2016 was a year of opportunities for Hearthstone players. Through a revised Hearthstone Championship Tour system, the most consistent players had a shot at qualifying for the Seasonal Championships, at which a ticket to Blizzcon was at stake. As a result of the revision, the new system created storylines for seasoned and new players alike.
One of those stories was Jullien "Cydonia" Perrault. In the Spring Preliminaries he went undefeated, securing a spot in the Spring Championships. There the Canadian didn't show any signs of slowing down. In a series of 4-3 victories he left Deerjason, Napoleon and ultimately Rosty behind him in the finals, securing a spot for Blizzcon.
At Blizzcon Cydonia sat down with Matthieist, talking about preparing and playing in tournaments, how Cydonia experienced this year, and what his favorite decks in Hearthstone are.
With me here is Cydonia! How are you doing?
I'm doing great, the event is really nice. It's good to see so many people that enjoy Hearthstone and the other games.
Let's start with your year in Hearthstone. You had your break-out performance at the Spring Championships, walk me through how it's been for you.
It has been a great experience. I've played Hearthstone for a long time, and I just love competing. This year there were a lot of opportunities for new players to prove themselves, so I was really happy to qualify for the Spring Championships. Then when I won obviously I was even happier. I hope I can keep up the good performance here of course.
Winning the Spring Championships really felt rewarding. As I said I play the game a lot, so I was happy to show everyone my skills in the game. After that I had a lot less time to dedicate to Hearthstone, but here at Blizzcon I'm determined to become the world champion.
When people think about the North American scene, most will think of players from the U.S. How is the Canadian scene doing?
I think the Canadian scene is doing quite well. We have some great players like Purple, Impact, Silentstorm, Talion, and many more. At first we didn't have many big tournaments, but DreamHack is coming to Montréal, so that's very good for our scene. But to be honest I think that Canadians are quite proportionally represented in the North American scene.
In Montréal there is a mixed community of English speaking people and French speaking people. It is nice to see people with different languages mix and play Hearthstone.
I imagine that after your win in the Spring Championships you got quite some attention from teams. You're with Escape Gaming, how has it been for you on that team?
It's been fun, they help me a lot. Being on a team makes it easier to compete in more events because your team can back you and send you there. It's also better for streaming, because through Escape I managed to become a Twitch partner.
It's a pretty small team, they have a Dota 2 team, but I'm their only Hearthstone player. I would love to have some Hearthstone team mates, though in many teams players don't practice together. Most of the time players have their own practice groups anyway. I have my own strong practice group which I play a lot with, and I learn much from them. So even though we're not officially on a team together, that's not a big problem in my opinion. Finding the right practice partner, someone who helps you build confidence in your game is very important. Positivity, giving feedback consistently and arguing with you about your plays, where you could improve... It really influences you on a large scale.
I arrived here at Blizzcon on October 22nd, which was just after all contestants' decklists were revealed. On basically every day when I didn't have to do things for/with Blizzard we've been practicing.
You mentioned streaming, is it something you enjoy doing a lot?
I enjoy it when there are a lot of people in my channel interacting with me. I love talking to people, meeting new people and chatting with them. I'm not enjoying it as much when there aren't as many viewers and I'm just talking to myself. I'd rather play normally then and try to focus more. I don't really have a special streaming personality so I wouldn't do anything different, and the people who have been coming to my stream say they have been learning a lot. When they have questions I can answer them and help them out a bit.
I love talking to people, meeting new people and chatting with them
My viewers are mostly from Canada, but there are some French folks in there too because of the mixed community. I stream in English, but a lot of my viewers speak French, but it doesn't matter much.
The funny thing about Twitch is that sometimes viewership can snowball pretty hard. When you get more viewers, you end up higher on the stream page, so more people see you. Sometimes when other professionals host me that's what happens. But a downside is that, if you're pretty small, it's quite hard for people to find you. That's why I post on Twitter, and poke some people I know before starting my stream. Hopefully after my performance here more people will come visit my stream, so I have more people to chat with.
Is it ever rough on you, to invest so much time into the game?
