Photo: Twitter
The first HPL season is well underway and the first matches of this $60,000 league were played last night.
PVPLive are showing big ambitions with their revamped project and new ongoing Hearthstone league. Getting renowned caster Nathan “Admirable” Zamora and pairing him with a new face on the scene in Tannon Grace provided an upbeat style of casting as the HPL tournament opened. With the duo stationed on-site in PVPLive’s studio, it added an extra layer of production value, though recurring sound issues left a somewhat bitter taste in viewers’ mouths.
Besides the studio environment, HPL also wanted to offer something different to the Hearthstone fans. Running away from traditional Conquest format, the tournament adhered to “no locks, no bans, no restrictions” motto of deckbuilding. “If you can build it, you can play it,” their press release said and we saw that in action last night.
Smartly deciding to abuse the “no restrictions” rule and stick to tested power decks, Jeffrey “Sjow” Brusi queued Hunter time and time again against Jan “Ekop” Palys, while the German was slaloming between four different classes: Druid, Warlock, Mage and Hunter. Even though Ekop’s change-it-all-the-time strategy helped him for the most part, his Warlock deck ultimately cost him the series as Sjow’s Hunter prevailed once more.
David “Dog” Caero and Hak-Jun “Kranich” Baek met in the second match. Eventual series winner Dog overcame Kranich's quirky Reincarnate Shaman in the opening series and joined Sjow on the winners bench.
HPL are aiming at a four-day broadcast, which means the tournament will return today with more matches, namely:
JAB vs Superjj at 00:00 CET
Kranich vs Powder at 01:00 CET
Zalae vs Era at 02:00 CET
VODs of last night can be found below:
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