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The 2014 Hearthstone World Champion!
For one whole year, we'll call himself the best.
Kaga will be your 2015 Hearthstone World Champion!
Pablo is your 2016 Hearthstone World Champion!
Todd, 602.9 is the 2017 Hearthstone World Champion!
And Hotterace becomes your new Hearthstone World Champion!
Glyon becomes the first woman to reach the pinnacle.
Your 2019 BlizzCon champion, Glory from Japan, is your 2020 Hearthstone World Champion.
Their possessive is your 2021 Hearthstone Grand Masters World Champion.
World Champion of Hearthstone could be the best player of all time.
2023 the Hockey Train and the most deserving of Heart Scope World Champions.
Thanks to Yanming, our 2024 Heartstone World Champion, this is why we cast Heartstone.
It's going to be a day no doubt of a lot of highs and a lot of lows as well, so we have
to say goodbye to some of these players.
Yeah, it's going to be a tough one.
Typically this sort of every match, very, very high stakes is reserved for the top eight.
That's just how where the stakes really pick up.
But by the nature of our getting to cast every single match this time around, we
have saved all of these elimination matches that previously have been done as part
of the group stage are all taking place today.
So we see how people got into their various groups previously,
or sorry, how they qualified, rather,
for the World Championship.
Four players from spring, four from summer, four
from China, worlds, qualifier, and then
Gabby definition in Kuro on competitive points,
and Shansu snagged up that last chance qualifier spot.
I think when we talked about that event, we sort of said,
oh, it's one of the most high stakes events
because there's no money on the line.
A little bit false, right?
Qualifying does get you a guaranteed bit of prize pool
for making it to the World Championship, of course.
Yeah, 100%.
We are, of course, going to be playing through a conquest.
The tried and tested format for Hearthstone
has done as well so far.
But yeah, I agree.
I think the players have had a few different roads
that last chance qualifier
was was fantastic because
although we could talk about
the prize money, but really it
was just a lot on the line for
a single player to go through
and it's similar stakes in this
tournament because although as
you can see now the breakdown
of the prize pool is there. It's
not nothing. Is it right? It's
a decent chunk of money on top
of the players already previous
the top of the league.
I'm absolutely happy with Oh, I
got top four still a fantastic
performance, but no one's going
to be happy with just getting a
top X right. They want first
place and they want to become
this year's world champion. So
along the line for the players
and as we mentioned, there are
a few of the players. They're
actually chilling today. They
get to sort of put their feet
up and watch some hardstone
and see who their opponents are
going to be because we have
some of those four of those
players in the top eight
then and they can will no doubt be watching the show and taking notes right who's qualifying
who's my opponent going to be how do I approach the lineups and so on so on are there any weaknesses
that the players have seen so far because I do think that is something important to know over
the past two days we have seen players play extremely well and then we've seen some players
struggle a little bit through you know maybe for various reasons whether it's just there with
with the pressure or just having some rough games
that they have to deal with.
And I think a lot of today advice
is just seeing how the players
who are in these dice situations now
have like reset themselves
and sort of refresh themselves for this day
because suddenly the games that happened yesterday
or the day before, they don't match anymore, right?
Yeah, if you can manage to, you know,
get your one or sometimes two wins today, right?
You'll still manage to secure your spot.
A couple of players, as you said, had some tough ones.
I think for those four who've made it past,
they're going to be keeping an eye on some of the more
unusual lineups to see whether the lineup was the difference
or if those players just had some bad days, which
can happen, very, very small sample size
once you get into a tournament.
Sometimes maybe a lineup really is good by the numbers
that they've run, but then just the day
they were having the draws they were having weren't able to sort of bring out
as potential. Yeah and as you can see on screen right now we do have our new
Twitch extension where you can check out the schedule as you can see now the
players decklists and the classes they're playing basically pretty much
everything about the game that you're watching as well as the players that
compete here as well. A really fantastic tool it's been live on Twitch if
you're watching on there for a couple of days make sure to click on the
little half-stone icon that will show up if you hover over the Twitch
share screen and you should be able to enable it if it hasn't been enabled yet
and it'll just pop up with all of this information you can keep track of as the
games go so if you're looking for the deck list for the play that you're
watching right now yeah they're right in front of you if you want them to be so
a really great tool really excited to have that on I've been playing with it
when I've not been air casting just checking out and seeing how it works
check out this though as I said before these are the players who get to put
their feel a little bit for the day does still be watching taking notes of
course but look at them we've got definition love storm yemming and maxibon
they're looking really strong so they'll be waiting to see who their opponents
gonna be tomorrow but this sort of day off to reset and so I'll just watch what's
going on is extremely valuable for them yeah and I think you know yours may
notice that it was a very good day for for China region and APAC region right
all of those four who made it through either China or APEC Maxi from Australia falls under
that APEC designation.
So I think a lot of times there's some EU bias for us at the Castro desk.
What are you talking about?
Yeah, we're struggling for us.
We're struggling with our predictions for this event.
Yeah, definitely.
you can see that the power level of these groups, right?
Our first match on stream today
is going to be Shao Ti versus Pocket Train.
And this is an elimination match
as we've talked about.
All these matches whoever loses is out.
It's as simple as that.
So this is going to be a tough one.
It's a fantastic two players, right?
To be playing a game of pasta and then we get to watch.
That's going to be great.
But knowing that one of these is 100%
not going to make it to tomorrow
is huge and as we can see here as we take a look at the bands the druid pocket train one of the players
who's brought a bit of a different lineup to the tournament this week and druid being banned out so the
more unique deck being removed from pocket trains arsenal there whereas shouty has the shaman removed
which is a bit of a strange one because we've seen shaman not really over performing i'd say
but it is one that is more of a requirement due to the lineup the pocket train has
Yeah, both, you know, if the druid had been left around, the shaman can just have such overwhelming momentum.
Druid doesn't have the tools to deal with, and that warrior on pocket train side is not quest warrior like most of the players here.
It is dragon warrior, and unless you build dragon warrior like very specifically to be able to handle shaman with like punch card or something,
you can really, really struggle having come back tools.
I think it's going to be
a lot of fun. Yeah, 100%
looks like no messing around.
We're diving straight in. I
love it. See everything on the
screen down the left. If you
want to keep track of the
classes that have been played
classes that are back, of
course, as well, but we've got
shouty on the top with that
quest warrior going up against
pocket trains. Death Knight.
This is one of the more I
would say current meta like
classic matchups. I would
say one of more popular
ones just because of the
shape volume of people playing
and these are like the decks, right?
Well, they're certainly the decks
if you lean towards sort of a slower,
more controlling play style,
that these are what's on offer.
You know, I think Priest has not really been able
to keep up the long time Warlock.
Someone recently received some hits to their control package
and Hydraliscaver and going from three-minute to four-minute.
So yeah, if you are itching for kind of decks that go long,
that gain life for armor, this is what you can do.
Yeah, and weirdly enough, this is the matchup
where the death knight, where often is the control player,
out of a lot of matchups, becomes more of the aggro player,
right, because you can see Shartia's kept
hold of that quest, of course.
Once that quest is done, then it's
most of the time they're moments till the game ends in the warrior's favor right so they're definitely
going to be on pocket to develop these minions nice and early which he has done quite successfully
and put as much pressure on as possible because pocket wants this game to end as quickly as he can
yeah and the dreadhound handlers you know they're they're nice with the rush to use as
removal tools against early minions but since the where hasn't got that they're also just
really sticky and annoying to deal with so
going to be able to get in a lot of chip damage there misses out on a turn three
which is sort of the weak spot in the curve for death knight if you don't have creature madness
but lots of cores available. Yeah these are huge as well these early minions because
there's a lot of focus around corpse count right in decay at the moment because they have
They have the option of huge swing turns with XR Kamaladar, especially when you can see that
Ysera in hand as well. So really, you're always looking how many coaxes are available on generally
turn six and how much are they able to push out because that is something you can do,
which is overwhelm the warrior. Yes, or is always known for clearing board, AOE, brawl,
but you make them have to have it and a lot of the time you make them have to
have it multiple times across multiple turns, which makes it a little bit more difficult for
Shaotii.
Yeah, although in this case a bit of a detriment allows Shaotii to play this hostile invader
and still have 5 minions in play after the Chocolus, or a free for glory you're just
going to be able to clean up pretty much all of this.
My pocket's got a few choices here actually.
Could use the Terradax to trade it down
and then develop something else.
It does have the corpses for it.
Could just go foam render swing
and go and just set the weapon up.
There's obviously having dropping at least
to try and build up a location,
but at least feels like it's one of those ones
where you need a real strong follow up plan, right?
Because you've got to spend most of the time
a turn just playing the location.
Preferably you've won some authority on the board as well.
and uh... it does give shouty just a little bit of reading room if that's
going to be the case on the turn it comes down
yeah this list of the dark gift of charge so this is you know getting a little
bit in
uh... turn you play it but yeah sometimes location
uh... particularly
even though copy is not valuable if you're going to uh... five five copy
uh... you want to have something to see in play
to make a copy of it
and pterodax is often one of those things.
Pocket shaking his head,
maybe not too happy with that turn.
Just get to load up the foam render, right?
So that's, it's not there forever, right?
But the plan is for it to be there for quite a while
because it uses corpses as durability, right?
So it's not too bad.
But still just having nothing on board,
basically giving Xiaotie a free turn to an extent, right?
no minion pressure, sure there's the weapon but not the end of the world. I would definitely
like to see some form of ramp here but unfortunately there's only a lease that works with playing
the ramp at the same time. Would it lock the ramp into your life possible?
Yeah, you know you can't be too upset about it right, getting to throw your lease down
and going for a five, it seems to be just the efficient pick of the weekend.
Pocket has not got demolition renovator either, so Xiaoqi can feel pretty safe, doesn't have to do any sort of play around picking the death rattle.
to pick up the some of the coffee and the three raptors make sense is this location is often
going to be used just to defend right and the raptors along with coffee can really help
deal with some of these awkward turns. Tar goes down there for pocket just to try and be
a bit of a pain and start to work on building a board. Yeah and is there now? Yeah so we
see the weapon swing held to preserve that corpse count assuming blob of tar gets cleared
that will give pocket what he needs to be able to meldor out this is serah
chaff tea just working
exactly
what he wants to do
again it's one of those like
commitment turns where do you want to play the locations pretty good right now
now, but is it the best you can do? Because if the location's coming down, that's pretty
much everything that you're really going to do that turn, right? One more man that would
make things very nice with the location you're, or can go just a different route, play something
else down. But I think just getting it down now feels fine, because it's, it's, it's
not as good as you're going to get. Oh, no, it's both of them. Okay, so let's
get the one.
You know, I think the lack of pressure here for Xiaotii is sort of like...
He doesn't need the rushes off of location right now. He doesn't have a great copy target.
So it makes sense to me just kind of getting that wand while he has the ability.
The weapon swing also may have been an indication of like,
okay, I should expect a Maladar play next turn.
Yeah, you're right. This is a pretty scary turn here from parking. Obviously, we can
see Brawl in the hand for Jotty, so. Does have a way to at least answer the majority
of this, right? Not get run over, don't take too much damage. So I think that's
what Warrior really wants to avoid. It's fine taking some damage, but you don't want
to let your opponent get away with hitting you very hard for a couple of turns,
that's where you start gaining range of some of these things like the extra
weapons in some foam render and some of the extra damage the DK can get hold of.
Yeah I think it'll be a decision of whether to brawl or to maybe use the
great Draco Rex cleans up most of this you're able to do a lot but Draco Rex
has a lot of value if you compare it with the copy from that location.
Yeah.
Pretty nice as well, just having the rest of the turn to drop the location.
Obviously can't proc it this turn because it needs a copy target, but just...
Excuse me, sorry. Spending the mana now, just while you can, is what's the important thing.
Very similar to what you said about marrying, right?
It's like, just spend the mana while you're relatively safe to do so,
and then it's going to pay off in the late game.
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, no fear of it getting blown up without being activated.
So however, if Pocket goes for his Elise here and tries to sneak in with a copy of Savage
Roar or something, I would then be facing down Demolition Renovator against his location.
Certainly this is a good one.
No? Okay.
Oh!
I don't know if Pocket's on the same line as me here, but Petrified Ogre with Charge seems
50 appealing. You don't know when it'll wake up.
But, uh...
It will, right?
It's a plan.
I was trying to think of how we can acquire pirates, right?
Because Marin is a pirate, so is there a way to give it windfueling and make war?
Oh, yeah, sure, sure.
But then Marin has to stay, can you against warrior and so on, so on, right?
So it gets a little bit spicy.
Location for pocket there, Fire Plume Ridge.
Went for a 10.
Discover spell, call 7 less, gain 12 armor.
you know there was the deal 10 available for pocket if you wanted to kind of do
that anti renovator option but decided you know what I'm I'm okay with with not
doing that
it was like big dragon hidden the ball now we have to clear up the majority of
this and now if this is being played is this gonna be a hold on the
on the location click from Shaotii.
So it doesn't really seem what you need it for.
It's still a nice thing to copy, right?
And it presents some more stuff that Pocket has to deal with.
I just think it because there's potentially Zileax next to it,
which might have a little bit more impact.
Sure.
Not quite enough corpses for the full clear here from Pocket, can I go for the wand?
Yeah, you can clear up all the little things with the Impested Breath meteor power, by
just leaving Drake, Drake, Rex, and, uh, oh, saving the Impested Breath so that if the
raker x's use it'll have to take some damage. Yeah fair idea right not giving it zero two
to trade into if it makes sense. Now this is where things can weirdly start to steamroll right?
Whether this is freeze, whether this is zilex coming down, whatever happens this marines
is not surviving for another turn and shouty can just push all of these minions that are on
bold right now it's a face to put a lot pressure on yeah and death knight doesn't
have you know quite as many defensive tools and fire plume location there for
pocket we'll be able to gain 12 armor at least one time but you know perhaps
unlikely to do so again with renovator and shachi's hand
It's just going to be silly, it's a lot of sense just pat on the board and you say there
still isn't many corpses left, right?
So it's unlikely that anything disastrous is going to happen to this board.
It's all upon to pocket train now to try and get something done, ceaseless as we
can see of course, there's a little bit of a ways away.
Yeah, I mean almost surprised to have seen the weapon swing from pocket earlier right just because
He maybe would would be needing those corpses with the explosion in hand
Steel
None of these quick analysis, they're not good
So we'll make some hand space, see what's in the box.
How close do we to Golden Cobalt?
That's my only question.
Closer than I think Pocket would like.
Oh, Kellos.
Kellos corpse explosion.
it'll at least clear up most of it
i think it's just outside of the cobalt
it's about as good as you could get, right?
not able to get the 20-20 out but
gives enough corpses for the clear whoever shouts his quest now is complete
and uh... yeah that could spell a rapid decline for pocket with
uh... shouty being on forty
on just in case because we talk about the uh...
fancy things we've got we do have the ceaseless tracker on the right on the
screen as you can see as cards have been played drawn and so on so on
and the reason it doesn't match because you got it from wand
which has an extra reduction just in case anyone's confused
and throw that one out there
You see quests completion though of course for Xiao Tianan.
This is where the game starts to accelerate quite dramatically.
Yeah, Sulfuras in particular can do that, but I mean having access to Ancient of Yor to accelerate draw, pretty big deal.
Devil's Saur Mask is interesting.
Yeah, I'm honestly just looking at this and just thinking like, is there a way that exists for Pocket Train to actually do anything here?
Because it's just like, how does DK deal with this? It's not like, uh, Shouties on 51 health before this turns even ended yet.
Like, what is the road to this? I don't even think about it.
Yeah, I mean, it certainly seems like we may be in Kobold territory pretty soon.
Yeah pocket. Well, what am I supposed to do about that? Ceaseless. You know cheap enough
to be used this turn. Although if you cobalt first you don't get to ceaseless.
Here we go. Who needs ceaseless? We don't need it where we're going.
Ah, Asina is interesting. Farseer Woe could do some things if he's able to pick up
a spell to activate it.
The Cenarius of the Toad?
Uh, yeah, that's not good enough. Let's try again.
Genuinely surprised not to have seen the ceaseless happen before all this, just for a little bit of safety.
I guess the problem is, it's still costing mana, right?
Yeah.
So it's less safe because there's a weapon equipped so if you didn't really get too much to hero power on the weapon could become problematic depending on how much more the mana cost would be.
Obviously your pocket would like me to be able to place something but pocket's probably like I need something miraculous to happen so I'm just going to go full mana... oh right.
And tonight I just leave. No, of course not, I'm joking. They would have been hilarious.
That is the thing about the Cobalt is it only gives you minions.
So anything that cares about casting spells you're going to have to wait a little bit.
Yeah, I'm going to say no, I'm done.
I'm going to go down 0-1 against Shaotian.
Honestly Shaotian, a bit of an easy go of that.
I'm not taking anything away from that of course,
but it was just not enough pressure from Pocket once those early turns were done by Shaotian to Clay.
And there was just no great way to pile on the pressure, right?
There was none of those big giants.
The X-Arc turn came down.
But even though it's strong against Warrior,
a Ysera is not really that much of a big deal, right?
It's not just carrying the game on its back or anything
like that.
So really great start there for Shaotige
and the win on that Warrior, because that matchup is one
you want just dealt with ASAP.
Yeah, and the Death Knight has sort of like just enough draw, right?
Like Marin, you can kind of count as draw, Grifta, you can sometimes kind of count as draw,
but otherwise, you know, after the Sanguine Infestation nerf,
it's just the two copies of Chillfallen Marin and, I guess, Nightmare Lord Xavius.
And so sometimes, yeah, you end up in these situations where you exarch out Ysera,
But you don't have stitch giants, you know, you're still waiting on your refill and
Just puts you in these awkward situations
Creature of madness
Pocket was able to pick up but couldn't like curve it out to get some of those crazy plays right where you you go for the
The buff minion on three and now suddenly
Your opponent's facing down this huge thing out of nowhere
Yeah, there was just a that's the problem in some matchups with this death night a lot of the time the death night kind of ends up being the
Defender in some matchups
But when you need to become the aggressor and actually end games quickly it can be difficult because you are relying on those big explosive turns
Not being answered and I do think this quest warrior
Is bill in such a way that you often have just about enough answers to get you there right is I feel it feels very
at home down to the perfect deck list almost close enough where you've got
just the right amount of removal because you've never got tons of it normally
that normally extra line around but the shield slams the brawls and then the
invaders are often like enough to get there right and that because you've
got that endgame plan is worried
the game. You don't need them for
jumping very quickly into game
number three, though. Jumping
back once a pocket train now
onto the the dragon worry. Yeah,
we'll have to see if he can get
something going better for this
deck. We have not had great
performances out of it so far.
This weekend, uh, I suppose
going for double pedal peddler on the coin? Yeah that's it. I'm a no meat, no even remotely
close to pocket trains level of play, but the only way I've had this deck work, the multiple
times I've sat and done sessions testing it, is if you just go all in and snowball from
like a one. There's a few different ways that can happen, right? There's a few different
routes to do it depending on your opening hand. But when I've been pushed off-board as Dragon
Warrior, in most match-ups it feels incredibly difficult to buy my gun.
Yeah, I mean that is sort of the nature of its style, right? Whether it is something
like this, which is, you know, welcome but not common, or something more like Sanguine
depths into stone carver which buffs any damage minion including itself so
depths on one to then use it on a stone carver on two suddenly you've you've got
a five five right and and it's just gonna keep growing if the opponent can't deal
with that five five on turn two which most decks cannot
Shall I tell you now, just, uh, look at these discover options.
What have you got on Alien Encounters?
Yeah.
I'm going to go for the tracking.
That was the, uh, the spells off of the Windrunner Sisters, this extra tracking.
Yeah, I definitely agree with the kick, given nature of this hand.
And it lines up, right? You can do tracking next to the alien counters you've already got.
So that's still fine as an absolute worst case scenario, because the rest of the hand
doesn't really do anything for a little while.
Yeah. Meanwhile, pocket train, uh, holding on to the gif-wrapped welp, you know, you
would maybe think you'd want to use that extra mana there, but there's no guarantee
he'll have a cheap enough dragon to play on four and the kindred kindred effect of these
windpeak worms is that you need to have played a dragon the turn before if you have their
cost is reduced by three so in order to give himself that turn four to four turn to turn
five just making sure he's going to have a dragon to play on that turn four.
another tricky decision nothing really stands out and normally when that's the case I like
to pick birdwatching because the reason nothing stands out is you've not got many great plans
to do with your hands so this just looks good to me well this is tricky as well because
glacial shard is just going to be useful but also grifter opens up some possibilities
with light steel or you know even if it's just removal or heal potentially as
well depending on how that happens. It ended up going Rengarri though.
It does have the tide pool pupil in hand so you know I don't hate this line
right figuring like well I've got a Rengarri in hand this buffs both of them
next turn can really get some crazy value. Maybe even go for the alien
encounters first. I'm not sure how full the pupil is.
Not ideal, not the worst.
Okay, yeah, just an absolutely just mid weapon.
Still no power, ton of pressure, only does have the two windpicks.
And now, Shadseen no doubt gonna be trying to maximize the alien encounters here to get
some level of defense on.
Yep, just gonna go ahead and get that in the pupil.
Could now go for double scout pupil to get even more alien encounters, but that is
considerably all in
so the worst plan though because they're gonna be useful
yep so they're gonna be stuck in hand right
yeah I like it
this way you get to play the one that you take
Right, because if you play bold scouts, you don't really have the board space to make
use and you don't have the man left over.
this is where things start to get a little bit tricky because it's just these encounters
just soak so much damage. The game would just be over right if there weren't taunts in the
way. These are going to soak basically a turn for damage and then next turn their
pocket is expecting more taunts plus the rest of a turn right for Shalti to start fighting
back and as I said if you remove all the minions of the board of this kind of push
It is very difficult for the warrior to actually end the game.
Now, Shati is relatively low health on 16, so it's not like Shati's got some health to play around with,
but 16, I would argue, is enough to get the job done, right?
As long as you can push, get these dragons off the board this turn.
Yeah, Pocker was really hoping for one more push, right?
So that he could, if Shati was at 10, then he could just chain Windpeak Worm into Windpeak Worm.
the only available healing for a hunter it comes from grifta
oh this is huge right Bob you daily encounters this turn and then just get two bobs yeah that is
fairly filthy the next turn and then bob or zileaks the turn after and then still have one left oh
nearly interesting not fair enough okay let's see where this goes because
is, I just thought Bob kind of just solved a lot of problems for me and solved the turn
seven problem, but it's like Shouties just going tempo.
Yeah.
I mean, Neary can sometimes serve as a taunt in its own right, but not as effectively I
should think as just completely freezing out your opponent's board.
I think the scary thing with this choice, and I guess you sort of just trust your
deck to an extent, but there's no Nile hero power, right? There's no actual discover ways
in Xauty's hand right now. So that's why I was thinking, oh well, look at what does
the hand say? You've got Xiliac, so then you can buy Turn 7 with Bob, then have Xiliac
and have another Bob, and maybe that just does the job, right? Because Xiliac is very
good against this type of deck. But yeah, Xauty's seen something I don't with them.
it is just I have so many discover cards in hand but it'll be fine. Well there's
nothing in the end though, right? I'm in deck yeah I mean there's so many cards in
the deck it's unlikely to draw into the hand next to it. It's a bluff. It's not like talking to my job or anything right?
pocket does you know does does take the bluff and
shouty rewarded with a mixologist pick up but also and perhaps this is why he
Gave up the Bob. Yeah second proc able to get this silly axe down and
Pocket wishing he had wind speaker activation now for these
is the advantage to shouty having sort of a slower discover hunter list here
yeah so I was just again do you push this yeah this silly acts just pops the seven seven right
then it can't trade so you guarantee the heal yeah I think so yeah sorry I was just stuck in
that for a second but yeah I think this is perfect from HLT and now okay at least maybe
one of the best cards he could have brought like bolt right I guess the other good stuff
is what Chromalordy Park right to destroy the zilean axe.
Yeah although it only destroys the played one not the summoned copy.
Not the summoned one yeah you're right.
Suffering a little bit from going for the windspeaker instead of the
precursory strike last turn. Had he used precursory strike on the Rangari Scout
and still taken that trade with the 6-4 on Miri. He could have still had it for
this turn to clear up one of the Ziliaks and also just to have you know
a dragon in hand, gift wrap, well, I wonder if he's going to be looking back at that turn
and thinking again about the different options there.
Yeah, I'm looking at this now for Shanti. I like to start, find out what potion you're
going to make. Then you've got options between neary potion or if you want, say, Xavius
instead, if the potion isn't required at this point. There's just so many options
now shanty on full health it's just I don't even know what would have to happen
for pocket to win this game I think judging from pocket's expression of
unlock he doesn't know either because this is very very rough it probably
involves a fireac yeah that's still a few turns away
They did get some of the 2-2 demon and deal 3 damage, just a little bit of damage, a little
bit of removal, a little bit of broad generation, and it's going to go through the nearing out
to just put more ball presence on.
Yeah, Shati really, you know, just settling into control here, trading with Azalea X.
Well that's it, right? If the Dragon Warrior doesn't have any minions at the start of
turn on board to attack.
There is very little they can actually do to you, right?
Like, they're very limited in their, in power level.
So yeah, I really like this from Shati.
You can just sit back and just,
sounds a bit silly.
And we used to say this is a negative,
but Shati's game plan is to just not die at this point
because it'll just sort of eventually auto win
through sheer value.
Yeah, however, still no, oh, we'll see what this is.
Okay, yeah, still no Nile.
So there's no, you know, guarantee
of those continued discoveries. We'll have another shot with Nightmare Lord Xevious.
Ooh, and Elise is a pretty good pickup. I forgot this tracking is getting doubled.
Pocket did get pretty good pickups there, able to zileax next turn,
And maybe follow up with summoning a copy of stone carver if you can get something damaged
Yeah freedom to play incendiars
Basically in incendiars pass against dragon warrior feeling pretty nice on full health
This is what has zileaks in the dream at this point, though it's going to be a dystopa
from the pick up there, next to it probably.
And I think at this point, Pocket has to just hope that Chatty ends up running dry.
It doesn't happen too often with the Discover Hunter, but it can happen sometimes for a
couple of turns if they don't have Nile.
So my guess is discover spell right since Shakti needs the value.
Discover plus rampage.
I'm tempted with copy.
I'm not going to lie.
Copy the incendias, get those eruptions even more upgraded yeah.
It's just tempting because it just feels powerful to do right.
Yeah yeah.
RC Rampage available here in Flable.
Spirit Bond allows a pretty nice, efficient clear, though.
It allows this to, the incendiars not have to go in, right?
And do this right instead, so it retains a lot of health,
well, all of the health on the incendiars.
Guest Pocket will start with the,
either the Shadowflame suffusion or copying the stone carver, see what discovered spell
is.
Guard duty is a board in a box.
You're very cheap board in the box right now.
Yeah.
Neplaya is quite interesting.
Yeah, I was gonna say, hang on a minute, we like damaged minions, don't we?
Yeah, I would maybe have been looking as well at the mech, right?
Since it had summon a tutu copy, and so both of those would then have death rattle of summoning boombots.
But, yeah, N'Bria certainly has the higher ceiling.
Oh, and there's the mile picked up.
Yeah, it's just got to be right. That's almost not what I thought.
Yeah, as well. We see Cecilis is getting quite close to becoming playable,
especially once this turn ends, it's going to be in that range.
And I think Cecilis, if it's if it's able to be dropped by
Shaotian relatively safely, or if this board is cleaned up by eruptions
and this might be in the last push of pocket or by Sylvanas.
Yeah, is it just, is it four damn it?
I think it's four, yeah, there's still the plus one plus one.
Yeah.
But it, you know, allows you to still preserve your eruptions, let them upgrade even further.
And a little bit more reliable, right?
Because just because you pick one eruption doesn't mean you can't draw another.
Yeah, Shouty just being hyper careful here and just saying I'll just full trade as much
as possible.
Now there's a 3-8 taunt in the way too, that's going to be problematic for a pocket train
to deal with.
So just again, just be hyper safe.
Next turn there's another discover now that the Aeropower's finally up for Shouty
and then there's Seasless Mixologist.
basically now the tools you can actually get
he's gonna hit yeah I was gonna say it's gonna target someone for him
and then get copies
I'm gonna be a champion a 1313 charge there instead of rush
Oh I forgot that N'Blaya gave the copies rush.
So yeah, these...
Well there's two.
Shatzin not at 13.
Is it?
It is summoning a copy on this location though.
So, depending on what Xiaoti does here, if he's able to, oh, never mind.
That's just going to be lethal there with the Shalad or so.
Had Pocket made it to the next turn, there was a chance with 13-13, summon a copy, right,
and then the stadium announcer for a weapon.
And the other spell.
Imagine if this wasn't a lethal turn the glacial shard probably comes down onto
Pocket there, but still a very tricky one there. I do think shouty played that very well
I think he quickly got to the point of okay just stabilize
Most of that game was with without the NIL zero power two
Yeah
So that was a bit of a tricky one to handle throughout some of those turns
but Shaotii did it and now it's currently leading to zero and pocket needs something to start going
right. I think that game wasn't bad at all, it's just that it's tough when Hunter has access to
some of those tools. Mainly when we saw the the tall wall come up right is the big problem
because then suddenly pocket needs to take turns off just smacking through these taunts over and
over again and that's really what gave Shaotii the time. Yeah and Shaotii only has the
cycle rogue remaining which you know of decks to have to win against three times rogue is not where
I would want to be up against. Yeah it's a little bit tricky although it did happen yesterday right
on the last match of the day and Kuro had just rogue left and actually got reverse swap which was a
pretty crazy matchup both players doing very very well recommend watching the VOD after today's
stream of course if you're going to be awake for that many hours but yeah there is going to be
and uphill climb here for pocket four sure because the rogue it is it's so fast and it is fairly
reliable right which is the big strength of it and I think shouty again I'll just say
unlikely to be a player that's going to make too many mistakes especially in this scenario with
this deck this type of rogue isn't really a new archetype it's not like there was anything
that new to learn recently or anything like that it's kind of the place that played rogue
and I think we can change the pro players just have this sort of just locked into their mind at this point, right?
They know the matchups, they know what they need to do. Let's see who can get it done for this game. Game number three,
shouty gonna be on that rogue, Ollie has left. Pocket, gonna stick with the worry for now.
Yeah, gonna be looking for as snow ball-y a curve as possible.
To even throwing away the Elise just to get that pedal peddler on something else early.
It's pretty good, there's a lot of access to EDM, although Pocket Train does have multiple
options to counter this to one with a free EDM available.
I think the coin play here is demonstrative of just how important the early game is
for this warrior. It would be easy enough to go sanguine deaths into pedal peddler,
but there's just, you know, not really time, right? You want to get all these things down
as quickly as possible and hope that your top decks reward you.