Well obviously the reason why I play Hearthstone is because I think it's fun. I really enjoy playing competitively, participating in tournaments and streaming. For the World Championship the prize pool is just so big that it's gonna be worth it to practice as much as possible. It does mean that I've been missing out on doing fun stuff such as exploring the area, but how can you live with yourself if you have this chance to become World Champion and you're just going to Disney World, right? I can still do that afterwards.
You're a really calm player and don't show much emotion during games. Is that just your nature?
I've been playing card games competitively for a long time. I've played some poker too, and that really teaches you not to show too much emotion. Especially when you just start, because it's very easy for people to read you. I've played poker online on several tables at the same time, and the last thing you want then is to get tilted. With the experience I have, I've kind of seen it all. I know bad RNG can happen, I've seen it before. The best thing you can do is just focus on what the best possible play for you is that turn.
I've obviously made misplays, but that shouldn't distract. You have to get it out of your head as soon as possible, just think about something else for 10 seconds or something. Remember what is key in your match, focus on the game plan, and you should be good to go.
Let's talk a bit about Hearthstone itself. What is your favorite class?
I like Mage a lot at the moment, like Tempo Mage, Mech Mage, those types of decks appeal to me a lot. I'm really excited for the new expansion and the cards it will bring to the game. Maybe a new class I'm interested in will pop up then. It's not like I'm married to one class, though. For example in Warrior there are so many archetypes you can play now. There is C'Thun Warrior, N'Zoth Warrior, even Pirate Warrior. I've played most archetypes a lot, for example I brought Pirate Warrior to the Preliminaries, I've played with C'Thun and Dragon Warrior, and now I play N'Zoth Warrior.
One of my favorite decks of all time is Combo Druid. I read the interview you did with GeorgeC where he said the Combo Druid meta was the best meta Hearthstone has seen, and I too think it was a great meta. The Combo Druid kept all decks in check that would otherwise be very overpowered. Freeze Mage was pretty good back then but Druid would beat it. Slow decks and combo decks would all lose to Druid, but Druid lost to the more aggressive decks.
Another deck I loved to play is Aggro Druid, which also ran the combo, but the one with [card]Fel Reaver[/card] was one of my favorites.
Where does your love for more aggressive decks come from?
I was having way better results with aggressive decks
Everyone, when they start playing, makes the cheapest decks. These are decks like Zoo and Face Hunter, that's what you play. You get good with them and then try to make a Control Warrior, but you're not as good with it because you're used to an aggressive style. That's pretty much where I come from; I was just having way better results with aggressive decks. I'm working hard to master the other types of decks, and I think I'm at least decent with C'Thun Warrior.
There are some decks that aren't powerful right now, so I don't spend much time practicing with them. For instance, before the Preliminaries I spent a lot of time practicing Miracle Rogue because I thought it was pretty good at that time. Now, however, I haven't played it in three to four months, since I don't think it's powerful enough. If I wanted to play it again I'd have to practice it a lot more. Other decks are, for example, Priest with its [card]Wild Pyromancer[/card]s. I don't practice with it because I don't think it's good. I will learn whichever deck is the best.
So far we've seen only a few of the new cards, but the tri-class mechanic has already been shown. What's your take on it?
It's something that comes from other games, and there it was really successful. So it's only logical to go this way after developing the basics more. Most of the revealed cards looked really interesting, and some really powerful too, so I'm looking forward to it.
A lot of pros and community people want more expansions throughout the year. Do you want that as well?
Well, I don't necessarily want more expansion, but just a bigger amount of cards in an expansion. There isn't much deck variety in decks which is a shame for tournaments. There you play five or four different decks, and if everyone has the same line-up it's not interesting. I feel like just before Standard there was a lot of variety in decks. After Standard, especially when they nerfed Aggro Shaman, the variety just disappeared. Everyone plays Shaman, Warrior and Druid. It's always the same decks. So maybe if they printed more cards there could be more viable archetypes, instead of just some classes being very powerful.
To wrap it up, what will we see from you in the future?
I'll be at DreamHack Winter, so that's happening soon. In HCT I'll try my best once again, and make it to the Winter Preliminairies. I think I should be able to qualify, and I'll show what I've got.