After a bunch of crazy games, let's talk about this extreme strategy about killing yourself instead of killing your opponent. Is it a Cloud 9 strategy now?
ek0p: Yeah, everyone nowadays is starting to BM people right? I invented it and now that everyone is doing it and I don't get any credit so obviously I have to innovate the BM game once again. This is some next level BM that you just saw right there. The way to top every BM out there is killing yourself and winning anyway. That's the best BM.
You basically Frostbolt-ed yourself in the face instead of Frostbolting Pappastoma in the face so you ended up losing. You should have won actually. The last game was also intense: Hunter vs Warrior. Why did you pick Warrior?
ek0p: At that point I had to choose among Paladin, Warrior and Priest. I chose Warrior because I had success with Warrior against Hnter before this tournament so sure, why not again? Even if Priest has better board clears than Warrior, it can struggle against those early game Undertakers and Warrior has weapons for that--or Execute even. Warrior is better in the early game department for sure. I also run double Brawl in my deck so that’s a thing that can really wreck some Hunters.
Isn’t it a big risk playing double Brawl in a tournament? For a long time people did not like Brawl and now you guys are running double. Why is this the case?
ek0p: It is really greedy but it is a very effective mass removal because whatever survives, usually you can just clear with the weapon that you have lying around. It is also good removal if Undertakers get out of control and Brawl is a good solution. Other mass removals are good against small minions but Brawl can also take care of the big ones so it’s really effective mass removal. It can hurt you as well but if you are ahead, then you don’t need to play Brawl anyway.
I guess it fixes the Shaman matchup as well because Warrior has been known to struggle against this class
ek0p: Exactly. Brawl is definitely one of the most important cards against Shamans, as well as Baron Geddon. With the rise of Shaman, because LiBo won with it several times, Shaman would become popular that’s why double Brawl would be useful
You just returned from China. There were a lot of negative comments about the tournament from the players and the community. How was your personal experience at the WCA 2014?
ek0p: China was pretty cool. I share my experiences in my Vlog. You can check it at my YouTube channel. Overall, the people were very nice. China’s very cheap so you can have a good time for a little amount of money. In general, I thought it was okay. Nothing really struck me negatively. In the end, I think that there were not that many players who did not deserve to be there. Many people there are on the same skill level so in the end it was fair and over all, the luckiest players eventually came on top. Everyone who missed lethal went into Top 4 except for RDU who got 4th because he did not miss lethal. Next time he should learn "the next level BM of missing lethal", then RDU can win some tournaments.
Do you know who you’ll play against with tomorrow?
ek0p: I don’t know and I don’t care. I plan on stomping on everyone, 3-0.
Let’s talk about deck building. It’s a big part of this tournament. We have 9 decks, 9 classes, obviously it incentivizes creativity. What did you do different this time?
ek0p: Not really. I tweaked decks here and there but nothing groundbreaking. Everything that I’ve played, people have seen. My Rogue is a little bit different. With the nerf of Leeroy, there’s a lot of different Rogue builds and there’s no general consensus on which one is the strongest yet. There’s a lot of variety in the rogue class. As for the other decks, they’re pretty standard. There’s also variety on how you can build Hunter decks depending on which decks you are going against.
What about Mage? You’ve used mage in this tournament. This class has also been getting a lot of innovation recently. Where do you think the class stands right now? What do you think is the optimal way to play it?
ek0p: I really like midrange Mage, the one with secrets like Mirror Entity, Counterspell, Duplicate … I also like Aggressive Mage. It is kinda straightforawrd which is generally not the deck that I like playing because it gets countered too easily but overall it is also very powerful. The Freeze Mage has also been very powerful since the beginning of Hearthstone. I’m pretty sure that the mage decks right now are viable. I just prefer playing control mage because it is a good matchup against many decks.
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