There have been immense changes in competitive Hearthstone over the past few months thanks to card nerfs, a new expansion and a new rotating format. DreamHack Austin, the first stop in DreamHack's four-event Hearthstone Grand Prix circuit in 2016, gave us an extended look at how tournament players have adjusted to the new format and the new meta.
Keaton "Chakki" Gill, the winner of DreamHack Austin, certainly isn't a new name to followers of the Hearthstone tournament scene. Chakki has one of the most consistent records of any Hearthstone pro, not only finishing strong in invitational tournaments (second in the ROOT Gaming Invitationals, second in ESL Legendary Series Season 1, among many more), but in noninvitational ones as well, such as the 2016 Americas Winter Championship and DreamHack Summer 2015.
But what does finally pulling off the big win mean? Chakki took some time to talk to ESPN about his DreamHack victory.
"It means so much to me. It's like I was finally able to get the job done," he said. "People, even when you have so many good results and you're consistent, sometimes look at that as, 'no win, doesn't matter.' So to finally get a win, I feel it validates all my other results, and throws that in the face of the naysayers. And it shows that I'm a really good player and people can expect me to do really well."
Stacking the deck: Chakki's Paladin
Of Chakki's four decks, the one that stood out the most to me as a real breath of fresh air was the N'Zoth Paladin list that he put together. Chakki was one of only two Paladins in the final 16 to bring Eadric the Pure, and the only one that dared to cut Keeper of Uldaman, generally considered one of the best Paladin class cards in the game. Chakki's Paladin deck turned out a consistent performer and in the 16 games Chakki played in the playoffs, Paladin was played in seven of them and went 6-1, only dropping a single game in the difficult Shaman matchup.
While all of Chakki's decks performed well -- if they didn't, he wouldn't have a shiny new trophy -- it was the Paladin deck that Chakki focused the most attention on before decklists had to be submitted. How did Eardric find his way into the deck and the Keeper did not?
"Ultimately, I think that was just the result of me spending the majority of my time focusing on Paladin," Chakki said. "When you have to bring four decks and we only had about eight days of testing, you have to kind of divide your time.
"I really trusted my friends with the Warrior and the Priest list. The Warlock list was pretty close to the standard Zoo list with a few techs. A lot of my actual playing time went towards Paladin, and we found out pretty quickly that a lot of the generic good Paladin cards weren't as good in the deck because it's very rare that you play a 1/1 and actually want to use Keeper of Uldaman on it. Even when you use Keeper on an opposing threat, you still have to deal with it. We cut all the deathrattles except for the most powerful ones: Cairne, Sylvanas, and Tirion."
A varied meta
One of the nicest things about tournaments immediately after widespread card changes is that you start to see a lot of interesting card choices. By the end of a meta period, decks and deck lineups have tended to have kind of a sameness to them, as the relevant archetypes become more and more refined. Before Whispers of the Old Gods and the debut of the standard format, every player had nearly identical Midrange Druid decks, with the only variety being a few tech choices at the back of the deck.
In addition to not using a Keeper of Uldaman, in Chakki's Priest deck, he played two Shifting Shades. Jon "Orange" Westberg played, in his Renolock, a Faceless Shambler, a card that wasn't expected to see any tournament play prelaunch. JBillyB brought Earth Elementals for the Shaman mirror, a card for the original set that never really saw play.
This isn't just the cards, either. In the earlier rounds, Rémi "Tars" Roesch, one of the finalists for the European Winter championship, brought a highly unusual Druid featuring Summoning Stone.
The (non)thrill of the hunt
Despite a tournament meta with a wide variety, of the 64 decks the final 16 players used, Hunter was shut out completely. Where a player desired to bring a face deck, it was Aggro Shaman that was chosen. Aggro Shaman had already been shoving out Face Hunter from the meta before Whispers of the Old Gods. And after, the Hunter losing Mad Scientist and Glaivezooka were more serious losses than the Shaman's.
Both decks lost Arcane Golem as well, but Shaman retained more of its burst potential with the un-nerfed Doomhammer/Rockbiter Weapon combo. To get back into tourneys, Hunter will have to find a new identity. N'Zoth Hunter is a thing, but none of the finalists felt comfortable enough with its power level to dare bring it. Sorry Rexxar, but right now, Thrall is the King of SMOrc.
But all may not be lost. While Chakki didn't bring Hunter decks to the tournament, he's an accomplished Hunter deck-builder and gave a note of hope for those that missed seeing any new Hunter builds this weekend.
"Right now, Hunter is definitively one of the weaker decks. That doesn't necessarily mean it can't find its way into a tournament," Chakki said. "I think Hearthstone's really well balanced in the fact that pretty much every meta game we've had, each class has been represented to some degree. Just looking at the top decks right now, Hunter's not too bad against them, but it's going to take some testing in the top eight preliminaries in either region.
"I think it's just a little too early for people to figure out a good list, but about a month down the line, I think we might see Hunter start to trickle in. I don't think it's ever going to be the dominant class until new cards, though."
Creating new stars
One of the most refreshing parts of an open tournament is that the nod to a meritocracy, frequently missing in invite-only formats, results in a healthy mix of recognizable pros with players who don't have the same attention level. Orange nowadays is a big-name player playing for one of the heavy hitters in Hearthstone, Team Archon, but to get noticed for his play a year ago, he had to survive large open tournaments to snag one of invites that weren't given to popular pros.
You may have read our interview with Andrew "Kitkatz" Deschanel. He's another player who, despite being a Hearthstone pro from the start, had trouble getting invites without the backing of a major team.
Terrence 'TerrenceM' Miller from Gale Force eSports may very well be this tournament's unknown that becomes a popular name. TerrenceM, a card game veteran of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon, with six top 100 Hearthstone ladder finishers, blew through the preliminaries, winning all his matches up until the finale against Chakki. Impressing social media isn't always easy, but TerrenceM won them over with his accurate play and his poise in a game against Payton that went into fatigue.
Stand down, C'Thun
Of the Old God cards introduced, C'Thun was the one that got the most attention before the expansion went live, but in the finals at DreamHack, it was N'Zoth that was featured in the most decks. Y'Shaarj and Yogg-Saron were nowhere to be found in the finals and C'Thun only made it to a single deck, Fr0zen's C'Thun Warrior.
By contrast, N'Zoth the Corruptor made it into eight decks in the finals covering three different classes: Paladin, Priest, Warlock. At least in the early going of the Old Gods, N'Zoth has been the strongest tournament card.
DreamHack's Swiss-system
Widely used in chess, bridge, Magic: The Gathering and some other esports, Swiss-system tournaments have yet to completely catch on in Hearthstone. In this format, rather than a knockout tournament, you have the advantages of an excellent player not being eliminated by a single match that goes poorly. Best-of-three matches are common in Hearthstone and with a decent element of luck, similar to poker, the Swiss-system is a good compromise between giving players a significant number of games to show off their abilities and keeping the tournament from being too long and unwieldy.
One thing that can be improved upon, however, is the information available to viewers. Too often, it was difficult to see how people's favorite players were faring in the preliminary rounds and be able to check on the overall standings. It left viewers with isolated feature games and long breaks in between, something that needs to be worked on for the viewing experience in tournaments that use this format.