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Hearthstone10 years agoRadoslav "Nydra" Kolev

GosuCup #17 decklists, winner's interview and going on a break

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First of all, let me start with the biggest news regarding our tournament: GosuCup Hearthstone is going on a summer break.

The decision might sounds shocking and was indeed difficult to make. When we started the GosuCup initiative four months ago, we wanted to give the community a good place where they can sign up, meet good players and hone their skills in competitive Hearthstone. At the time, only a handful of organizations were giving away prizes as large as $100 for an open tournament and we soon saw that you really did appreciate the GosuCups.

Every Sunday, hundreds of players came to our tournaments. The tournaments lasted for as long as eight rounds, often going into the late hours of the night as the competitors fought for the grand prize. Every week, you came to us with feedback on how we can do better and I can only hope we've been helpful to you as well.

We made a lot of friends during the GosuCup days, including many of the pro players who are currently competing on the largest stages in the world. Even though we often stumbled onto all sorts of problems, we grew to love this endeavor of ours - it gave us another way to connect with our readership and with the Hearthstone community.

When the BlizzCon world championship was announced, we sincerely hoped GosuCup would be chosen as a community qualifier tournament, seeing how we were one of the first open tournaments to offer a sizeable prize pool. Events, however, developed differently, and GosuCup was overlooked in favor of another, newly-created tournament and ultimately we didn't make the cut. 

When the BlizzCon qualifier slot went elsewhere, we knew we had a tough decision ahead of us. We realized players were always going to choose to get a shot at a $250,000 pool then compete in a vicious single elimination for mere $100. It was back at that moment when we first considered discontinuing GosuCup - competing against weekend tournaments with much bigger incentive was going to be an uphill battle, to say the least.

Nevertheless, we decided to continue the GosuCups and we were delighted to see that our trusted player base did not abandon us. We continued to see stable 200+ sign-ups. We continued to have professional players register for the tournament and we were very proud to have Rdu against Faramir in the last episode's finals. We continued bringing you these reports and interviewing the winners of every tournament, bringing, I dare say, an unparallelled coverage of a cup of that category. We also shot Blizzard several emails and held several conversations about getting the GosuCups a BlizzCon qualifier slot but so far to no avail.

Ultimately, we decided to make the decision we've been contemplating for a while and we'll be discontinuing the GosuCups for the time being after crowning seventeen champions. During that time, we'll continue our attempts to make GosuCups eligible for a BlizzCon slot as we strongly believe we deserve that much and if we succeed to the tournaments will return. If not - well, time will tell.

GosuCup #17 standings

1. Germany Faramir
2. Romania Rdu
3. Sweden Vaipmachine
4. Estonia Mogix
5-8. Greece VampAurora
5-8. Germany Phili
5-8. Germany Kunzi
5-8. Poland Jarzeb1

Final nation standings (Top 10)

1. Germany Germany - 43 points
2. Sweden Sweden - 40 points
3. Netherlands Netherlands - 37 points 
4. Russia Russia - 29 points 
5. Denmark Denmark - 26 points 
6. Poland Poland - 15 points
7. Czech Republic Czech Republic - 13 points
8. Portugal Portugal - 12 points 
8. United Kingdom United Kingdom - 12 points
8. France France - 12 points 

 

Winners' decklists

 

 

GosuCup #17 winner interview: Faramir

            "Miracle is not unbeatable anymore"
 

Well, with some overdue - congratulations on your GosuCup #17 victory. How does it feel beating one of the best players in the world to take the throne?

Thank you, it feels really great to win this tournament and to beat such an world class player like Rdu in the finals is just the icing on the cake. I couldn’t be happier.

Walk us a bit through the final series against Rdu. The scoreboard shows 3-1 but I imagine there have been more clutch plays than the numbers suggest.

The first game was really close, he played Backspace Rogue against my aggressive Shaman deck and I was really close to dying, so I went all in with the hope to kill him next turn. He only had to deal 4 more damage, so I was certain to lose but fortunately for me he drew a lot of blanks and didn’t get it.

I don't really remember the 2nd game, it was a pretty fast one for my shaman, I think against his Miracle Rogue. In the 3rd game I was 1 mana away from 3-0 when I was overloaded, so I played a Juggler to prevent his Leeroy combo, unfortunately he dealt 22 damage with spells and his Auctioneer alone.

And in the last game I was on Backspace Rogue against his miracle, it came down to the last draw where i missed 4 damage like him in the first game but I got the topdeck to win fortunately

You should also feel extra happy as you managed to stop Rdu from back-to-back cup championships, since he had taken ZOTAC EU just the day before.

I saw Rdu tearing through the bracket, getting 3-0 after 3-0 so I prepared some decks for him. It’s time for some other guys to win something as well.

