In its two years of serious competitive play, Hearthstone has given us a lot of memorable moments. We’ve seen Lifecoach getting ironically punished by [card]Nozdormu[/card]; [card]Sneed's Old Shredder[/card] dropping back-to-back-to-back [card]Kel'Thuzad[/card]s and Trump winning games off of [card]Hungry Crab[/card].
Yet to this date, this game between Cong “StrifeCro” Shu and Aleksandr “Kolento” Malsh at the semi finals of DreamHack Winter 2014 remains one of the best displays of tactical thinking to day. In a throwback to the last DHW to commemorate yet another year of Hearthstone at DreamHack, we’ll now go back to this moment.
A little back story: After many months of being hyped as the best player in the world, Kolento took his first major at HouseCup #1 in October and was in prime position to take the World Championship next month. The Ukrainian was a true juggernaut of the game, showing absolute perfection at the dominant decks at the time while also being one of the few players to have success with Priest.
As he travelled to California for HWC 2014, Kolento ended up sharing a group with Cloud 9 team-mate StrifeCro, the only worthy adversary to the HouseCup champ in that group at least. The eventual clash between the two ended with StrifeCro’s triumph; Kolento came second in the group and had to play Hak-Jun “Kranich” Baek in the quarter finals, a match-up that resulted in former’s elimination.
The last days of 2014 were trickling down and DreamHack Winter was one of Kolento’s last chances to win another major and end the year on a high note. His first day at the event, however, did not begin optimally, and Kolento was almost eliminated from the group stage, though he managed to survive the lower bracket, ending the tournament lives of such players like Forsen, Rdu and Maverick.
With all the threat of tournament elimination, Kolento was yet to face his toughest enemy in the very familiar face of StrifeCro. The American himself was also looking for a major win, after being dormant for the majority of the summer and fall seasons. Viewers could almost physically taste the tension, as two of game’s most innovative deckbuilders were about to clash.
The series peaked at game four with Kolento on control Warrior playing against a deck nobody knew how to play against and which would later become known as “Fatigue Mage”. It took the two more than 30 minutes to declare a winner, during which nobody – not casters, not fans, not even Kolento himself – could fully realize what was happening.
I will not spoil the game for you: That would be a crime. To this day, I’ve watched this match over ten times and I stand by the opinion that it’s one of the best lectures on strategic thinking and planning ever put on display in the game. For all the Hearthstone that’s been thrown our way since then, it literally took one year before ThijsNL and Ostkaka could produce an equally thrilling semi final.
