Grandmasters Season 2 Americas Champion
- David “Frenetic” Neila Quiñones – 2021 Grandmasters Season 1 Europe Champion
- Gabriel “Gaby” Jeanne – 2021 Grandmasters Season 2 Europe Champion
- Wataru “Posesi” Ishibashi – 2021 Grandmasters Season 1 Asia-Pacific Champion
- Sato “glory” Kenta – 2021 Grandmasters Season 2 Asia-Pacific Champion, 2020 World Champion!
- Huang “Xiaobai” Dehui – 2021 Gold Series Season 1 China Champion
- Zhu “Tianming” Xinyu – 2021 Gold Series Season 2 China Champion
Format and brackets
The format used at this year’s Hearthstone World Championship 2021 is going to be Standard + Conquest. Standard probably needs no introduction, as it is the official way to qualify for World Championship since it was first introduced, and it was created purely for the seasonal-feel.
Conquest on the other hand is one of the few formats that Hearthstone uses, and it is certainly the best one to determine the best deck-builder and player at the same time.
- It is going to be a best-of-5 Conquest, which means that each player is going to bring 4 decks.
- Each deck has to be from a different class.
- Before the start of the BO5 series, each player gets to ban one deck from his opponent.
- Both players then choose a deck they are going to play.
- The Player that manages to win a round with a deck cannot use that deck anymore, while the loser can still use it in the following rounds until they manage to win with their deck.
- The winner is the one who wins with 3 different decks (all decks besides the banned one).
When it comes to the brackets that the tournament starts off, they are going to be dual-tournament with double elimination, where 2 players from each group advance to the Top 4 stage of the tournament. The starting brackets look like this:
Group A:
- Nalguidan VS Tianming
- Posesi VS Gaby
Group B:
- Xiaobai VS glory
- Frenetic VS MaBanterFace
Hearthstone World Championship 2021 Decks
While the Hearthstone top decks remain hidden from the public at the moment as they should come as a surprise at the event, with speculation and our experience on the ladder, we believe the following decks are going to be the ones you might get to see in action.
Control Warlock Variation
With the new hero card and the legendary spell, Warlock has been given some interesting tools to control the state of the game with. Not only that, but an interesting variation that has been terrorizing the ladder is the Owl-TK Warlock, which manages to do up to 56 damage to the opponent’s face.
Libram Paladin
Buffs and more buffs! That is what Paladin is all about at the moment, and if you have been playing high-legend ladder since the expansion, you have probably struggled to deal with Irondeep Troggs that come out with at least 10/10 out of nowhere.
Face Hunter
Even if control is probably going to be quite dominant at the tournament, we believe that an aggro deck like Face Hunter is certainly going to find its place at the Hearthstone World Championship 2021.
Honorable mentions: Freeze Shaman, Secret Burgle Rogue, Big Priest, Quest Warrior, Garrote Rogue.