Well, this is a decent curve here for pocket, not the ultimate curve, of course, but
pretty good, especially with the weapon backing up. And we can see Shalty has a whole
lot of nothing it's gonna be the forbidden button press of the hero power this turn I imagine
yeah no matter what it was important to kill that 2-1 on turn one right or else
would come out and be a whole different ball again
a little bit of good news for pocket there had a bit of a rough series so far
but important to take these little wins where you can and try and get that mindset in the right
place. Oh, shouty. Oh, poking in the face and then press the button again. Yeah. That's
what's tricky. You can't even, okay, you can, but you're not feeling great about, oh, I'll
just hit this one for and stuff and it's like, there's a lot of punishes to that that
you might not like so yes it's a path like you don't have to trip yourself into this problem
yeah it's a well
this is the sort of game i think the pocket needs and the game is by no means over
but just this you know points going well right fill some momentum again i think pocket
is at least been feeling like it was the rough end of a state from the first couple of games
there. Yeah, Shaotii says, I don't really want to disbar that, but I do sort of want
to eat a minion this turn, rewarded picking up the wisp as a target for E.P. Infant now,
full board of, uh, with double Phoenix. Yeah, and that's regardless of what's drawn,
right? There's still chance of E.N.G. should I give this. This is where Shaotii's like,
I just died could you twice let me I'm gonna stop playing the game now. Yeah
Yeah, wouldn't be surprised see double Phoenix and then you know save that West for next turn use or the webweaver
Yeah, I can see it of course you will happily position my extra to be tossed away by the chisel
This makes sense right, turn 12. I don't want to say the turn plays itself next turn for
Shaotii, but the setup is there as you quite roughly know those tasks.
Okay, let's have a first go at the weapons.
Okay, not the best.
You can't be Fiery War X by a row because a warrior can do it.
No! He gets in draw.
He's stolen Shaotii's tusk.
I'm back in time to steal the weapon.
Yeah, this makes sense to me.
You can take your Phoenix trades where you want them.
It is far worse for Pocket if he lets the Phoenixes go into Xiaotii's hand at the end of his turn,
then if Xiaotii gets them back at the end of his own.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're just missing out on that, right?
like a pocket pocket nose to rule a go face every single turn that it's humanly
possible
does have a zepphras
we've already seen some pretty incredible EMG is this game sorry this
tournament so far they can really change the state of the game quite easily
or shall we just have to get them cheap enough, which is a little bit easier said than done at the moment.
Yeah, coming up, you know, Pocket able to get some face damage at hand with the Dream Planner's Ephrais,
and I'm not positive, but I do feel like of decks that Colonel Lord Epoch can be good against, you know, barring EMG turns, of course.
of course. The rogue is the one that sort of plays the most minions straight up from hand in a turn,
and so I could see instances where they do a big webweave return and you just run a lord epoch and
clear it all.
Yeah, this is a farm fair.
So what's 7 damage just showing before we see anything else?
Soulfire is good.
Grommash probably we're not going to get to that point but there is location to activate
it if we do.
Is it time to sanguine here?
i think because it's a location you have to
just seems good to do some extra damage right, just to send it all face you've got a solid
fire strike next to it
yeah able to get nine damage in face so it looks good to me
and very far away from grom of course so it's not like you need to
It doesn't matter for that, let's move it off into the distant future, probably distant enough to be the future game, and not the actual game right now.
This is looking pretty good, yeah?
Do you want damage plus two attack?
I'll push this maximum.
And a shouty is going to have to perform a solo damage.
I suppose this makes sense with the weapon swing, percursory strike and soul fire.
He's still, he's going to have lethal damage next turn, so just playing it safe, taking care of that twisted webweaver.
Yeah, there'd have to be shenanigans right to stop this actually being lethal next turn,
so yeah, makes sense.
Taking out some of the potential card draw does remove some of those shenanigans.
is going to have to pull some further back here. There might just be a scenario where
it's just I'll remove as much as I can and just cross fingers, right?
Yep, yep. Rogue does not really have ways to heal. That's always been a characteristic
of class.
It probably is, like, EMG into taunt, right? Or some kind of thing that keeps them alive.
Yeah, I mean that's what it's going for here right prepping the dubious purchase
And neither of those safe phones quick go back in time and change
Wait, was that the other EMG it sure was
I'm saying quick like I should have these probably not already locked in these and no small again. Yeah
So pocket is gonna finish up this game with a victory here going
We're starting to bring it back with a win on this Dragon Maury
And that may be a little bit of relief as well because things went a lot better that game
Very clear plan and it always helps when your opponent effectively passes what two turns in a row in the early game
Yeah
That's always something you would like your opponents to do for you because that's very kind
So yeah, a bit of a tough one there for shouty
But did the best of it that he could but pocket train got to be feeling great just
Rough first couple of games and then suddenly okay drag on worry is going to do its thing and then we'll move on from there
So still got a lot of work to do but at least there's some kind of light at the end of the tunnel
Yeah, and certainly, you know shaman and beth night still both have the the capability of
you know, presenting enough pressure to deal with the slower
rogue turns. But we've seen a couple of turn three EMGs so far
this weekend. And I think that's the kind of thing that's just
not in your control if your pocket train. So he's just kind
of kind of hope for a little bit of good luck, a little bit of
poor draws for shouty, give just enough time for, you know,
shaman to do its thing for death night to I don't even
know if you can consistently like overwhelm the rogue as death night or if it's more just
like you try and set up complex boards to mess with their game plan.
Yeah it's a tricky one.
We are going to find out because I believe we are going to death night versus rogue.
Yeah it's a bit of a tricky one but I think that about most death night matchups for
me.
I don't know why but this sort of rough build of death night just never felt that
comfortable when I've been testing it but it is one of those things where you
You need the Rogue to just have a little bit of a slow start,
don't be too minion heavy.
And as long as you can just...
It sounds a bit silly, but like, keep playing cards, right?
You don't really want to have to have slow or passing turns
as Death Knight in this matchup,
because you need to put the foot down,
or the Rogue's just gonna relax,
because I think Death Knight very generally struggles
to get out of range of actual high-damage Rogue turns, right?
There's only really warriors.
Yeah, you have to be able to get a lot of your minions to take the hits.
We saw a pocket recoil from the cards he was given after that mulligan.
It was an instance of he had a decent hand, but not a great one.
Was really hoping to pick up Creature of Madness or
Dreadhound Handler for that turn two.
Even throwing back Infested Breath and Chill Fallen Bear.
You know now it's just gonna have to hope on these top decks because this is looking even more
Yeah, and this is
Kind of perfect
As well through the weapon with the plato so and then just curve straight into it
Which now allows the plato so to be arguably weak against the board because they're not losing anything anyway
They've got to quit the weapon. Yeah, which pocket train will of course have that knowledge of and yeah
This is gonna be a tricky one shouties gonna keep drawing cards and excuse me pocket
might be desperate enough to throw out coin elites will have to see, but other
than that, I guess it's just not got a lot to do. It's kind of Rawls reverse from
the previous game, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean the pterodaxes can present a good
tempo swing later on, but you don't really want to be thinking about later
on, right? You want to be getting those minions down to make shout you have
to think. Yeah, later on you might just be dead, so yeah, it's gonna be a
I'm a little fortunate.
Shouty, not taking the time with this one, I imagine...
Is this the sort of thing where, because the hand doesn't look amazing,
is this ever a don't swing and maybe a false one, so...
Yeah, I think...
It's like a reason to, you know, like, yeah, okay.
I think you can afford to, right?
The fact that Pocket doesn't really have anything going on.
Shouty, you can just try to say...
Yeah, we'll wait until we get plays the mallers so that there are you know some rocks in there
Utility they can serve in the early game is just sort of increasing that draw count for EMG
Wow pocket going for that. I didn't know if there was a chance pocket was going for the one-cost location
Just to guarantee something to do
It's gonna go for five though. So there's a chance as pocket through signs up in there going well
Yeah, I guess we see
Again, if you are just tuning in recently to this series,
if you joined us just a little bit late,
this is elimination, as are all of the matches
you will see today on stream.
So the loser of this is done with their run
in the World Championships.
If Shouty takes a victory, pocket is unfortunately
going to be knocked out.
If pocket takes a victory in this game,
then we play game number five.
I think Shaotii, trying to side here, does he play the wisp and then the tusk? Shuffle
away in Cyndias, but be able to throw the Phoenix out, or just sort of pick one between
Phoenix and Tusk. He is going to go for all three.
Yeah I think I like this just cos it sounds like Wade but cos there's still a lot of car
dropping missing for Shouty right?
Like he has the weapon so...
Ohhhh.
This was one of the many, many disaster options it's not like there's a million four drops
and they earn an under and then they have that type but there are enough to be a little bit annoyed
about it right yeah definitely enough you know what would have been happy to see any of the twos
as well right creature man is here exactly that's what i mean yeah just edited invested
that yeah a lot of time like any class that had a green border would have been quite nice
Oh, uh, oh, indeed.
Yeah.
Uh, Rukkara?
Ten armor and a really good weapon and really great gear power.
And nice because it's just damage.
Yeah.
Even though, obviously, the weapon has a very interesting effect, just damage is nice
because it means it's a little bit easier to push that through.
able to do that pterodax copy combo and now finally present some pressure, refill that
corks count, refill his life total, and webweaver pickup from Shaotii don't let him start to
get some refill of his own. Second Phoenix picked up and Insidious is welcome to back to come
down next turn. Yeah that's the thing right that's why it felt okay to throw away because
If you don't hit any card draw, to this extent, well guess what?
And in Cyndius probably wasn't going to make you day much better,
but is he so likely to hit it that you'll just get it back very quickly when it's fine?
I think, yeah, just stand there, just go...
I don't want to say all in, because that has connotations of Shouty having nothing else to win the game with,
But I like just dropping max stats down right making pocket money
And trim the toss does have a blob and does have giant now, but
Can we get to this repair a car
Yeah, that
that would be a non pleasant surprise for pocket, but I think just incendiary as go most likely
a pocket cross this fingers I think hoping that no incendiary as please
we know better it is at 30 right so has managed to get topped off because of the pterodaxes
We can see it's another long way away to a pocket's next power play, right?
Yes, there's Marry next turn, but can't play the wand in the same turn.
Basically, if this push doesn't hold Shouty back, there could be a lot of trouble.
And I think Shouty is trying to decide.
When he plays in Cyndia, the blob of tar does really muck things up in terms of breakpoints,
right?
All of these three attack minions mean that you're going to have to send two things into
it, which means Chachi then has to pick between targets he wants to go into, and yeah, this
is just the more efficient way to clear it, going to take a turn off to get the
or farer down.
Okay, not too bad at all.
And again, Pocket Train's follow-up is fine.
It's not bad at all.
Does have location to press.
Does have foam rendered.
It can just play the marion if it wants to do that.
still just the chatty being fairly safe himself at the scaring day.
Yeah, you know, tempting to do something like foam render, dream hound handler,
or dread hound handler rather, to get a copy on, you know,
a minion that is much more exciting to copy,
just no keywords for i5 as whatever,
but I think Pocket is just in such desperate straits
that he needs the walk, he needs that card drop.
Yeah, something to just dig him out, right,
and get him actually ahead in this game,
because there's still a whole turn before Zileanax can come down.
Shout to him, yeah, weirdly, sounds weird to say.
Turn eight quite late, Prince, isn't he?
He's not being played, right?
Like, a lot of the time we used to see them coin now
and so on in their, in his rogues,
so, yeah, kind of interesting.
One, you know, as well,
so he wanted to get the better breakpoints
on clearing the blob of tar but he had to know that with the location coming online
there was going to be raptors there was going to be a 5-5 in play pocket would have a turn to play
stuff and now it's the point he basically has to play the Incendias. Yeah.
And then next turn there's Thanos, there's also Evie Amps, there's the Mola, so
you the super-assume pockets thinking the same thing is like next turn's the danger turn
turn the game right we have to do everything possible to try and defend
against this and I'm gonna see what Shati is gonna do with this weapon as well
yep
yeah thinking about throwing the Elise face as well yeah I like it just max damage
in case they heal right we're gonna race uh pocket gonna hope for a miracle off
off the wander swaned well crowns okay but I think he would have liked to see
something else can be good pressure there's also the backup of grifter in a
world where you get grifter he'll potentially yeah
he's gonna have to look for that yeah gonna go dig in once don't really care
about seeing the deal say oh no heal and I have to be nervous I'm guessing
it's just try and get a minion that I don't have the knowledge of every single
meaning that I can generate, but if there's something there it can maybe help me somehow.
I don't know, but it's better than nothing, right?
Well, I think it's that you can't give Xiao-Ti the draw, right, because you don't care about
Biscard when they cast one draw.
Unfortunately, that was, I think, enough eruptions drawn before Rock's pocket was
just low enough that I don't think it's gonna make a difference.
another eruption. There's no there's dying the deck right?
Oh is there any? No yeah no rocks at all yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah just two eruptions left at the moment.
And pocket waving goodbye I think he knows again all these players
very very knowledgeable on this road deck and what its damage break points are, what's the expected
damage, the pocket just cannot quite get this done, cannot survive long enough. Shanti's gonna be all over this.
Yeah it was you know close near the end there, um anything had been no turn earlier for pocket
Right, if maybe, you know, maybe if he had been able to save the coin, right?
Then he can play the Zilliax, right, point it out on that turn.
But, you know, it's hard to, to know.
And the players in the early game were looking so dead that, you know,
you need to get something down.
And so coin Elise seemed after the time.
Yeah, really?
That's going to be it for my pick.
Yeah, yeah, true.
I completely forgot about all of that.
Yeah, there was a lot of things involved
in the elimination matches today.
But yeah, it's a tough one for Pocky.
I think definitely a rough couple of games at the start
couldn't really get going.
Shouty, I think, played very, very well.
As did Pocky, did the best with what he had.
And that's going to be the story of the day, everyone.
They're all elimination matches.
And guess what?
We're the world championships.
So they're all great players as well.
So we are going to see, I don't want to say upsets
because that's the wrong word.
Shouty generally agreed upon to be one
the best hospital players we've seen ever to an extent right so like there's no
there's no upsets really but you know pocket obviously a world champion and
there's tons of fans it's sad to see him knocked out but again you knocked out
to show tea who's another fantastic player that's just gonna be the sort of
story of the day I'm afraid but huge congratulations to show tea and as you
said right the start of the show and China and an APAC sort of as the two
regions that are just performing so far. We're very interested to see how this top eight develops
over the course of today. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's all right, Parker can always
join us washed up at the casting desk. Yeah, he's always welcome, although I do not make those
decisions. So I can commit to anything because everyone knows my opinion doesn't matter. Regardless,
I'm going to go to a quick break and we'll jump into the next match very, very shortly.
don't go anywhere, and we'll be right back.
Welcome back everybody to Elimination Day here at the World Championship of Haarstone
pocket-trained former champion has left the building, but Shao Ti, one of the most popular
and highly respected players has gone forward into this next match. And with me, I'm delighted
to say to steer me through this match is Rekvam. He's caught so many strays from me
over the years, fires a broadcast, he's got a chance to get his revenge. Rekvam, you
enjoying it so far?
Hello, Laurie. Hello, everyone. Yeah, I'm loving the World Championship this year.
It's been great. Love that I have the opportunity to cast and what a nice match we have for us.
Xiaotian Tonsoku, two veterans of the scene. Xiaotian considered one of the goats of China.
And he's got a bit of a redemption to make, I'd say, after his day one showing.
And he's on his way there.
We can't ignore it. What did you make of that turn when he just...
It was brain-fell out, it was something to enjoy the hunter said, yes, two days ago, what did you make out of that?
It was baffling for sure to think that his best out is a 3-in-7 grifter when he's in such a dominant position versus anything that definition can do.
It really caught me off guard, not something I'd ever expect him to do, but it's not even the most shocking thing we've seen recently in the World Championships, so...
I won't ask you that, my bitch!
So, obviously, Xiaotie, as we look at the group there, has a chance to go through here.
You watched a lot, I know, of the Chinese qualifiers.
Is he the best of the Chinese players, do you think?
Is he standalone the best?
Or is he not up there with him?
I think all four of the Chinese qualifiers are definitely the top four of China.
I think the best players made it.
They showed it in their tournament performances.
personally I think Lovestorm was the one that stood out a little bit more than the
rest that's why chosen as my champion as well but Xiaodi has played pretty
consistently well in these tournaments I think he won one or two of them as
well so definitely definitely deserved spot at the world championship for him
and in this match we're going to be covering Xiaodi Tansoku I mean you've
into two worlds, right? So, Shaotian in his fourth World Championships, Tensoku in his first,
does it make any difference? Do you feel it first time out more than second time out?
I think you do feel it. It's pretty natural to feel a bit more pressure coming into your first
championship, but Tensoku has a lot of tournament experience under his belt. He has won a master's
tour as well, which in my opinion, those big master's tours with 400 players are so much
much harder to win and do well in than these smaller 16 player tournaments. So he has proven
himself at the biggest stages. Worlds is its own special type of pressure, but I think he's
been handling it pretty well so far and his play has been pretty on point.
So I guess well, Chateau's taking just a short break, obviously giving him a bit of
time to prepare for the next match, talk a little bit about what it's like to be
pro player again. So you're well known for being very good at making lineups behind the
scenes, you're helping other pro players with their lineups. What is the difference between
a 16 player tournament, this lineup and a lineup for a 400 player master's tour? What concessions
do you have to make for the fact there's weaker players? A 16 player tournament will
usually feature the top of the top and the top of the top like more mechanically
intensive decks, decks where they can make a lot of choices. While in an open field of, let's say,
400 players, there's going to be a lot of curveballs. There's going to be more of those dragon warriors.
There's going to be more of those Hagatha shamans, for example. Whereas in this field,
you really have to prepare mostly for Discover Hunter, for Cycle Rogue especially, which we
might not see as much in the 400 player field because you really cannot make any mistakes
with the cycle rogue. We saw in the previous series how easy it can be for the deck to break if you
don't make sure that everything you do goes perfectly. So I'd say that is the biggest
difference. Just the player quality means that there's more of these combo style decks than those
curve style, just get stuff onto the board and make my turns easier so I
don't make any mistakes, typodex. Excellent, yeah that's pretty interesting to see, I mean I see it from this side as well, but hearing it, it is from your side as well, the same difficulty in line-up construction is good to hear.
I'm going to talk about the Cycle Rogue for a moment, nothing to do with this match, except they are both playing it so you know it will have some relevance, but
but it gives the impression of being an easy deck.
But I was watching people last night and this morning
talking about the Inkuru Maxi Bond game yesterday,
where Inkuru technically, and this is not a diss on him,
technically missed a chance to win the game,
but it was so hard to spot in the moment, right?
The 10-30 point answer.
Yes, absolutely.
That is, like Inkuru found himself in a super hard spot
where Maxi had a huge board
that you always want to be the first one to do the big board,
make your opponent respond to it.
And Kuro did brilliantly well to position himself
in a position where he actually can come back into the game
and he did come really close.
And then the extremely hard two turn lethal setup
with Crystal Tusk and Maestro,
which is not something that almost ever would come up
in a real game.
Just happens, you miss it
and you have to move on and make sure you lock in for the decider match, which will be coming later today.
Yeah, even harder when you're 10 health and you look like you're probably going to die.
All your haste is to tell you, well, I'm playing at cyber mode when I'm 10, I'm dead next turn if I leave this up.
But there it was. Okay, I'll quick chat about these lineups.
Basically, it's the big five decks. Tansoku hasn't got the warrior, Shaotii hasn't got the death knight.
any favours for you on lineups alone without factoring the players?
On lineups alone I'd say Shao-Ti is coming in with a bit of an advantage
because Quest Warrior is really powerful in these basic standard lineups,
these mirror lineups that we're seeing a lot of,
just because it does seem to be doing pretty well into DK and Shaman especially
Though it has been losing to Rogue, that matchup is pretty close.
If the Rogue doesn't get the early pop-off with everything must go
and doesn't push a little bit of chip minion damage, then it can really be hard for them to close
up the game. So small advantage just based on having the warrior to shouty in my opinion.
That being said of course, his Hunter makes a lot of concessions to Warrior being there.
He's got the Asira sort of heavier lineup build. Is that possibly a potential sticking point for him?
That yeah, that is part of a salty strategy. We see the Chinese players go for this slower
hunter with Shaladra Scylla, Sarah and the lease. So the strategy there is to leave up the
quest warrior in the mirror because they must believe that Shaman is a good deck versus a
good enough deck versus warrior, and then Hunter becomes a more important ban.
I wouldn't say it's really paid off when we take a look at Incuro, who has been the player that has
played the Hunter versus Warrior matchup, and he is 2-0 in that matchup without Elise. He played
it brilliantly, really impressed so far. So I wouldn't, at first glance, their strategy
doesn't seem to be that great because we saw in even in the previous series with Hunter vs
Warrior Dragon warrior matchup how close pocket train managed to get in the long game versus this
Hunter. So it could be a pain point because the Tansoku does not have the warrior where
which the Shaotis hunter is decked for.
Again, we are just getting them ready again, Shaotis.
The players are basically allowed to claim 10 minutes off if they need them between matches,
and honestly, they should generally claim those 10 minutes because it's
dashing into a second matchup when you've prepared for the first matchup a lot.
How much do you do that? How much do you prepare for like
match one over match two and just take it one at a time overnight?
I try to always prepare for the first match as much as possible.
If you get the time, it's good to be prepared for all of your group opponents,
but making sure you lock in for the first one that you're on point
and that you don't drop into the lower bracket is always going to be more on your mind.
And in today's situation where you're facing elimination if you lose,
that would be even more the case for Shao Ti that he would be more preparing for pocket
trades lineup, especially because it is not a lineup that he had a chance to prep against
before the tournament. Like I am a certain he did not expect the location Druid or Dragon
Warrior that much. Though I heard rumblings that he was considering Dragon Warrior in
his lineup. But yeah, the location drew it to drew a ban must have demanded a lot of
test time to come up with the decision to actually ban the Druid. And yeah, that's probably
Robert.
Yeah, it would be interesting to know what he would have banned if it had been the first
match on day one, as opposed to, they've seen Maxi Bonplay Fury Hunter, they've seen
Tansoku play pocket train they've got an idea for how the lineup hands out what
we're trying to achieve rather than just you look at a lineup you've got 24 hours
to test you know what's this people are supposed to bring this like why is this
here so yeah it'd be interesting if we would have made the same ban but I think
the Chinese players do seem to be pretty well prepared and well you're
well prepared and well for this tournament so that's probably have
gone that way yeah they've been preparing for a month basically because
They had to prepare for the regional finals first and they're mostly playing the same lineups, I feel, as they did in that tournament.
So they were definitely well-practiced on these decks and know what they're doing, know what their goals are.
Sorry for the mini interview.
Well, we're just chilling, waiting for the match to start.
Would you prefer to play this sort of start tournament or the start of tournament where you've got a six player round robin
to choose your opponent into your opponent, Kanban, you'll cut back. Which one was your favorite?
I like playing more games. I think that's a nice thing that they had in China. They played
this front robin. They got to play five best of fives. And I feel like it's always better to
have more best of fives. If you're like a top professional player who really wants to make
sure that his skill becomes apparent through the tournament, you always want the bigger
sample size. If you're confident that you're the best, that's always going to be in your favor.
You can't get high roll just from one best to five. You can't just break in a tournament like that.
So it really helps you shine.
Stay, Zach. I'm for the best three open cup single-e-limb.
Can't be one of the difference of opinion here.
But who do I best? I think the players are now good to go, so let's get into game one,
Shaotii on the road, Kansoku on the shaman with Hagatha in hand. What do you make of
this? This looks good for both players, I'll be both happy with this one.
Yeah, they both will like their mulegans, we haven't seen many shamans draw Hagatha
other than Love Storm on Curve, so that's definitely the card you want in this
matchup because getting frosty the core as a 5-5 is just super powerful versus
rogue and rogue on the play always like seeing platy and I expected the E.T.M.
to also be a molligan keep for Shouty. Tosses it though. Doesn't like it on the
place as he needs to find crystal tusk rather than E.T.M.
seems seems to want to use the game as a more of a combo card draw card for
for sending it everything must go in a single turn on turn three or four
probably on four on the plate. I'm overly scared I'm repeatedly told I'm
overly scared obviously if you draw something good with it and the
Platys dies then you lose quite a lot of momentum in that way but now he's
going to feel looking quickly.
Yeah, it's a strong start from Tensoku being able to answer
the platysaur while developing an actual board.
Usually what will happen if the platysaur is dying on the play
it's pop a book that's coming down
and then there's not actual pressure,
but these 1-1s are testing shot these next platysaur,
which means that he needs to play
if it's worth just playing it out
and risking another discard, or if he just has to take it slow
and dagger off to pick up these 1-1s,
because there is the possibility of just coin turbulence coming down
and then he's getting hit by a 2-2, a 1-1 and a 3-3.
So he does decide to just dagger off.
Kills the battlecrime minion instead of the rush minion
just because of the turbulence that I mentioned.
It is a feature of modern Hearthstone.
any time you feel you've got to press the hero power button unless it's very specifically with death knight or
You're looking for charge win or shaman looking for spell damage or something like that in general
You don't want to press that button your whole brain says I don't want to press this button
But sometimes it's one wrongs in this matchup and against the death knight sometimes it's not so bad
It's the way especially is sometimes with road as you just describe
You just need to kill a turn just to wait a while while your hand develops
Yes, because the rogue is basically just a combo deck, setting up the cardra combos.
Shati will have problems here, because now he has a Drone Crystal Pusk and he has a Drone
Reparation, so these cultist maps are just sitting there begging to get used to it.
He hits a really good hit with the Shati step, and this is gonna end up being a
strong turn, a strong setup turn.
in these three two I know your favourite of yours right?
yeah they've been buffed from two twos
I like them on the four of those three twos they're pretty strong that way
oh my goodness!
and this is a feature in this mode deck
you talk about combo side right but this is a feature you can just put a lot of stuff on the board
and hit you for seven, two, three, two and suddenly you're in trouble whatever you are
Yeah, so now he's in a good port position to answer these 5-5s usually as rogue if these 5-5s come down you take a lot of damage
You have to usually punch them with crystal tusk as well, but now Shati had a really nice temper turn and he'll be able to clean up one of the 5-5s
The pressure will keep coming from Tanso Kudo. He has a really good hand, but Shati just needs to find the way to get the EMG down.
That really is the key. Largely to just buy time, right? Sometimes it's your win condition getting down early, but here it's just stay alive until he gets it.
maybe even Syndius and Asteroid all at the very end in that order and they try to do the best by the 30th one
because you're not now in any situation in this entire game.
Yeah, it's really hard to get the chip versus Shaman, it usually comes down to that everything must go swing-turn.
Especially when they draw like this, just spending all their mana really efficiently,
which is not something we've seen Shamans do in this tournament so far,
this game it's really all coming together front-end so cool and I think that's
one of the things that pro players don't like about if they do have to play
shaman is that you are in the hands a lot more than other decks it's just what
you draw sometimes unable to play the game
sometimes it means on its own and there's not much in the middle yeah
exactly this cultist map with all was insanely strong for for shout the
picks up prep and the dubious purchase gets to deal with the shamans board for free
basically while drawing cards. Now he can go for the weapon on the follow-up on turn 5 and he's
suddenly in a really good spot. These cultist maps have hit exactly what he's needed.
Yeah, the one and only really awkward thing about Haggathur is this one turn where you
have to play 4, 3 and pass.
Right, this is kind of the one turn where the road gets a little bit up here.
Yeah, yeah, and this is the turn where Chucky will probably try to go in if he can.
That is a good pick up as well, second prep for the EDM and the webweaver is simply coming
down.
Making headspace for the draw 3, then the double Phoenix will draw 2 more, already 6
cardrons to start the turn.
And then just needs to pick up a little bit of something, maybe a second EDM, Shadow
stuff for the Platysaur. This could be a double, everything must go turn.
Really good. Just a lesson here for people who are picking this deck up, who are playing
the Mauler by now. You really want your Maulers after your Eruption. It's not always possible
against a more aggressive deck, so you will have to sort of clear some of the mess up.
But in general, the way in which I describe that, this is what you want to be doing.
these walls too later, you can use any of those you can use power and try to get the double
everything just go down, that's exactly what you're going to see.
And the minions are pretty good for the first one, for the second one.
Oh, that's 7-7-7-7.
Okay, those are all above average I'd say.
Four drops, just the...
This is going to be way too much stats for Shaman to deal with,
And now you've achieved your swing turn as the cycle rogue, and the shaman shouldn't be able to come back from here.
Shati will look to close out the game just with poor damage and a little bit of burn.
There is four cards left in the deck by the way, at stage 5.
He's gone right the way through. He's sitting there planning how to make sure he beats Frosty Deckle right now, it's not there.
Yeah, Tansoku doesn't have much of a play at all, if next turn she's just beneath him.
Yeah, Tansoku has this one cult neophyte in his list that he would have liked to have last turn.
Yeah!
You're late!
And now he's just going to be in a losing position.
Sometimes the shaman can burn down the Cycle World, even when Cycle World gets this kind of board.
But since Shout East turned 4 with Prep Doobie and having two Phoenixes on board, completely dealt with the bell hops,
there's not really anything for Shaman to do but try to barely control the board
and end up being really sad because you're taking all these all these
minions to the face. So if I'm shouting to you here, he's just gonna work out
does he want to use Incindious next turn to deal five in any world? Like does he want to set up the crystal dust now?
Just to make sure of that. Is there anything you want to do? Does he want to put Astroids in the deck now?
because it will be two-turn and just work out how to secure the two-turn.
I expect you to just put all the asteroids in the deck, make another three-two Phoenix,
and first the dusk, clean up the board, make sure there's no funny business that can happen.
Well, clean up the board, clean up the zero-ones and send everything else,
It's a very good example for me to talk about.
It's just coming down to if there's a miracle card from Elise and there is not.
is going to try to find spell like, I mean there isn't going to be one, at least he's
okay. Yeah that's the thing, there's no surprise to
the shaman, that's why the top players don't really like running it, although they do run
it because it's so good, but it doesn't seem. Shouty there was able to just sit there and
go, okay how do I win over two turns? I know the two things you can do are furious
fouls, or weapon, or murder, I mean who cares? Um, off you go. And yeah, Shouty
gets the rogue out of there. Um, I'd say that's quite a big deal, I don't know
I don't know what you think of Rogue, but I've got it in the slight favour to get to most of the field personally.
Yeah, it looks like Rogue looks like the second best deck in the tournament so far from what we've seen.
It's been picking up wins left and right.
In Kuro they get reverse slept on it yesterday in some really unlucky games,
but overall it's looked like the second best deck after the Discover Hunter.
makes sense and the warrior might look a little bit better once we've got rid of the people who
don't like warriors like that that's a fairly well positioned deck the weakness again we talk
about a lot is that you can the opposite way around to shaman you can play into the early game
of the warrior very aggressively and force it onto the back foot and the more experience you
have playing against warrior I think the more the more and more you realize how much you can
and force it into a bit of a corner,
despite it's infinite movement and infinite armor.
So I'd go with that.
I think there's been a number of hunter men
showing the rest of the history.
Very important versus these controlled X2 pick your spots
and push at the right time, make turns,
all prefer them playing around crucial removals
and in the right way.
And part of why Quest Warriors
when rated in this tournament is under 50%
is probably related to the fact
that all these players are just amazing.
doing that, pressuring the warriors at the right times and just making them have it
and then they don't have it and they explode. I will be interested as the
tournament progresses to see how well the Chinese players do in the warrior
mirrors versus the non-Chinese players because there were a lot. We watched a
lot of those in the final qualifier in China. There was so many and it's not
matchup you're going to practice infinitely because it takes so long.
Yeah those kinds of matchups usually well I usually don't go for the very heavy control
lineups anyway but those kinds of matchups you just kind of have to play a matter on your own
and you can't do them up because it's too tough to actually prepare for them in tournaments
and Shalty looks very prepared with this Mulligan.
That's a very well prepared mulligan he's got right there going on. So what you're saying
is if you're in front of your playtest group and I ask you to prep control warrior mirrors
you'll have an urgent appointment to do anything else that you need. Exactly, exactly that.
