The three-month league promises to be a tournament like no other.
With twelve invites and $60,000 in prize pool, the 2016 Celestial Invitational is on first sight just your normal invitational tournament, just with a bit more money on the line. Yet, it’s built in such a way that it provides ever-changing narrative across a very unusual format.
Not only will group stage matches be Bo17 with all nine classes being used. What’s more, each week the format of the tournament will change, determined by the players and the community. A total of five different formats will be used during league’s running, including:
- Last Hero Standing, Standard
- Last Hero Standing, Wild with GvG banned
- Last Hero Standing, Wild with Naxxramas banned
- Last Hero Standing, Wild
- Conquest, Standard
Thus, the Celestial Invitational will be the first high-profile tournament to use the Wild format. Viewers will be able to enjoy this terra incognita of Hearthstone starting November, as the first week of the tournament (October 18-22) will feature the very familiar LHS plus Standard combination.
The twelve players are split into two round robin groups of six, and four of each will advance to the playoffs. Half of the $60,000 prize pool will be given away during said group stage, as each match winner will be awarded with $1,000.
This is also the first time a long-running league is making a return to the Hearthstone world. In 2015, several such endeavours were launched, including Kinguin's Pro League, the Nvidia Pro/Am tournament and PVP Live's Hearthstone Pro League. Of the three, only Kinguin's KPL ended smoothly, with Nvidia's league being plagued by issues start to finish and PVP Live's HPL getting discontinued midway.
