Photo: ONOG Twitter
128 players will compete in single elimination to split the 75 HCT points.
The North American Hearthstone scene is ready for its first LAN of the new year after the eastern scene has already heated up with the Gold Series finals and WESG 2016. The place is PAX South in San Antonio, TX and the prize pool is $10,000 and 75 HCT points, and while that’s a generous purse, the arrival of the tournament has been less than smooth.
Information about the event has been sparse, the first details about it were announced just a week ago via the Twitter page of ONOG, the tournament’s organizer. The tweet announced the official format of the PAX South Major – a single elimination Bo5 Conquest bracket with a ban – which sparked a whole other discussion on itself.
The single elimination format has received much criticism from the pro player community, and while it is still acceptable in low-prize community cups, the common agreement is that it has no place in a major LAN event. Over the years, big-name Hearthstone tournaments such as DreamHack and Truesilver Championship exiled the bracket in favor of either swiss or rounds of group stage play leading into the playoffs. The previous ONOG Hearthstone event itself – the 2016 ONOG Circuit Finals – used double elimination group stage into double elimination bracket to crown the champion, in addition to the months-long qualifying process.
The upcoming PAX South Major, however, is much more akin to the first PAX event of 2016, held in March in Boston, MA. The PAX East Major, as it was called, also featured a single elimination bracket with the exact same $10,000 prize pool and the 43 HCT points awarded to eligible Hearthstone majors.
According to Jon “Orange” Westberg, who has been invited to compete in the PAX South Major alongside other notable names such as Jeffrey “Trump” Shih, Cong “StrifeCro” Shu, Dan “Frodan” Chou, Terrence “TerrenceM” Miller and Will “Amnesiac” Barton, the reason for this set-up is the limited availability of computers, making a format like swiss where all matches have to be played simultaneously impossible.
In spite the few flaws, the PAX South Major is shaping up to be the tournament to watch this weekend as it will give an insight into which NA talents are fans to watch in 2017. James “Firebat” Kostesich and Brian “Th3Rat” Courtade will cast the games tonight at 19:30 CET at ONOG's Twitch channel.
