Disclaimer: The opinions below reflect only those of the writer. They should not in any way guide your voting or taken as synonymous for the outcome of the GosuAwards.
You can cast your vote for all 6 categories here.
Very soon, we’ll reveal which players, teams, tournaments and casters have emerged the winners from our first ever GosuAwards Summer for Hearthstone. 36 nominees in six categories are competing for GosuCrew’s and community’s votes in public polls and closed crew voting.
Many of the community polls already have clear cut winners – though it’s not too late to change the outcome – but objectively many of the categories are much closer than they appear in the public eye.
In a series of featured analyses, I’ll go through the main categories and talk about each nominees realistic chances and position compared to its peers.
Let’s begin with “Best player”
The prime contenders
There were many players worthy of a GosuAward during the first half of 2016 but such is life that only six can be nominated and only one can win the award. And just like life, some deserve it way more than others.
Thijs “ThijsNL” Molendijk is currently in the lead for “Best player” in the community poll with 64 per cent of the votes, a number that’s not likely to be beaten by the time the polls close on July 28th. It’s certainly deserved. The Dutchman has shown us nothing but consistency throughout his career, and even during periods of relative underperforming, he’s remained a top competitor in the field. Being the only Hearthstone player to ever win two regional championships put him in the history books and his fan base ought to be excited knowing that he’ll be competing at Blizzcon once again.
In spite of all that, ThijsNL has been far from his best shape in 2016. He’s faced early eliminations in StarLadder and CN vs EU Season 3. His biggest spike in win-rate was actually way back in February when he hit 82 per cent. He’s been struggling to even come close to that since and when put side by side with the Thijs who destroyed all GosuRankings records in 2015, the Thijs of today looks unconvincing. “Unconvincing” in his case, of course, means that he likely won’t be running away with the GosuAward with no real competition as he did last year and if he does win it should be a close race.
In fact, when I think about the player who stole the headlines underneath Thijs in the first half of 2016 that’s Jan “SuperJJ” Janssen. The Complexity talent broke out during SeatStory Cup IV last year and since then he’s been doing nothing but winning. Last year, we awarded him with the “Biggest potential for 2016” prize and I’m happy to say he’s not disappointed. In 2016 so far, he’s won more than $20,000 on the back of one first, one second and three top four placements.
SuperJJ has gone through all phases of a marquee player's development. Starting as a streamer who’s most known for playing Rogue, he then became an exemplary deck innovator and culminated in the perfect game-winning product we’re used to seeing today. He’s never had a month with sub-60 per cent win-rate – very much the hallmark of a great player.
If you’re wondering who can even challenge ThijsNL for best player, look no further.
The joint #3
ThijsNL and SuperJJ might be the headline names in my book and with biggest chances to win the award, but that’s not to say there are others who are almost as deserving. Keaton “Chakki” Gil and Sebastian “Xixo” Bentert have had a fantastic year, a sort of a golden age for both. Chakki successfully cast away the curse of the silver king, finally taking a gold at DreamHack Austin, and although this is by far his most recognized achievement, he’s been doing quite well in other places, too, most notably making it to the Winter Championship of his region and finishing top four in the Xfinity Invitational in June.
Xixo, on the other hand, has very much been SuperJJ’s mirror image, just attending tournaments and kicking ass. Although he’s had two slow months in January and April, Xixo has otherwise being perfect. In fact, if the StarLadder Season finals had happened two weeks earlier, fitting the January-June timeframe, he would’ve been strong opponent not just to SuperJJ but ThijsNL, too. Forget the fact that he holds the #1 on GosuRankings, or that he’s the second ever player to break 1,400 points. Forget that for three of the six months in the first half, he’s had a win-rate higher than 72 per cent.
What am I saying? Do not forget any of this. Remember it when the main GosuAwards come at the end of the year and Xixo is once again among the nominees, unless some major league injustice happens. Another major championship or two and we might be looking at a prime contender for the overall best player in 2016.
Who’s missing?
Despite the large number of panelists on the committee there’s always the case where a certain category is missing a notable nominee. The “Best player” category, surprisingly, came very close to being perfect, had not for the fact that Il-Mook “Handsomeguy” Kang is not on it.
“Who”, you’ll ask as someone not paying attention to the Asian scene, but that’s far from fair to a very competitive region. In terminology that the wide public would understand, Handsomeguy is in 2016 what Jung-Soo “Surrender” Kim was in 2015 and Hak-Jun “Kranich” Baek in 2014: Nothing less than the most consistent player in non-Chinese Asia.
Together with ThijsNL and Kranich, Handsomeguy is among the handful of players to have competed in two regional championship grand finals. In March, he narrowly lost to fellow Korean Sang-Hyeon “DDaHyoNi” Baek but those who’ve followed the career of ECCA’s player knew he’d be back in full force. That he did a few months later when he ploughed through the APAC Spring Championship to secure a Blizzcon spot for himself.
Being from a less televised region explains to some extent Handsomeguy’s absence from the list of nominees but it’s a cheap and poor excuse for us, panelists. Even though realistically he would’ve never won the award, he absolutely deserves to be in that top six because, if you really think about it, in terms of the HCT campaign he’s accomplished more than any of our actual nominees.
Lesson we learn from this: We get Asian experts on the panel next time. Fortunately, Daniel “DTwo” Ikuta has already agreed!
