The former world champion is starting his series of non-standard tournaments with a five-card banlist.
The state of competitive Hearthstone has been under attack for some time. The disbandment of Natus Vincere’s Hearthstone division was but just one example of the shaky state of things, other concerns including the straight-forwardness of the gameplay (the so-called “Curvestone”), RNG comeback mechanics like Yogg Saron and the staleness of the tournament formats, mostly consisting of four-deck, one-ban set-ups.
A few organizers are trying to spice things up in the twilight of 2016. PGL Bucharest, scheduled for September 16-18, is set to introduce a 9-deck last hero standing with an extensive pick/ban phase. Another tournament series coming from 2014 world champion James “Firebat” Kostesich, on the other hand, is going where no other tournament has gone before – banning cards.
The first time this was attempted was in 2014, when ChanmanV opted to ban the then dominant [card]leeroy Jenkins[/card] and [card]starving buzzard[/card] from his Deck Wars, but was shut down by Blizzard. This time around, the company looks to be more acquiescent to Firebat’s idea and Batstone #1 will run its first event with these cards forbidden:
[card]Yogg-Saron, Hope's end[/card]
[card]tuskarr totemic[/card]
[card]fiery war axe[/card]
[card]barnes[/card]
[card]call of the wild[/card]
Firebat has also revealed four of the invites to compete in Batstone #1, which include Thijs “ThijsNL” Molendijk, Keaton “Chakki” Gil, Cong “StrifeCro” Shu and Jan “SuperJJ” Janssen. Three more will be invited before the tournament starts September 14th at 16:00 CEST.
