Sweden’s Fluffy and Russia’s Korvus are a lock for the Shanghai finals.
After a 15-hour broadcast, Europe knows the first two players to compete at the end of the year for the six-figure pot at WESG, the largest Hearthstone tournament ever outside of Blizzcon.
Elliot “Fluffy” Carlsson, who won the Swedish regional qualifier, was near perfect in Kyiv as well, dropping just one game to Simon “Crane” Raunholst on his way to the top seed. The Swede left not only Complexity’s ace behind, who ended up eliminated with a score of 1-3, but also beat group and tournament favorite Sebastian “Xixo” Bentert, winning the tiebreaker between them by the power of favorable head-to-head. Dutch player Liam “Lbdutchboy” Brouwer finished third to wrap up the group.
More upsets happened in Group B as Russia’s Mikhail "Korvus" Portyanski finished on the top of the standings with a 3-1 score, outpacing Europe Championship finalists Mateusz “Loyan” Roszkowski and Eirik “Diggen” Aarvig. Loyan and Diggen were both tied at 2-2 with Tempo Storm’s Petar “Gaara” Stevanovic, who ended up in the lower half of the bracket due to poor tiebreaker and is eliminated from the tournament.
Noteworthy was the lack of metagame diversity during the first day. Only six of the nine classes were played, with Priest, Mage and Warlock out of the picture. Despite nerfs to key cards, Druid, Shaman and Warrior remained both the most popular and the highest winning classes of the day. Little to no variation in archetypes was observed, too, the deck floor consisting almost exclusively of Midrange Shaman, Yogg Druid, Control Warrior, Miracle Rogue, Anyfin Paladin and Midrange Hunter.
Full coverage of WESG EU is available in our event coverage hub.
