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After some well-deserved rest after DreamHack Summer, it's time to turn eyes to our weekly cup competition - the GosuCup. Before the fifteenth edition returns this Sunday, let's take a look what happened in the past events.
It's been more than ten weeks since Russia stood on top of GosuCup. After Troeput took the crown in episode #3 we now see his compatriot Willionir triumphing over Czeh player Tyder for the $100. Willionir's throne was succeeded next week by former MTG hardcore player Seeker, who defeated AlKarr in a tense five-game final.
Worth pointing out are also Chacruna's back-to-back bronze finishes. The Dane from team Wildcard was very close to the finals both times, but couldn't quite fight for the gold as his team-mate Gradefor did in episode 9.
GosuCup #13 standings
1. 
Willionir
2. 
Tyder
3. 
Chacruna
4. 
Diderick
5-8. 
Keyo98
5-8. ThijsNL
5-8. 
Krigam
5-8. 
WhtPwdr
GosuCup #14 standings
1. 
Seeker
2. AlKarr
3. Chacruna
4. 
Wouter
5-8. 
Lunatic
5-8. Faram
5-8. 
Breizhpunisher
5-8. Hit-Girl
Nation standings (Top 10)
1. Netherlands - 33 points
2. Sweden - 29 points
2. Germany - 29 points
4. Denmark- 26 points
5. Russia - 21 points
6. 
Poland - 13 points
7. 
Portugal - 12 points
7. France - 12 points
9. 
United Kingdom - 11 points
9. 
Italy- 11 points
#1: Seejer
#2: AlKarr
#3: Chacruna
#4: Wouter
#5-8 (at random): Lunatic1407, Faramir, BreizhPunisher, Hit-Girl
#9: Willionir
#10: Tyder
#11: E3k
#12: Kyztheone
#13: Legendaren
#14: WhtPwdr
#15: Saeb
#16: WybityBark
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"Maybe it's time to reinvent the old Paladin controls"
With long overdue of about a week - gratz on winning GosuCup #13 over Tyder. It must feel good I imagine?
Thank you, of course it does.
You've actually been an active weekly cup competitor for a while now as I often see you in the late rounds of many tournaments. How did you end up playing Hearthstone competitively on such consistent level?
I don’t know really. I just try to train a lot and pay attention to the meta.
What does your training involve? Is it just grinding the ladder or do you have a practice group with friends where you test specific decks and match-ups?
1-2 months ago, I really liked to grind the ladder but now I have no motivation to play ranked. Mostly, I play with a friend to test decks in different situations and match-ups.
Why did you lose the motivation? Isn’t a spot in the EU Blizzcon qualifier worth fighting for?
I tried to reach top 16 the last 2 seasons. It was very difficult but I managed to make top 14 EU. However, after 2-3 hours I was 39th. I was trying to reach top 16 many times since but I couldn’t and I understood that even if I reach top 16 I can’t hold on it.
Back to GosuCup #13: What decks did you use to make your victorious run? Why did you choose those exactly?
Mostly I play Warlock, Rogue and Druid. I like to play them and they’re also the strongest classes right now in my opinion, however, I do play other decks as well to counter my opponents’ picks.
Speaking of these 3 classes, Lock and Rogue have found their cookie cutter builds, but Druid players are still debating on what the optimal Druid deck is. Opinions vary between tokens, watchers, Gaara's ramp and Strifecro's midrange and there really are a lot of options. Where does your choice lie when building a tournament-viable druid deck?
I don’t watch Gaara and Strifecro so I don't know what druid decks exactly they use. I like to play tokens and a very old version of the Druid.
What do you mean under very old Druid? When people tell me this, it usually brings back memories of the old fountain Druids, with Nourish and all...
Older, like beta season 2-3.
The deck is displayed in the decklist section in the middle of the article.
Do you think there are more old decks like the Druid you speak of which can be digged out and re-invented to fit in the modern meta? I know for a fact several players have been trying to resurrect the Frost Mage with varying success but do you think there's other viable stuff too?
Maybe it’s about time to reinvent some old Paladin decks, as they are good versus Locks and Rogues.
You mean control Pallies or full face aggro?
Control.
In the following questions, me and Willionir talk about DreamHack as the interview was conducted before the event started.
Moving on to other tournament, DreamHack is just around the corner. Do you follow professional Hearthstone and if yes what do you expect to see at DH?
Some new decks and professional plays.
Lot of big names were extended invitations into DreamHack. What are your predictions for the tourney overall?
