It’s been two eventful opening days at the 2016 Hearthstone World Championship. With the ante upped to $1 million, stakes are higher than ever before. Even without the money on the line the clash between the four regions is ripe with intriguing narrative, with storylines dating as far back as last year when Sebastian “Ostkaka” Engwall ran away with the trophy.
One can argue that this year’s World Finals are even richer on stories than their predecessor. We have redemption, reassertion and baptism in the fire that’s Hearthstone’s crown event. From now up until the very last day, there won’t be a single boring minute and every region has something to prove.
Today, we look at the main storylines from the first two days and leading up to the winners and elimination matches on Friday-Sunday.
1. America is flawless
On paper, North America wasn’t supposed to do as well as it did. Its line-up consisted primarily of lesser-known names, the only distinguished competitor being former Archon coach and child prodigy William “Amnesiac” Barton, the region’s Winter Champion.
The identity of the AM four is a direct product of the Hearthstone climate in that part of the world. The Americas lacked, and still does, the tournament infrastructure of Europe and China, where major tournaments are being held monthly, and only this year did it get its first DreamHack event. With very few opportunities to find new talent, develop, and improve existing one, the quartet to represent the region came down to players whose appearances in major tournaments were few to non-existent. In a weird way, Amnesiac’s colleagues were even more unknown than some players from China and APAC, whose exposure in the west is limited, to say the least.
These hurdles didn’t stop the North Americans from going undefeated in the opening matches, which, frankly, came as a bit of a surprise. The opponents they faced were highly decorated, including the beast of APAC Il-Mook “Handsomeguy” Kang, a triple championship grand finalist, Ole “Naiman” Batyrbekov, a headliner on Virtus.pro, and Pavel “Pavel” Beltukov, the winner of Europe’s Last Call Invitational. The series they played were hardly close either and in the four Bo7 North America gave up just six games, much thanks to Julien “Cydonia” Perrault’s blanking of Handsomeguy and Edwin “HotMEOWTH” Cook’s 4-1 obliteration of Pavel in last night’s fourth series.
If all four Americas players win today, it will be a total group stage triumph. The last time this was done was in 2014 when it was once again the Americas region which achieved it. It is time for a repeat.
2. Europe... not so much
As mentioned above, North America wasn’t supposed to have a flawless record in the opening days. Europe was. Instead, three of its four players are one loss away from a round one ousting.
With Thijs "ThijsNL" Molendijk, Naiman and Pavel all in a catch-up position, the EU hype train has slowed down significantly. The region was voted as the one with the highest chances to win the Championship but instead it’s having its worst start at World Finals ever, matching APAC’s at Worlds 2014 and AM’s Worlds 2015. In both cases, only one player of those regions managed to qualify for the playoffs and in both cases it was the player who won his opening match: Hak-Jun “Kranich” Baek in 2014 and Dylan “Hotform” Mullins in 2015.
If this trend is to continue, that’s good news for Artem “DrHippi” Kravets, who also came very close to joining his fellow Europeans in the losers bracket but survived a seven-game thriller against Yuxiang “Breath” Chen. It’s now up to other three to break the macabre tradition.
It will need some stepping up, however. For all their big stage experience, neither ThijsNL or Pavel played to their real potential and while the Dutchman and his opponent Jason “JasonZhou” Zhou played possibly the best series of last night, Pavel’s piloting of his C’Thun Warrior was not up to World Finals standards.
Then again, if any four European players can turn it around for their region, it’s those. Between them, they’ve won close to $225,000 and have competed at more major tournaments than all the other four regions combined. There’s definitely a lot that elevates the hope for an EU comeback but fans will be at the edge of their seats come Saturday nevertheless.
3. Match of Day 1: OmegaZero vs Ddahyoni
Zheng “OmegaZero” Lin carries a lot of the faith of his countrymen on his shoulders. A back-to-back major champion and four-in-a-row #1 legend finisher, the rising star is very likely China’s best shot at taking its first world championship.
In five games against APAC Winter Champion Sang-Hyeon “Ddahyoni” Baek, OmegaZero showed just how good he is at Hearthstone, playing out his series in arguably the best way out of all 16 players at Worlds. This isn’t a match that will have you shaking with excitement, it’s simply one player’s display of highest Hearthstone skill.
4. Match of Day 2: ThijsNL vs JasonZhou
This one, however, is. A titan of the scene, ThijsNL met JasonZhou in the opening match of day two and played full seven games before China’s player emerged victorious. Highlights include Thijs’ Miracle play against JasonZhou’s N’Zoth Warrior in game two and Jason’s come-back on the same deck and his Malygos Druidin the next two, as well as the very last face-off where Thijs’ secret-heavy, double-[card]snipe[/card] Hunter got blasted in the last second by Jason’s Miracle.