So for this matchup, Shaman vs Warrior, even if Warrior has a hand like this, with coin
new heights into Elise, the Shaman can still easily get there vs that, but they need a
very specific hand of Hagatha and Shudderbuff for Wish upon the Star. That is something that
warrior really cannot deal with very well. The triple buff just makes it so your only really
efficient removals are brawls and then Shaman can make too many boards while also having
an Alakyr finisher that is super hard to play around so that's that's gonna be
what Tansoku is looking for and just a Shatter Block into Wish Upon a Star or
it's a shot he will just point new heights into Elise and take it from there.
Yeah, that the Couch Returns end up being 8, 9, 10, 11, 1, after the Charm and Daffodil
with a power surge at the end with those buff cards. If the warrior survives those, the
quest is complete.
So, Charm 10s to start running out of things, and if the Charm does well, a Hose to face
into 8 turns.
I remember this place from now.
11, 10, there's lots of stuff like that. The weird stuff from off the wall.
So, preserving XiaoTee's removal early on, not what he currently has in here, but he won't be too bothered.
It's great. It is a big deal.
Yeah, when you have Elise, you can be pretty, pretty chill because if you pick up Raptors, that's nice mid-game removal,
which I believe he picked from the first one, and now on the second pick, he will be deciding between
plus to attack because it gives him a lot more removal power or discover spell which it will be
more useful if the shaman does have those big minions from triple bush upon a star
and he does like up discover
and that's that's later as well i could discover really good removal for those big turns
and just hope you get through the early part of the game.
Yeah, the thing about Elise is when you hit the discoverer you can have so much agency
over your choices, through how you craft your location or if you take the discoverer
you can really take whatever your hand needs at that time.
Like maybe you need some card draws to you, discover cards like shield block, captain's
log something like that or you need to just take up a shield socket or an exit
or a brawl if that is offered it would be quite the good versus the shaman it is
ridiculous to me that we're in a spot where shield slam where you're getting
hit by 1110 over and over again it's just a good card because of the unleash
the clock list now. It's just like, yeah, I'd get 10 armour, it'll be fine.
Yeah, the access to armour in Warrior is just really, really good at the moment, so
Shield Slams are premium removals again, as it was intended from the start of Hearthstone.
Yeah, so Executes the one for later in the day, City Defenses Reckon and Deco.
City defences in Zero Mana, so...
Heavy will just pick it up from here and get it on the floor.
Uh, partner for Soku to interact.
Oh, he's... interesting hold.
Okay, it is an interesting hold.
Not sure the reasoning behind that.
Like, maybe the reasoning is the Zero Sixes don't do anything before there's a board from the Shaman.
something something roll if you choice it but usually for a roll you have access to
crocodiles in every scenario so I'm guessing he just wants to conceal the
information and not be boardlocked because he is summoning more to once
with his locations that could be a reason but usually it wouldn't matter
I just didn't need it. It won't calm down here.
It will be coming down next turn anyway, so...
I guess 0-6 doesn't do anything, so it's fine.
Everything is completely fine in these choices.
Now Shatty needs to decide if he wants to play the whist to save mana on his card draw,
and because he can hit the Ancient of Yor, I think that's why he decides to just spend
mana on Crocalisks, then the Ramanan for Glory, get the Yor down, and now he can put
the 0-6s in the way if he wants to. Still goes new High-Zero Power instead of Yor,
so he can get the Great Drakwraks down instead, and then he'll use the Sivvy
So it's probably to protect the Dracorex on the board.
Yeah, and that's important as well with the yaw as well.
They'll be handy just to give you something to defend the way you're doing nothing for a term.
Obviously Dracorex is his most powerful about now in the game,
while the shard's still sort of ramping it up to those A-tates and taking it away too long.
Yeah, that's interesting.
who really wanted to top deck Shudder Block here, if he top deck that then he'd be in
a pretty good spot curving into the fairytale slum that casts Wush upon the star.
But now he has to just end his deck with the flight of the firehawk and his biggest
problem is everything he does gets deleted by the great Dracorex.
So he cannot really make a board this turn which would be good against that.
And at the same time there is a...
Yeah, he just does not have a way to kill it.
So he has to just use his car drops here, probably picks up the other growth in, and
now he has the answer kind of to the draft rags, it will cost him a lot.
And the city defense will protect the draft rags.
shot even chooses that it needs to come down here which generally you wanted to
come down to stop a wish upon a star landing on to a natural board
yeah the alarm bells will be going off after the new fights
round 2, 8 mana
he is very methodical I've noticed
and it's, I mean, this is his 4th world championship seems to be doing pretty well for himself
Oh, would be like a 9-60 intravenence?
Well, I mean the Resort spot is really good with this hand.
I don't know, 50-50.
Both either Drag-Rex or Zileax at this point.
And...
I'll put it straight away.
There we go.
Still holding the city defences.
Wow.
He's in a very dominant spot, so he can kind of do whatever he wants.
Um, the Drakrax is killable at least, with Furious Foul.
I don't know what it does in my set up, but it's so good to be able to kill it.
I would have liked this Drakrax to be unkillable behind 0-6 points personally.
That's a bit weird, but I think it's the moment you've held it for the appropriate moment that felt like an appropriate moment to me.
In the transition later, against the Murlocs, against 11 attack things, against Alakir, they are going to be a nuisance.
Yeah, I guess he's holding for like a late game alakir for me, but I'm a big fan of Enlil
myself, so that would have been really good temple to have a drag crux on the board.
How the 06s are going to come down to block the wish turn?
A Rofin turn?
Yeah, everything's just a bit awkward for Tansoku.
He's in desperate need of the Shutter block.
this could be the turn to to get it down try to find it with birdwatching
pretty good odds on on hitting that
yeah but it's too afk yeah how many minions are there the deck at this point
Not very many
Here is the action of luck one bell hot
One if I won't go if it's a fight by my cow
So cool
I think it was a trade that Shanti chose to make, like, kill a 4-3, instead of a 3-3 with the Mewy.
He's getting kind of punished for it.
Didn't like that from him, but...
Right.
He's struggled, I mean, this is the matchup, right?
He's struggling to get his agents of your down. He's always a bit irritating for me.
I really want those in play. They're just sitting here, knocked with my cards right now.
He is healthy enough to be able to get them down this turn if he really wants to.
But I expect that he'd try to get this wand in play.
Try to hit shield slam for the Muradin.
I can deal with most of the board with Shonado, but it's not an ideal turn to leave out the
Muradin.
And then we'll probably get a Shroom of the Ours damage boost.
Looks like they're about way more deceitful than Shonado's, they're just saying it's
working damage, not even that scary.
I think he's getting 60 of his forces in here, it's really...
A lot of his problems are solved by having that out there as well.
Also, Po-Dom's zileanct is like...
Po-Dom's zileanct by doing this, like, yeah, get rid of my armor and I'll start healing when I actually take health damage,
but I'll just play my zileanct as a minion, just that's nice.
I mean ideally you wouldn't take all the all the damage if you can
No sure, yeah, but if you're going to take some, you'll see the LNR
D's up here, and we're still going to have a real good one
Because the shaman can set up some triple deli's nonsense with alakyrs
if you give them enough time doesn't look like it's going to be happening
because Shouty is... Shouty's hand has been pretty good and hasn't actually taken
any damage so far. Birdwatching for Shatterblock seems to be the plan for
and so forth. There it is.
You have to use it for more boards.
You can set up a shrapnel for extra hops, just protecting the
murder in this way.
Did you say last time that you made a good low tempo to get the
shuttle block into your hand to get going, but now you found a slot where
you can actually make this low tempo to establish the yours?
decided to sneak in the birdwatching as well as get a night intent and these
silly axes will clean up the board because they were buffed by the
reserve response from these. That's what we're going to be expecting this to be.
And now this is behind on board again
and it's really hard to get back on board if you if you're first off the board as the shaman
oh I missed that the zilean axis also from off the 3 from Black of the Barrel
I'm guessing?
Zilli Axes really hate other Zilli Axes.
The number of times you take a second because of this exact interaction.
That can be very tricky.
Okay, so Chatty now has got the wand in hand, has got the quest about to finish.
He's got a claw, he's now got a bomb as well.
He's starting to gain control.
This is the tricky part I was talking about at the start of the game, where he has to get a bomb.
where he has to navigate maybe another two or three turns and big threats and
then things should get easier because he starts making his own counter threats.
It looks like he's going to try to make this a bobb turn. Use croclists to boardlock his opponent.
Well, give them only one board spot. He could also just go for an invader clear,
but the Invader Clear is probably going to be better
once these ancients of yours can actually attack into the 5 nines
and he won't need to commit some more removal
like Shieldslam to activate the Invader
he'll be able to use a Goblet or something like that
if he just freezes the board here
Can we not talk about it playing off please?
Okay, he does...
does...
he's the invader.
It makes it...
I mean, it's still pretty awkward for Tansoku, because he's limited to Tenmana, whereas Shati is already at 12.
The number's only gonna go up.
Um...
Pretty good avatar form turn now because Shati took the clear with the invader and made his
5-5s into 5-1s just to clear some 2 days.
Sure.
Nope.
I'm not a fan of Shati's last turn, if I'm being honest, but we'll see how it works
out.
So he doesn't want to have a time for a shot their block down
Taking a turn off put the weapon and push max damage base
Okay
I think so, I think it's pretty confidently as if it is a 2 turn setup.
Um, and now Shotty is in a tricky spot.
Yeah, this hand is kind of warm.
Nice line from the first one, so we should make sure we get off the corridor for Shafiq actually, but if the quest reward comes down here, there's a Mara which would be backbreaking.
Yes!
He's setting the barrier to the first team to show him he's plenty.
That's not it though.
So now the crown will come down, try to find something to put in the way, and just keep
on killing all three of them.
Yeah?
It's almost desperation.
He does get to the net so he might be okay.
there's gonna be another board coming from the shaman but now Cecil's
expanse is active
is um
I'm not sure yeah we'd love this atleast to get something to skate with here
yeah I think it's going to come down here though
And then you try to fill it into a 10 mana location that defends the board, maybe raptor's
attack combination or just go for two 5 mana locations which then can clean up the board
just as well.
I think he did for Raptor a second time.
And he needs coffee for the Allaqueer retros.
And we'll go on.
That'll be the way he wins the game.
I should probably want something.
That's the first one.
Spell Raptors.
I've never had to deal with three Terraluns before.
I think all three are different, maybe there's an error.
I saw the third one has six armor, the sixth one has rushers.
I can read them out, but I can't show them in series.
So the third one is Gain 6, Summoner 5, 5 copy.
The middle one is 5, 5 copy and plus two attack.
So if we walk down here, we'll have all the machines get us down.
Okay, so now Tensoku has a fair board with power school locations.
The last run is just a combo piece.
But there's a problem, his health level is disappearing, and Child Team Board is pretty massive on their games.
They just can't fight, get the Elise down in time.
Yeah, and I think it would save him just a bit too late.
You know, Shaman's really aggressive. Why do you keep the question against Shaman?
This is why.
It's exactly why. The fight back that you need when they're trying to kill you, yeah,
is important, but always you do just around the stuff.
For Tansoku, he might be looking at some kind of at least discover out at this point.
He can make a big board, but that's not gonna cut it because there's a 1616 ceaseless because
of the AFKs.
So yeah, he's just slamming one of the locations.
I tried to hit a discoverer that keeps him in the game.
Um, APF Storm is usually pretty okay for two mana, but not here.
Yeah, it's not getting enough done.
So, looking at the old ones, like, can I hex my own minions?
I don't think so.
Oh, he, uh, he attacks better than me.
So he doesn't get to kill everyone into a 4-9, but it doesn't matter.
Uh, he's just dead to the Sulfurus, the quest warrior, uh,
he's, uh, the quest warrior, the reward that he needed, the Sulfurus,
and just to close the game.
There he goes again.
So if he's just not able to unpick the problem of how to get that Alec here down, how to get the buff,
he did go for that turn where he just pointed everything face to put all that pressure on,
which meant that Xauti did have to get the right rewards very soon, or things were going to go wrong,
but you start off with two rewards, a lot of them are good for you.
So worked out for him there, 2-0.
But his own showman still to come, which could be the weakness in this lineup.
Yeah we have seen some issues with with shaman in this tournament where it drops
a fair few games so it's a shouty is definitely not out of the woods yet he
has to beat a worst case he'll have a shaman mirror game five which is sort
of a running running joke in the from the sea and tournaments that every game
every series comes down to a game five shaman mirror but with three chances I
I like his odds.
The best one for him will probably
be versus the Cycle Rogue.
Shaman does have a little bit of an edge there.
But we saw in game one already how the Cycle Rogue can just
get those swing turns in and blow out the Shaman.
Yeah, Shaman has that edge mainly because he's
got the wide board, so early afterwards do nothing,
So you have to organize things even more correctly as a rogue and all the time not only Jeff organized correctly
You're being hitting the face for substantial damage. So you've got to control that as well
So a lot of the time you are you're being attacked on two different fronts of the two things you want to do
And but that being said like you say just if you do organize it right and you
Explode some eruptions and you asked for some faces
Nothing can put up with that right now
When cycle does its thing
Yeah, when Cycle Rogue does throw the perfect hand, the perfect pop-off on turns three or four, it's very hard for anything to keep up with it.
Yeah, it's really hard for even aggressive decks to punish Cycle Rogue if it draws perfectly.
It looks like it is going to be the Cycle Rogue, as you see on the one side of the screen.
Well that's a really good start for Tansoku, Crystal Tusk is super important versus any
Agri Deck to, I mean versus any deck just to set up those EMG turns on three or four.
And the space what Collector does so much like it's not just a one mana two one that
you can eat but it banks the mana, you basically spend no mana on turn one, sure
you use it later when you reduce something else but that banked mana is surprisingly important
obviously you're doing things on turn three and four that are really important and really
big you know having a mana that you can carry over from turn one is so huge yeah yeah just
the the one mana can be a difference between getting a prep doobie into into your turn
versus not being able to do that, so it's a big pick up for it, that's so cool.
Shachi will be two, so I'm going to go like Bellhop, and Spell is never too disastrous.
Double Hell Bellhop is kind of worse in some ways, because you can't buff them so easily,
but you still get your cool Bellhop into Bellhop and tell the rogue, you've got to do it the hard way.
Yeah, it's sort of better for the shaman that they're not buffed, if you have two of them,
because you get to put the pressure on to the board instantly and stop this task from just
hitting the face without any punishment from these stomp minions. You can circle with
the double tusk just deciding if he would rather have two tusks or throw away one of the tusks
and hit the DM because he might be thinking that he can't go in on turn three anyway and then he'd
like to just have a re-equip of the tusk for next turn. So like if he would equip tusk this
turn then break it and attack with it with the second one, one turn three and then if we draw
naturally we can have a better set up some more cards from his deck that decides to go for a
pulsing wave to dusk and then probably cycling the the cards with E.T. and from this turn
though being forced to take all this damage is not gonna make him copy it.
No, not at all.
Okay, if you save the tusk swing, so he does get to the case of that, yeah.
So, the move out there, he's down to it.
Yeah, he can't actually go for the EMG this turn, so he has to hold EDM,
and then he knows he's losing the webweaver.
In this way, if Child D has an expected turn, there should be a minion sticking, so he will have an ETH team target, so the expected turn for Child D would here be Turbulus or Second Bellhop.
Usually, maybe fly for the fireball to try and do some scenarios to try and this is the most expected for Tansoku, and now he gets to eat the game on the Platisaur.
If the Platisaur starts to turn with critical damage, then you see what the two cards you draw is correct sequencing.
Yeah, so he probably needs to go in, so get your free cars first, make sure you go in.
See if we had happened to draw.
He's just looking for a track that he can get the previous purchase down as well.
Has a couple more draws for it if he wants them.
And he wants to do that, there's a lot.
now he will probably not keep cycling and just you can just shadow step and
play a phoenix and try to go in next turn it is getting really hard
that's good self-control that sometimes you tell him to stop no actually you're
I'm going to give him my EMG, I'm going to keep drawing until I hit it and he just draws a pen and I know some weird people or something just died because you got no resources left so yeah.
Good control there obviously, he's a world class player he's going to have that but sometimes I'll let him just keep digging.
My cards I'm out of them.
You can play around the ladder, try to hit the high rolls for showboarding purposes, try to go for a turn to EMG, I've seen those plays, and I've seen them sometimes it works.
It's just the climbing inside, but I've owed my EMG.
And if there are two of them in there, you do get four shots out of it, not two shots
out of it.
So it's about a 25% chance if you go for it there, you do hit it.
So you have got to weigh up how bad your hand is.
There was a reason to go for it.
If this was significantly worse on board, you had to hit it.
Shout the Queens up the board, get the roving ahead, and make sure he determines who's more
than.
This is kind of poor, we already get too much for the roves, so this can be a turn where
he needs to, yeah, this needs to be a turn where everything else still comes down.
So looking for preps, uh, doesn't find it.
A little shadow step, uh, Blacky.
One more draw for preps, and then, then EMGs are free.
Okay, okay.
EMG works well.
Yup.
There we go, 5 W EMG again.
Just like earlier.
It's the payoff for the reward, even though the patch is pretty good.
Yeah, those are decent, but I don't think they're good enough necessarily.
The Muradin will come down, he'll kill off my hands, and the Shaman will push down to
So just a little bit more damage and it's a it's a kill over two turns with the hammer into Furious Foul and I
don't think there's much that the the Rokken do about it. It's not gonna be enough to to turn the shaman so
I just want to hit him for 3 here because I've got 76 of 3's flying around on the board, making trading to 3, making it a bit of it, I don't know.
Yeah, I don't want that 3 damage, I just want it.
Just send it.
Tansaka will be looking for prep cultist nap into Incindias so he can prep all manager and get the Incindias down because that is the only way he realistically sets up a 2 turn versus the High King's Hammer.
he misses the the incindious though so now he has to pivot into trying to kill with molars over two turns
which will be much harder than just if he had found an incindious
but so he's stepping away it is doable it is doable actually
to 1 damage. These ponds are very annoying for him though. So now we get to counter damage
to 1-16. So 12 more for an extra. Then needs to find 12 more in the asteroids.
I think if he's going to just send everything face he needs to play the furious file so
they can tank asteroid hits so he doesn't die because there's no more EMGs there's
There's no pawns that can actually stop him from killing the road.
So if he just doesn't die this turn, he wins the game in two turns.
So he needs to put minions on the board to tank asteroid hits.
That's why he should play Furious Foul if he's just sending everything face.
And I think that's the play for him.
We will make sure to count everything since he knows that there was no instill miss, but
he really doesn't want to give the real time to have serious calls to him.
That's basically what's 8 health.
What's the secret there's a calmness.
But yeah, it's just about to just turn Astorite into the minion that's going to push out
Yeah
I'd have taken six here for sure
So the process I didn't want to go into I'm sure I would on that the second you say I'm like, yes, definitely
Right, but oh my goodness
So now for time so cool is there a shadow stuck left in the back
I don't think we've seen all
Yeah, we see how the both right the source. Yes
So this is
that means there's three more asteroid hits so that's at most nine damage
which will not be enough to kill the shunt thief, can't do well with the old manager
Is that right? It's been better, for sure.
I'm gonna walk one more in the deck and it's just a bit off.
With better order for the Asteroids,
if he doesn't start to turn with the three Asteroids, then that would have been enough.
Yeah, chatty.
No such luck for Spencer, too.
So choosing the order of the fouls and the weapon made a massive difference.
I like to highlight those and thank you for pointing that out because he would have lost
if he'd got that very, like it's not that nuance.
It's fairly obvious when you hear it, but that very easy to mistake doesn't matter
which one of these two things I do, I just hit you for six and I hit you six more and
you die or I die.
But no, the expert, what is it, six health on the board just gave him all that protection
he needed.
It counted as eight health the way the asteroids went, so amazing to see how little things
like that makes such a huge difference but anything else any final thoughts on this match
and they will get into some more matches for the people? Clean play from Shaotee, drew
well, made no mistakes really and just got rewarded. That's what happens sometimes you
just get to an easy series. Well thanks so much for hanging out with us in this
class I think we'll see you again later today as well but that is group A wrapped
up, shouty and definition progressing from that group, keeping some of the
casters predictions alive at least. But we're going to get to group B so we're
going to take a short break and we'll be back in three or four minutes with the
next group.
the
Welcome back, everyone. We are ready to get into our next match and moving on through
to group B Decider matches now. I'm Raven and Jeremy once again, here's Edelweiss and
we'll be taking you through this one. It's going to be Insane vs Chun-Su, which is going
to be pretty interesting. We were talking just off camera then about the play predictions
as well and how those have been doing so far. Not the best for some people, pretty
good for the people who weren't with HRT so far. But we can have a look at how
group B panned out. Yang Ming obviously advancing, yes, no, hang on Thursday. I've
going to remember what day we're on, actually, advancing on Thursday to get
through to the group pretty nicely. But now we're going to see these bottom three
players fight for that last spot to go through. Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken it
was Chunsu, your pick. Yeah, yeah, he was. Yeah, you may find yourself where I'm
sitting after this as well. We shall have to see. Of course, Sottle and other
or Shaoqi pick players redeemed, right?
But yeah.
Insane versus Chansu.
I feel like this is kind of the big lineup difference that
is most frequent, right?
Is like, do you have shaman?
Do you not have shaman?
Yeah, it's a big one as well.
And what's kind of amusing as well, give you a bit of a,
that we can see is the, I think, wait, is this right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah.
So like Chansu banned Hunter and I was playing Hunter and in same band the warrior and he's playing warrior in the first game. So we've got kind of a 41 kicking it off. But you completely right. It's a big question mark on where rogue sits versus Shaman. And we've obviously seen some shame and do pretty well overall.
But I do think the rogue, we've seen some of the ups and downs of Rogue haven't we so far
definitely but I do, I think if I was picking and I was probably better at it I would have
probably locked in Rogue for like the better lineup overall.
However, Shaman, you know a lot of these good players have been bringing the Shaman
list and we'll see how it goes but yeah, it's going to be a really close one because
I think it's a fantastic player but I'm just thinking about my predictions.
Every single time, I'm just not going to be subtle, that is my one goal with predictions
now and now.
Chancellor did very, very well in the last call qualifier to get that spot, he played
really confidently and got a lot of good work, so a lot of this, as always, is going
to come down into who can sort of keep their cool the longest.
Yeah, and the last chance qualifier, very, very rigorous, only one player making it
out or speed out a couple of America's players like banter who we will see again later this week
yeah looking at these opening hands not too bad
at all for chansu here is going to keep hold of the varisa got rid of everything else because
when you're going first to the pirate sanctuary doesn't quite play out how you'd like it to
right with the three drops it doesn't really work like that normally so i do like the
the mulligan overall insane on the other hand hold on to that quest as we've discussed in
this matchup in the past but also just having access to pretty early ramp and warrior we've
thought a lot about it doesn't really do too much in the early game well if you get new
heights that is something that's very positive to do in the early game yeah no immediate
lays available where it to be coined out so we might see insane just you know
way to turn to do it yeah I think you see nothing early on that's gonna cause
many problems obviously you're expecting something to come down on turn
three when you're playing against Hunter but even that if it's one of the
sisters like fine the two four on the board and you'll happily take the
ramp to deal with that for a little bit later on yeah and I like this order
right going for the discover a spell there can be really big swings when it
comes to discovering spells since there's no discounts on what you find and
chance you're saying that rather discover one spell and buff my entire deck of
minions by plus two plus two thank you very much yeah especially because it's
just like the one card draw right that's gonna be the potential difference
there so okay it was a million that's kind of funny
Still looking pretty good for Trunks too, just getting the sisters down and again, arguably
in the right order overall, especially if you can get to Sylvanas a little bit later on.
And we'll have basically max damage from that.
Does have Incendius ready, does have this Brumaster available, not for, I imagine not
for any time soon, unless there's an early decision to bounce one of the sisters and
go again.
And that could be pretty interesting, but Insane does have a pretty good turn here
if you want said yeah just just you know very safe once you start flying at least
there messes up the curve a little bit I start taking some of that chip damage and
hustle invader like even after you do the the double Emmy of battle cry and
spellburst having to deal with that death rattle afterwards can just be
really really annoying yeah and it's still a 3-5 right like that's decent
stats especially in this sort of current meta room where there's Hunter there's
rogue and that there's death knight as well where there's a lot of things that
are 3-5 actually trades pretty well with right across the board so and not
too bad even just the shape of the minion in general
I imagine mixologist here because it's the only thing that can draw you a card.
Yeah, I would guess so.
And it's just a 6-6, so it's making this hostile invader not look too cool.
It's going to be deal 2, deal 3 as the potion choice.
We're reveling in this new technology.
We're just getting clicked every time, yeah, 100%.
Well, I mean, in all honesty, up until this point, we've just had to just say, okay,
probably is this until we see it right? What would we pick in this scenario but it's always
good to be 100% and would you see the Elise come down here? And I will then click again
to show a copy of 5.5 and gain armor in 4.7 on the top. Yeah being able to pick up armor
I think very very nice to try and pad yourself against potential huge burst damage from the
hunter they do have the ability with grifta potion or mixologist potions and neary and gary scouts sometimes
sneak out lethals that way
they look a bit tricky here for chansu because there's nothing that like dramatically progresses
there's the potion that can be played now to clear up some of this does put it into the people
if it's played, but there's just nothing else for once ever, Hunter does not have access to discover
at this moment in time, which honestly feels like a rarity, which is why the deck is so strong,
right? You so often can just discover cards, draw cards, generate cards, whereas the few
times you find it yourself in this position where it's already possible, the deck just
feels a lot weaker to play. Yeah, and I wonder if Insane might pick up on that
vulnerability here and do something like a coin Draco Rex?
Yeah that could be interesting couldn't it? Again on the other side here,
Insane has some good options but nothing directs. I'm trying to think
if coin Draco Rex comes out then the Incindius doesn't just get dealt with
as a follow-up, but is likely to be able to be dealt with, right, if the play would be in
Cyndia's pass. Yeah. Same going a little bit safer here as Concealed Block, and I imagine develop
the location of these hunters and not really joining the party when it comes to Demolition
elevator just doing a double check yeah no no demolition elevator this is the
this is the more aggressive hunter right now at least but but with the double
brewmaster which has sparked debate I suppose I will say yeah this is
interesting because again incendiary pass looks fine because if you make the trade then
you force them to play minion to be able to make a copy of a minion on insane's turn.
This is fine. We can see that there's some pretty good answers to this with the drake
of course. The other option I suppose was looking like Xavius into Niall or something
like that right to try and just get the game going for Chonsu because it has been
very, very fair, I guess, is the word I'm going to choose for Chonsu right now, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It just feels like a very fair game, not doing all the discover hunter stuff really, so yeah,
it's going to be definitely a difficult start for him.
I'm saying now, Double Dracorex, and this is a minion that, if you can't deal with
it quickly, is very, very annoying to have stick around, particularly when a lot of
Hunter's game of land consists of, you know, playing a bunch of alien encounters, for instance.
Right, and these big wide boards of taunts.
Well, that's exactly what John says after here.
I'm going to start using that sanctuary, which is very important, because we're staring at the renovator in hand, for insane.
We can use that, we can start rocking this track in and start actually getting work done.
done also of course has the two rangari scouts to be able to double up on that discover as well
and now a second type of uh cool people sorry so uh chonsu very suddenly very much back in the game
i would say yeah i think you know nile that was about as late as it could come uh because you
know once insane as you know if he's able to open that location again copy the drake orex
but there's just not really any of the other chunks we've developed.
Bob should get interesting.
Yeah nice as well because the it's funny that the minus two attack doesn't really change much.
One because it's double buffed anyway, but also you're not really playing Bob for the stats,
right? You need you want that freeze effect. So it's actually one of the much better
minions to hit with that mana reduction effect from Xavier's.
I'll be curious what Shansu goes for with that Bob, if he's going to use it aggressively.
We have seen once yesterday someone go for refresh, pick a three drop, could also save
it for a long game plan of getting a copy of the Hunt the Warrior quest reward, the
Torgias.
Yeah, really tricky one because the base level right when you just use it to repeat freeze
potentially with brewmaster because it's so cheap that's pretty easy to do.
Yeah.
This is going to be tricky for chunks to deal with because these two zileaks just line up
perfectly.
Let the five six go face pressure and like chunks who's in the real threat of actually
just dying soon right 19 health big board on the other side for insane and it's
definitely on chance to get something done.
One spell away from at least the first tide pool pupil being filled.
You're probably gonna start with a discover, see what happens, and then build the rest of the turn around that outcome. I imagine.
little bit surprised not to see
eruption use there but yeah being able to find rangers sylvanas maybe that was
the plan right yeah that's kind of it isn't it yeah you get two of them they're
dealing six and you could brew master if you really wanted to like the second
one or something yeah I mean I think Sylvanas is arguably the reason the
master is in the deck yes you can bounce Bob maybe very occasionally bounce tide
poor pupil grifter but Sylvanas is really the big pale
I like doing bird watching again and then dropping one Sylvanas and you've got
shenanigans for next turn with the other Sylvanas and then multiple
if they're so desired of course so charges on this their parent sanctuary as
well yeah insane is gonna have the information that there is a copy of
that savanness
And yeah, this is, I think a pretty good spot for Chansu at this point, right?
Warrior does not often have those sort of big boards pressuring you.
And so now with Sylvanas able to reset, a lot of time to be able to just pile on
the damage with Sylvanas after Sylvanas, wait until you can get another one mana potion.
There is a deal 3 and deal 2 to all minions in one of the tide pool pupils.
And Niri in hand.
Yeah, the big question for me is just what's the plan there, post a quest for this, for
saying here because I was even looking looking at potentially playing marring and
then holding the wand and then going from there right potentially quest reward one
I love it later on
more eruptions coming out just to double check it there are two more
eruptions left in the deck now
There's still two arcane shots in there as well, not exactly looking great right now when
your opponent's on 40 health, but that sort of thing does add up, especially when you're
I'm going to be here to keep this as a 6-1 attack in and then bounce it, and Chansu just
saying, eh, I don't love these and every little bit of damage counts, the amount has
gotten hand.
yeah and it's not doing more than two damage at any point also unlikely to
need it for board players as well so it's like you know what I'll get the
eruption done draw a different card move on yeah you completely ride the brain
master coming down to bounce the weeps of anus
look at this just out of nowhere look how much damage is available now did he
Evaluating the parrot sanctuary again
A little surprise to see the six three be the one to get bounce rather than two four
Yeah, one less health but way more attack
Yeah
Guess like slip up there unless I'm missing some kind of weakness that it had a lot things a specific removal to be
overly worried about
Also the benefit of the Sylvanas is it just their chunks through this block of Azanoth pretty easily as well.
Yep.
Brawling two brewmasters in the Sylvanas. That's when you know you buffed your minions, right?
It's like when they're eating the brawls.
Brutal.
Yeah.
Brewmasters double buffed by birdwatching.
And buffed from the sister as well.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's what it was, right? It was a sister for two and then birdwatching for a plus two plus one.
Immediately chew through that weapon.
There's more blue masters where they came from as well.
May decide to...
Save the second one. We'll have to see
Yeah, I was just gonna say as well even though the other choices look fine like carrots I'm sure number two looks quite good
Yeah, and here yeah, we see the seldom used discover three refresh three men of crystals
This is where maybe you'd like rewind isn't it I mean Volpe is still fun
Nothing's blowing my mind right now.
No rush minutes to draw, nothing to hit to discover a minion.
I'm just taking big damage, OK.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you see a brawl, right?
So.
Yep, yep.
Just locking in with all his loads more stuff.