I think Gaara and ThijsNL are the strongest of these.
Interesting picks... No faith in the televised faces like Gnimsh, Ek0p or Amaz?
I don't think that popular players are necessarily stronger.
Alright then, we'll see if you're right in one week's time. At this point, I think we can bring this all to a wrap. If you have closing words - now's the time.
Well, I just hope that I can get some high places on GosuCup again and say thanks to my team Dardem | Evo. The guys really helped me during the tournament.
"The meta is going to transition away from RNG cards"
Alright, first and foremost - gratz on winning GosuCup #14. I know you only recently went fulltime as a Hearthstone player so I guess taking your first cup win must feel great!
Hey Nydra, thanks man ! Yeah it feels nice even if lots of named regulars were not attending this time and the field was smaller as usual.
You're basically the odd-one-out as far as GosuCup champions go. If most GosuCups are won by young, up and coming players, you come from an extensive TCG background, having played MTG since forever.
Yeah, I started playing TCG´s 1995 with Magic the Gathering and also played a lot of other TCG´s like Shadowrun, Babylon 5, Pokemon, VS System, WoW etc. I focused on MTG, though, and started traveling and playing tournaments at a young age with a couple of promising results and grinded on MTGO ( Magic Online ) for years 24/7 on a professional level. I also had an offline comeback with decent results which gave me the official "pro" status finally and also introduced and redirected me to online poker. To put it shortly, I spend most of the time in the last 10 years with grinding online card games and playing tournaments which could be helpful when it comes down to Hearthstone.
How did you end up transitioning into Hearthstone?
When I started playing Hearthstone at the end of November I got totally addicted to the game. I played very actively with some decent results on the ladder and in the couple of weekly tournaments we had at that point. Sadly, I was nearly inactive from the beginning of January till mid of April due personal reasons but after the TakeTV Hearthstone Invitational took place in my home town, things took their running. A good friend called and told me that he met a manager who is forming a Hearthstone team and that he told him about my skill, will and dedication. That’s how I ended up applying.
It turned out Sheepshooter was the captain and manager of that time and that sounded really nice to me because we chatted a lot about decklists/metagame/plays. At that time, I managed to reach a 75-80% win-rate, finish top 50 in Season 1, top 8 in ZOTAC and third in ESL. Within that week Sheepshooter informed me that I got the last slot on the team which still feels really nice and now I'm playing together with him, Robinwho and Flashkicker for Cplay Tt Hearthstone.
So as we mentioned, you've been living and breathing MTG before moving on the HS, which we can all agree is a different, infinitely more complex game. What knowledge did you extract from it and transfer on to Hearthstone?
Living and breathing hits it on the spot. It’s definitely a different & more complex game but there are also many similarities. I guess the ability to recognize patterns which I have trained for for years helps me a lot as well as the dedication to train limited formats or constructed decks all the time. If you play card games for so many years, you get more than used to the rng/luck factor which isn’t affecting me emotionally at any point so I have a clear mindsetup for most of the times. Additionally, if you stare on boards for years trying to figure out what’s the best play and how you’re going to win and what your opponent will do in the next turns is pretty similar to Hearthstone and helped me a lot for the transition.
I want to stay on HS vs other TCGs for a little long. Hearthstone, in general, is considered a more volatile, rng-based games than competitive staples like, say, MTG or WoW TCG. In traditional TCGs, all the randomness usually comes from how your deck is stacked and proplayers avoid the few random cards like the plague unless they can abuse and mitigate this effect (the Ignite Memories decks for example). Yet in Hearthstone, we have both the luck of the draw and lots of cards with random effects which are actually needed for many tier 1 decks (Rag, Ysera, Sylvanas)... How much is this harming the game? Will the meta ever transition away from these cards and stick strictly to cards which can be fully controlled?
I’m definitely sure that the metagame is going to transition away from cards with an rng factor to cards which can be fully controlled as soon as we get more sets and more playable cards that synergize well. We can’t compare it to MTG at this point when it comes to the card pool and the possibilities of deck building because there are so many sets/cards and with that - infinite possibilities.
One thing that makes HS different from Magic is the resources. In Magic, you have to build good decks not only-spell wise, but mana-wise too, ranging from 20-22 lands (aggro) to 24-26 (control). This where the randomness comes from, and when you hang out with players you will hear about losses due to mana screw (not enough lands) and mana flood (too many lands). I played some HEX TCG some weeks ago and it was really similar – it felt awful losing to screw/flood.