Ha, true! How intimidating is it to play against a player like Rdu. It's not like you dont have any experience against big names seeing you were a Gentlemen Cup regular, but I imagine going against the best in the world is always a challenge...

Before I attended the TakeTV Invitational I maybe would’ve been intimidated but there I got to know a lot of the known pros and in the Gentlemen Cup as well.

There is nothing to be afraid of when you are playing against a big name like Rdu, I am not one to run from a challenge and I am in Hearthstone to play and win against the best to show that I belong up there.

Other players I've talked to in the past (including such outside the Hearthstone scene) have said that playing a known player is actually helpful - you can study them and you don't have the pressure to perform and win as they do.

I dont think that’s true, these guys are known for a reason and that’s because they are strong players. They won a lot of tournaments so they proved that they can handle the pressure. It’s a big advantage to be known, you get invited to tournaments that other players can’t attend or have to play a big qualifier for. If you see it like this, the pressure is on me to show everyone that I can be one of these guys.

Sticking to GosuCup, you brought four decks but of only two classes. Why go for Shaman and Rogue? Is it because of the allowed sideboarding, allowing you to keep class but change deck and counter?

I main Shaman and Rogue, I actually got both golden heroes now (yay) and I wanted to see how my aggro Shaman list performs in a tournament. It got me a lot of wins, including 2 against rdu and a 3-0 in the semifinal. Of course, I brought more decks to the tourney but I ended up using only these 2 classes because I was most comfortable with them.

I would pick miracle first, get countered by Handlock and then switch to Shaman to counter it, that was the basic idea. I had alternatives, for example for Rdu's famous freeze Mage I had a Warrior and a Hunter prepared since both my classes got a bad matchup against it.

I for one will be trying the aggro Shaman for sure, especially seeing Violet Teacher is in it and that card's fucking awesome!

Yeah, I ran a lot Yetis a lot of the time but the Teacher synergizes so well with Shaman spells, I actually run a Bloodlust in a deck now. Just take out one Earthshock and put in bloodlust, it works really well on ladder if I don't run into zoo.

A few weeks ago, you transferred to Managrind. The move was done without a lot of fanfair but it still must be a big one for you. How does it feel being part of the MG brand?

Yeah, not many people noticed. Definitely feels great to be part of the brand and talk to great players like Realz.

The team has a large roster, but to me it feels like it lost a lot of its potency as Chakki, Darkwonyx, Kolento, etc moved to other teams. Do you feel that way or is Managrind still as strong as ever?

Yeah unfortunately a lot of good players left and it hurt Managrind quite a bit to lose them, we will see if we are still as strong as ever in the future.

Let's talk some other competition. There are two big tournaments this week - IEM Shenzhen and DH Valencia - of which the former seems to be more interesting, featuring a bigger prize pool, notable invites and some local players. I guess my first question on this topic is - do you try to follow eastern Hearthstone? Are you familiar with the metagame landscape there and if yes - what can we expect from the Asians at Shenzhen?

First of all, I disagree that IEM Shenzhen is more interesting. There are a lot of notable players like Gaara and Lothar at DH Valencia as well. I really don’t like that Shenzhen is a pure invitational, sure you want to have big names to promote Hearthstone as an e-sports but where is the chance for lesser known players to promote themselves.

I don’t follow eastern Hearthstone as well, to be honest it seemed really weak when EU just stomped them at the EU vs CN tournament, I heard that china won against SEA though. We'll see, I watch the OGN stream sometimes because I am a big fan of GGdoa since my League of Legend days. I expect the European and NA players to stomp them to be honest.

Why do you think Asia is so much weaker than the West? It's not like this happens in many other esports disciplines.

Yeah in other games like League of Legends a lot of mechanics decide the game. In Hearthstone it’s more about the experience and your knowledge of the game and how good you are at evaluating all your different plays to pick the best one

But there are a lot of ways to learn that, aren't there? Western Hearthstone is on TV 24/7.

Sure, you can watch a lot of streams and learn but you have to willing to invest a lot of time into the game to become one of the best and i don't think that the Asian meta is quite there yet. The meta changes so quickly and they seem to be a little bit behind. Let’s wait for Naxxramas release though and see how it unfolds after that

Speaking of the meta, do you think the meta this weekend will be changed as compared to DH Summer?

I think the backspace Rogue that really made a first appearance in Sweden will be stronger represented at DH Valencia and also in China. Miracle is still strong but not unbeatable anymore, so people will look for other strong decks and maybe we will see some surprises, I am looking at you, crusher shaman!

Well, I think we can bring this to a wrap! Any final words as closer?

Not really. :D

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