You need to clear it.
I've already seen hostile invaders.
However, insane now does have quests to complete.
So as he jumps, he's sitting up there.
I was like, okay, the real game begins.
One, can't say for sure,
but there may be a little bit of a fake out here.
One, it's some pressure to maybe discourage Quest reward
from coming down.
Still with the brewmaster leaving open the possibility
of either bouncing Sylvanas or Bob.
Yeah, it's kind of a win-win if even one of those is left up.
There is also... hmm.
Can play a quest reward.
Could play that hand, Marry, and just go for it that way.
Obviously, you've got to see what rewards you're actually getting hand first before
you make any decisions.
It's probably going to have to be some kind of defense, right?
It's just not quite enough health to feel safe if you're going to leave up a chunk of
the board.
Well, and Shunsu has been saving these locations, right, which has to be a little bit eerie.
ability to have basically type 4 people's 4-0 to do on a big neary Rengarri scout turn.
Jansu basically drawn through the deck right now, not much left in there and it's pretty much
all damage I guess grifter is the the big one that's still not been drawn right in terms of actually
generating high damage counts. Yeah very easy to pick it up though between the two trekkings in hand.
Oh yeah for sure. We'll make board space as well with this parrot sanctuary if it's been chosen to
to be pressed before they do anything else.
I have to move a little bit quickly, not going to be a combo kill, I think we're just bouncing
Sylvanas and pushing through.
Yeah, it's probably just a safety net turn, right?
Maybe finish with the taunts.
Or a taunt.
Okay, making room, probably going to drop the taunts now, right?
I'm gonna pick up one of the potions.
This is scary though. One can cause some havoc here.
For Glory as well. It's more free draw.
I wonder if this is brawl into Sophie Orris.
I would be impolite on that.
I'm not sure.
I would be impotent it was just a lot of damage right after the brawl you would imagine yeah
well could also strike yep yep yeah wanted to see you know what was left after the brawl
Yeah, just going for absolute safety, not even getting out for portal, go ahead and
get this renovator.
Okay, instead of trying to particularly close out the game next turn and saying going for
a small defensive plan, trying just not to die, Parallax kind of picked up here for
Chansu.
These are gonna be able to proc this.
There's Grifter.
Both players just very close to ending this game, but neither one just quite get in there.
Yeah, time to see whether the truth is a deal six. It is not.
And...
Yeah, no reduce no steel not even I think the option number three you would like to see is
Get three random legendaries
Yes, I go for tall and
And I you know I have to wonder if
Maybe who he was banking a little bit too much on hitting that deal six
has cleverly been you see there holding off on getting a spell played in the
pupil this whole time the second people yeah that's why no alien encounters and
everything else earlier to be able to get something else that deals damage in
there for the near return
okay well that's useless
This is guaranteed Barnabas.
I'm able to clear this up in there.
Regardless of the true shenanigans of Time Warp, it's still setting up effectively to
turn lethal, right?
Yeah.
It's going to be a lot of damage on the board.
Keep with the weapon showing especially it's one of those may as well get the taunt down.
It's insane just building everything up dropping the legendaries and saying you know what you've
got to get through this and deal 28 to me or you are very likely dead next to me.
Especially with all those Sylvanas gun.
is neary there is multiple shots of potions as arcane shots as well that can multiply there
is a lot of damage available from junsu here but i do think that grifter six would have
made this a whole lot more simple yeah i mean arcane shot uh in in the deck right so
you can see that this one this version of the discover hunter is a little more centered
ending with big neary plays but yeah it was was very much counting on some
Griffed at deal 6 action and now I'm gonna have to do sort of a backup and
hope that getting some doubled stats on glacial shard
yeah just freezes still one more potion to be made right yeah deal three
Okay, that's what you were after. Yeah, deal three freeze
Do this develop the alien counters freezing space as well
They also really nice because it's the board spaces that are being taken off right huge
taunts in the way nothing actually able to attack
as it stands this may just be enough
yeah no time warp
no time warp only the hero power for armor can freeze away the board damage
but insane needs to be able to clear the neary
because otherwise it's arcane shots for four piece
and tide pool pupil does still have an instance of deal 3 which of course would be deal 6 and
14 is exactly enough
Yeah, this
Is this ever like so furious press the button and try and snipe is that lids? I was drastic because it's gonna come down to
I'm maybe playing co balls
I mean I like that plan as well, but yeah, okay armor up so furious
Press the button again, and then freeze the rest. Yeah, this has to oh
My oh my hit nearly and that is quite the snipe
So no monster wait how much damage is this anyway?
Yeah, I guess you can get four from the weapon
It's 11.
By my count.
It's a 3 off.
We need to high roll the amulet.
Yeah, I was going to say, press the amulet first.
Press the amulet first.
You see how, you know, Chatsu has this easily if he rolls the six damage.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it wouldn't even be a discussion, right?
And yeah, missing out on the the doubling effects of Miri.
is this do you need to shoot minions I think you have to right otherwise like
you need you need this glacial sorry to connect
yeah this is the right choice there's four health minions on board so these
three twos aren't quite as troublesome after the talents obviously but still
ceaseless problem Bob has to go into one the others in theory there's still the
hero power from Ansofjores itself very scary
Oh, please.
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Clean Kronos as well.
So it wasn't guaranteed Barnumus off the Ethium earlier, or not Ethium.
All you can eat. So much eating in that extent.
Eat stuff, yay.
The food cards.
Oh, okay, takes that one at once.
That takes out the other one
And yeah, it will clear up
Enough of this damage that Shansu is out of this game
Really came down to the the amulet
there, but I I do wonder if there may have been some kind of
Deviation from from all in an amulet plan that that might have
Got things done a little bit earlier
Yeah it was a little bit tricky isn't it because I get it. It already feels like it was longer
than just that one game but there was multiple Sylvanas pushing tons of damage so that was
a lot of extra damage that you don't normally get I would say in your average game so there
was a lot of damage generated. I think Insane did a really good job of being quite measured
on when to go for removal, when to sit back and gain armour and be defensive and
so on. But yeah, chances you just couldn't quite get there. Again, there's a discussion of
did one of the what three brew masters, I think they were in that game,
need to be saved for grifter in an emergency situation, or would that not have gained enough,
you know, there's a nice thing with this one today, right? There's so many routes
to actually play the deck and how to progress in any given game, that it's hard to just,
really narrow it all down to one moment. But yeah, there's definitely tricky. But I think
one of the problems as well is that there wasn't even anything great from the grift.
I mean, we saw that what you could possibly do with like cost reduction from grifter that
we saw was like yesterday now. And that was pretty spicy. But it's just that there wasn't
anything even an awful like just at home to like, okay, fine. It wasn't really good
enough. So a little bit unfortunate there for chance to did have some good plans
just didn't quite pay off but it does mean insane it's going to be that one step ahead now
1-0 in this series so far which is DK and Rogue left over but still chance to I don't think the
hunter take a loss is the end of the world I think Hunter's just going to get a win of some
more you can have if it's worth it I think I'm by chance too it looks like we're going to go into
the rogue versus shaman matchup yeah and this shaman we've seen the highs we've seen the lows
and it's really, you know, all, that all over the place. I think this matchup in particular
is one of those where it's like, well, if the if the shaman gets the early stats just
very, very quickly, it can seem like, you know, what could rogue possibly do? But then
right, rogue has similar blowout players available.
Yes, well, those is like, oh, what could rogue possibly do? And then they do it. And you
Oh fair enough. They've been able to pull out the bag. Let's see how it goes.
Chonsu getting off to a pretty decent start, and then the Moloch's down nice and easy.
Does have that turbulence, and the Pirate Sanctuary to back it up.
Oh, and the F4. And that is how important that card is. We both do it at the same time.
Yeah, having access to Hagathar on turn three is probably, at least for me, the highest impact thing that can happen in this game as the shaman.
I think so, yeah. I mean, it is the namesake of the deck. They call it Hagathar Shaman for a reason.
And yeah, particularly with two parrot sanctuaries available with Turbulus, you know, just a little cherry on top.
carry on top, you can buff the spells that you draw, buff those minions plus one. I think
it's just having the ability to shutter block some of these spells is pretty crazy and even
just the play of Frosty Deck Chorus Slime, very very early on you get a 5-5 with 2-4
depending it is significant pressure yeah that says it's just stuff right just
throwing stuff out on there creates a lot of problems and saying like name a
little back and forth play with the with the Phoenixes
but yeah there's the wins and we all know how that feels the early Hagertha
and you just know it's gonna be a bad day or at least in this instance a bad
game
Yep, location pressed means that turn four fairytale slime with frosty decor is going to be coming down.
When this is tricky, if you're the rogue in this scenario, here's the game plan.
Sort of, okay, everything's going as bad as it can go in terms of what my opponent's doing.
does insane now have to go all in on doing the best possible rogue thing right
you have to go all in on having the big pop-off turns with Thanos and getting
you know focusing on destroying to incendious as quickly as possible and
getting it down you just have an old manager in hand as well or had an
manager and as well and is that what rogue has to do in this scenario just
match totes over how well the shaman's drawing.
I think so, yeah. I mean with this prep, eat the imp in hand and then now the weapon queued up.
Insane has the ability of guaranteeing raw 5 cards,
at 6 with the platysaur for turn 4.
There's the normal draw for turn, so that's 7.
So it only needs to draw 2 more cards to reduce EMG to 0.
And it's pretty good odds that in those seven that he's gonna be picking up next turn
He will hit, you know, at least one EMG at least, you know
Some other draw whether it is a dubious purchase or cultist map something else to kind of keep the engine rolling
And the fairy tale slime coming down now for that for today
I don't know if there's ever too much to think about right?
I know, Chon, so obviously, fine, the player's taking their time,
but would have been a lot of convincing and required to not play that this turn,
and same will be prepared for this and going through the motions now, if it's OK.
How do I progress the game plan?
Here comes all the cards where you talked about, though,
another E.B. Imp available as well.
Wisp, excellent target for it.
Oh, okay. Webweaver and Platasaur.
Yeah, and second Phoenix.
Ooh, that previous just shy of playability, but is able to get that big of Musko down.
Mmm, pretty poor hits there.
Yeah, everything must go to the bin by looks of the stats on these things, not the best at all.
When you're struggling to deal with the Frosty Decor minions, where you do everything must go, you know you're having a bad day.
Yeah, now it's a question of...
What do you want to eat? Go ahead and eat.
Draw some way to dubious purchase, draw three, hoping you hit another EMG, does find it, hopes for better hits.
There, okay.
I did I'll be honest at both those times I was just looking in sense camera to just be like you learn everything you need to know because they see it before we do just because the way spectator works so it's like okay first reaction disappointed they're definitely bad next reaction no reaction okay they're probably fine yeah not you know not strong enough to sort of make up for the poor role before but you know solidly average
A little bit of tricky turn here, of course, bird parat sanctuary only, it's, you know,
your battle cries, so that Namilia wow potents into insane's board, not able to come down
just yet. The other fairy tale slime being wished upon a star also not coming down for
bit so this is really sort of the only option is to just set up the other sanctuary, play
turbulence, take the best trade you can.
Yeah pretty much the best he can do here. Insane seems to have got even with a bit
of a not the best start scene had to come down a good control of this game right I still managed
to do the big rogue set ups we talked about it doesn't have the incentives of course yet but
still has time to do it because it's sometimes quite easy when you look at a game like this to think
oh yeah we're only on turn five when the players are just doing incredibly powerful things in
the first few turns of the game you think oh yeah i haven't played incentives yet never mind
Yeah, and a little bit of a tight spot though in terms of the draws for insane not able to play
this phoenix unless you choose to shadow step one of these is just going to let the other one come back to hand.
And yeah, no incendiary insight. Bottom six cards.
Even so, like this uh, this Novelia is, you know, solid clear right between that and the
static shock.
Chonsu can clean up this whole board, but it's still exposed to, you know, as much rock
damage as Insane is able to set up.
Yeah, that's the problem isn't it?
So again, because we're so early in the game, still funnily enough, the normally, like, clear
the board and pass isn't really what you want to be doing against Rogue, right?
Because it's like, well, they'll just do something again that they'll ner turn.
So it's a little bit tricky.
Oh, it's actually open early, it's okay, it makes more sense, I think.
Yeah, it doesn't give you the call clear, but you can at least clear two of these
minions.
at yeah and then set up you know the potential safety of have a lot of stats
in play to soak damage from rocks and just to present you know 18 damage worth
of threats. Both duty as purchases are gone at this point.
Yeah weirdly enough look at this is this one of those ones where like yeah I
I need to either kill them or clear the board, I think we're insane now because it's looking a little bit scary.
Yeah, well, and...
What was I found out?
Insane there, I think was really hoping to see specifically in Cyndias plus O-Manager, then...
Well, actually, it's too late for O-Manager to make its difference in terms of coin,
but in Cyndias in general, right? Something they can pick on the first one, and then the second one to be in Cyndias.
but now is just gonna have to go in a little bit.
Yeah, just draw a 12 pheasants in this.
Draw as many asteroids as possible to start chunking down these minions to have any chance of living.
Does still have web waver and some more cards, of course.
And there are still five or four asteroids in the deck.
Great.
Good.
So the last card is the other Mola.
Yeah, they did their job, certainly.
And the danger is here for Insane, that now he's in fatigue.
So, certainly has advanced board position, ability to play Incindius on curve.
Chudzu has used that static shock so it's really just about
Nomelia positioning and I think you basically
have to just leave the webweaver up.
It's so tricky though right because if you know Amelia then your point plays at 70 years
then what are you doing right? Do you just lose anyway? So it's
Is there any way that you can do this without playing the Nomellia?
Does that ever work?
The only thing you've got is Frosty Decalor.
That's just not as good, right?
It's causing the same problem of not setting up Lee for the next turn, right?
Yeah. The disadvantage to armor versus life game, right? Or really death battle, I suppose.
I think armor vs life gain, if they said death rattle you gain the life, then sometimes that
can resurrect you or maybe they took that away.
Oh yeah sure, with the thingy, with the clan.
It used to be once upon a time you could hit zero and if you gained life you would
not explode.
So, as far as I can tell, Insane can just play Incendius this turn, hit face, not even
draw if he doesn't want to, and then next turn there's all the explosions and Elm Manager
and weapon, I guess, and the, uh, the Last of Maul.
right I mean Tronsu is effectively at one so Tronsu would need zilex to have
any kind of recovery right oh yeah it is now yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah was that
I think that was a mistake, I think he just wasn't thinking.
I think it was just past, right?
Yeah, yeah, he, you know, I think it was just, well, I've got a wisp.
Yeah.
Let me just get the extra bit of damage in, right, and just completely forgetting, oh yeah,
this is going to draw, it's going to immediately draw the ruptures, so that's a big deal,
because Frosty Deckor now represents a relevant defensive tool.
Yeah, that's why I'm just making weird noises, to be honest, because I mean, insane
knows as soon as soon as that
wasp hit the body went oh no.
And what if I don't because that's
why I was trying to say like it's
such a back and forth simple
interaction incendiary pass and
then what what can chance to do
apart from what exactly because
the location was a location up
still.
I think so.
I can't see now because they
discover that there is one
take of location.
Yeah.
I think Zileaks off the top
was the only out that chance
that Chansu would realistically have.
Yes.
And that's it.
And all I had to do was play in Sendius and pass,
but insane.
Slipping up at the worst possible time here.
And he'll kick himself for it,
because I think that game,
unless someone, you know,
maybe in the green room or the other casters
are going to point out a different way Chansu wins
if it was in Sendius and pass,
then, yeah, I don't know,
that game seemed almost solved to me.
I'm frosty. I'm just gonna have a go thing tonight.
I'm now insane. I don't really know how this is gonna go.
there's no way to draw, right?
Yeah.
So it's not like you can go mauler,
oh manager, oh wait, no, there is.
Well, but.
Potisor's in there.
Oh, I see what you did for the rocks,
but you take damage, right?
It's insane as well and to fatigue at this point.
I'm just thinking, is that the only way
that you scramble anything out of this, right?
Cause I don't, like on a eight manner,
it's not like you can maestro any arrow, right?
because you just said you want them out to play anyway so it doesn't matter
yeah I mean I think insane is basically in the most you know throw your hands up
in prayer position right yeah it would be Mahler all manager John suits face and
then play the flat a store
oh wait would you
is it definitely I guess I'm not sure if it matters if you all manage in the
face or the whole one.
It's just a different target.
Sure, yeah.
You can wait to see the hits.
Yeah, so this order was better, right?
You then you get to choose where to go manager.
If it's lethal, then you do it.
Yeah, but it doesn't matter because extra fatigue.
Yeah, he'll be kicking himself with that one.
That is just one of those moments
where your brain switches off for a split second. But unfortunately, that's all it takes, right? One
click where your brain just autopilots onto, oh, well, I have webweaver and Wisp. I want to draw these
these eruptions, right? That's what you are. And then as soon as you realize, wait, I've only
just played in Cyndia, it's like, this isn't going to work. Huge. Unfortunately, they're
there for insane. That was a tough one. So we like, it's got time to recover, though.
though this is still just one one right and chance it was a really bad spot there so arguably
the games are still going in saints way it's just a slip up cause that one to just a just
a wriggle away there from there but yeah tough say who he's so fighting for both players
maybe not having the time of their lives right now.
Yeah I mean and I think extra factor there is of course that you've let the shaman
get through, right? And if not having brought Shaman, you consider Shaman to be sort of weakest
deck in Shunsu's lineup, then you would hope to be able to prey on it further. And so now
that it's through, insane is going to have to deal with the decks that at least based
on his lineup, he respects a bit more in terms of the Hunter and the DK.
Yeah, and that feels a lot worse, right? It's like suddenly you go, the Shaman's
gone. I've got Hunter left. That's a problem. And Sane still has his own DK, of course, and
the Rogue once again. But that, I think now, all focus is going to be on what's Insane's
recovery skills like, because that is one of the ones, because these players pride themselves
on being as good as they are. Those are the moments that kick you the hardest, right?
Because the whole point of these players being here is that there's some of the best
players in the world. And then even the best can have a bad moment, right? But that is something
that's going to be so frustrating for the same. We saw it on camera as soon as you did
it until the game ended, right? It was set as the frustrated expression. So I hope that
insane just can, you know, has the ability to wipe the slate clean because I say this
all the time, but that game no longer matters, right? It's happened. There's nothing
anyone could do about it now. Move on. The next game matters now. So as long as
to just shove that aside, focus on this game now, and if anything, he may even be hyper alert during this game of like, okay, no more, maybe lapses in concentration as we do dive into our game number three and saying it'll be on the road once more,
decided not to take a break from it, and just say, no, no, it's fine, I'm going again, chance of jumping back on the hunter.
Yeah, and you know it's not the most disastrous of circumstances right had one game lead
You know now it's brought up to one one
It's not like now suddenly his his life is on the line because he's down to one, right?
I think that would be sort of even more tense
But yeah, I think it's always
So then you see
Kind of player whether you go down as insane has or accepted break, right as others may
Yeah, just stickin' with it, I like it.
John Sioux here once again has a fairly solid opening, unlikely to drop the Ranga Scout
but does have Coin 3 drop into 3 drop available to him.
Sylvanas, not the Windrunner sister that you want to be playing first,
but it is certainly good to have for some of the boards that the Rogue can present. Usually,
you know,
not much if anything is gonna have more than four health, so if you can get a
once upgraded Sylvanas in your back pocket, that could really swing some boards.
Yeah, I like this pressure for insane.
Yeah, it also helps take some of the, it's like splitting focus now for Chansu, right?
Like, okay, well what do you want to kill now?
Because you could kill Platysaur, which could discard, you know, X card, but then
you're leaving this up, right?
And then now maybe this is going to pop off because of that, so I like the attempt
from Insane. It does get to keep the webweaver now. And no real payoff for keeping the webweaver,
unfortunately. But, you know, were it not for this weapon being there, and it is a one-of,
then say that Platasaur sticks, now Insane has a webweaver in play and can step the
Platasaur, replay it, draw two cards, get the Phoenix in play, really off the races.
So, I think it was well worth the risk.
Gonna probably lock it in at DL2 here.
I will of course, have to be at potion ready as soon as it's finished being brewed.
I'm gonna hide the plus count, uh, some little looksie.
Perfectly correct. One.
Not bad.
Yeah, it's gonna be Gain Armor.
Yeah.
A little too 12 minions in the game for armor makes sense.
Now it has taken a fair bit of chip damage already, so...
Rismo.
Uh, yeah, and Sane just needs the card draw here, right?
Okay.
just have options to go with webweaver but this webweaver is feeling more and more like
a 2-3.
I hope that's just sat there right?
Not really being overly utilised but the problem is if insane goes for it it's probably going
to cost him a shadow step and then is that then worth it just to get a bit of card
draw and we'll have to see what the plan is here.
Just go for the discover.
Some of the key tools offered, honestly.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like how much do you have to value just being able to pick up two cards, right?
If you take Valnose, play it.
Yeah, it represents another card draw when it dies as well.
and should allow that incendias to be available as soon as possible for insane
yep
uh, savius will activate this weapon, putting it up to 4 attack, uh, while we can chance
you to clear up the 2-3 without having to, you know, put 2 hits into it.
It's okay to leave, it's just very clean turn, you can mind-blowing bullet.
You should take the minion on board, maybe some of these are good for a taunt copy.
Probably a neary, yeah.
Yeah, it's a lot of health on a neary, and extra nice win, you might have to be using
it with this potion that deals two to everything, you're doing that twice, so that'll
bring your neary back down to its normal health of five oh we just get the tempo
neary next turn which would be very nice I love tempo neary force your opponent
to get it it's one of the more terrifying things yeah
she's gonna say about that shadow step four now
picked up the old manager to set up for next turn potentially coin in
Yes. Yeah, a budget is going to be used to clear off the Zavius, but that's just kind
of interesting, right? If you see the old manager this turn from insane and you're
Chonsu, is that a reason to just slam neary at that point, right? Because you're expecting
them to play in Cyndius and then you just go great, like, fine by me. Must be tempting.
Yeah, and Chonso's sitting at 16, so he's certainly going to be in need of the armor
from the Mixologist potion later on.
But yeah, for now, doubling up stats on Rengarys scout, getting a double tracking going, saying,
Okay, I dare you to play Insidious.
Tricky one here. Some really good choices, but this is the first discover, so...
Kind of how to make that one. He's gonna go for the pupil. Get two of those in hand.
That can be some shenanigans there with parrot sanctuary, where you reduce the pupil as to
one and get the stats doubled.
Was that the discoverer's spell?
Yes.
Okay.
Hello.
Shunzu, utilizing the spellburst effect there on the weapon, which that makes you immune
for the turn.
Let's see if the draws could help, this could get the, if the swing happens it could get
the eruptions beforehand.
Okay, sorry I thought we'd swing it in, I was a little bit confused for a second.
I was like, let's not go two for two and saying, you know, it's a little bit afraid.
I think Chunsu Wishing he had some of those damage dealing spells right now.
Yeah, they're still tracking.
Available.
There's also what isn't available is hand space, which is what happens when you have
Ranga, Scout and Niri on board.
Yep, yep.
yeah tracking would trigger twice yeah actually just gonna go ahead and make
sure to get this armor clear up the scout hand space does get the armor in the
pupils and yeah glacial shard we'll be able to freeze up the weapon at a
crucial turn right gonna do everything chunks you can keep this neary alive
Yeah, just stop in the car door after seeing the, er, the eruptions, right, is a big deal
to flip to anything you can want.
Yes, and this is getting shadow stacked.
Re-potion, deal 2 to all, plus deal 3.
What am I, by the way, slapping up those two jinxes?
Okay, it gets a little murky when the second one happens.
Okay, I've got E.B. and now available for insane. More and more card draw.
Yup.
I mean, having to spend even the two men on the weapon break was kind of big.
It was nice to handle it pretty well.
There's some eruptions up there.
Oh, what?
So long.
Oh.
Yeah, I think it's saying I'm happy to see the chain end having to step the platysaur
to try and hit another eruption.
It really doesn't want this neary to stick to his purchase.
Surely now yeah, okay. I'm gonna say surely
And pretty nice hits there in the
Eternal and the
36
Could have some some relevant texts there. I believe it says whenever you play a fire spell you get a random elemental that costs
And reduce its cost
I'm going to take your word for that one because I do not know exactly what that card does.
All I'm looking at is a 6-6 and a 3-6, so they look good to me.
Pretty good.
Yeah.
I got chance to, pretty dangerous for him at the moment.
There is only one eruption left in the deck for a insane.
there is still a a mauler in there as well. Yeah, there's still chances of more damage of course it's
just that the eruptions are mostly gone. But a lot of tools have had to be used right both
preparations have been used. Falnos had to get spent just for the sake of additional card draw.
So in a lot of ways a chunks who is able to just sort of clean up these boards a couple
terms in a row. Insane's not going to have the damage to get over the finish line without
minions. And this is what chunks will be looking for, right? Just want those taunts, want the
alien encounters as sadder and I just build everything up knowing that those options
are gone. Same going for Max Kajor once more.
I'm literally just digging through to the bottom of the deck.
There it is, the last one.
Last card is Mola.
Yeah, it's gonna have to go into fatigue to try and clear these up with any rocks.
And I don't...
I mean, it seems insane, but I almost wonder if you have to hope for like a good Maestra hit
for bringing hope of kind of going,
getting over the finish line here.
Yeah, I think the big concern as well is,
do you even have time to try that?
Because insane might just be,
at least as far as he's concerned,
might be just very dead next to him.
Yeah, and I think that's why he's sort of like
strategically trying to, you know,
play the mauler before the webweaver is just trying
to get the rocks to clean up, have this last push with this board of Phoenix and everything
must go. Probably not even going to play the Wisp because of the fatigue.
No, shake that from the inside.
Did clear up the Sylvanas, but yeah, not the biggest hits he was hoping for. And at
this point, you can just bob your way over the finish line if you're chance to.
Yeah, I also, I can't remember exactly, but I think there's a decent chunk of even damage in this type, but I think there's, there's a deal three and deal two to all minions potion and there might also be a two to all millions in game four armor.
Another precise voice.
Okay, bursting shot.
Yeah, that's a lot of damage
I shot is deal three
First in shot deal two three times to enemies
Very scary, but you are right this is this scenario where the game is
Pretty much solved right because as you said even though there's a my pastor
Potential not at this point right because there just isn't the time
time to be able to play Maestro and the hero in the same turn, which is probably good for
balance reasons, right? You can't quite just throw out a random hero any given turn, but
it does massively limit insane possibilities there. So, Chonsu fighting back, as I expect
as my prediction choice, looking good again. These games have definitely been tough ones
I think for both players, right? I don't think any of these games have been super clear-cut or super clean, I guess
I'm being like those easy victories that we've seen in some other matchups because sometimes the game just goes your way
Right, but it does mean now chance who just has a death night left over
Against insane's rogue and death night
So there's a you know rough mirror and then the rogue matchup as well, which can be potentially pretty scary
but I I would be more
concerned at this point with Insane's first road game and then the potential frustration
that being felt. Because even at the end of that one, right, I don't quite know. I might
have just been a reaction to the EMG creations, right? I'm not sure. But it's just, it's
a tough one to handle. So hopefully again, Insane can just, you know, try and pull
it together and get some wins just to try and even this up a little bit. But Tronsi
just having DK left, not the best performing deck in the world, but by no means the worst.
Yeah, certainly. And you know, even if you expect the Rogue to get over the finish line
at some point, right, in three games, I think, yeah, Insane has got a struggle mentally.
I think you can get inside your own head
after a couple of losses like that.
And mirrors are sort of notoriously messy, right?
So if you get into a death night mirror
and maybe your draw is just a little bit worse,
but you start perceiving it as being even more than that,
really gotta hand it down the mental game.
But so far, Crystal Tusk in hand,
definitely want to see you for Rogue.
Yeah, there's a couple of cards.
As long as you've got one or two of them
in your early game as Rogue,
you're like, okay, we can play the game, right?
And then Crystal Tusk is definitely higher on that list.
However, the chance you get after a pretty solid start,
one, two, three against Rogue is exactly what you want.
Oh!
Oh, no!
stupid oh no too too an elusive oh no oh I would have slammed that so fast I've
got you know what this is how I'm gonna get to my next match yeah just reading
them going yeah yeah yeah yeah he's realized just like oh I just I just
It's going to be crystal-swearing.
Oh my, oh my.
And also, almost the perfect effect, right?
Yeah, yeah.
The elusive plus two plus, what more do you want?
Yeah, I mean, it already is a high health minion.
For those wondering what does this card do,
because it's not normally running things,
this is a three-minute, two-four.
After any card is drawn, make it temporary.
What does temporary mean?
It means that you will discard it
if you don't play it that turn.
So, as we saw-
You know what road likes to do.
Yeah, road likes to draw cards.
This rope in particular is named Cycle.
And I think similar to how we saw
a protected customs enforcer
be used to very powerful effect. Insane's not gonna be happy to see this.
Yeah I was trying to see okay the reaction was raised eyebrows I didn't
know if we were gonna watch a man break on camera live because that is a problem
as I said for many reasons right one the temporary card effect right it's an
issue but also it's four six evasive like that that's also a relatively
large problem a lot of the time.
So you take a look at what dubious?
Yeah, it's got to be dubious.
I hope you win the 50-50.
Now, you know, we were making it out as, you know, a crazy, crazy thing.
It is fair to say, well, Rogue gets to play all those cars that it draws, right?
Like, they just, they typically don't cost a lot of mana,
but he is forced to do this, right?
to step these platysores to just find something.
Yeah, there's a maul that can be coined,
but the second that, for example, Incindius could have just been drawn.
Then what?
Yeah.
Right?
He's almost, I think that may be just game lost if Incindius was drawn there.
And saying having a fantastic turn,
now working with what he's got,
he must go here,
putting out decent-started minions to be able to try and fight back.
But yeah, that is very, very rough indeed.
I'm going to go for the Thalnos and the Wisp and leave in the Mauler.
Yeah, it's interesting. I would have been inclined to actually save the coin there and play Wisp, Space Rock.
Because maybe we're just on a different game plan, right? Maybe you just coin the Maestra, pick up a Tamsin or something for your draw engine.
because you've been put in such an awkward spot both Shadow Steps used one
mauler dropped Thalnos gone like you just don't have the shuffle things into my
deck burn capacity that the rogue relies on. Interesting now, Chophon is gonna draw a card
which Chophon probably can't play because guess what Death Knight isn't rogue.
Do you think it's worth trading into the Thanos here?
It draws an extra card, but insane controller card maybe after killing the 4-6, which means
it's no longer temporary, right?
Right.
So I think trading in, yeah, forcing one more card to be 10th is just worth it in
that scenario.
Yeah, and then you go ahead and kill the 2-4, I would have imagined.
Yeah I guess so yeah because it hits him for 2-2 clean right?
I just wonder where you got face and just say this in the game we're going to play.
Yeah.
Let them do the trades.
And look that was significant damage to Chansu as well right from so it cuts both ways.
Oh okay.
So there's map but dubious can be played but it would draw three cards.
I guess you can declare this first right if trade into the 4-4 first and then could do be us just just for the card draw
Yep
Okay, trade that bound down first make a chance to his card temporary then kill it then draw
Probably not the most impactful
probably not for this matchup but in eighty seventy eight more procs could be
good oh and that whole night there's incendiars right on time just dodging the
air at the temporary keep up yeah looks like yeah chance you're gonna hold off
on the pterodax because there is exarch Maladar next turn
next time though.
Yeah, yeah.
Effectively two options here, right?