In HS, both players get resources continuously which is nice because it takes out that screw/flood factor and it’s a mechanic that’s part of the game. To me, that feels like it’s reducing the luck factor at some point because every deck can rely on getting mana all the time in a steady manner. In Magic you can lose without doing much/anything, while lots of HS games are super close because both players are resourcing up every turn.
For me, I think that lots of RNG cards are actually fine as they are controllable and that takes planning. I was never a fan of strict RNG cards like Pagle or Tinkmaster, though, so maybe designing more Ragnaroses and Sylvanas instead of Pagles we'll be all fine?
Yeah, it could work out.
Throwing more questions at you as we transition to some GosuCup talk! You brought decks from all archetypes - a heavily defensive Druid, then Zoo and Face Hunter and two miracle decks - Druid and Rogue. Now, four of these are pretty common, but miracle Druid is not. Yours has cards from token Druid mostly but we see a Gadgetzan in there, double Coldlight, Wild Growths, Moonfire. I guess my question is simple - What the fuck?
Hehe, yeah, that deck is so funny. It’s able to win games and unsettles the opponent while you play in a tournament and your opponent has no clue or just the fact that he has to think a lot about what you’re doing there and which cards he has to expect. Facing such situations in tournaments when you’re not prepared can be fatal and also might make your opponent uncertain for the next game.
Below, Seeker goes in-depth about the Miracle Druid, typing out kind of a mini-guide to it. Be prepared for a long read!
A good friend of mine Niceday86 - who also has the same TCG background as myself - built this deck around 10-11 days ago, inspired by a turn 5 kill Druid I had built. He built this ramp control miracle combo kill deck and it was more than funny to play against it in the beginning. The first rounds I played with it were amazingly nice. It might not be as consistent as other decks but we still have to find that out, it’s definitely not that easy to play because you have limited damage output and mistakes are not allowed.
The gist of the deck is to ramp up, draw some cards and handle the board then just finish the opponent. If there’s a spot for an awesome Teacher turn which could pay off you go for it and roar all the tokens.
The most important cards for the start are Wild Growth, Nourish, Innervate, mana is this deck’s base and if you have a chance to ramp up, go for it. Wrath could also be keept situational but normally you should try to mulligan into those cards.
This deck features a lot of spells which have a huge synergy with Violet Techer and Gadgetzan Auctioneer. Sometimes you have to be very patient to kick off 1-2 awesome turns and sometimes you’re just fine with clearing the board and using a lot of your spells and waiting for the right moment to evolve a nice board. Usually, you just go into the draw and pray for MiraKles to be in your favour and often in the following turns you’re going to finish your opponent exactly on point by combo supported by Claw/Moonfire.
You can set up huge boards with Violet Teacher combined with Power of the Wild and a couple of cheap spells really early, which will be overwhelming if the opponent has no solution. If you’re able to Roar the turn after that while your opponent might just have handled 1-2 threats then you’re most likely going to win that game.
If you don’t Innervate early to ramp out nourish then you keep it for Gadgetzan or the combo to draw as many cards as possible. Usually the Auctioneer hits the board around turns 6-7 and you often have 8-10 mana so you’ll draw 7-8 cards most of the time.
Coldlight Oracle and Naturalize: the Oracle is just that random 2/2 "I’m here to trade" dude helping you get into the flow by drawing two cards which can synergize with Naturalize when you’re going to let the opponent overdraw which is really nice against handlock and sometimes against miracle. Naturalize is a hard removal for 1 mana, meaning it can swing momentum and draw you cards via Gadgetzan so its drawback is somewhat mitigated.
Finally, you have some cards to finish your opponent or deal huge amount of damage like Force of Nature / Savage Roar and Leeroy Jenkins.
There was a new Priest card announced recently. What's your take on it?
Yeah I saw it, really nice body, 3/4 for 3, seems pretty playable. Evolving the board early with some huge life minions which trade and going be healed all the time.
Is it going to make Priest viable?
Hmm, I don’t think so, since the class is so reactive still and doesn’t have much card draw or nice finishing bursting potential like other decks. But the card will definitely have an impact on Priest decks I can imagine. I’m far away from being a Priest expert, though, so we will see. It’s definitely one of the better cards announced so far, definitely more than playable.
Would you have designed something different?
I don’t think so, it’s nice, strong and still fair, definitely a step into the right direction to get the Priest near to the metagame.
Well, I think we can finish this. Any last words?
Yeah , thanks to you guys for hosting the hearthstone GosuCups.
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