HCT World Championship 2019 Day 1 Recap
Photo by Blizzard Entertainment
All 16 participants that were gathered at the Taipei Heping Basketball Stadium only had eight days to put up four decks for the most important Hearthstone tournament of the year—the HCT World Championship 2019. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that more than one week of preparation is not enough for them to study the new cards, mechanics, and keywords of Rise of Shadows, Hearthstone’s latest expansion, and ultimately figure out the meta.
Case in point: Raphael ”Bunnyhopppor” Peltzer of Group A and Xu ”LFyueying” Kai of Group B, two of the world’s best Hearthstone players who have secured themselves a spot into the HCT World Championship 2019 quarterfinals after today’s tournament opener.
“Warrior seems to be getting wins… Rogue is almost looking kind of shaky, even though it’s, in my opinion, probably still the best deck in the game… I feel like Rogue should be winning games anyway,” Bunnyhoppor, who edged out Guan ”SNJing” Zhendong, 3-2, to advance in the tournament’s next phase, stated about the meta displayed during the first day of the World Championship.
Tempo Rogue emerged as the most popular deck coming into the HCT World Championship 2019 with 75% of the participants bringing it. It was followed by the Magic Carpet and Grim Rally-empowered Zoo Warlock decks which sport a 69% popularity. On the other hand, the Control Warrior, a deck that served what Bunnyhoppor’s deemed as his worst game of the tournament yet, comes in third with half of the contenders wielding one.
Tempo Rogue was also the deck LFyueying used to deter the wacky yet effectively working Chef Nomi-empowered Miracle Priest Deck which David ”killinallday” Acosta used to advance in the group stage. The HCT Winter silver finisher has outlasted two American representatives before moving on to the quarterfinals. Despite maintaining a taintless tournament record so far, LFyueying’s journey was undeniably hard-fought as both of his matches needed all five games before he was declared as the winner.
Both Bunnyhoppor and LFyueying have the time in their hands to study the development of the tournament meta as both of them won’t see play until the playoffs on Sunday, April 28, 2019. Meanwhile, the action-packed Hearthstone week continues tomorrow as Group C and Group D determine who will join Bunnyhoppor and LFyueying in the playoffs.
The HCT World Championship 2019 will kick off tomorrow with a best-of-five match between Kacper “A83650” Kwieciński and David “Justsaiyan” Shan at 10:00 SGT. Check out our event page for more information and updates about the HCT World Championship 2019.