Slam the Maestra or put in Crystal Tosk plus Everburning Phoenix.
I would imagine...
Yeah, probably Tosk to preload it and then incendiars and then wait.
There for the other swing, but no, I'm completely off base in the sense. It's gonna drop the nicer
Who are we re-panduin all those were the days?
I think with how much has been lost from insane side to to that
temporary effect
Just needs something extra to get over the finish line and yeah
10 at least 10 damage from the weapon is good for that the two damage here a power is good for that
This is a tricky one, isn't it?
Creature of madness looking quite good for this turn, but Blob of Tar with plus 3 attack
lifesteal isn't anything to completely ignore either.
Probably going to be Creature, I would guess.
It's tough.
Like, if the Grifter didn't say place this on top of your deck, I would be interested
just because it can potentially give you the Draw 3, right?
Which, with Jon Sears hand, would be very, very welcome.
But yeah, I agree with you, this is sort of the safest line, right?
More board presence now gives you something to do.
Next turn.
Oh, wait, six, seven, oh, wait, do you pick the seamstress this turn so you can play it
next?
Oh, wait, it's not going to get rushed, is it?
Never mind.
it's what it's unholy it's not going to get reborn I think oh right okay wait so
it would have had rush but only one attack yeah yeah I was thinking so there's
two menus on board if they get wiped you go up to eight corpses next turn you
could play it trade it away potentially and then you have nine corpses
Maladar, you Sarah? Sure, sure. Just always trying to get that Maladar combo off.
But Sarah is sort of, you know, one of the weaker ones to do it on if you don't have
the sort of card job. Oh, I was thinking of soaking rocks potentially. Sure, yeah,
Yeah, well that's true for that purpose. It's quite nice
Because of the maestro choice in the previous turn it does mean there was no coin available for instantaneous now
So again, not the end of the world, but just a slight delay on there not having into this
It's gonna shuffle away. Yeah, I'm a little bit surprised by that
It's interesting, every time I try to incendiate this set, it's gone wrong, so you know what? I'm not gonna bother.
Least pick up could do something pretty silly with the X-Arc Maladark and play it for a 10 alongside Frostbitten Freebooter.
He's going to go for five.
I guess the advantage here is that Shunsuk can exarch out via Sarah still and then with
the three mana refresh, be able to play this five boss location.
Yeah, that's true actually.
You can put it in.
You get the kind of, you know, say, anti-aggro options, right?
Welcome back, insidious.
on time. But if Insane is going to stick to what seemed to be his plan before, it might
just be Rakara coming down, you know, slamming into the Elise or something, or even Face,
and just go in with everything. That hero power is too damaged, so.
Yeah, I was just thinking like, now, is it not potentially Incindious? Do whatever
with the minions on board, don't swing, and then next turn you go Rakara, breaks the weapon draws,
and then you've got the swing as well as the draws of the eruptions. Like I think that's at
least the line I see, but insane's definitely taken this a different route than I would,
and insane's a lot better than me, so I'm excited to see how this plays out.
Yeah, another thing to consider that we haven't had to deal with for quite some time
is that, uh, you know, if we did follow your line, it would allow you to go for the rikara
to uncrease yourself, right? Since these freebooters can free your space.
And to be fair, this is kind of still the same thing, just insane through the cards now,
but as always with Rogue, you don't have that many cards left in the deck at this point,
so you maybe don't need that to save the card draw, right? This is still an effective way
to do it 100% suddenly though chansu very very powerful follow-up play to what
was already a powerful turn I think he's just gonna check that he's able to
remove everything he wants to remove and whether Shalad herself changes the
plans, or if there's some kind of lethal, if you just go X-arc plus shalladrosil now.
Yeah, re-admitterate access to me that that he sees some kind of other play than the X
Arc de Serra location line.
Yeah, well this gets the second one right which is a lot of healing.
Sure.
So it's a lot of clay, a lot of healing, gets the freeze off.
for go one of the refters this way but I mean it's swapped it for face damage I
guess or guaranteed freeze anyway yeah it's five face damage and yeah freeze
your opponent yeah this may have been some kind of label set up right because
Because you can X-Arc, Shaladr's sail, you got the Hero Power, you can give it plus
five.
I think there's still one mana off from then also being able to play Awakens.
Yeah, yeah, because the Hero Power is too right, Awakens for two is full, Maladah
six.
Yeah.
I'm saying I'm going to do the honourable play, quick weapon, swing face, I like it, I respect
it.
Yeah, and I think it could sense that there's something weird going on here, right, you
know, freezing my face, setting me to 13, Rakara, one of the few heroes that gains
more than five armour, right, gains you a whole 10.
The good thing here for Tronsu at least is it's not like this is 100% hidden information
like you see them play Maestro, right?
And then you know one of the very common picks is Rokara.
Yeah.
So it's not like a shock, oh I can't believe this hero just a pig.
It's like, it's sort of, sort of, but he's gonna go for the years here and now.
Yeah, it has to be nervous because it's insane just did the weave, right?
We coined out the hero power for just a certain face damage.
Honourable plays, I like it.
I don't have to do that since my Hunter days.
Let's see, I think it's saying, trying to figure out
when or if to play the second webweaver. Yeah, just going to go ahead and eat this one.
You can get into dangerous territory fatigue-wise if you go through double webweaver.
I remember when I said I wasn't good at Rogue and I've done that a few times and now I love
drawing cards and they go wait a minute they're burning away what's going wrong?
I'm burning away sometimes.
One eruption, one Ethiopian, one prep remaining and again we were saying earlier no shadow
steps.
Yeah.
probably gonna go for Mahler somewhere in here I think hoping to use the dubious
purchase so it may in fact be you know you weapon the 5-3 yeah because you still
get five base damage there you do this purchase and then do your Mahler but can
he get all these actions in? I don't know. Watch the camera and find out. That's what I do.
Yeah, I think he had to just sort of do a in-between play of making a board,
which is fair. You know, better to do something like this than to try and get the actions in
in with the mauler and not be able to. I do think that there, you know, others will have
to take a look at it, but I feel like there may have been a way to get the mauler down
and then draw the rocks and squeeze it here.
Yeah, is this just lethal?
I think it is because of the coffee.
I think it is, right? I think Chonzi was just counting that up to triple check, but
It's looking there mighty fine to me tons of damage coming out got a copy there as well and the extra five
Looks like chonsu is going to be moving on in honestly a
brutal series across the board
Not the fastest series we've ever had
Insane obviously having that you know the big mistake
I guess we saw earlier on in that road game and just having a bit of a struggle from that point and chonsu
I think, I think Chonsu played pretty well, pretty calm as well, and that's genuinely, I mentioned it right at the start of the show on Thursday, is that one of the reasons I picked Chonsu, not only have we seen Chonsu play a million times, we know he's good, but in the last call tournament that he won, he looked just so chill and just happy to sit and just play some
and I think we've seen from multiple players so far,
having the ability to just not get overly pressured
or just keep control of the emotions
or just maybe just approach the tournament with you.
It's just super fun.
I'm happy to just play.
Pays off, right?
Because you maybe not hit feeling as stressed
and not maybe making some of these mistakes
with seeing some of the players make.
And I'm not even talking about just insane here.
I'm just talking about seeing multiple players slip up
across the last few days.
So huge congratulations to Chansu.
Tough one in for Insane.
He'll definitely be kicking himself a little bit unfortunate.
So we do have to say goodbye to Insane, of course,
in the World Championship for this year, at least.
I'm sure it'll be back again,
maybe even at BlizzCon next year.
But also, we are gonna go to a quick break
while we get the next match ready to go.
Don't go anywhere.
We'll be right back.
Music
Welcome back everybody. We are deep into day three of the world championships and it is my great pleasure to be joined once again reappearing on the broadcast. It's a wreck fan who is here to talk you through the group be decide a match between chance to who we just saw narrowly edge past insane and so you're in who you are.
at least was able to go one-on-one on day one to put himself in this position.
Wreck Van Halen, how you been doing? How did you enjoy your first cast? Have you
enjoyed the game so far? The cast was great. A lot of stress but not nearly as
much stress as the players are going through and so far Group B has been a
bit shocking with what we saw happen in the first series but chance to move
moves on to the the starter match versus so you're in yes which is what we're
gonna bring you now and I do believe we have a full mirrored class and archetype
lineup here on both sides which does result in a similar ban we can spoil
that it's their hunter ban on both sides coming out here but when these two
mirrored lineups go up against each other are there any like particular
matchups any break points any tech cars like anything to break the tour
path that are like really important.
Chonso has a little bit of a tech that could be important for the warrior mirror.
He runs Steam Cleaner, whereas Soyorin doesn't. Soyorin has a
renovator in there, which will be better versus
control DK if that matchup comes up.
Other than that, there's not really any effect to set apart
the lineups, except for the fact that Soyorin is running the
least version of Hunter, which should in theory be worse in the mirror. Just harder to get the
sisters going and only one brewmaster, whereas Chonsu has two. So the Sylvanas AOE is much more
potent for Chonsu if we were to get that match up, but as the hunters are banned. So that won't
be a factor other than that. Everything's mirrored. Okay, good to know. We are going to be kicking
things off with the death night mirror. Both players have locked in their key choice for the first game.
Anything in particular you want to give us about this matchup? Obviously Elise being a key card in
the matchup overall. Can the player who doesn't get Elise compete or is it really, really
that important in the matchup overall? It is possible. It's very important to be on the
play, I'd say. If you hit the morbid swarm into the creature of Madness Curve, that really
puts you in a dominant position, but there's a lot of mid-game shenanigans that can unfold with
Maladar, big swing turns with Stitch Giant. If a player can get Maladari-Sera combo off on
an early turn and get the man advantage going that way, then maybe the lack of release could
be overcome. Looks like these two players are not hanging around. Chonsu did get a little break
in between the two series as we have been hit by Trout of the Tournament Day so far. We took a
little bit longer break to compensate for that, which means less talkstone, more hardstone. We
can get straight into the action. Chonsu with the full send on the Mulligan. Sawyer in just
waiting to see what the opening hand looks like up there. Lots of Ysera effects going off at
start of game of course but that did look like a morbid swarm just appearing
in the Chun-Si-Ban turn one yes very nice that is pretty important that is
pretty important to make sure you're getting on board nice and early and
dominating from the go and not gonna be happy with the rest of this handle but
this spending man on invested breath is better than I think and Sioren will
just look for a good dark gift from any creature madness tree drop ideally you get a
a phallaric that copies itself that's a lot of corpses and as we can see there's also already
an elise in the hand for Siorin so he'll be much happier than Chonzi is currently.
Yep Chonzi just having to slam the Zephyrus here just playing the curve as it stands you
know as the wise prophet Theno once told he is spending all of his mana every single turn so
So he must be doing something right, but the cards are not really the curve he's going to be looking for here, but
oh my goodness, Farwick with the copy effect here is kind of brutal.
That is four corpses for one tutu. That's going to make sure you're very happy with the Revenous Pterodax in hand.
So just having that in hand already with five corpses ready to go means that at least for copy
is going to be super strong at regaining the board.
If he were to fall behind, which he kind of is because of the nature of being on the coin in the mirror matchup.
First, the least pick of the series.
Certainly going to go for a 5-5 does get 5-5 copy, which is pretty premium and savage role given as the option as well,
Which is pretty much the dream death knight location in most situations.
Yeah, pretty much exactly what you're looking for in the mirror.
You'll take raptors to get some corpses, you'll take this cover, but
Copy plus attack means that you have so much more reach in the mid game if you get a form render up.
You can start pushing the damage and really threaten your opponent's health total.
but so your in cell total is currently the one being threatened already down to 20.
What has happened here right now?
Thought folks in terms?
She did?
That is really weird to not take copy with Theridax in hand already.
I almost wonder if that is a bug with our tracker because that seems so bizarre to me.
We will wait and see when the actual one hits the board, but that's what it's telling me right now.
That is puzzling
Chulso isn't even that far from lethal here is he?
Savage roar is already 8 damage then damage with the hero power
It's 50-50! It's 50-50! He's gonna leech! He's gonna leech!
I'm not going to be able to
forget all of that. Forget
everything we said about the
mid game about at least being
important. Just go first, spend
all your manner. The savage
drawer. Win the 50 50. It's
all good. So rewind a couple
of turns as well, right? Because
there was the double faric on
board and he just played the
blob of tar and didn't trade
either of them, right? He
any of my stuff so it stays here for the savage rule from the Zephyrus next turn. Really clean
setup from Chonsu, had himself a 50-50 and then got rewarded for the setup for the play.
Really really nicely done from Chonsu. And we'll never know, we'll never know what location
to wear and pick. We'll never know. It remains a mystery but regardless the quickest one-zero
of your life in a DK mirror to Chonsu. And honestly, Wreck Vap, I have to say you
fell at the first hurdle I asked you how you could win when the opponent gets a
lease and you don't and you didn't say Zephyr a savagery all get five minions in
play and then win a fifty I didn't say Zephyr yeah I completely missed it I
completely missed it. Johnson Rolik yesterday or the day before yesterday
on day one versus Yanming he had a savagery I believe in the warrior
matchup. Yeah, that's right. I think we saw a savage role and a bloodlust from from Zephyrus
before today, and that's the second savage role that we've seen now. That's right, yeah. So moving
over to the quest warrior now, control warrior, whatever you want to call it, and so we're
in queueing up with the shaman and matchup. We've already seen multiple times throughout
proceedings, what are your overall feelings on this on this matchup? Generally, I'm not a big fan
from it from playing the warrior side in practice versus a poketrain and theory hunter. But in the
tournament so far, it's really been looking very dominant for the warrior. I think we see we
saw Shaman only win when Lovestorm was piloting it. It's really important to get a good
Shudder block timing if possible with Wish upon a star or just get an early curve and catch the
warrior out without any removal without any good early game but Jonzo seems to have a pretty wild
early game with point new heights into Elise which should just stabilize whatever the Shaman
I'm interested to do
Yeah, it's not like shaman can really put up a bunch of early chip damage that some decks are capable of against warrior
And even then if your hand is is calling new heights into a lease
You are gonna struggle to
To be scared of too many things your opponents can do
You can see quite happily playing out here and no location in play yet for soaring
But he does have flight the firehawk
Which is probably one of the better early game cards you can have
I'll take Roy Finn with me.
This is on the bellhop.
No bellhop exactly.
That is going to be painful for him when he sees this Elise come down.
Not good options for the first discover for Chansu.
A little bit better on the second.
It's really hard to skip on the discover in this matchup.
You just get so much mana cheat going, tempo removals, and Johnson does go for it, picks up Discover plus 2 attack location.
The plus 2 attack won't be very useful, but the Discover should mean he gets to work with this empty hand a little bit better.
So this is the first big tempo turn for Soarin, somewhat underwhelming as Rekvan was saying
because the bellhop was not picked up off-flight at the firehawk, that is generally what you're
always going to want to see in these kind of matchups.
Chansu does now have options, he can choose to consolidate location, but that hostile
invader with a zero amount of safety goggles looks a little too perfect for the situation
in front of him.
brutal top deck for sure all the pressure is gone and the warrior is
playing a better tempo than shaman in the early game which is never a good
sign nice top deck for soya in into the exact minions that he wanted now he
can deal with this board and try to establish tempo next turn. He kind of
should be clearing this turn because of the threat of copy location. It's not
unreasonable for Johnson to have picked it because he just had an empty board to
play his Elise. So yeah, Siren will go with the Static Shock, but on the 3-1 Elise instead
of clearing the board. That seems weird.
It does, doesn't it? For what? I mean that's a deliberate choice to leave the 3-5 alive,
because it would have cleared the Elise anyway by killing the 3-5. So for what possible
reason do you want to do that? I can't think of it. I really don't see a reason, yeah.
I think that was just incorrect play. Now there's this hospital invader chilling on the
board that we have to deal with to actually be able to get forward back. Yeah, avatar
So he ended up losing a 4-4, or his 4-4 didn't do face damage.
Maybe you can say it forced a shield slam, but that's a trait that Chonsu is probably happy to make.
Yeah, took extra face damage himself as well because of the buff, the two attack buff on the hostile invader from the location.
Meanwhile, I'm just going to pick up an extra brawl from the first roll of the location,
which is a fantastic asset in this matchup.
That is the power of the Discover for sure, because the Shaman can make these big boards
that you can often times not be able to deal with cleanly without a copy on a drak
for example, so the brawl will be very helpful there, well, Slaffeting Growth enables 6 AoE
with Hostile Invader in a future turn, yeah not very good here, he might just be forced
to bot to try to get Sawyer in to extend more into the brawl
because right now the brawl just isn't doing enough.
So then do you take slow motion when you don't?
So it's just like you know there's double
growth in, slow motion would block the growth in turn,
but you're actually kind of chilled with your opponent doing that, right?
So yeah, Blitzcar probably makes the most sense.
The growth in dust has come down, so Jorin could have tried hitting Shudder Block this
turn with the birdwatching, it was fairly decent odds, double flight of the firehawk
was already played, and as we saw in the previous series in group A where we watched
This exact matchup play out with the new heights into Elise for Charlotte B versus console to shaman
He never got the shoulder block down in time
This could have been a really good turn to try to forget it into play
And if you miss you just send the furious foul onto the board
instead of
Sending a growth in
The bull work ended up being a pretty perfect pickup for this turn as well
just letting him brawl away, place the 5-5, just to contest board a little bit,
you need to get that thing played before you start doing anything impactful yourself as Warrior,
and then obviously picking up the weapon just means this 10-7 is not currently a threat to
Chansu at all, but he is extremely low on resources, he only has one discover left in the location,
no card drawer in hand yet either, no forglory or anything like that.
So we are in might just be able to threat chain him out here if Chelsea doesn't find some resources soon
Luckily for him he has this terror run into captain's log that is probably the perfect pickup
And the punch card synergy with the location and the hostel invader and the bullwalk is going to be
Really really sexy here
What a beautiful clear
Well, not the full clear. The leftmost zilex will stay alive but the hostile invader will
clean it up when it dies. Yep, and this only uses two charges of your weapons, you still
have one remaining, so the zilex isn't really that big a threat, especially after you've
already seen what one static shock and an avatar form from your opponent already
for Soiren now he really needs to start looking for either another red chain
for some other removal but like most of the removal so far have been
Generator removals. That is a 7-11 allocator just sending it. Okay, that is
That is one approach that you can take as well when your opponent has a few cards just say
Okay, you don't have armor game. You might have board clears, but you won't have our game
Exactly. He currently beats full clear plus hero power, right? Which is a reasonable thing to try and beat in this position
I don't mind it
unfortunately that's a lot more armor game than I think he would have
anticipated out of those four cards in Shunsu's hand. It is like the three card combo.
Let's see what wins the brawl. It dies to the enemy. And it's gone.
But more good top decks for Soiren. He has Bellhopps, he has Grifta, he has
another growth in in hand might come down to just the first two treasures
that Johnson rolls from his quest reward because these minions will be too big
for the Draka Rex to clear.
Alright, Furious Foul plus Bellhop.
I'm charging Sanctuary along the way.
The order could have been a bit different.
This gives a little bit of information to Chansu, but it's not that big of a deal.
Oh you're giving away, you have a second 5 mana spell?
Yeah, fair enough.
Ooh, Zileax.
I think that's gonna make Chansu rope a little bit, and then he will play the Zileax and clear one of the six sevens.
Or not the rope at all.
I think it's not that clear cut that it's just winning in this spot.
Because the immune will clean up one of those lily axes without even giving any healing
So you're only getting 18 heal
And there's how many foul in hand
How many hits actually are there from the quest reward there like a Mara is obviously fantastic
Are there any others? Yeah, it's even mostly a Mara and then yeah time warp seeking by another turn
I guess yeah
But it is actually fairly likely for the Zilex to not even heal because Chonso knows there's
another 5 plus cost spell in the hand which could easily be either Furious Foul or a Wish
and then the Immune Foul would just trade and yeah, he will not pick up any more healing.
So he's still in a position where he needs either a topdeck or a mara or a time warp from his lathlorbius.
The remaster isn't cutting it.
Emotional support remaster is back out to play.
Dragorex would technically leave Chonsu alive here, but he has to play around the wish that
could be in the hand either from earlier or from the Hagatha. So it just slams the quest
reward. And misses, so it goes with the Dragorex whoops he's alive and he actually
is as unlikely as it is.
Yeah, weirdly, the chances that both the expensive spell that you know about from the bellhop and the slime that you know about from Haggathor, the chances of them both being not lethal are actually so low here that they are.
Still, you have 50-50-ish odds here off Drifter to still be lethal. That'll do.
is just a nice solid shaman Joe never gave the warrior breathing room and yeah
so your in used his resources well he did put up a lot of pressure the lease
wasn't enough definitely had some questions over the the mid game turn
with the the static shock and the the hostile invader but outside of that he
just threat chained it really, really well, just continued to push force the removal.
And even with the help of the discoverer spell from the terror run, just was not enough removal
in the end for a chance to keep getting there. I think partly because both for glories were
buried deep right, you just didn't really get enough control to keep the hand size
high and had to brawl away boards without really taking advantage of the minion size
on the other side. And I think one of the key interactions for me in that match
of shaman is you want to hit a wish upon the star like have a board that you're happy to play
wish upon a star on before your opponent gets to dragorex you because if you don't do that normally
their dragorex is just way too big of a swing turn and you're just not able to recover from it and
that's exactly what what siren sorry managed to do there so squaring up the series uh dk and
warrior still to win with for siren shaman and warrior still to win with uh john su it does
mean that the the China meme is being avoided we're not going to come down to a game five
a game five shaman mirror but we could come down to that steam cleaner teched out warrior mirror
that you were talking about earlier yeah it it's kind of looking like the warrior from
chonster's side has this dk that it can prey on but we've seen that the matchup go
So both ways, kind of mostly DK I feel in this tournament specifically has been coming
out on top, just putting up pressure, but it's in theory slightly warrior-favored.
Just remains to be seen.
Our next matchup is Warrior vs. Shaman, just the other way around.
We all can play it the other way around.
Can do the same thing sorry and did and just put out to check the warrior
He will certainly hope so. Yeah players are locked in. We're just gonna go the other way around
Everything that we just said over the last 10 minutes or so of that previous matchup
Just flip it around and then we can we can stay silent for the next few minutes because we'll clearly just play out exactly the same game
But yeah, so
Outside of what we did see there, you know, we talked about it a little bit of the chance. He just not really getting card draw
Are there anything any other key moments the warrior needs to look out for in the matchup?
You know, I was talking about Dracker X a little bit. Are there any other key cards that chance he was maybe missing?
To be able to survive the threat of the charm
In that game, I don't think there's really much that chance it could have done
It mostly just comes down to the quality of the shaman draw if they if they change the threats their favorite
If if they don't and they give warrior breathing room and the warrior
Usually comes out on top just out grinds gets bored at some point with the drag wrecks and
stabilizes their health total gets their card are going and
Just doesn't just makes the matchup look not close in its favor
Which in a way is just the nature of being the control deck in a matchup, right?
You kind of have to accept sometimes that if my opponent just hits the nuts, I can't keep up with them
because they're just way too efficient, way too aggressive, they're playing all the most efficient possible cards
and hitting me with them and that becomes a problem.
Chonsu here just going straight to two-point bellhop for the three-trees, as is very solid here.
does activate the the for glory here from Sawyer in which it always seems like
warriors in matters you have these questions about right you go the way
back to battle rage like is it worth pushing the one to activate our rage
now you have all these thoughts of like is it worth removing all my opponents
armor to make their best fail cost zero or do I put extra minions on board and
make their for glory cost less like why why the warriors always profit from
you doing things you just want to do it's it's the control player mentality you
have to punish your opponent for playing the game if they are having fun that
that means you if you're winning and your opponents having fun and that's still
that's still not good enough you need to suck the fun out of it okay so what
if your mentality but what if you lose but your opponent also did not have
fun is that then a w for the venue one right yes just ask control players
I'll give tiktok a call off to this pretty awkward turn for chonsu hasn't
picked up any top decks that he tried to play for with the aggressive line of
coin envelopes so he's first to pass a turn would you look at that it came up
immediately. Chonsu actually skipping an attack with the the 2-3 raptor on the right just to leave
two armor on the opponent which means they would not be able to go hostile in beta safety goggles
because they already have armor meaning that their safety goggles would still cost mana.
That is generally something that I think is not worth playing around. If you're missing
if you're missing like one damage that's already I mean because the margins can be very thin
because the warriors gain so much armor these days you really want to push all the damage you can
and even in that spot you just saw the invader come down he got to push three damage back so he
missed two to play around potentially getting full cleared. Mm-hmm. He does get rewarded
in a way by having full health on his Muradin, but I don't think it actually did that much
to play around the goggles, even if it was in hand. It just ends up missing two damage
to play around the card that wasn't in the opponent's hand.
But, Rekvand, the crucial point that I think you're missing is that when you play
around cards you feel smarter and that's really important.
That is very true.
Yeah, thank you.
The Muradin, ah, there is the answer. The Shieldslam.
No matter what the outcome of the brawl is, because I do believe the brawl will come down.
just to make it so the maron can come down next turn safely or the drakwrecks depending on the
on the board's date.
Yeah just no much for Chonso to do here.
The biggest board he can make is Frosted Decor or Birdwatching into Hagatha and his hand
thus cream of needing a top deck which Hagatha would be a good a good play this turn.
I might be considering just going with the wish or try to set up the wish with
Frosty the Core. Okay he has a minion so he says this is a good enough turn to get wish played
because it can be hard to have seven mana, but it just gets shield slunned and Maren gets developed, so
it just ended up being an off turn. It was just pretty much a bad turn, pretty much no matter what.
Once the wish was top deck, that was my instinct. Like you said, there was the option to hold,
just go wide with Frosty and then you have like pop-up, wish the next turn. But if you,
like as I was talking about previously, if you just get Dracarix in that spot,
Well, you then have to spend your turn responding to the draker X and your two turns behind
So I felt it was right to play the wish, but still not good
Yeah, at some point you have to also I think stop playing around cards from the opponent's like yes
If if your turns wish there, okay, they don't even need to have the draker X that can just correct
Now you're even in a worst spot
But, um, whereas if he did get the Hagatha down, maybe if he could top deck a Shudder
Block and get a Tripled Wish if he hadn't top decked the second one, right, because
then they'd have played it last turn.
It's a lot of it, it's, uh, it is.
I will say when you brought up the Birdwatching for Hagatha line, that I definitely considered,
but I think, I still think Wish now was better than the Setup Turn for Wish
next turn right yeah yeah that was better but I do when you brought up the
verb watching the Haggath of the turn up yeah you know what we might be in a
spot where that's necessary you see now he's even mentioned was offered was
offered the Haggath of the turn and did not take it just skip yep yeah because
he's now he does now he is just in a spot where he wants to make those huge
minions that actually killed the kill the trackwrecks and this is a good
setup now to kill the trackwrecks so he's getting rewarded for his choices now
yep and this might be a board that's offered for the warrior
yeah mana available to play zileaks so having the frogs is great not just to
get more buffs from the wish upon the star ball so because it really tanks
those zileaks attacks if that was gonna be the option from Sawyer into deal
with this. Okay that is quite good here. Gets new heights in as well and which is nice because
he's already max ramped 10 mana so now he gets to go over the cap and the hand buffs
are really nice on the on the zileaks and even if he just goes with the second run
attack. That's going to be really annoying for Chonso, because he has to deal with these
hand buffs. Otherwise, the Zileaks will be so massive.
Are you casting with Raven later, Rektorn? Do you have another one later on? Do you have
a Raven cast?
Oh yes.
Okay, so just to warn you for the later on, Raven would have been saying slam the
monkey there, and then double buff your entire hand of new later. I just want to
warn you that that will come up that's that's the kind of line you have to deal
with you know what that's a that's a pretty fun line so he chose to cycle
the shield block to try to get a brawl I'm guessing for a next turn get closer
to his C-slash which is kind of close to being active though not really
There is going to be a huge board.
It's kind of weird.
I really like the run-tack on board with the shield slam, fur, so you're in.
Now he's going to get cleared by this hammer and two bell hops are going to come down.
He does have the Zileaks, but the Zileaks is only 8 attack now, it's not 9 and it doesn't
line up cleanly into the bell hops.
So he's in a bit of an awkward spot again.
How big is the Zileak?
It's only been plus 2, plus 2 by the way.
It's been double buffed, yes.
starting the turn with your I didn't see that one coming from being honest the
ball work I expected to come down but the instant your threw me off the instant
you yeah it's certainly really wants to really wants the cycle to his brawl it
seems he wouldn't need the brawl if he just played at the run back last turn
I guess versus the Merloc Rolf in navy but he have three run backs on the board
that needed to be dealt with that scenario okay does a ramp to get more
mana. Ceaseless not going to be active any time soon. This board is tanking a lot. It's
going to tank at least 15 damage. Still going to take 14 more, but there is a renovator
in the... in the Soyorin's... in Soyorin's Warrior, so Johnson needs to be
cognizant of that while picking these options. Probably gonna go for a 5, try
to get a copy or discover. Deathrattle is interesting to play around the
renovator, but Kopi is so good with Alakir that he might just take that and
not play around renovator for a bit. Yep, picks up 5-5 copy and discover a spell, can chip away all
these bullwark charges pretty easily. Still push 14 and Zerec Van was saying and he is threatening
lethal now with the double wish puffed alakir in hand and the copy but Sawyer in down to seven
cards in deck is more than entitled to have that demolition renovator by now.
Yeah, Renovator plus Brawl is a turn that you would really expect so you aren't to be able to do but he's just bottom-sixing both of those cards.
So he's stuck with the run attack and then finally buffing the Zileaks up to 9 attack to be able to deal with the 7 nines.
there's the renovator pickup oh yes please sign me up sick the classic
Zileax and Zileax action and that will get played.
Zileax Tennis probably it's fine to copy a Zileax now but he might be hesitant to do
it because of Brawl. Probably will feel like he's playing too much into Brawl but the
copy on the Zileax would be really nice to just get rid of the run tack off the
board as well as the the others they'll act as so full clear that's true yeah that's a good point
I think it makes sense to copy here holding it last time is probably fine she had such
good lethal setup with the allocator but I mean even that there's so many things that Soiren
just doesn't have here right like yeah you can copy here and you overextend into brawl you can
not copy here and you're vulnerable to demolition renovator because you just haven't used any of your
location value at all. Everything that you're doing here can get punished by Soiren doing something,
but Soiren just does not have any of those options at the moment.
I do feel like, since Chonsu had the knowledge of Runtak plus Zilliax as a possible turn,
he should have used location charge last turn, even if it played into a brawl,
and now it would be opening into his next turn for the Alakir,
and he's stuck being unable to click again because he needs to hold it now for the alakir finish
but just there's just no brawl for for soya rinse so none of it really matters he could trade for it
he could trade for the brawl like is there a four glory left like how easy is it to get this
Oh, there it is.
Blends it anyway.
So the remaining cards were, yeah, there's a goblet that could rebuy you at it, but
there was no Fagloria left, so.
Pretty low odds.
A little better than 1 in 4, but not much being able to hit that.
And that's just going to be 14 plus 10 plus 10.
We see Shaman winning the match up back to back, just making the warriors have the checks
and they have not had the checks.
Yeah, and I think that was a much slower start, I think, from Chonsu and a much better warrior
hand for Soiren than we saw the other way around as well.
So there's a period in the midgame, you know, well, when we were debating the term with the
wish upon the star and the parrots of the bird watching into Haggathorn.
That point after that turn kind of went past, it looked like Chonsu was just falling behind
and wasn't going to be able to reestablish the threats.
