Our Summer Championship Scorecard

Following the thrilling conclusion of the Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) Summer Championship, we wanted to revisit our event preview and see how the tournament shook out compared to our early expectations. Here’s a quick look at the hits, misses, and surprises from our three days in Los Angeles… One Ban to Rule Them All Jade Druid drew the majority (63%) of the bans in the tournament, which is unsurprising given the Conquest format—most players weren’t running a lineup of decks that could target Jade efficiently, and it’s a strong counter to the omnipresent Highlander Priest. Simply removing it from the equation freed up the pros to focus on maximizing their odds with Priest (which also had few organic counters in play), the enormous potential of Tempo Rogue, and whatever their edge-case matchups looked like. The remainder of the bans generally hit specific weaknesses of individual player’s lineups. Highlander Priest was the next-most banned, at 17% of the time. Kim ‘Surrender’ Jung-soo, our eventual champion, brought a lineup that was designed to beat most of the field apart from Tempo Rogue, so he was responsible for most of the limited Rogue bans (11%). The last few bans hit a couple of Token Shaman lists, Wang 'BaiZe' XinYu’s Zoo Warlock (twice), and a lone ban of Zheng 'OmegaZero' Lin’s Hunter. Classy Performances Which classes succeeded and which did not, outside of mirror matches, frequently came down to their pilots and matchups. Based on pure numbers, though, Paladin was the surprise breakthrough weapon of choice, posting an overall 69% win rate across the entire tournament (albeit only over 16 games). Our four semifinalists qualified for the upcoming HCT World Championship in Amsterdam this January, and they did so primarily on the back of the most popular competitive decks. Each brought Highlander Priest and Jade Druid, and three of the four had Tempo Rogue and/or Token Shaman. Only two outside edge-case decks made appearances: Jason ‘JasonZhou’ Zhou’s Handlock, and Surrender’s Murloc Paladin. Most of the players who brought non-standard lineups were punished for it. Neither player who forwent Jade Druid made it to the quarterfinals; two of the three players fielding Warrior decks also failed to advance. Having said that, players with the same meta lineup that took Orange and Purple to the World Championship, like Pavel 'Pavel' Beltukov and Riku 'YAYTears' Miyao, fell short. Each of our highlighted Unique Decks was brought by a player who didn’t make the semifinals. Tech Support Survey It looks as though Jon 'Orange' Westberg and Ryan 'Purple' Murphy-Root’s decision to play Gadgetzan Auctioneer in their Highlander Priest decks and Sea Giants in their Token Shamans paid off—the former for its strength in the mirror and flexibility elsewhere, the latter for its value alongside or against board flooding—as both of our color competitors made it to the World Championship. Most of the other tech choices appear to have fizzled, as tournament-prepared players easily played around Mind Control Tech. A special shout-out has to go to Dirty Rat, which ended up being a fairly standard inclusion in multiple decks, but also became a staple of the miracle moments of the Summer Championship. Other minor tech decisions, like Guillermo 'Empanizado' Tolosa Góngora’s Tempo Rogue focusing heavily on winning the mirror match, played out very well, too (despite being fairly simple changes, such as playing Golakka Crawlers). Congratulations once again to Surrender, Orange, JasonZhou, and Purple on successfully navigating HCT Summer and advancing to the World Championship! What decisions—lineups, bans, tech, or otherwise—do you think helped them go the distance? Let us know in the comments.