A brief history of competitive HS formats
Ever since competitive Hearthstone became a thing – somewhere after the Innkeeper’s Invitational – there’s been one topic widely discussed and experimented with: the tournament format. And with the rapid growth of the scene, it’s almost surprising that almost a year after Artosis triumphed at BlizzCon, people are still searching for the most optimal way to conduct matches.
To Hearthstone’s defense, the game couldn’t take after the established formats in traditional games, where the competitor would build a single deck, flesh it out as much as possible and bring it to a tournament. The main reason for that was simple: Before Naxxramas, Hearthstone had nine different classes but less than 400 cards. That alone was way too restricting to players and even in the last days before the expansion, classes like Priest just didn’t have more than one viable build, not counting the small tech changes to fit the meta. In order to tap into a larger card pool and bring diversity to the competitive scene, players had to use multiple classes within a single tournament.
Due to its limited card pool, Hearthstone couldn't take after the established formats in traditional games, where the competitor would build a single deck, flesh it, test it and bring it to a tournament.
Thus, the BlizzCon deck elimination format became the standard for tournaments for a long time. While weekly open cups tried their own thing – Managrind, for example, used to run one-deck swiss tournaments while GosuCup allowed unlimited sideboarding – televised tournament adhered to what the Innkeeper Invitational used. And it made sense – players got to build several decks and viewers got to see different classes and match-ups. It worked.
Somewhere around the Millenium House Cup, this all-kill format was improved. Taking ideas from the French competitive community in attempt to restrict broken builds from competitive play, tournament organizers implemented the ban system. Players would still build a certain number of decks, usually four, but they’d be barred from one in each series. Not fancying playing Hunter? No worries, then.
Needless to say, this became the go-to format for modern Hearthstone tournaments in the Western scene. However, in Asia, people had different ideas of how the game should be played.
The recent WEC 2014 grand finals - as well as online Asian tournaments like CN vs KR Masters 2 - invited players to a brand new format. The four-class restriction still applied but this time players could fill all nine deck slots. For the western players and viewers, this was as unorthodox as it gets. The feedback, as a result, wasn’t a positive one.
Where WEC goes wrong
Now, all this is not to say that the western standard of 4-classes-1-ban format is perfect and it didn’t have its opponents. In a blog post, TCG veteran and Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour champion Brian Kibler criticizes the system, saying that while it promotes class diversity, it “does not necessarily promote diversity amongst the actual decks people play of those classes.” He goes on to point out how the reward for inventing an innovative strategy is “dramatically lower”, especially when your previously unseen, secret deck can simply be banned out against you. This, Kibler says, leads to players using a bunch of classes but not really using different builds which in turn leads to difficult-to-build narratives around the players who, in traditional TCGs, will build a single deck of their own, perfect it and try to smash the competition that way.
- Brian Kibler for BMKGaming”
Then along came WEC 2014 which – in attempt to “fix” the western format, or provide a different take on tournaments, or for just any other reason – pushed things a “little” further.
Let’s start with the minor problems. First of all, players could still ban one class of their opponent’s, which means the same issues Brian Kibler had with the traditional format remain. People would still ban Hunter and use Handlock in response. Nothing is improved.
What really drove the format in the ground was the next part: WEC competitors were allowed to fill all of their nine deck slots, giving them that much more space to design decks.
What really drove WEC's format in the ground the fact that competitors were allowed to fill all of their nine deck slots, giving them that much more space to design decks.
Now, this sounds cool only for a few seconds before one gets to think about it more. Traditional ban format is already revolves around counter-picking and while players will try to design decks that perform decently against everything, they will order and pick their decks in such a way so that they earn an advantage in the Bo5 or the Bo7 series. They will open with Druid or Rogue knowing those are solid classes overall; they will pick Shaman to counter Handlock; they will run control, heal-heavy Paladins to counter aggressive decks; they will choose Warrior to get an edge over the Mage. The examples are many, but you get the idea.
What’s important to point out here is that never in a 4-deck tournament will you see a deck which can be described as a “hard counter”. Priests will not be built purely anti-Handlock with [card]Big Game Hunter[/card]s and double [card]Shadow Word: Death[/card] because this deck still has to play other decks and it takes one of your only four deck slots.
In WEC, this restriction is gone. With nine slots to their disposal, players could do basically whatever they want to. They would not only construct solid, well-rounded decks for the series opener but also use the empty space to construct specific hard counters to anything their opponents bring out. In addition, simple math shows that if players usually build four traditional decks for tournaments – the best build for each class - they will have that many plus one slots for counter decks. You literally have more freedom to build reactionary and not progressively.