But the power of wish upon a star over the long game against Warrior is just so massive,
right?
Warrior does need to have basically all the removal in the deck at that point if
you get all of those threats going.
So, 2-1 to Chonsu, Shaman and DK now getting there.
Wario left for Chonsu, obviously the Wario mirror
with the steam cleaner tech.
And the death knight matchup you talked about a little bit
in the last break between games.
So, going back to the mirror, how big an advantage
do you think that ends up being the steam cleaner
for Chonsu?
I think it's fairly relevant because it's really hard
to actually draw enough treasures in the quest rewards
in the same turn as you play the Latorbian armor quest reward.
Sorry, it's not Latorbian armor.
That's a different card.
In any case, it is a pretty relevant tech
because you can just get rid of all the quest rewards
instantly, if so, if so, if so, your end doesn't save for glories or a shield block, if he can,
or something like an all you can eat to fetch some of the some of the
quest rewards instantly, or if he doesn't set up ancient of your ahead of time,
it can be very hard for for the for the mirror matchup to just get hit with the
the steam cleaner tech and not have access to, let's say, Time Warp, Galvadon, or even
something like Nether Portal plus the crystal coves.
We have infinite 5-5s.
That can also be something of a wind condition.
But Soyerin does have a little bit of an advantage with the renovator for the Elise.
They do also, both decks play Brewmaster, right?
With Saurin's probably being the more important
in terms of the steam cleaner cut.
Does that come up?
Like it, cause we saw it previously,
I think on the day Banta was casting,
there was a game where someone played a warrior mirror
against steam cleaner and still Brewmaster,
they're ceaseless instead of Brewmastering
their quest reward, which we were quite used about.
Like it was Saurin versus Yandang,
versus in the DK matchup, where it just ended up being inefficient for him to try to play
around the steam cleaner and ended up never actually, he voted so much mana and never played
his quest reward and he was scared of dying to board so he brumastered his ceaseless.
I was not a super fan of the gameplay in that series, but we'll see how it goes in the Warrior
Mirror.
The Warrior Mirror is a bit different, because there's nothing really pressuring you to force
you to brewmaster anything but the quest reward.
But in the same manner, Chonso can just brewmaster the Steam Cleaner and...
That's true, yeah, yeah, good point, good point.
That's crazy, I think it's all about that.
One thing in the early to mid game of this matchup is, can your opponent answer an empty board ham?
We see Chonso with the shield slam, which is pretty much the only way to answer an empty board ham.
So he has that check ready, if Soyorin were to draw ham.
but Syurin does not have the shield slam so he will need to probably play this
hostile invader on curve on an empty board just to make sure that he can deal
with Ham. Ham going off multiple times is just too destructive from the
mirror if it just gets to keep it. It can be because if it snipes Elise or
ceaseless. So one if it snipes the lease it gets really hard to gain enough armor or put
enough kill pressure depending on which option you get. Either you go 10 mana gain armor
or 10 mana gain plus 4 attack. So either an offensive option or defensive option. Both
can be useful in various situations. And if, for example, a Seaslust gets eaten, it can
be possible for your opponent to just make too many boards and force out the revivals.
We saw something similar in Gabi versus Tianming, I believe, where Gabi just made a board of
88 tons and Tian Ming couldn't really OTK but then he hit AFK with two
Galvadons and barely got there. Looks like Swerin has gone straight for the 10
here by the way and with a relatively on-curve Elise, Chuan Siu did pick up
the five. We will take a look at the five things rich here for Swerin. 10-10 copy, deal 10 on Deathrile.
The Deathrile to play around the renovator inclusion and 10-10 copy is just good overall.
If you can copy Galvadon, it makes it, it makes the YOTK much easier. Chonsu might be
thinking about just coining Bob to get an extra Elise. The danger obviously is then you're
giving your opponent three coins to throw out their location so he won't be doing that.
But it is a play that you sometimes do in the mirror to get multiple releases and we see the empty
board hostel invader to be ready to answer two hams. But likewise this is a great shout from
you pointing out the importance of the hams because Chonsu went for the 5-5 copy and then
And instead of coining out one ham, he actually went to wait one turn, establish the location,
go for the copy, and Soyrin had that covered really nicely with the other tech, you exactly
pointed out the tempoed out hostile invader that we have to deal with the board state.
And we see Soyrin is now without the C++ expands, which could be relevant in the
late-game scenarios either for OTK or just for clearing boards and the other
hit was his own ham right which means chances minions are safe for the rest
of the game as well. The chance to use Steam Cleaner is safe. Yep and the
brewmaster for the second Steam Cleaner. You did mention Bob briefly we've
seen it in this tournament we've seen it used on a lease just for extra
leases or when your opponent gets a lease and you haven't got it we did
also see a really cute two turn lethal setup where Bob was used on the Barnabas to make
the the Galvedon cost zero in the opponent's deck. Is it a useful card in the matchup overall?
Is it is it generally used for copy in the matchup? I'd say ideally you use it for a triple
called Zero Mana Minion for easier roti caves, using it to copy any good minion from the
opponent is a fine use. There's some scenarios if your opponent isn't careful where you can
use it to boardlock with Unleashed Acrocalisks and buy some time for yourself to cycle through
to your time warp after the quest. That is probably the rarest usage as these players
will not be leaving themselves boardlocked.
So I'd say mostly for tripling after Barnabas,
if you can get it off.
And just to go back to step one,
just to come for the viewers who are watching,
who aren't aware of the general win condition
in this matchup,
generally you're using some combination
of Galvedon and Time Walk from your quest reward.
Galvedon just makes a giant,
buffed attack win fury minion.
Time Walk gives you an extra turn.
so you can set up these OTK turns that your opponent can't play around.
Now, because of that, you might think Bulwark of Azenoth
is actually a really, really useful card to hold for the long term
to try and play around that from the opponent,
but you do tend to see warriors throw it out pretty liberally in this matchup.
Why is that?
Mana reasons, hand size reasons.
Usually, you can't hold that many cards for later on.
You have to just get rid of your hand,
make sure you're using older mana efficiently, because this is a matchup where if you fall behind
and your opponent's just spending all their mana just cycling through their deck better,
they will be the ones to be in a better position and get all of their quest rewards first and be
able to set up the outtick first. And they will then generally also have a little bit of a
board that just chips through your bow work anyway, and it doesn't really end up saving
much more health than if you had played it at an earlier point and tried to be more efficient
with their turns. For Chonso here, it was really important that he got this new Heizen.
He reached the 10 mana cap, so he had to absolutely play it this turn. So he's just trying
to make sure that he's drawing as many cards as he can
and being as efficient with his mana and card draw.
And now he's even using full work aggressive to just kill a Marin.
I think his older Kimmy doesn't have enough targets for card draw at this point.
Is that why he's holding it?
There should be an invader, a Marin and a...
And the zileac still so it's interesting that he held it
Yeah, we're still in that
I've drawn three, but
Maybe there's something specific maybe he wants to hold it for
After his quest reward to have a little bit more card draw
and now there's quest rewards in both players hands he just places one and I
expect that he might brew master it because because going with your your
quest reward first is that your steam cleaners clearing up all of your
All right, quest rewards
So yeah, he does do that he could
Oh, he doesn't want to
Copy it and then bounce the the 5-5 copy
To be like more stat efficient because he just wants to brawl this or the way and save the copy for removal later on
Now he's putting Soyorin in a position where if he doesn't play his own quest reward
and has to hold it until he finds a brewmaster to play around steam cleaner.
Johnson can just naturally draw all his quest rewards and win like that, but
I'll never needing to steam clean. That's so interesting. Yeah, because also if
so if Johnson were to leave a quest reward on the board, Sawyer can
theoretically bob the quest reward as well in order to get extra copies to
play around Steam Cleaner. The same is now also kind of true for Brewmaster from Soyerin,
like Bob could steal a Brewmaster so Chelsea can go Steam Cleaner, bounce the Steam Cleaner
to play around the second quest. This is kind of silly when you break down all the possibilities.
Yeah, it's very tricky to navigate to play around every single Bob thing that you can
do to play around the brewmaster steam cleaner, a lot of layers to it. I expect Shonstu to try to
max draw his deck, his turn, to try to find the most of his quest rewards that he can,
that we see now he plays the Holy Kniep and now he can draw a beast from his quest rewards like
Barnabas. And he gets the good one, yeah. He did already hit Galavadon though, so that's
not going to be as good as it may seem, but it will still come into play here because
it doesn't really make sense for him to be in clear because he is ahead on health, he
is held on quest drawn, quest reward drawn in his eyes at least, he doesn't know that
Soyerin already has the time warp so just needs to find
Calvadan to hopefully do enough damage
And now we might see Bob
Oh, yeah Bob Bob recruit a Barnabas. So now all of Soyerin's minions are
Zero mana
Including the Galvadan yes as the player was talking about earlier
We just steal your opponents Barnabas to sell up your own potential OTK
Really good in the mirror as well because you're almost always going to burn a card from your opponent while doing this at the same time
Which if that hits time walk or Galvedon from the opponent, they are in serious trouble trying to win the game
But Chonsu does of course have the second quest reward to be able to play around that
But it would slow him down
Enormously if you have to go through that process again
We see a mega fin for the Romana that's gonna be nice for the time warp
And now suddenly Chonzu is not in a good position anymore.
He doesn't even have a clear for this board.
Nope.
And that is quite a lot of damage to take twice with the time warp, so might be forced to fall for a freeze,
but starting with coin for glory seems very reasonable.
just see what happens okay there we go that was better yeah you can pretty much
ignore our new tech ceaseless tracker because he made every deck in his every
million in his deck cost zero anyway zero yeah both both ceaseless are just
gonna be permanent to zero I think tronzu is considering the ball for free
still because he doesn't die to time work like that and he's all he's just
doing yeah you go you go Bob Bob freeze right because then you still oh no
he's actually still not still go ceaseless I like bobbing the bob it's
it's just one it's just one free car burn from your opponent right you just
replace the Bob we have all the time make sense so now we'll see so you're in
draw to see Romana minions nor try to draw as many as you can it's all the
NASA's right yes draw the track rex as well
really really once I galved on the galved on nope no such luck
a car through mains and siren he does not have enough draw anymore I'm
guessing he'll get the nether portal down because those are five slides with
crystal cobalater yep oh but the invader stuck so the three twos aren't in the
position to stick really and now we'll also see why the bulwark doesn't really
do that much at this point yes a hundred percent a minion stuck she also has a
a weapon, a hero power, but it still heals for 15 or 20 but it's not really enough.
You also just cannot find the time warp.
Soirin does have enough mana to potentially just go latorvious and dig for another Galvadon
through that, but Megafin usually gives you card draws so I'd expect him to try to Megafin
into something like a prize vendor or maybe he can get other ways to draw cards. There
is a three-man Amur lock that makes your other murlocs draw cards on that battle, which
means he could roll away his board to activate that in the same turn as he chooses. We'll
have to wait and see. There's the Bob Triples. I think the Marlin looks better than it actually
is. I'm being honest, just because he still doesn't have time work, right? And it does
shuffle stuff into your deck and you don't really have the hand size to cycle the
cards with a wondrous wand. So in that case, because obviously it's minion only, right?
Draw a minion, get three copies of it. What's what? Which minion was he looking for from
the remainder of the deck? Really any minion, really any minion just because he wants
stats. Right, right, because he's an Aided but he'll pick a Marin and try to make
handspace he does have 16 oh no he only has 13 mana to work with and that's
that's a big mana discrepancy so he's like he just drew to thin his card
drew thin his deck by one card so that when he draws the time walk he then has
zero mana minions to play in south lethal right is that is that the plan
Yes, yes.
Okay, new fights.
That's gonna help dump the handspace.
But yeah, now just Wonderswond.
Oh, he doesn't go Wonderswond, okay,
because he doesn't have handspace for it.
Okay, Krog.
Deals with the board nicely.
And oh, our all sirens removal is gone.
The ceaseless was even so there's no doubt and I think ceaseless was even
So yeah, Chonsu is recognizing that nicely and just going for max board
because yeah, so at some point you do run out of removals and
Warrior doesn't really run out of threads
So that's why it comes down to the time we're put the key
usually and
Yeah, yeah, Chonsu is just sending full tempo, but Botface is an absolute disaster for his hand size,
but just deciding he wants the absolute biggest minions possible to max out on tempo.
Yeah, at this point really, he doesn't even need the time warp.
He's outvaluing and it's getting really hard for Sawyer into actually even no decay through a board with three taunts.
So now he does need to make his minions 5 fires and he does not know the interaction because these are still one once after you play the crystal core
Well, well, well, I'm gonna put my hands up. I did not know that either
So it's going to be tempo time warp it seems
Because he needs a board that can deal with the Chonsel's board.
No card draw, but a pretty good one-drop at least in the Murloc Rope, then.
Yep.
Rock Skipper is okay.
And time warp does not get played that's it's going to be a lot of damage to take
See that's to time warp here probably not
16 plus 12 plus 8 so that's 46 not 36
Yeah
Not quite sure
So is there now a world where you want to slam the steam cleaner just to you
like you're imagining your your opponent does not have the pieces they
need to win the game right so you can reset them back to square one with the
the steam cleaner now that you have this insane tempo yeah and you have
yourself an extra marron so you will not be taking the fatigue damage they
will and you have board advantage health advantage it's looking pretty
locked for Chansu to win this game. Random Murlocs, maybe, but there will be one once.
I do believe the Krog will work now, again on these crystal core minions.
Yeah, that was going to be my next question. Do you have to do anything to this board,
or will the Krogs come to save the day yet again? Yes it will, back to one once
small. So they're now staring at fatigue and there's just no way for him to come back on
board really because he cannot get to these Krogs. They are just going to farm him. Well,
okay, so he won't go into fatigue because he will have 20 Raptors from Pink or NASA.
Good point. Yeah true true true. I mean at some point you will have to play them and
cycle 3 or deck, those will be one mana 5-5s, but it's probably at the point where
these crocs have farmed you so far that you would rather go home and cry than try to
win with the broods or the raptors.
So, what Serr needs to do is he needs to try to set up a board, then time warp, and have
enough board to actually kill both Crogs, and then somehow win on board because he cannot
have enough damage to OTK.
How is that possible when every minion you play is a 1-1 mode?
Come out there's no way that can happen. Is there?
Well, he needs to make five fives and then time work and then right okay, okay sure sure sure sure you will be able to
To actually deal with the board
So then I guess my next question is what's he waiting for that? He hasn't done that yet over the last two terms
I
Would have expected it
Expecting to try to get it this turn. I think he wants to try to see what his mega fin number two does
Maybe it does something better
And there's also the fact that Chonzu has another warrior quest reward in hand
In just the shuffle it's it's hiding there, but it is there. So he has access to time works though
At any point
Galadon coming down just for tempo.
He's just playing at tempo, Galadon.
I love this game.
Yeah, I guess so.
Nothing so you can do other than time work now.
And the Chancellor will send everything face,
make the biggest font he can.
And this is smart, right? He just takes...
Exactly, yeah, he just takes stealth wind fury
because now even if your plan happens
where you time walk and you kill the Crocs,
Well then you're not killing the wind fury stealth galvedon that's still gonna end up killing you in two times time after you've taken the time walk
So this is super super smart from Chelsea
And I don't think there are any murlocs with taunt
In the game, so yeah
No time warp no problem
great stuff and
The most adorable man in Haarstone does it again. We were we were too busy talking about steam cleaners and brewmasters and all that kind of nonsense
He just made a mass. He just exhausted the brawls
He ate the ceaseless and he said you know what crowns? That's all I need
Marins and crowns and just pick giant legendary minions and hit my opponents with them
That is Haarstone in his purest form right there and a pretty
So, it's a really solid performance from Chonsu overall and great to see because we talked about this during last chance like Chonsu is one of those legacy players who's been in and around that level of top player through so many different systems and iterations and grand masters and masters tour systems and everything.
around for so many years and that breed of player that's played at this level for like
the best part of a decade now is so rare, right? Like Chansu is one of the very few to
do it. I don't know if... Do you have much of a tournament history against Chansu, Rekvarm?
Anything? I have never faced Chansu in a tournament. No,
haven't had the pleasure. So that is... I feel like he was the very tough opponent.
That's the first time this weekend that we've asked one of our pro player guest
cast is that question and they haven't immediately gone. Yep. I beat him in this tournament. I
beat him in this tournament. I beat him in this tournament. Just start listing it all off immediately.
But anyway, you've got one more cast left for the day. I think any final thoughts you want to
leave the people with before we go to a very short break? Final thoughts. Chonsu played
really well, impressed by him, just like in last chance. Really happy that he made it through.
and my next guest is Fury versus Tian Ming and I will not be biased at all for that one.
That sounds accurate. Yeah, congratulations. Congratulations to Chansu. He's going to be
going through Commiserations to Soirin who did not quite make it. We still have two more groups
to play through Elimination and Decider for, so do not go anywhere. We've got plenty more
Hearthstone coming out to round out your Saturday. We will be right back after this
very quick break.
Welcome back, everybody. We are halfway through elimination day at Halstown World Championships
2025. And we're going to be starting with Group C elimination match next. Some hope
for the two players in this one. The first two groups, the winner of this match went
on to win and qualify for tomorrow. So whoever it is, this one will be feeling
a little bit more confident than maybe at the start of the day. Here's how we got to
this one. It is going to be you versus Phil Phil, winner plays Gabby for the right to go
to tomorrow. And Love Storm's just chilling. Love Storm's already into tomorrow. So what
you made of it so far, Adel? Yeah, Hugh has a rogue deck that, you know, I sort of
like to play more. I'm sure, you know, it has its weaknesses compared to the Cyclo
Rogue, but Protoss Rogue, to me, is just a little bit more fun. You can do some
pretty silly things with Dorian and with Chrono Lord Deus, but ended up, you know, not being
able to get enough damage in against a warrior because you are reliant on sort of putting
together this plan of a huge damage turn, as opposed to Cycler Oak, which is much more
about like early chip damage and that sort of thing.
And then Phil Field we saw on that egg lock between the two in Kuro did much better
on the egg lock.
egg lock. Then we watch Philfield. We'll have to see if he can sort of make a recovery on that deck,
sort of show us what it can do. Yeah, he struggled to draw the eggs. There's the wall of hero power,
there's the one, two that fetches the egg, there's the egg, but there are only three of them
organic. There's plenty of other ways to get it, of course, but he struggled to draw them early
enough he struggled to have ways to deal with them. That deck does get punished if it goes
sort of miss, miss, don't play egg. Quite often there's an army of stuff coming at you and you're
still going well I've got to play my egg. I can't use my remove on my opponent's stuff because then
I can't make my egg explode or whatever it does. I need to end up in this cycle of oof and you
struggle to make a 20-20 in the end and just hope that they don't have a way to remove it
and they usually do because you've given them all the time in the world. On the other side
include did draw his eggs. It's like, yeah, very, very well piloted as well. Just infinite
2020 is all over the board. Easy job. So interesting to see how that goes. But we are going to start
off with something more familiar to us, the gear on the shaman, feel, feel on the death
night, one of the matchups that's possibly defining this tournament sort of quietly
behind the scenes because both these decks haven't been doing too great. I don't
Yeah, I sort of think you know Hunter has been the the best deck at you know most
banned and I think doing quite well when it is left up and then behind that
cycle rogue certainly you know the winds look quite convincing right there have
been you know few hiccups here and there but for the most part I think
people are liking that ring yeah it's shaman and DK where folks have sort of
decided one way or another which one they prefer to have. Also a contrast in
sort of qualification, do you qualify for this championship 23-23, 2024-2025
including a semi-final. This is Phil Field's first time. He came through the system to
some degree, got through the qualifying tournament. You're the one sort of the
top 50 lead, top 50 points earners plus open qualifiers. He got through that to
get to the Masters Tour where he then qualified for this. So he's come a
long way to get here whereas Gears gets to the master stores, gets the points, does all
those good things every year. So a lot more easy going for a Gears but Philfield has, due
to the new system, I'm going to spam it, you know, had quite a lot of airtime himself
whereas maybe in previous years we just have a person sat there who we hadn't seen.
So benefit the system this year, you might be able to feel his weight through the system
as we get into this and I see a Hagatha and a location on his side.
Yep, certainly feels like the right pick having Shaman when you're able to do that consistently.
We haven't seen it happen much, we saw a love storm do it, I think everyone else has really struggled
to just hit that Hagatha early in the game.
moments hesitation there for you I think deciding whether or not to tap
location he's going to coin this slime or maybe go for something like the bell
hop something like the bell hop indeed you know fell hop plus bird watching but
But yeah, I sort of figured with the TAP slime is where his head was at, because it's been that coin.
Trouble is here in two turns time. You are getting wished as well, so the clock is on for Fil-Fil.
Not only to just not take damage from the things on the board, but to prevent the board from being there when the inevitable turns six buff occurs.
And, you know, with only four corpses, I assume anyone corpse explosion in the deck, let me
just quickly check that is correct.
That's the usual.
I don't think anyone's brought more than one corpse explosion just under them.
Just the one.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think, you know, in the days of Starship Death Knight, which something in Philfield
certainly played a lot of bringing full Starship lineups.
That was when we saw more often double-court disclosure that kind of went a little bit
longer.
Excuse my giggling.
I did a steam cleaner triggering twice.
It was quite amusing to me.
I don't know why.
It's just very silly redundancy in the guard there.
Oh my.
How do you feel, Gio?
Do you want to double bellhop now?
They're not that large.
They're really annoying.
Do you want to save that click of the location to have your wish next turn?
I mean, there's also like just
murderers swinging in and having to be dealt with.
Right. Like it sticks around.
It's just so much damage.
If it doesn't, you get the weapon.
If it sticks around, it's almost game over, right?
Because you will get the wish next turn.
It's not a show to watch.
Wish so it's not like the most incredible thing ever.
But it's a wish onto those bell hops that are both still in hand as well
Yeah, I think you know he was hoping to set up
Interesting I was gonna say hoping to set up the double bell hop turn next turn going into
Fairytale slime but now that makes me think he's expecting to just slime immediately
Yeah, both are on the cards here.
I suppose this is safest, right? If you play them as three-threes, then you're leaving yourself open to the possibility of, you know, them getting cleared and you don't get the box.
Yes.
Whereas now you can follow up with the bell hops and ensure that they're all five-sixes.
Absolutely. Depending how you feel as well. I think you just jammed them, but cheeky little turbulence before one of them if you want to as well.
Especially with the Murlocs coming down on 8. Might be worth some investment.
Do you have to deal with the leeches at some point?
He'll feel, has got this horseman to deal with one large minion, a little tool in his kit that a lot of these death knights do not have.
Yeah, this is several decisions.
I think he used the static shot to pick off a leash just because, why not?
Unless you want to save it for your weapon later.
Yeah, he hit it.
Yeah, I think he's just going to kind of go halfway in pushing 10 face like the leeches
are annoying could remove one if you want but ultimately without husk they're not doing
that much and even with husk like all these things are so large that you kind of don't
have to worry that much static shot which is more if you keep it in your hand with
the weapon anyway so deal with this
we can see that dealing with this is not the forte of this particular death night
I think Philpheil is gonna try and make the most out of these leashes though
Setting up to remove two of these. This is out on one leech due to board space but you know now the
at least the Haas cast to be answered.
Yeah which is actually super annoying because you want to play your your
murloc and you don't really want your AT-8 to just hit a 3-5 but they are super irritating.
You get a pair of enormous minions in play. I don't think you can complain too much.
True. I like to complain though. Not...
Yeah, I can't do it. Love it.
Does have the option to play the avatar actually, right?
Whatever it's called.
Avatar form?
Avatar form. That's the one.
Yeah, it could do that on one of these minions or on his own face for just the two damage
AOE clear.
It gets rid of all the leeches, then you don't really care about the 3-5.
Might be time to do that.
It even moves so much damage, it's effectively doing five damage by removing five leeches,
but yeah, two 11-12s is what he goes for.
I get it.
And the advantage to leaving them up right is you're you're not giving Phil feel
The corpses that they would generate and so with this many stats in play for you
The only real answer that Phil feel could have is that one of corpse explosion
Sure, although I keep forgetting I suppose they do get generated mid explosion
Okay sure. There was a period where that was turned off, but yeah.
Still wouldn't kill the 11-12 in that circumstance?
Yep.
At least not on its own, we don't have...
Of course.
Yeah, annoying as they are I think it's just like with how big these minions are
you spend so much steel with them and this way like you know that he can use
avatar form with hiking's hammer next turn and get to develop on both the ALE
and the plus two attack that it gives himself missed on the steel yep we've
taken so much of this damage off the board now I'll have some much to end ship through the hard way
Yeah, and that's gonna be it, yeah, 10-10 and discover needed armor, but also you have
to expect your odds of being alive here, not very high.
Yeah, there's a lot of ways to do damage here, so we could take the 10, because we're
I'm getting down with my da and still having a lot of things next turn, but feel, feel...
Tournament's not going his way so far as we can see where he's in this match, but also a lot of his matches have been like that where his opponent has just got 1, 2, 3, 4, you're dying and no real answer available.
And it goes to 1-0, gets the shaman out of there, which he'll be very pleased about.
Just left with that Protoss rogue and his own death knight.
Yeah, I think the combination of Parrot Sanctuary and Hagatha, where you get the Hagatha down
on three, you get one of the Slimes down on four, is just outscaling what most decks can
do at that point in the game, and then, you know, it just sort of scales up from there.
Yeah, you have to not take that early damage to be able to survive that wave of really
big things from turn eight onwards.
You don't always survive it anyway, but at least you can set your game planner,
you have some board maybe fight back make them use those cards defensively
which I would have done mistakenly was you just like leeches what are they
hit you for 11 and 12 and 28 or whatever it was at the end yeah that seems
better than doing damage to 0-2s I guess make sense
Phil Phil with this egg lock still to come he must be fearing that because
it didn't perform well for him yesterday he did do as the honor of
showing it yeah it has to win with it so he showed it as three times so we
to see the deck a bit but you can flash a pair of actual eggs on camera for just a
moment I think yesterday. Recognizing that it was sort of the unique bring. I do
suspect though that like one of the reasons to do it is if you can get a
a bunch of eggs in play early, right?
Like, when I say early, basically around when a rogue is going to start doing all their eruptions and rocks
that they can really cause problems in terms of eating up those hits.
Yeah, absolutely. Because normally the eruptions clear the way and then the asteroids hit you in the face,
because there's nothing else to hit.
But the eruptions are never clearing the eggs, so the asteroids are always going to have something to run into.
Also unlucky as well like Tianming played against Enkour, the same lineup as Philfield's got,
same 120, and banned the egg lock. So there's always an element of getting lucky in these
tournaments in terms of what gets banned, what doesn't, who you match up against, what they
think of you and so on. Philfield had to play the egg three times in one of his matches,
Enkour didn't have to play it at all.
Yeah, you with both players with the Elise here should Phil feel keep his there's a possibility
that you will have two of them could get yes it's one of the dangers and I come down
to the Elise on three or least on four location five doesn't sound like a fun time for the
opponent. Oh, he's hit. Yep, there it is.
I have that one, I think. Yeah, good one. Get to photon cannon on two potentially, you know,
for the discount more than anything else. Yeah, a dagger deals with one one's cleanly
so can.
I've had to do this as the other way, the cycle road more than once against death
night and in that deck it does not feel nice in this one with two elitists in hand it probably feels somewhat better.
I remember this place well.
Yeah I should think so. Could even see a one here.
Copy is much more premium for this rogue and so just mana efficiency is the name of the game.
Yeah because you get the very good minion copies right.
Yeah, you don't care about stats the way that a death knight cares about you know the copy actually being a good size
You can copy the hero power or something else
In this one one one's fine. You know you're copying a Dorian. You're copying an Archon. It's the effect that you care about not the stats
Look you don't cast you subtle he'd be telling about one drops I
Think I think even subtle gave up on that one eventually
Well, it was true at the time there is the one with coffee.
No, under to him. He was long categorically right now.
That's all that matters. Something like that.
Yeah, we can show that location. The pics were deal 3 to all enemies and someone went on copy.
You know, the deal 3 does go face, so it is a bit of extra damage and I think also just a nod to demolition renovator,
which we saw was in Field Field's hand earlier, but got sent back in the mulligan.
Yeah, a pletitulenevite coming up as well.
This is fairly unpleasant.
For whom?
I mean yeah so you will not be unhappy with the hand that he has but the just
the board state is just awkward and tedious so it's unpleasant in that
regard it still take what he's not going on obviously. Yeah might take a break here
not go for the second release just to try and deal with the blob of tar. Yeah
in terms of what you're saying unpleasant though you know you'd like to
be able to do something like prep photon cannon to be able to get the
dubious on the Bob of Tar but no guarantees and this one is going to be a
five cost and might do something a little more defensive here yeah he's got
the coffee loaded up right so you can do what he likes
five five copy three russets
So that's the bigger option and obviously the Raptors, one of the better or the best
usually picked for most decks for a defensive option.
Yeah, particularly great for death knight.
How you want a death knight you need to generate a lot of corpses and the Raptors are a good
way to do that.
Yeah, there was a good here though because they're a good way through the blob of
So I think we'll see the 5-5-1 drop straight away. Yes, here we go
I'll start actually doing some of that that chicken damage that you'd like me hoping to do
Prep out the cannon
All all discounts are nice but really important to get the first one because it will turn the
one ones generated from Dorian into zero cost.
He was going to be checking that Robocaller at the start of every turn to see if it says five.
I paid a matching number for Dorian, yeah.
Dorian is used to cost four, but in this case at five it gets to fill that slot for activating Elise.
It's nice when the... well, if you play the decks, it's nice when the nerf becomes a buff.
Yeah. Or at least a sidegrade. Considering whether to just go ahead and play the Robocaller
as Draw 3 generally. Or, yeah, go ahead and rip the Stuby's Purchase, even though
doesn't hit you know anything amazing. Filfield is pretty okay with that, especially hitting the
handler instead of a 2-1.
You can't, you can't see Filfield, you can't see why.
I mean I think he's pretty excited because Filfield is holding a foam render.
Has, uh, I think he got copy on his location as well, maybe, maybe not.
Sleuth and Clones already to just getting it done right on 17. Yeah, I mean this is three swings of the weapon, right?
Phil feels like I'm at 30. I just need
you know a couple of turns get over the finish line and
That's the thing about Rogue. That's Phil feels. Don't really have healing. Yeah, so that's gonna come up
for
Phil feel next turn at 30 weapon equipped Giew at 8
Yeah, you know maybe an argument for going for armor you know at some point on like it was offered on the five cost location I think could have gotten like raptors plus armor and you figure you've already got
going for armor, you know, at some point on like it was offered on the five cost location
I think could have gotten like raptors plus armor and you figure you've already got
copies sealed up from the one cost. So perhaps a little bit of a little bit of greed showing
there and coming back to bite it. Yeah, you suggested it at the time as well. It
did give him quite a lot of tempo and getting through the blob generating the 5.5,
but even so, feel-feel spotting the opportunity to chip away.
And Flamerender does end things quite quickly when he gets going.
Can make a pair of taunts.
So that's something.
I feel the look of a person who hasn't won a game yet this tournament.
Rumble enthusiast effect could be fairly relevant here,
able to throw out the one cost location as an activator. Get two random shots here.
Oh fuck. Now get settled, yeah. Okay.
I was saying, what is this nonsense? I had it locked up and now there's these taunts
in a way. Yeah, so he's not dying any time soon most likely.
Shilatrasilz reacts in hand, opponents on 7. You can get through this eventually.
