Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020, Season 1 is well underway and has seen some fierce competition. 48 players from around the world – 16 from the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific – have been competing in the first 8-week season of the year. After 3 weeks of play the players were split into 2 groups, Division A and Division B. The breakdown for how the divisions work is as follows.
Top 6 players from Division A automatically make it to Playoffs.
Top 4 from Division B compete to determine which 2 of them will join the top 6 from Division A in Playoffs.
The players in 7th and 8th place in Division B are automatically relegated from Season 1 of Grandmasters 2020.
7th and 8th place from Division A and 5th and 6th place from Division B will compete for final relegation.
Players in Division A have a significantly better chance of reaching playoffs and a much smaller chance of seeing relegation. One of the players who snagged a spot in Division A for the Americas region is Eddie. I managed to get an interview with him so you can find out just what it takes to be a Hearthstone Grandmaster.
BitBeaker: Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?
Eddie: Hello everyone, my name is Eddie, a Grandmaster playing in the American Region. Some of you might know me from seohyun628, which I decided to change last year as it was too hard for people to spell and pronounce.
BB: How did you originally get into Hearthstone?
E: I got into the game during beta, when I saw an advertisement about it, and I have always liked card games since I was young. I decided to give it a try and love it ever since.
BB: What do you do during a match to keep focused and prevent your emotions from getting in the way of making solid plays?
E: Before I play my match, I usually think about different possible matchups that might happen and the general game plan going into those matchups. This helps make the thought process clear and make sure I approach the matchups correctly. Understanding that variance is a part of any card game and trying to keep calm even when things don’t go your way. Also preparing some water and staying hydrated helps during match day.
BB: I currently play in THL as well as many of the readers. Could you describe your journey from being a player in THL to becoming a Grandmaster and how much different are the two experiences?
E: Before playing THL, I was already playing semi-competitively in Hearthstone (2nd place in Dreamhack Montreal 2017). However, I was still relatively new to the competitive scene and wanted to gain more experience. Joining THL was helpful as there was a weekly tournament to help me stay sharp and try out new decks, which eventually helped me improve a lot and secure my GM spot as a top points earner in NA. Grandmaster is definitely a very high skill level tournament where all the players are extremely good at the fundamentals, where deck preparation is one of the most important aspects of defining top players. When I was playing THL first season, I was playing as 2nd seed (first seed was theflyestlai). As 2nd seed, my opponent will generally bring good meta decks, but the lineup would not have much synergies with each other. Those lineups will generally have a deck that is good vs the deck they planned to ban and weak versus some of the potential decks opponent is likely to bring. This gives me extra percentages before the match starts. Overall, I think THL players fundamentals are good but little bit more thoughts on lineup preparation will be the main differences.
BB: Blizzard recently moved all of their esports events from Twitch to YouTube. Has the platform change had an effect on you as a player?
E: I think the change is overall a good change in the long run. Youtube is one of the biggest websites in the world and able to hit way bigger potential audiences. However, making it exclusively on Youtube definitely reduces the interests of potential sponsors from esports teams. Grandmaster was averaging around 15k-25k per week while on Twitch to roughly 5k-8k on youtube right now which is a big decrease. Me and a couple very decent GMs are currently teamless as very few teams would be interested in sponsoring players participating in a tournament with a low view count.
BB: Demon Hunter was the first new class released in the history of the game and with it came some very quickfire changes. Do you think adding a class was good for the health of the game and how has it affected your gameplay experience?
E: Adding a new class is very refreshing toward the game and healthy for the game. Sometimes Hearthstone gets a bit too stale after 1-2 months in an expansion, which having an extra new class might make the game more diverse instead of playing against the same 1-2 archetypes every game.
BB: At what point do you feel like you turned the corner to become the player you are today and what do you most attribute that to?
E: I think the biggest part that helped me improve rapidly the last few years was having a good friend/practice partner to discuss plays/matchups. Tarei was one of the few people that was willing to discuss plays with me when I was a nobody. Sometimes I would send him replays or discuss about certain matchups or mulligans. Personally, I feel like it's very hard to improve fast playing alone as there is often a lot of different lines/approaches being missed. It is very easy to tunnel vision and say that this line of play is definitely the best play, when there might have been some other play that was better. He would also motivate me a lot when things don’t go well. He would always tell me to focus on things that you can have an impact on (mulligans/deck selections/tech cards choices/cards you got dealt with) rather than complain about certain RNG. Cause in the long run a better players will win the majority of the time.
BB: What is the best piece of advice you could give to those looking to take their game to the next level?
E: For anyone that is looking to improve in Hearthstone, I think the most important thing is to find a practice partner/group and learn from each other. It is much more efficient to learn with a group than alone. Having a second opinion is very important as there are always things that we might have missed when reviewing the games ourselves.
I’d like to give a big thank you to Eddie for taking time to answer these questions for us. You can find him on Twitter @Eddie__HS, or on his Twitch stream at https://www.twitch.tv/eddie__hs
If you’d like to try your hand at competing in Hearthstone there are many ways you can get started. There are several different tournament series to get your feet wet or you can jump right in and start trying to qualify for the Master’s Tour through the Blizzard website. If you’d like more information on ways you can compete reach out to me on Twitter @BitBeaker or send me an email at BitBeakerGG@Gmail.com. I look forward to seeing your name in the ranks of the Grandmasters. Until next time #RuleTheRoost