The third and final season champion for the Americas in the 2016 Hearthstone Championship Tour was decided Sunday afternoon, with Edwin "HotMEOWTH" Cook taking home the $25,000 first-place prize and an all-important seat in the finals at BlizzCon, which is coming up in just six weeks. HotMEOWTH bested ROOT's Jeffrey "Tarei" Liu after falling behind 3-2 in the final seven-game match of the Summer Championship on Sept. 17-18.
HotMEOWTH's weekend almost ended early after a quarterfinal scare against Jerome "Monsanto" Faucher. Up 3-0 in the first match, HotMEOWTH needed just one win with his Warlock Zoo deck to advance to the semis. Zoolock is one of the more tried-and-true decks in tournament play and even with a deck built differently than the more standard template -- no Power Overwhelming, instead using Demonfires, Lance Carriers and Dark Iron Dwarves for reach-plus-bodies -- HotMEOWTH was heavily favored to grab at least one win.
Montreal native Monsanto instead threatened to pull off the reverse-sweep, winning with Worgen Warrior, Freeze Mage and Anyfin Paladin, only falling short when HotMEOWTH's Zoolock held off the Yogg Druid in game 7. HotMEOWTH's unusual card choices ended up helping out in a pinch when the two Lance Carriers made a 6/2 Dark Peddler that dealt 12 damage to Monsanto's Druid.
While HotMEOWTH didn't previously have the extensive tournament background that a veteran like Tarei has, don't assume that he's a newbie. On a brutally competitive Americas ladder, HotMEOWTH reached the top 100 in both July and August, finishing as high as 12th in the latter month. And if you've ever caught the popular weekly Data Reaper report at Vicious Syndicate, he is their resident Hunter expert.
HotMEOWTH talked to ESPN esports about his decks and the tournament meta after the full release of the One Night in Karazhan adventure.
Was there ever a moment when you second-guessed the Warlock deck?
HotMEOWTH: Surprisingly enough, my Warlock deck was one of the first two decks I decided to prepare and bring to the tournament along with the Druid deck. It was one of the decks that I have more faith in performing well [since] before the tournament started, mostly because of having success of ranking up to Legend this month [September] on ladder with it.
However, after knowing my opponents' lineups right before the tournament began, I was worried [about] its performance, mostly because of my first opponent Monsanto's lineup. Monsanto's lineup was all combo/control decks that tend to be really favored (70/30) against my minion-centric Zoo Warlock deck because of the multiple [area-of-effect] board clears with combo spells that those decks have.
The idea behind my more aggressive variant of Zoo Warlock with chargers and minion attack buffs is that it can fare better against slower midrange decks that consist of fewer board clears and more big threats such as Dragon Warrior, Token/Malygos Druid, and Midrange Hunter, because of my Zoo deck's faster/earlier board aggression. It has the potential to close out games before big minions or board threats come down. So, in that aspect, it performed as expected [i.e. winning games against Druid], which I am happy with. I think Zoo is still a strong class in the current meta, but my list is pretty experimental/unrefined, since Karazhan cards just came out not too long ago.
How did you decide to go with a Warrior build that's more along the classic Control side, without the Dragon shell that is currently in fashion?
HotMEOWTH: First of all, my lineup strategy was to target control, where it can fare decently against the strong meta decks currently in the game, which tend to be more midrange and aggressive in nature. After testing my lineup a few times with my practice partners, I found out that it was best to ban Shaman over the popular Warrior ban.
With Shaman banned, Dragon Warrior isn't as tempting to bring, since beating Shaman is Dragon Warrior's greatest strength. I feel the new Dragon Warrior list with The Curator is overrated by many pros and intermediate players alike. While Curator is a strong addition that helps the deck have more steam against control and slower midrange decks, the deck becomes more minion-heavy and has fewer removal spells early on like Slam. It is much more susceptible [to the] strong, early aggression that aggro decks often have, which makes the deck weaker overall against faster/aggro decks. In this tournament, I expected people to bring faster tempo/aggro decks, which brought me to the idea of bringing Control Warrior over Dragon Warrior.
Control Warrior is known for being favored against tempo and aggro decks and also having polarizing/extremely favored matchups against combo decks such as Freeze Mage and Worgen Warrior. I feel like Control Warrior may be the best archetype out of all the different Warrior decks as it can beat anything with its stability through multiple removals and armor resources to gain over 30 health to play around decks with strong burst potential. It is sad that I couldn't play a single game with Warrior throughout the championship, since it was banned by all of my opponents, but that just shows how much respect they have for how the strong the deck was against their lineup.
Which matchup this weekend were you most concerned about?
HotMEOWTH: I was pretty confident the first two rounds of winning with all my decks except my Zoo Warlock. And [my expectations] turned out to be correct since I had a 3-0 lead against both Monsanto and [Manny "dude7597" Eckert]. I think what I worried about the most was Monsanto's lineup potential to sweep my Zoo deck since three of his decks (Freeze Mage, Worgen Warrior and Murloc Control Paladin) were really favored against it. But I did know he had a weak link which was his Druid deck that my Zoo deck is favored to beat. So I told myself to just play Zoolock last and not get tilted over the losses from his other decks, since I was unfavored and was meant to lose those matches anyway.
The final match against Tarei was equally concerning and stressful for me since his lineup was really similar to mine, as we both brought Zoolock, the same Druid list, a Control variant of Warrior, Midrange Hunter, and a Shaman deck that leaned towards being aggressive. I felt like Tarei was the hardest to beat since he was, in my opinion, the most experienced player in the top eight. It felt like a 50/50 against Tarei with how similar our lineups were and it came down to how we queued and played our decks in the end, since I think that neither of us had an edge for prepping a better lineup because of how similar our deck choices were.
What are your thoughts on the impact of the Karazhan cards on the current meta?
HotMEOWTH: At first glance, I thought the cards would have a mediocre impact on the state of competitive metagame in Hearthstone. But it turns out it actually significantly impacted how the decks were were built, especially the meta decks (Yogg Druid, Zoolock, Control Paladin, Midrange Shaman). I think cards like Maelstrom Portal really improved the Midrange Shaman deck's chances against aggro decks, along with tools like Lightning Storm to deal with early aggression, particularly Zoolock since the deck tends to play out a slew of early-game minions.
Cards like Ivory Knight and Moonglade Portal really gave Paladin and Druid the stability they needed, as those cards heal your own hero or minion and also provide extra resources for development at the same time. I feel like the best card in the Karazhan set is Barnes, as the card gave a lot of new innovations in deckbuilding. Overall, I think the Karazhan cards tend to favor the already-strong meta decks and kind of left out classes like Rogue and Priest in the competitive metagame. As cheesy or cliché as it sounds, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" with the new cards.
Many thanks to HotMEOWTH for the interview. Next up on the 2016 Hearthstone Championship Tour: another seat in the finals will be filled on September 24-25 when the Europe Summer champion is crowned.