Yeah, still, you know, it doesn't feel good being at this point. Can use a weapon to clear
up the 5-5 cleanly at least. Leeches regenerates and corpses. I think his best
pick up here would be Exarch Maladar because then he'd be able to...
This clears the other one, right? Yeah, actually is there a way to connect face here with that
Sam's or above? Nah, it's not clean break points. So you can you can connect face with the three ones, yeah.
Which is relevant, because it once again sets up a vehicle for the next turn of the year.
Yep.
And now you get back to hoping that it doesn't happen again.
Yeah, and there's the blink.
So Dorian Prep Blink is, you know, kind of what I was talking about in terms of being
able to get the cheap versions for making an Archon, can generate two Archons here,
but yeah, needed that to happen a bit earlier in the game so that they could be set up
with the Chrono Lord Deos.
Arthnes will keep him alive into Zileac's at least for what he can see on board.
So it feels like that's a good idea.
It feels like, how do you kill this man? How do you kill anybody?
What is this game?
And uh, yeah, I mean you just hoping that he'll have something to zileaks into next turn
I was wondering is this next time play for feel feel just swing should have to seal go and just hope you don't die
It's worth considering right especially now with that copy summon, you know, you isn't planning to go off next turn
You're gonna have the roar which at minimum is your hero power and your face buffed
All these board spaces filled. Yeah, I think just playing Geladresil kind of guarantees it
Then next you got the five damage from the Awakens
You've got the nightmare of your hero power
You've got the swing of the weapon this turn swing of the weapon next thing you've got plenty of corpses for that
And you don't pay into those iliacs right other reasons for doing this. Yeah
And you're quite a high health total so you're probably not gonna die
well, you know
You hasn't done the setup turn yet, right? It hasn't done the the Dorian blink
And even if you were sitting on you know some miraculous ability to create
double arc on
Like there's just no board space
Yeah
Now, because that one location that makes a copy makes a five-patch copy, you know, that
is a little scary with these charge means in play.
But yeah, Philfield did see this line, maybe considering dreaming something, but yeah, just
going to hold and hope he's not dead to something surprising.
I put lethal on the board three turns in a row please just one time just stop being alive
how can he do that?
I don't know is there any way he can gain some health?
Is there anything he could deja vu into?
I mean, from his perspective, at least.
Sure, sure.
I mean, he could deja vu into the demolition
renovator to blow up the location,
but that doesn't exactly help, right?
Hero Power pops the divine shield.
Hero Power.
I think his best option is to.
Nightmare?
maybe I sort of feel like he wants to potentially have just like played the
zileanx there but yeah a bit of a mess
feel feel gets a win on the board it must be such a relief like it's only
it's only one match I'm not saying like he's lost 800 matches in the road it's
his first world's struggled yesterday and the old is first round and now he's
just didn't want to go O2 again so getting that chalked up must be a relief
for him he can tell everybody for the rest of eternity that he's won at least a
world championship game and now he can set about winning a match and winning
the tournament for him and he's got his warrior and his egglock left and suddenly
the matchup looks a lot more even than it did in that opening hand honestly I
thought you was going to run away with that when he hit the early Elise
Yeah, you know, I think, again, something like a warrior that does take a lot more time, usually.
Going forward like the double copy, you know, no armor gain makes some more sense, right?
You can sort of, there's not really a whole lot you need to deal with from the warrior until much later turns.
But the Death Knight really is all about counter pressure, and especially when you've got this five-attack weapon just chunking every turn.
Even if you're at full full life, right? It's six turns
As long as it's hitting face every time so
Amplified by a lease, you know raptor or location
Yeah, that's
Situation where you know, maybe it would have been better with the armor. Maybe just would have slowed things down a little bit
The thing is that if it slows things down just a little bit
feel-feel has to commit to the board and then your zilex heals you and it's a totally different game right so
and this isn't some hindsight from like you know that I could a lot lot better than
and you called it at the time that you'd have gone for the armor after you established the copy already and
Again my buying that extra time might force put things on board and suddenly maybe everything pans out you get an extra turn
And suddenly kill your opponent and all these decisions in Hearthstone
I always find it fascinating to follow the knock-on effect of just little things how they magnify through the rest of the game
And then you'll talk to a more skilled opponent and you'll say,
I only made this little tiny mistake.
And then we're like, no, actually, that mistake
has cost you 14 health by not playing this 2-1 on turn 1
or something like that.
OK.
And there's a lot to be learned from the decision.
I'm not saying they're right or they're wrong,
but the decisions and how they change the course of the game.
Yeah, it's reasonable to think, right?
The Death Knight has a lot of one-offs.
So in this scenario where there's not the one-off,
home render, right? That's, you know, 15 more life that you're not having to deal with. And
just sort of a looming threat over the course of the whole match. And, you know, a lot of
times we see people just going like, well, make you have the corpse explosion, there's
only one. And that's how it was with Keyes Shaman, right? Phil Field didn't have the
corpse explosion, and that was it.
And we see people beat Warrior, we've seen it today, like, make them not have the
the seventh removal let alone the first one just keep making the not have one
even when the decks loaded with them and like you say with a deck like this one
there is only one corpse explosion couple of blobs there's not that much real
guaranteed clearance if you make them have it and they don't have it you do
win the game quite often that's how it works so easy to say especially when
you're you know you're struggling sometimes to use you know if you're
ladder you lost four games a row like make them have it of course they've
got it. I don't want to break them have it. I want to do something else. But you've just
got to stick at it and keep trying to make them have it. And then they have it again
and then figure it out.
Well, I'm excited to see the egg lock again. See if Feel Feel can get a little bit better
draws. I know you were testing that one out a bunch.
Yeah.
Yeah
Fine if it did feel a little bit draw dependent it also felt like if my opponents I was playing it sort of low four digits
thousand legend
They did feel if my opponents were a little bit stronger. I might have struggled more but
There's the tricks to sort of avoiding it being stolen and all that stuff are a lot easier than I expected them to be
There's plenty of ways to play around
The things that you first think, or whatever gets grifted, what if that, what if that?
There's plenty of ways to set up extra eggs around rolls, around grift and stuff.
It felt clunky, but fine. It felt hard to manage my removal, because my removal is my egg removal at the same time.
That was the thing I found most trouble is my cards are versatile, but every time I killed an opponent's minion, I was like,
but I want to hit my egg and that's the thing that I'd have found
I think where I will be massively outplayed by Phil Phil and by Encore for sure
but he doesn't fancy the egg again just yet he's going to leave that till last
he's going to go with the warrior and it's going to be against this
rogue again uh you're saying about the rogue
how many times does it need to copy how many times does it need to
sort of get the arcons down against warrior typically
I mean, I think often you want to be ending the game with a pair of Arkans in play and Chrono Lordeos.
But you have to have been presenting a fair amount of pressure over the course of the early game for that.
And, you know, there's not a whole lot of ways to do that, right?
You do have Creature of Madness, which would help.
Sometimes you get enough copies that you're able to do an earlier archon just cuz right so that it's that it's dealt with
Yep
You maybe gonna be taking the ancient of your here. They're not really the best things
I think he was hoping that Phil feel you know there's sort of there's a there's a pro and con here
Right going into turn three. I think he wanted ramp
but
You know Phil feel not having it probably the next best thing is draw
Yeah, it feels right it feels like on four as well it's not a bad time to
Do you start drawing cards?
In the absence of your lease
But he's gonna come to the ham
Yeah, oh
dodge yeah dodge indeed stuff right there and then you know feel feel knows the
the odds that it would have been knows that's what you was looking for
you know that gives you see that come from the right hand side of the hand is
like oh come on he didn't flinch I wonder if you is just hoping like that
well maybe if I coin out this ham and maybe it just sticks for a while you
You know?
Yeah, if it does 5 and 7 damage, it's done its job right?
You were saying about the early damage is hard to find, that is some...
He's got the robo-hand for at least picking some stuff up.
See if he coins it out.
Got to check what's being called, yeah it looks like the plan was always to coin
out.
Not the right numbers on the robo-caller.
Now very crucially, Q has drawn three out of four Templars.
And that's going to make things much more difficult in this matchup where you need as much damage
as you can possibly get.
You know, no early lease, no Dorian, you know, had the opportunity to keep Dorian,
but you wanted the early pressure and Field Field just barely able to clear off this
hand.
So important.
One was going to be, yeah, another eight, another seven, another five, but yeah.
Can't play the robo-caller this turn because it says six.
I was going to say, yeah, he's got a six on it, okay.
So...
We've seen this a lot from this deck in this tournament.
Well, I mean, it's only you playing it, and he, you know, has played one max, but we saw this before.
Yeah, just decides he has to do it.
Yeah, but we all have the 10 plus in hand.
Okay.
Just watching him navigate this, fine mess of a hand.
Yeah, I think he just knew, like, well, I need one of the fours.
It's either going to be dubious purchase or release.
And so he said, I guess we can't do Dorian,
and let's hope we pick up either release or dubious gets dubious.
I think he's going to burn.
Oh no, not quite. Nine cards exactly.
What an ugly looking hand.
It's rough.
Four, six, seven, and eight. It looks like shaman, except shaman, those cards are actually doing something immediately.
Yeah, and crucially, you know, without getting any extra copies from Dorian, it also just makes it harder to get any Archons in play.
the most that you can reduce your protest minions by is four right two from
Artenis and then another two from using both photon cannons on minions. Wouldn't
be surprised if you just yeah goes for a stealth art template here see if it
sticks hasn't really got a lot of other great options. Yeah I think when he
committed to the Robocall that's kind of where he was at right like you
described he was after the elites but the backup plan is this and hope and it
isn't looking like a great hope because Dracorex is in hand
yeah
yeah the other option we should get the combo off and get one off and off get some damage down
Uh, yeah, I feel like he'll even pick up the new heights to finish it off rather than
using Unleashed Cockles.
He's also, I think, just possess what the situation must be on the other side.
Like he's seen his plays, like, oh, that's your hand, it's full of things, oh dear.
Yeah.
A little bit of a tell that nothing else is going on here.
Now, you could go for a Dorian Kingslayer line.
It is a little rough drawing, legendaries for your opponent, but if you get, you know,
a 1-1-1 copy of yours, there are some decent hits, right, Elise still in the deck, Girona
still in the deck isn't great.
I think, yeah, so it's basically a 50-50 on Elise, but if you do hit Girona, you
get two shots at that half-life effect.
Oh, that's why he's chosen to do no knowledge for seven times.
Oh, cunny.
Yeah, yeah, that's why.
He just wants the Gironas to do more.
Yeah, the downside, of course, is he will also be drawing Filfula Legendary.
Yeah, and this deck is jam-full of legendaries. The Warrior deck is kind of what it does.
Yeah.
But he is desperate, so make the desperate play.
great hits get the photon photon get it activated manages to win the 50-50
I did the ball works legendary
you know I sort of forgot that it included non-leans yeah same yeah it's
not bad in the matchup ball work no it's quite defensive it says the thing
you described earlier with the death and the the arklons if you can predict when
it's coming which you can to some degree or delay it at least. I think Phil
Phil is looking at the crockless Greek Draco Rex play potentially.
seems good seems a very efficient use of your game 10
we just need to get one of the little combos with it and maybe decide to save it for later
roll in case something gets stealthy and awkward
yes I mean Zelyak's pretty good wall
Archie is not going to feel good about attacking into that
the reductions are coming though
Another cannon at hand, half a spoon plate.
So Gyu is going to actually able to play the game of Hearthstone now.
I think the problem for Gyu is that having missed on that deja vu for ramp is still going to be metacapped at 10.
And so that alongside the lack of Dorian making a free version of the Templars means that it's just hard to, you can't make an Archon and a Placrona Lordeos in the same term.
Yeah, and one of your Templars has gone as well now, so even tougher to even try and
sort of cheese it out and make it stick.
Yeah, there's gonna have to be...
So if you decide now's the time?
Yeah, gonna have to be some kind of Grona shenanigans to get the life total down.
Oh, I forgot Talgath was in there, so it was a 1 in 3, not a 50-50 on the Kingslayers.
your least location, you know, potentially discover a spell has more value for you now
because you could discover an extra photon cannon and get the discount.
Sure, you can discover them when they're in your deck.
Right, for now going for the old Azalea X Azalea X.
We've seen that as lots today already, and obviously over the course of the last month or two we've seen it so many times.
I confess I'm not sure whether Garona works through Bulwark or not.
Is that an exact wording thing?
Yeah, this is one of those instances where because the wording is sort of more flavor-based,
you don't know, like, well, does this count as dealing damage?
I know that it's not reducing max health, which is what I expected from, you know, cut
your opponent's life total in half.
But whether or not it's considered dealing damage and then we'll get reduced to one
or will it just deal the full 15?
Yeah.
Look.
My very quick
understanding having just meditated for a moment into no particular reason
is that it probably cuts it in half and still works.
So interesting, my guess would be that because it
doesn't affect the max but it's probably considered damage and would get reduced to one
not sure we'll get to find it. That could still be right. I did not verify my sources very well.
Oh, now it has to be verified by Sottle who will definitely know
it does cut in half.
Okay.
Uh, and so that's a lot of copies.
you can forego the frontal ordeus and still go for a bunch of copies of
Archon it is significant damage regardless but you is going to have to work
through this ball work first. You can pick up a third Elise.
Goodness. Yeah, very very clunky here obviously Phil Field now has the four
glory lined up the refills basically still has drakax waiting to do disgusting
didn't get the activations in really really wanted to attack with the hero
power there to start working away on that bulwark not the you know worst of
rope runs we've had today but you know certainly doesn't feel great well yeah
We've had some this tournament. We have had some
Players are of course all playing on a neutral server a lot of the time so
Tends to be just slightly slow in their use again
They they will be used it or a lot of these players do play on all three servers anyway to accumulate their points and such like with their best score counting
But even so
We have seen a lot of roping going on as in failed roping not not the good rope
You just use your time to think, definitely.
Yeah.
But now, Philfield has quest completion, right?
So the Torbius comes into the hand,
able to turn through, get his deck down to a mirror,
four cards, four throw, just raw.
Yeah, that four card is super relevant,
because obviously, he just will
be able to win the game in two or three turns
from this point after playing the quest reward.
I'm just going to go ahead and throw out the renovator, saw a copy on that location and said no, thank you.
And Crystal Caverns plus Amara.
He gave a thumbs up at Amara, he doesn't mind the extra 10 health, you're saying?
Yep.
Can't blame him.
Save it till after you get king halved.
No, it's 0-40 copy.
Hey, copy again.
It's always one cost, it's always copy.
Those are the rules.
Yeah, makes sense, right?
Copy is the...
It doesn't scale, so you're getting it for one, it's doing the best job it can.
There's all the other scale.
I think you looking if there's any way to isolate the 8-8 for dubious purchase?
Yeah, always just go for a template.
I know technically copy does scale, just to be clear, but you're not copying for the minion, you're copying because you want the effect.
Right.
Well, this is interesting, going for a copy on the stealth, and because of the divine shield, you know, a little bit more protected here.
At least from Great Drake O'Rex, right?
The next thing you can copy the arc on itself, if he wants to.
Yeah, I think this is basically trying to get out, you know, something like a brawl,
right?
You really want to see that brawl go away.
Because when you have an odd number of Templars, you can sort of afford to use one in that
way.
They'll feel really happy about that outcome.
Yeah, I don't think he believed it was happening.
He had such a bad run of cards in his first round
that to actually have a few things going his way is like,
oh wow, really? I'm allowed to win a brawl.
Not even sarcastically looking.
It's just my sarcastic attitude that's talking about it.
He seems genuinely surprised that he's getting some luck.
He doesn't need a lot.
He's been a long way ahead in this game,
a little bit so nice to have it easy sometimes yeah thank you not happy about
these hits but does get the information of what the two treasures were that or
quest rewards rather were that Phil field pulled off the torvius these are
ad hits aren't they yeah I mean I almost would think yeah safety goggles
just get out of the hand. It'll be a duty's purchase, wins 50, 2 dead cards, and a shot at it.
It's up in the blinks now. Well done, Blink. You knew the assignment. Be at the bottom of the deck.
I'm here's a way that I forgot about. The step means this will cost 0,
in addition to chipping away at the weapon. I don't want to get this hero power in though,
or oh yeah there we go chrono daggers very likely
still needs the hero power swing
the damage race is on now filthill is able to
there we go considerable damage considerable healing uh good clear
yeah no does have the combo
yeah filthill has the the ammar to go up to 40 plus you know 34 armor showing
Wait the attack didn't go in so the oh
It's not so bad
Or that or we're just having a slight delay here. I think based on the the screen shakes. That's what's happening
But it's not such a big deal because of the battle cry on high Templar right it has a deal-to-damage
Yeah
So yeah, we missed something there.
Yeah.
I feel like we're not seeing what's happening at the moment.
Let's keep going on that for a second.
But, yeah, if I had to project what you would be doing, well.
So how much damage can you do for the maximum one turn is the most important thing now with
the shadow star?
Yeah, yeah, it needs both locations open.
There it is.
Yeah.
open right you get two copies
uh...
uh... how to say it's maybe just a skate pod here to stave off the team
better
circadian answer
uh... the at the most damage you can get
right is
you can
get deos down you go for both high-templars you'll get to double up
on those battle cries which is
yeah
total of eight
then
you
from the archon you get two copies of the archon
and each of the archon end of turn effects is going to get doubled
so
now i blank on whether or not
cuz our condos eight in the city and me face and then to damage
i think just to all minions i don't think that to damage also goes to my
understanding but i i can be one piece of time for times but yeah so eight
times
The 8 originally, and that does do 2, and it's the 416s at the end?
So I think it's something like 48, plus that 8 from the Templars.
Okay.
So, 56.
So that's why the-
It's apparently counting here by the way.
Yeeah.
And I think you was really hoping to hit with that corona.
This might be lethal.
You can go face.
You can ceaseless hero power.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Time warp.
Yeah.
And time warp.
I think they'll feel this is life.
Hero power is the bit that made it weird to count.
Why did it take you to count that so long?
But yeah.
Yeah.
Time warp just what you needed.
And it was pretty safe from what Gyu was able to present
damage-wise, regardless.
I think Gyu would have needed that Garona to hit,
to have much of a shot anyway.
That or would need sort of the board
to stick after making that Archon play.
So.
Yeah.
The second you see the time with Ceasar's
in hand in a normal game, because when we're casting
It always seems to be the mirror so you're going well
You can't just play 18 attack and they play a time warp. It doesn't do any damage
But in the normal game obviously you don't need to do the whole Galvanon thing
You just play a couple of cheap minions and
You know hitting them with the thing you've got on the board and then hitting them with your 10 10
Whatever else you can get in this case a weapon that all the hero pilot us a it's plenty
But the pressure the situation and the double checking triple checking feel feel has taken that to one lead
But he's got one deck left and it's the egg lock which he struggled with in the first round.
Yeah and you know, can you I think not have you with sort of the order of the draws there but having you know this rogue into the egg lock a little more capacity to say okay you focus on working towards your thing.
thing, I'll focus on working towards my thing and we'll sort of see who goes off first.
Then there's a DK and the egg lock really likes a DK. You can't clear the eggs. If you just race
and egg, egg, egg, egg, block your own egg, block your own egg, block your own egg,
make sure there's a copy, which is what you do anyway against everything. The DK just doesn't
really have much to do about it. It might come down to a grift to try and steal a 2020,
that sort of thing but yeah corpse explosion doesn't help it allows your
survival instincts to just wait and you have a lot going on so I think Phil
Phil would be very happy with this situation even if the Protoss rogue
turns out to be more difficult for him than he's expecting which it might not
because it's a bit of a slow burn and again the thing I found with the
dragon warrior you're having to kill their minions with your
removal so your egg isn't dying enough. Your spirit bombs cost four, they hurt you, you're
getting hurt by dragons. It's a bit of a juggling act. If your Potos Rogue opponent's not putting
much pressure on and you could just, you know, spirit bomb your egg, drain like your egg, just
do things to your egg so you've got a 20-20 egg and a nice little arch to it, it might be
reasonably unpressured. So we'll see how you put some pressure on against the egg lock,
If that is the matchup, he has gone with the Death Knight first, though, on the left of the screen there.
That way? I've never got this right before? Kinda.
Yes, yes, that way. I just gonna be a few Death Knight versus Phil Fields, Egg Warlock.
And, you know, let's just take a look at Gyu's list, since there are some sort of slight variations in the Death Knights.
He of course has that Zephyrus which played a fifth of a role in a
death night game earlier with the Savage Roar picked up that Sautel and Rick
from the casting. Bill Bill rolls his eyes no egg in the opener again didn't
even keep it the imp which I think can be a keep but no has missed again.
just just praying for a egg keeper or egg of careless itself has had some some
really bad beats this weekend like if he's doing it it is correct but I was
just going off base off the stats when I was testing it and I was keeping the
imp on its own because you have got sergeants you have got wisps you've
got some cheap stuff and if you end up without you draw three but obviously
you can draw an immediate one card just by throwing that card away looking for your egg
stuff so he will know better than me.
And uh he knows he's in a good spot seeing the tap come out.
I think you play the Zephyrus skew I think you have to put the pressure on early.
You can get table flipped and you can look very silly but I think you have to do it.
Yeah I mean it's not even that silly right if you're getting table flipped for two
one and a three two uh interesting goes for impact battlefield rather than deal damage
not what i would expect hex exists hexes in the pool uh yes that would be the reason if
you get hex you win on the spot immediately if you zephyr's into uh yeah and philfield knows
what was pecked he knows like well it's not great odds did you uh did you rip it or am i safe
it's not that bad either it's like there's ten or something like you can
definitely hit it but it's definitely a card you're terrified of happening yeah
now he breathes now you play the game but he is on 21 that's where the the game
actually gets awkward
so you do have to be brave with your health total with this deck I think yes
after I finished playing and sort of did a bit of a climb I went into another
streamer chat and they're saying, oh, you know, I found it hurt me too much. Well, when I was
testing it, I was, because I was testing and not too worried about my ladder placement, I was just
playing my cards and seeing how much, you know, I could stress test taking damage. And I think
you do have to just take that damage when needed with the spirit bombs, the hellfires,
etc. You have to push your health total to the limit.
Interesting pickup here of the holy egg bearer, I guess Phil feels saying like, well,
I don't want any of these right now, so I'm just going to let this card burn, and not have to deal with playing it at any point.
I was looking at maybe the configuration there, but it does already have one in hand.
Yeah, I was considering that too. Looks like we're going to table for it.
Why couldn't we table it first?
I think it just didn't matter.
When we table it first, then we can conflagration as well on our 0-3, right?
Well, but he wants to save it to either double up on Deathrattle from Dark Mero, or to do
it in turn as Archmage of Thorns.
it didn't matter. Okay, fine.
But foam render puts on the pressure. Not a lot of pressure.
It really does. It's not the card you want to see in a deck where I've just said, like, you don't want to take, you know, you've got to push your health total.
But foam render pushes it really hard for you. You don't have to push it yourself anymore.
ah
Q considering
Whether he wants to you know push the extra one or you know guarantee an extra corpse here about trading into the abuse of sergeant
It's the one
8 on the board, and then 5 for the next turn, that's 30, and that's how it works exactly.
Approximately the one might matter is the eyeball test, right?
Yep.
You know what I was saying earlier about my 12 rules in playtesting?
Do I kill my own minion with my drain souls, or do I kill the enemy minions? Here we go.
Yeah, gotta do this for the arcturidricorns.
But you usually like to have your eggs
you know a little closer to all the way popped by now.
Yeah.
Can I have to twist I think?
You got a second Archdruid, so it's not the disaster.
That one will be closer to pop if this one goes off, so...
Yeah, you know, I have to wonder about that turn with the cursed campaign...
Or, sorry, cursed cat poems, where he took the egg bearer just to discard it
and there was a conflagrate available.
then he could have kept the one in hand, played that one, maintained card size,
do the table flip first, then the abuse of Sargent,
sort of how you were describing.
Still got the same clear,
be one card deeper, be one, you know, egg-crack deeper.
Yeah, that would make sense in that context for sure, I think.
rack up the corpses to be able to keep swinging with this foam render
he has a twisting nether coming up in um a while just wow now
and is there ability to make a 2020 here while still getting rid of the poison?
I have to see, okay, yeah, abusive, you can use on something and then you can drain soul
the one-two.
Yeah, you need to get rid of the one-two, because if it's poison.
Oh wait, sorry.
I was thinking you can abuse it to kill the one-two, yeah, and then drain soul your
egg, but yeah, you know, this is fine, right here, drain soul the one-two.
If you want to get really fancy, you could go for Hellfire, but then you're at 5, so if
there's any chance of the 2020 getting cleared, you're taking the foam render and that's it.
And you currently have lethal setup because of the ooze in play, which basically allows
you to do 20 damage twice as long as one of your eggs is around.
Yeah.
I like better gets second 2020 in play heals you off some more and he's not happy about
that turn away from that twisting nether.
Stitch shine even with the shadow flame you know not big enough so he's gonna have
to hope for a freeze effect here so close to the deck or one more manner
story of this game I think yeah barrier is something but it's not great
barrier puts you on 39 in a lot of worlds where you're facing 40
So he's looking at do I go for the barrier
and just accept the benefit hope that the taunt is able to stop one of these
or does he have to just roll again?
And I think you have roll again find an actual
OK, so I'll show you.
Oh, OK, so you can so you can freezing trap and then
you double trade to get the corpses so you can morbid on the one one on the one
one and you think you stopped it yeah i mean the secret is on this side
oh right because of the leaves you don't you don't have to morbid one
but there's a dissolving use on this side of the board
you should buff the zero three egg into a 20 20 uh matter for it
yeah can you get rid of the three seven
I think the issue is like you do still want to attack with one of these 2020s. So the important bit is
You know being able to proc the freezing trap without bouncing one of these
The 37
Can
Hellfire and then spirit bomb, but then he's looking you know pretty low himself
Yeah
And he has to know that it is freezing so yeah I don't mind here just going ahead trying
to gain up life, stabilize, get this other egg pretty close to activation.
And place some other minions while you're at it as well so they can activate it.
Yeah, I mean corpse kind of too for you right so so there's really just no threat
of corpse explosion being relevant forces you to deal with another minion that
that can otherwise proc the freezing. He's so excited Phil, Phil, do you still
calculating away? He's been here before many times. Yeah. He's able to go for
the twisting other now though. He is. He is.
I think he was hoping to sort of keep it in reserve though as sort of ace in
hole. Could have a massive swing potential, right? Next turn he goes for
twisting Nether, attack with the weapon, and then double-dry it.
Okay. So you would, yeah. Oh, we'll just throw this down. Yeah, it really really
seems to want to do as much as possible without popping that emergency escape
button up the twisting other three we're still one minus short on this side
right I'm going crazy for real to clear with it the table flip do the spirit
bomb attack the world 2020s is all we use it after you tap for 40 a you're
still one month short
Yeah, and they- Do you need to take both?
You can't do enough damage with the other stuff, right?
Okay.
Yeah, they're a pretty good defense right now, and you know, he doesn't mind necessarily
the leeches working their way at these eggs, but this might just be a health fire or
a, yeah, or a health potion to double up.
Yeah, here we go.
get to another pair of 20-20s while still gaining some health and leaving the leeches
in play. It also crucially presents an egg that is one
away from...
Nethering, yeah. Yeah, one away from...
And the other one is two away, which means if something weird happens you can still use
the other one.
Uh, but I think you may just have to pull the trigger here.
It's working out if just putting Xeliacs in the way might be enough.
yeah it is scary because you run the risk of you know that the hell fires
table flips
to sort of punching through and then
it's way way too much damage
so the twenty seventeen you could put in your two little minions
and the zile Axis will put it down to
re you've got the morbid swarm available
and they would be in the way, like you say, but down side, let's do this first.
Yep.
And I get to throw giant down if he swings with the weapon.
Yeah, and he should be able to deal with the last 20-20.
Wait.
There's still an Umbra in Phil Field's deck.
There it is.
But no worries, site for now.
And I think Phil Field's going to have to put up that taunt defensively here,
along with maybe a freeze on the giant,
because he wants to tap, he wants to dig for that Umbra.
That's sort of the last big push.
It's games.
There it is, you have to play it now and if it doesn't roll 20,
because you could feasibly just get a bunch of early stage eggs, that's a miss.
That's another miss.
Oh no!
There's one.
What's your only favourite to get it this far?
Oh, there's two. Okay.
There we go.
Let's get his teeth.
Oh, does Shaladrissil do this though?
Is there anything they could do now?
it's a lot of sale
uh... you can bounce one
uh... one
you need to find one damage from somewhere
c
one note uh... zilex is twelve the giant is eight right so you get to clear one of
them
if you just plays aliax and swing all
yeah
then
oh feel-feel can't health fire comfortably he's going to have to heal if he's ever going to
heal fire to kill azalea because he will die
true yeah it does have the
health potion
to uh... to do that but
Not enough cards in hand to be able to
Table flip as well. So I think you do ziliacs kill one of them and say well if you're going to double
We've got to start doing now
Yeah, it doesn't kill you and the next thing you've got a hellfire
What's it doing and the pump? All right? This must be some things. Ziliacs no attacks
I think this is lying because
Yeah, a lot of hesitation there and I think that
You know because there's another meaning of play because there's
Um, table flip.
This is going to let Thillfield punch through Connector 40.
Yeah, if you're killed off one of the 2020s there, right, with the Zileaks, the trades, with the Giant, as Thillfield goes through,
Guy would have had enough health to have one more turn with a chance to be able to dream a 2020, play the, um, awakens and then swing with a face.
and that might have got in there.
But Filfield has pulled himself together
after a rough start to this tournament.
Largely couldn't have known for his own, to be fair.
He just couldn't draw the eggs.
But he is into the decider match for Group C.
And every person who came from the lower bracket
has won the decider match so far today.
Yeah, well, we'll have to see if the trend continues.
In that case, we would have our first egglock player
making it into day two.
I think in Kuro has one match he needs to win to make it in tomorrow, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
But waiting for Phil Field, the person you probably least want to see in half, say now
pocket trains out, Gabby is being around for what feels like 100 years at this point.
I think he's still 12.
Here we play Phil Field in this next match.
So I'm going to get us out of here now because I think people want to see that
and not me waffling on.
But thanks so much for this one
and we'll see you all in just a moment
for the Decider in Group C.
Don't go anywhere.
It's gonna be great.
the
I am joined by great pleasure to reintroduce, face to and be familiar to pretty much anyone
that watched any form of Hearthstone in the early 2020s.
particularly paid attention to APAC, Parthstone, the Gia and Derek dream team
taking you through the early shift on those marathon GM days. It is the one
the only, Mr. Derek Brown. Derek, how you doing? Hello, Southall. Very excited to be
back. Thank you for the very appropriate intro music as well. TJ, appreciate
that one. Yeah, sorry for my slightly low pitch quality. I'm coming from
You'd Live from 1998, apparently. I'm in my father-in-law's office right
right now and I am plugged into a VGA monitor. If you can remember such a thing with the little
screws on the side to go. But in terms of the Haas-Den Esports, I'm very excited to be
back. It's been a great couple of days. Like some big upsets, I think it's fair to say,
some great plays as well and just kind of from a macro Haas-Den Esports storyline standpoint.
