An hour-long Priest vs. Paladin control fest goes to fatigue, featuring double Sherazin and clutch plays.
Forget about the “resident sleeper” memes that accompany every control match-up. This one you will want to see and we have Finland’s Juho “Ersee” Hyödynmaa, a DreamHack Winter runner-up, and Chile’s “Macheen” to thank for it.
The set-up
In Group E, Finland were trying to recover from the loss to fellow Norsemen Norway while Chile were about to play their debut HGG match. On paper, the Finns were the favorites, with multiple Hearthstone veterans on the roster, including aforementioned Ersee and Assembly quarter finalist Aleksi “Wampie” Majander but a loss to Chile would seriously threaten their chances of making it to the second group stage. Thanks to “Nefiu”’s win over Janne “Janetzky” Aho, Chile were also ahead in the series 1-0, and it was up to Ersee to equalize against Macheen, or risk a clean sweep.
The decks
It lined up to be a control match-up, Macheen choosing to play the fashionable [card]Lyra the sunshard[/card] Miracle Priest and Ersee going for the control version of the new Murloc Paladin. Paladin vs. Priest has been a classic battle in Hearthstone, with Paladin usually having the edge due to the perpetual threat of the hero power, but this Lyra Miracle played like no other Priest deck ever.
When the machine gun sound of the RNG starts singing, there’s not knowing what can come out, as Ersee would soon realize.
Finland’s Murloc Control
Chile’s Lyra Miracle
The game
The game starts according to plan for Ersee and looks to be basically done by the time an early Lyra is cleared, but Macheen is far from giving up. When [card]medivh, the guardian[/card] spawns a [card]sherazin, corpse flower[/card] for a deck which all it does is cast a barrage of spells each turn, Ersee faces a very real danger of losing a favored match-up.
Narrating the match-up further would be spoiling it, not to mention it goes on for almost a full hour before a winner is decided. We suggest you just watch it.