This is obviously bad format design. As Curse’s Johan “Darkwonyx” Hansson pointed out, such format creates the danger of a snowball effect, where the winner of the first game in a series is one hard-counter ahead of his opponent and has a huge advantage for the rest of the series (and as we pointed out, the nine-slot rule allows for more counters than well-rounded builds).
- Darkwonyx for GosuGamers”
A quick scout to the tournaments using this system, namely WEC 2014 and CN vs KR Masters 2, shows that there’s truth to Darkwonyx’s word. In WEC, five of the six streamed games were won by the winner of the first game. In CN vs KR, seven of the eight Ro16 matches had the same outcome. 86% of the time, Bo5’s are turned into Bo1’s. I guess a similar research on the western tournaments should also be done but just looking at the WEC EU and NA qualifiers, we see the numbers being down by 15%, and those were tournaments which allowed for deck re-building during the playdays.
Limitations breed creativity. Cut them out and you’re risking a subpar result at best.
In another interview we did during our time in China, GosuCup #1 champion and #22 player in Europe Nuno “Ignite” Pinho says that WEC’s champion further “reduces the skill ceiling of the tournament” which is the final point I want to make here. Having full freedom is good for many things, just not Hearthstone tournaments. The beauty of competitive TCG’s is how players players build around certain restrictions to achieve the best possible result. In Magic: The Gathering, competitors must operate within a small 75-card limit (60 for main deck, 15 for sideboard). In Western Hearthstone, the limit is at 120 cards but those are spread over four completely different classes and playstyles.
- Ignite for GosuGamers”
This is why deckbuilding is considered one of the hardest things in TCG’s – it’s done in the face of limitations. Limitations breed creativity. Cut them out and you’re risking a subpar result at best.
Where to now?
Now that we’ve agreed that WEC’s format is suboptimal to put it lightly (we have, right?) and that there’s still room for optimization (although the format does indeed work for the purposes of contemporary Hearthstone), the logical question is “what’s the next step for competitive Hearthstone format-wise”.
Personally, I would love to see Hearthstone going the way of traditional TCG’s for the reasons Brian Kibler mentions. The connection between the deck and the player who built it always makes for a great story. Magic: The Gathering fans will remember Stanislav Cifka and his “Second Breakfast” combo deck which won the RTR Pro Tour against Yuuya Watanabe, taking turns as long as fifteen minutes; or Shouta Yasooka’s intricate deckbuilding in his 2012 Players Championship run which ended in a second place. I haven’t been actively following competitive Magic recently, but these are narratives that stuck to me.
The connection between the deck and the player who built it always makes for a great story [...] but for better or worse, one-deck tournaments are nowhere in Hearthstone’s near future.
But Hearthstone, unfortunately, is not there yet, as we mentioned at the start of the article. The game is young and the card pool isn’t even at 500 yet. Even though there are nine different classes, there are no more than two or three viable builds per class. If you face Paladin, you’ll know it’s going to be control, because it’s the most consistent. Additionally, any attempt at implementing a sideboarding option is hindered by the game interface, which simply doesn’t allow for an easy way to do it. For better or worse, one-deck tournaments are nowhere in Hearthstone’s near future.
Still, there are tournament organizers trying to go outside the 4-class-1-ban box. Viagame's new HouseCup tournament has competitors build nine decks but of nine different classes! The two players then go through a pick/ban phase similar to those in MOBA games until each player is left with five decks to use for the series.
This format copies some of the principle used during the ESGN Fight Night 4v4 matches but has more room for variation. Where ESGN players had to build their decks on the spot and create just three decks, HouseCup players will have to pre-submit nine different builds, having in mind the current metagame and the opponents they'll be facing. According to Viagame staff, the format was designed with the help of the proplayers who'll be attending the event.
- Simon Sundén, Viagame Content Manager”
Of course, HouseCup's rules can still get caught in the same pitfall, where Flavor of the Month classes won't see play, but at least that's a more clever use of the nine deck slots, compared to Asian tournaments. Having every class in players' line-ups will also help draw out bans, targeting the "OP classes" but leaving enough opportunities for strange and innovative decks of underrepesented classes to be played.
In the end, finding a revolutionary solution that completely remodels how Hearthstone is played is close to impossible. Yet, organizers ought to take small steps and do little experiments in pursuit of the most optimal format during every stage of game's development. Sitting on something for months long just because it works and is safe is a mistake . Young sports need innovations, even in small doses.