It's so interesting to see, you know? The castle never leaves you, Derek. You're
30 seconds back in and you've already dropped the phrase macro heartstone e-sports narrative standpoint. That's what we like to see
That's the real that's the well cast the talk coming up
If you'll allow me to make my point. I think it's really interesting right like shouty going through
It's something you and I clearly expected right with us picking for him picking him for our predictions
But I don't think he's been playing particularly well, which is really surprising to me because he has always felt like such a kind of
like a almost mythical player,
right? Like you don't get to
see him that often play,
but whenever you do, you're
always so excited and people
talk about him in this kind of
semi mythical sense. But yeah,
really not. I think playing as
well as we would expect with a
pretty big self imposed loss
yesterday and then a couple
of shaky plays today, but
still obviously very excited to
see him go through devastating
for, you know, insane for
another kind of rough loss
that he's seen there. But
Group C is looking very, very
interesting love storm looking on fire yesterday and or on Thursday sorry and Gabby here as well
getting to see him again finally after so narrowly missing out on winning out the group
is really exciting to see because Gabby is just one of those eternally just joyful players to
watch so much larger than life physically as well as kind of narratively at this point
and I'm excited to see him play.
Yeah, Gabby, Gabby working hard
on making sure the stature fits the aura now
in recent years.
Looking forward to him going up against Phil Phil.
If you are just joining us,
you might have missed out on Phil Phil,
but he finally vibed his way to an egglock victory
to clutch out the series.
He got down to the position that you want to be in
when you bring that deck,
which is Rogue and Death Knight left on the other side.
side. Those are the two matchups that you absolutely eat with egg locks. So he was in
a fantastic position in the series. Going up against Gabby, that is going to be a little
bit more problematic because as you can see looking up a little bit in the bracket, Gabby
versus Filfield was our opener. Gabby does not have a death night in his lineup. So
it does become a little bit more difficult for that egg lock to potentially pick up
a victory. Gabby in the opener, I don't know if you remember this Derek from
day to almost felt a little mocking towards egglock when he just kind of farmed it really,
really easily in that opening series. So we'll see if any of that attitude remains going into this
one. But I think Philfield definitely feels like he's got his feet under the table a bit more in
this tournament now just based on that performance against against you. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, definitely. It's always scary for players. I think when they bring a slightly
off meta deck, like egglock or like almost kind of a funny deck where if it does fall flat on its face
as it did against Gabby going 0-3 cute three times in a row I think it was around just lost every time
it's kind of like you're you're embarrassing yourself rather than just I got unlucky I didn't
play well it's not before the tournament even started I shot myself in the foot but that's
clearly not the case now for Phil Field he's got a couple of a win with the deck
under his belt and if he's wearing a belt didn't look like it necessarily
I think he's a very, very
ambitious player. Um, but
coming into this is looking a
lot better for him now. Uh,
Gabby, though, I think is
that kind of that mocking
style that you say from him
is very emblematic of him as
a personality, right? Where
he has this incredible
bravado about him, uh, where
he's this very, um, uh,
ambitious player both in
ambitious person both in game
made a video together, kind of taking us through some of his tournament, previous tournament experiences
that you've had. He does have a certain amount of vulnerability, I think as well. It's easy to forget.
He's still a very, very young person and still, I think, has his whole world ahead of him. And
despite having this very impressive attitude towards all endeavors that he undertakes,
there is a certain level of, I don't know, insecurity there. I think it's fair to say
that he is trying to overcome. Obviously, he's very impressive as a player and that shouldn't
necessarily be there. But it's interesting to see that he's not just all kind of
brash bravado as might be might seem the case when you see him talk. So I'm excited to see
because I think, you know, when these players do get these big tournament wins,
the emotions can finally come out and I think Gabby the only achievement that he's let yet to claim in half zone is being the world champion.
So if nothing else I'd just like to see how much that would mean to him because everything else almost feels trivial at this point with how much he's achieved so far.
There's I think three of those in this tournament.
People might even be able to throw more into the mix, but I think Gabby fury hunter jowty you could all apply that description to right like so many tournament wins.
tournament wins under their bell, respect of their peers, respect of you know people who the people
came before them, their elders in the Hearthstone scene, everyone absolutely understands that they
are the the real top tier of you know the last five or so years of Hearthstone. Jouhti maybe even
a little bit longer than that on top of that but they don't have that world championship win
under their bell and that's what makes an event like this so special. It seems reductive but
that it does come around once a year.
And even when you have a game with the longevity
of Hearthstone that's been going for 11 years
and had 10 world championships,
that still creates a very, very exclusive club.
What, you like that?
Do you like that one, Darren?
Just take an exclamation mark, Artosis.
You just can't just firing or saying that.
Just give me an exclamation mark, Artosis,
in the chat, absolutely.
Yeah, so the fact that we have three players
like that in this field, right?
but then also a yangning and a pocket trade in this field who are going for repeat world championships back to back in the case of one of them. Absolutely stacked field altogether. But we've been waffling for long enough. Let's actually talk about some of the
in front of us. We've got Warrior versus the egg lock stacked up. Warrior, not a great match up
against the egg lock, but probably the best of the control decks at being able to deal with it,
because what they can do that Death Knight can't is, during all of that faffing period that we
saw from Phil Field against the Death Knight, where you have to draw the egg, then shoot
the egg two or three times, then get your dark marrow down, your arch druid down.
During that time warrior can draw their deck and gain 50 armor in the time that that's happening, right?
Which gives them so much stability against a couple of 2020s that then you just have to piece together that one turn
That's that's like it's like a hostile invader with the spell burst
Proc all the eggs then brawl you've got 15 mana because you've already ramped a couple of times during the game
You know you have all the money you need to clear you get that one big clear to come down
you can get over the line, which is something that we did see almost exactly from Gabby in the first series.
I would say maybe Philfield did not quite have the delicacy and the attention to detail that you need to kind of prevent those situations happening,
because obviously you're in such control of like the cadence of the recursiveness of your eggs, right?
So you can have like one slightly cracked, one fully cracked and a 20-20 on the board,
board, and then suddenly it's really hard to deal with.
But I do think there's a lot of potential skill diff on both sides
in this matchup.
And I think Gaby perhaps got the better of that first time
around.
And we'll see if Philfield has picked up any tricks
or to pick up tricks or two along the way.
Because Gaby is going to toss that quest
and just look for ramp, for card draw, for armor gain.
And the ballwork of Azarov, actually, not a bad thing
to have in hand either.
Yeah, it's really interesting to kind of talk about that to consider DK versus
Warrior went against the egg warlock because we kind of saw in the previous series where you did get someone out pre up pro
Active game plan in the first few turns
By building up a bit of board trying to pressure but didn't double down on it
Whereas you and I in the waiting room were kind of talking about maybe
Zephyrus for damage rather than board clear would have been
More consistent proactive aggressive approach
which whereas, as you say, the warrior does have a proactive game plan in these early turns,
but it's less to do with aggression. It's more to do with this kind of progressing, the
card draw, their armor, as you say, building up to get those big clears later on. But while
we can camera about this back and forth, the main thing is that right now there is
no egg and no clear way to find the egg for Philpheal. So it's just going to be
a whole lot of juggling these cards back and forth and trying to make something
happen? Phil Phil having to coin nothing there as well just to avoid the burn at the end of the
turn not ideal but just slamming through the imp as hard as possible Gabby just fires out the
precursor strike just to draw one extra card pick up a minion now has the hostile invader in hand
and Gabby turns down the mana efficient play of just pre-loading the bulwark of Azenov which
I do respect because Phil Phil does have a couple of options in the deck to be able to chip away at that
Before the before the 2020s come out to play
Okay, I mean relevant a relevant card, but not the absolute game ending card has been eaten by ham there
Which yeah, that ham is another big reason why warrior does have a lot more game in this matchup than some of the other control decks do
I mean, that would have just been too perfect of a story to write.
Phil, Phil, Phil knocked out because of what eggs and ham doesn't come to fruition here.
He does not like them Sam, I am.
But here we go. The game begins with Phil, Phil. And for Gabby here, what are we looking for?
Is it just the case?
I'm sure he's sorry sorry dad are you sure you like your job like that these are the kind of hits that you only get from
Derek Brown like I think we need you back on the casting desk immediately
Yeah, well makes for a caster not yeah, yeah, good point good point
So, for Gabby here, you talked about his proactive game plan in his first few turns where you're
drawing cards, gaming armor, trying to set up for this big productive clear.
Is that still the game plan here where he's not under too much pressure quite yet?
Like it's been a bit of a slow start for Phil, Phil?
Is Gabby still gearing up for just a big clear, or is he gonna try and maybe get underneath
this Kellos and go for an aggressive game plan. His opponent is down at 16.
You just can't really do it with Wariova. You don't have the minion support to be able to do it.
Even if you get a really aggressive Elise location, they're just going to play like one table flip or one Hellfire and clear your whole board.
This time where Philfield doesn't have a really aggressive start with the eggs,
this is time that you do want to use to just build resources, gain armor, draw cards.
This is exactly what Gabby wants to be doing getting down to your gaining armor drawing through his deck already
Pretty much keeping pace with the deck that
Exclusively draws cars and have a card draw hero power
By drawing cards so quickly so Gabby doing everything he needs to be doing right now just getting those resources bill up
One one copy and three armor sure, okay
I remember this play as well.
Get in there, fight, maggot!
So, stage 3 of the Eggnail with the cracked open top, I believe, about to appear.
Yep, one more proc needed for the 2024 Field-Field.
But you can already feel the loss of that dark marrow makes these turns a lot less explosive than they would be otherwise.
doesn't matter in a lot of matchups because in a lot of matchups you don't
have to deal 50 speven to win the game but you can see already the case for the
warrior can tank a couple of 2020 hits absolutely no problem here in the quest
to set up a full clear so as Phil feel here please preemptively excuse me how
much do you have to tread on eggshells when you're going to set up turns can
you just like make a bunch of 2020s and just pray they don't have to clear
or do you have to have some like back-up uncracked eggs
to be able to proc in case of a big clear,
like what are you considering people?
Is it just all in or try and hold something back?
Yeah, it's a great question.
As we all know, you can't make an omelette
without breaking a few eggs,
but you do have to be careful with the order
in which you break them.
This kind of situation where you have
four different recursive stacks is beautiful.
You have one 2020, one relatively fresh egg,
one egg that's only one proc away,
and then the arch drew it as well,
which is another step along the chain
because your big fear is always hostile invader.
Hostile invader can always deal with the egg on the far right
that's like almost all the way open.
It can always pop open that with hostile invader.
So if you've only got those two stages,
one step away eggs and fully hatched 2020s,
that's fairly easy for the warrior to deal with.
And I think that's kind of, I wouldn't say mistake,
just for the sense of simplicity.
I don't necessarily think Phil Phil had the option,
but that's the mistake that Phil Phil made
in the previous series against Gabby
that enabled the brawl for clear
to come out in the end from Gabby.
But I think without Dark Marrow,
I'm getting so distracted by whatever Phil Phil
is eating right now.
But this setup is a lot better,
but he's suffering from the lack of explosivity
that comes from not having the dark
barrel available, which means Gabby
can kind of just chill against a solitary 2020.
He doesn't actually have to worry about it too much.
Man, if you're getting distracted by that from Phil, Phil,
you wouldn't have lost one day in APAC GM.
My Lord, the stuff they ate on broadcast
on some of those days.
I did Europe GM straight after,
which each Europe GM day was about eight APAC days.
So don't talk to me about surviving GM days, Derek.
APAC players just turned up and threw trees at each other
for five minutes per series, and then went home.
Oh, man, those are good days.
It feels weird, right?
I was thinking about this earlier,
but like, you know, bringing Cora back,
bringing you back, having all the guest casters.
It feels like we're doing that sitcom final season finale thing,
where you bring back all the character, and they're like,
oh, this is the end, you know, it's all just a big nostalgia-bait
reminiscence package, when in fact, this is the first time in many years
where we're like, no, no, no, we're actually back next year.
There's more of this.
There is actually more of this coming.
And reprising his role as Doctor Doom, it's Derek.
Yeah, we've just got Robert Downey Jr. is playing Gia now for the next season.
I mean, if anyone would do it, it's him.
What a method actually.
Alright, whole lot of eggs on the board now as Gabby is, as you said, going for this big, kind of clear up turn.
Is this a hostile invader turn? It honestly seems a whole lot too messy to me.
We're going for any kind of thing like that
Yep
So he's just gonna say it will work of as enough. He's under no real threat here
He can absolutely just take his time and now he does have a pretty nice looking aggressive game plan set up
He's also gaining mana. He's already at max mana 13
You can see at the top on the max mana counter
So he can start to edge towards the territory where something even like great Dracar X plus parole becomes available if
if uh Phil Phil waits too long which again affects what level of eggs you can have hanging around
so let's get to that point where you have the nice balance of uh helices and like semi-broken
eggs right so it just becomes a real kind of Dr Boone's laboratory puzzle every
time Gabby wants to clear this board. It's exactly that yeah but you can see
that there's only you know he's one shield slam then a hostile invader then
a brawl away from the full clear even on this board state right there's only one
tricky egg in the way everything else is fairly simple for him to clear. Yeah
that's true and I imagine Gabby might just take that opportunity right now
yeah it's looking pretty clean isn't it all things considered
No, no, okay. Taking this time. Just gonna shield slam away one by 20.
Happy to pick this up over time. Yeah, such disciplined gameplay, isn't it?
Like, because my instinct is to kind of see these eggs as a threat, which obviously
they are, but not immediately, and a 20-20 left on board with Bullwalk doesn't matter at all.
And this is just such gorgeous play from Gabby, where it's just completely calm, completely
unflap. This is the exact kind of situation where you would expect the pressure of competing in the
World Championship would lead you to misplay because you just don't want to, the pressure
sets in, you don't have time to think about it, you just panic and you think,
I have to clear this board, but Gabby taking it so slow. And it's just, as you said,
because of no summoner dark Marrow for feel feel becoming harder and harder to
continue to threaten that for he's got made one or two more turns where he can
threaten a Kellos but after that it's it's gonna be tough and I think there
might be a world you know not having a massive amount of experience I'm only
just you know crystallizing this idea now where Gabby just says I never have
to clear these eggs if you don't start hurrying up and making a bunch of
You're dying to fatigue the clock is on you not me my friend like you're the one that has to get on with it presents and threats
Matthew's coming along fast. He's gonna be drawing the last part of his deck next to
We shrug off that 2020 like it is no big deal Gabby is
is. If Gabby swings with the Bulwark this game, I don't just be too much. Swing with
the Bulwark for Lethal would be so sick. Oh, for Lethal? Yeah, I was gonna say, we've
seen a fair amount of attacking minions with Bulwark this tournament, but yeah, swinging
it like the gallon pushed the one for Lethal, that would be the dream for sure.
Nice player to mock up a few more of these.
Yeah, double proc off the spellburst and the copy will proc open all of the eggs, everything
lined up nicely.
For all this away, you still have your ballwork of Azenoth up, so even if a 2020 bell survived,
no big deal.
and then you just have the Umbra left to survive
with Philfield taking the team.
Not to mention once the ball work has gone,
2020s do currently have to connect eight,
sorry four times to end the game.
Gabby just from pure armatof.
Oh, it is Ooz's last card.
Let's just see what comes out of this Umbra first.
Then we can assess and see if there's anything
you've done here from Philfield.
Cause if it's all eggs, as you say,
Gabby can just ignore it and just wait for Philfield
guy on his own right.
One 20-20?
Okay.
Ooh, two 20-20s.
That's a little more scary.
That's pretty good.
Ooh, interesting, is he not going for procing another one straight away?
Because he could have just had another 20-20 though, which would have been a little
bit more likely to threaten lethal.
a for glory there is still enough mana remaining and there is the suitless and
there's the bulb every card we could possibly need in the world of Hearthstone
to be able to clear all this up and yeah I think Philfield is just gonna be
fatiguing to death here. Yeah nothing to do, Gabby could just ignore the remaining
20-20 for the rest of the game and it wouldn't even matter it's just
absolutely nothing feel feel can do as as you predicted the warrior it's it's interesting
like the relationship between control decks and these sort of all in you know gimmick feels a bit
pejorative but these types of decks that just have one big push all sent around one card or one big
minion like the all in the all in edwin decks back in the day things like that control decks
have typically done very well against them just being able to circumvent the the big push
that they throw down there and you know first glance I wouldn't have thought Wari would be able
to do it so easily it felt like such a tangled mess with all those eggs Brawl typically doesn't
do very well against these death rattle heavy decks but as we said such a cool karmic collected
approach from Gaby means that he has the resources to be able to get there and I think just
a very well deserved first win of the series. Yeah fortunately it was a matchup that I chose
to put some time into testing when I saw the deck lists because like you said I don't think
I think it's one you could bluff if you just guessed that on stage, like you would just give, you'd be so wildly wrong because it just feels like, oh you know the deck that has no transform effect only has really like four hard removals in the whole deck and none of them deal particularly well with death rattles is not going to be able to survive this deck whatsoever but when you factor in the armor gain the ceaseless almost always getting down to zero because of the number of eggs that die right each egg is five minions in one so you can see that.
of millions dies, the Cecilis gets discounted, Ham being such a ridiculously disrupted card
as well. It is just a pretty solid matchup for the warrior. It's not a disaster for the
egg lock, but the egg lock can still win it for sure. But it's why I was very quick to
just point out that there is, I think, a skill gap in the matchup. I think the closer
you get to playing perfectly, the more it tilts towards the warrior in my mind,
personally because I think the puzzle, the boon labs puzzle is much harder to solve than
it is to create, right, in a lot of situations. So yeah, I think harder to play from the warrior
side and when you have one of the absolute best in the world in terms of getting piloting
that warrior who made it look absolutely effortless.
You've got to respect the man who speaks to his gimmick as well. He's brought egg
egg lock and by God, he's going to play egg lock as opening hand.
There it is straight away making for a really nice start here as I'd imagine in a matchup
like this, you have to get going pretty quick as the egg wall look right.
Both decks have these incredibly explosive turns they can pull off and feel feel well
actually both players look like they have a lot of the tools that you'd need to
get them going right.
Yeah.
Crystal task.
You are always going to be happy.
actually cracking out the first attack automatically with the task which is not
always a given. The problem with the task is the turn you choose to go in with
the second attack. You almost always want to be playing and everything must go
on that turn because if you don't it then probably sets you back to maybe
even three turns afterwards because you're minus two zero mana card draws
from not having the weapon set up on the future. So some players will choose
even if they have it played on two to wait until four for the second swing of
the weapon which they will then argue it's more flexible to hold on to the
weapon entirely for turn three and turn four than from swing plays on turn two
but Gabby does swing immediately and Phil Phil is gonna respond with
instant egg which Gabby is gonna be less than pleased to see here. So
instantly cracking the deathrattle there on the crystal tusk. Do you think there was any consideration
for holding off for a turn or to see if you do manage to find some of these card drop effects
so that you can get that big all-in-one everything must go turn? So the problem is
this matchup is very very difficult for the rope. Once this egg gets consolidated on the board
good luck killing your opponent with asteroids right? Like how are you going to get asteroids
to hit your opponent in the face ever from this point onwards, so really the way that you win
the match up, more often than not, is turn three EMG and just hoping for that miracle to happen so
that you can make this big board with a couple of yeti-sized minions that don't get table flipped
and connect with those and then maybe your Incindious has enough damage in the late games
to be able to get over the line because as it stands now, Phil Phil can just merrily march
on with his business here and Gabby is going to be a little bit too slow so I think it was
just one of those bad matchups go for the small percentage outcome where it's offered
to me and Gabby just did not really find the hand to reward with the EMG.
Yeah I can respect that. Obviously right now I guess we're praying for, I don't even know,
Twisted Webweaver could maybe give you enough card draw and then a couple of miracles
off the everything must go but I think honestly latest turn six there's going to be a callos
on the board right it's looking like it's could even be this turn. Yep the thing that Phil
Phil has to navigate now is just not going too low health rink is a fantastic pickup to be able
to manage those situations because obviously the likes of hellfire and spirit bomb and so on you
do do a lot of self damage in this warlock so if he slips a little bit too low and then we
do get into Incindious territory. You can just sort of accidentally offer your opponent
a free kill that was otherwise a guaranteed win, but I think with Hell's Drink now to
be able to point at his own ex, he's going to be very, very comfortable with this over
one turn. Fingers crossed, Scythe himself up, Phil
feel against Gabby could actually be getting a win with the egg wall across the
earth earlier and always speaking of disasters just absolutely nothing
coming together here at all for Gabby right? Nope. He is able to slam the
Incindious next turn so if he can get Incindious landed that's 10 damage that
goes into the deck then you draw blood mage Thanos that's 15. One or two of
If the six Asteroids you have in your deck you get to go face, then you're looking at
18 to 21 damage.
It is tough for Phil Phil to get too much higher than that, so if Phil Phil was a little bit
slower you have a chance, but the 2020's lethal on board, can't play insidious, nothing
else matters.
Yep, just one of those games.
It may not have seemed like a big turn, but I think that turn through and Gabby swung
with the Tusk. It was either one or lost on that turn, right? Either he got the big miracle turn
with the ENG or he didn't. And in this instance, he did not. So Field Field almost certainly
going to be equalizing the score here at one game apiece. And you talked about how the Egg Warlock
didn't have the death knight to go up against, right? To get the good matchup. How important
of a win. Is this for field field to get it?
So it is huge. It's massive. You know, the reason why two players have brought
out to this tournament is that it has a good matchup against Rogue and a good
matchup against Death Knight and you would be well within your rights to
expect the majority of your opponents to have both of those decks. I do feel
both of those players have been a little bit unlucky with the matchups
that they have and have featured people that have either excluded Rogue
or excluded death knights and they've only had one or the other. But more importantly than the actual
matchup matrix, I think it's just an element of mental comfort for Phil, Phil, who was in this
position yesterday, jammed the egg lock three times, exactly the same thing it looked like he
was about to do here, and Gabby just batted him aside, just absolutely little brood him out of
of the series and into the lower bracket and was, you know, like I said, just a little bit
derisory in his mannerisms on camera while doing it to the egg lock as well.
Philfield did have one absolute stinker drawer in that where I think he's three of his bottom
eight cards with the two egg bearers and the egg, which is obviously like insanely
unlucky to get to that point.
So I think just from an avoidance of tilt perspective, Philfield will be delighted
to have that warlock win on the board. So I know that there's been a lot of hate all throughout the
weekend towards Shaman, right, with obviously from Pocket and Fury being eschewing it completely
and not wanting to bring it whatsoever, but ending up on it. How do you think this is
going to be ending up for Gabby, right? Is this going to be another problem deck? Has
it actually been as dire as you guys have been making out or has it been performing
reasonably well do you think? It's performed okay but it's kind of performed as expected right?
The criticism and it has become cliche at this point because it's been repeated so many times
but that's the essence of it being true and us all having to state the fact over and over again
for three days of broadcast so far right? The problem with the deck is that it's very linear
and very predictable in terms of what it's doing to the player and to the opponent
because of that when it does do the thing it's incredibly powerful and we
seen Love Storm for example just hitting location Hagatha repeatedly and the deck
looks absolutely unbeatable because the the the curve play in a very secret
part in S you just do the most efficient thing possible in Hearthstone
every single turn and your opponent explodes the problem becomes when
control warrior gets a dracar X swing turn against you and then suddenly
your entire decks useless because you can't re-establish a board into a minion like Dracorex.
Your deck just doesn't really do that anymore and lots of decks are capable of doing things like that.
Discover Hunter similarly can do these like mana cheat of 30 mana turns all in one turn where
you create this huge swing and then you're looking at that going okay I have the card
furious fouls in my hand right like it just doesn't doesn't achieve anything in response
to what Hunter can hand out. So it's a very feast or famine deck. It's a deck that would
not have been in my lineup coming into this. I would have been on Death Knight Hunter Cycle
Road Quest Warrior. The more I watched the tournament, the more I think that Copy Druid
was actually a very good idea when it comes to the Pocket and Fury's lineup. And just
the rest of it is what fell over. Because Copy Druid has been, the Copy Druid's
been eating bands for both of those players throughout this tournament, right? Which
is great news because that then means you would get to play Hunter but then they didn't bring Hunter
so they don't get to capitalize off that which is really bizarre so the more I think about it and
having seen Pocket and Fury's lineup in action I think I would have perhaps like copydrew it Hunter
Rogue Warrior as as as the solve lineup for this but I think Shaman is a deck that is never
going to be too far away from having some ability to win any game of Hearthstone it's
it's just I'm surprised personally that a player with the ability to outplay like Gabby ends up on
Charlotte because I don't think those outplay options exist as much in Charlotte as they do in
other decks. So I'm surprised to see Gabby on it but we shall see. I mean it's kind of emblematic
of Gabby though, right? Like when he was in his real heyday of taking down MT after MT,
He was just a pretty staunch for best decks player, right? There wasn't that's right. Yeah consideration. I would say yeah for
Dex skill level because you know, obviously
Would in any tournament be one of the better players with the decks he brought but he he really did just bring the best
For the four best ladder decks in his opinion more than anything else really
but I think there is a caveat to that where
sometimes the four best debt like to Gabby involved D6 Warlock or it involved
Brute Demon Hunter or it involved spell mage right and but those weren't the
four best decks to everyone else because they weren't as good at those decks as
Gabby was and that's the period sort of early lockdown European GN where Gabby
and Blythe were just so dominant over everyone else because they were total
monsters on those kinds of decks and those kind of decks were very
prevalent in the game at that point so it remains to be seen but regardless we
are we're back on our cycle road grind we're back on our tusk and Gabby here
choosing to shadow step the space rock collector here a couple of reasons to do
this firstly it does potentially cheat you more mana on the next turn and
enable your everything must go if you're to pick up any of the cards like
and O-Manager a particular dubious purchase.
Secondly, if you draw Eat the Imp,
you would much rather have a Zero Manor card in your hand
than leave it out on the board
where it's definitely going to die to your opponent's minion
and potentially strand that Eat the Imp.
Thirdly, the Twisted Webweaver pick up.
That Gabby has then finally found
off the card draw from the weapon,
but still ends up a long, long way away from that EMG.
Yeah, I wonder, I mean, I'm definitely going to question Gabby, but my first thought when you shadow steps was was platysaur, right?
What if you pick up that feels like one of the best cards in these turn three, four, five situations to shadow step and get yourself an extra card for?
That is disgusting.
Oh, he's dark gifted a six six.
Ah, it's called Toy Snatch or Golum or something like that, which is then discovered as zero
mana hideous husk, discounted by six because of the six attack on the Dark Gifted Minion.
Absolutely disgusting outcome for Vilphil. That is huge. Obviously a disappointing outcome to miss
on the webweaver to allow a little bit more card draw for Gaby, but right now it just
doesn't seem like it really matters.
Platasaur for two more draws.
It's still not coming together.
It's looking like it's going to be a little too slow.
Yeah, no prep.
All you need was a prep or a step to be able to bring that together.
I'm sure the the rogue haters are going, oh, all you need was a prep or a step.
Well, that sounds different for rogue, but shut up.
That's what happened.
is there any hope for incendiars to be able to turn this around if he's not just dead right now?
Not when he's dead! Not when he's dead, Derek!
What a disgusting game, exact legal as well.
Now, now, very hard to criticise a game that you've lost because your opponent
went dark gift into buffed toy-snatching geist into zero mana hideous husk, right?
right. Very hard to criticize, but from my experience and my knowledge and my ability on the deck and certainly what I've seen real, real top players criticize others for doing with that deck, Gabby has now gone in on those weapon swings incredibly aggressively on turn two and turn three, which as I mentioned, if you miss, which you usually will unless you have a specific hand on those turn three second weapons
second weapon swings, you're then set back so far for the potential EMG. To me, to my untrained
eye, my moderately trained eye on looking, that seems aggressive, that seems ambitious,
the way that Gabby is going about it. Would he have won that game? Almost certainly not.
Like that series of outs was disgusting in that situation. Would he have won the
game against Turn 3 Egg? Almost certainly not. That situation was far too difficult
deal with. However, I am a little surprised. Just looking on how aggressively he is going after those
early weapon swings. We'll see. Yeah, it's just a case with all these types of decks about how much
do you trust the deck, right? I know Lorinda has been talking a lot about this in our virtual
green room where when he's streaming this deck, people have been shouting at him to trust the
deck more. You know, you can't make the plays with the cards you have in hand. You have to
make them with the cards you might draw and just trust that eventually because you're drawing
you'll find the cards that you need, the majority of the time, even if it doesn't work out in practice every single time. And for Gabby, I guess he just believed in his deck to provide what he needed, but it did not do so in that game.
So one last chance for Gabby here to get the win with the cycle rogue and one last chance
for Gabby to stay in the tournament at all.
One more game lost here means that the Hearthstone superstar, the hope of France rests entirely
on his shoulders.
Will Gabby be able to turn this around and advance through to the top eight?
It's looking a little bit more likely based on this starting hand.
Crystal Tusk. Three games in a row. It's now finally the time rule will work.
100% and this time he has a much nicer looking set up for some aggression. He's
not quite, he's on the coin, he still has the coin, he hasn't cleaned out the
weapon. He also potentially has great sales for Ethereum off the top. He does
shuffle the Juvius purchase back into the deck of course of Crystal Tusk but
he does also now have that backup plan of Incindius so even if he
doesn't hit everything must go here he could hit for example O manager and then
have double coin incendiars in his hand ready to go which also gives him a great
route through the rest of the game. Again just swinging on three here Gabby is
just not giving any consideration to holding for some bigger swing turns
later on I guess when the rest of his hand is looking pretty dry in terms of
Okay, I think he's gonna chill you I was about to say if he draws exactly dubious purchase of this second space rock collector
It is playable with the prep but I'm just a hold here
It's still end up being what would that be six card draws seven card draws
So yeah, he still would not end up with a playable everything must go even if he hits off the dubious purchase there
So I think that makes sense
pretty nice hand shaping up here though for Philfield with very likely board clear on the
following term with hostile invader even if we do see an EMG actually it could still be
a clear. Philfield's about to do the cheat. Admin.
A what? 5 charge bull up. 5 charge bull up. Minus 1 durability.
make me a piece
I say we got it starting with a completely free
dubious purchase to draw three
picking up prep do be again
so already seven draws deep this time
as a whisk for another one or there is a need to be in
so they are free
the e-m-g's are free at this point anyway you want them but you have to
find them first you have to decide between cultist map and eat them to
be able to do it. So Coltist could hear obviously everything must go itself it could hit a prep
which would be fantastic obviously getting the other card plus being able to get down the EVM.
I think both preps would just used that turn. Oh you're right both of them. Oh my goodness.
I think we should just be able to have a look here. Should just self-sit yeah there you go.
but two still two steps and the Phoenix in there which would all cost zero off the
culture's map to be able to get the lucrative double card roll off that
option it's a low boost
still nothing doesn't want to commit the shallow steps here I guess saving them
for a more mid late game plan around in symbiote trying to get down you know
the Thalnos a whole bunch of meteors as well.
There's the EMG burned off the top, it's kind of fine.
We're now at the point where Warrior is able to clear that stuff up anyway.
I think honestly the worst part about that previous term for Gabby is that he didn't even
hit that consolation prize I was talking about where he hit the old manager with two
mana remaining and then this turn he would have been able to go coin coin in Cyndias
So he's going to have to make do with single coin in Cyndius next turn instead
And so what we've been mainly focusing on Gabby's game plan on the other side as it slows down for a turn here
is feel feels only metric of if he's winning or not. Am I able to keep the board clear or does he need to start shifting to some kind of
proactive game plan or focus on his own dex mission a little bit more instead?
Yeah, no, no, it's a good shout. It is almost exactly at this point in the game where he needs to be thinking about doing that because
as I mentioned, the EMG being burned actually wasn't that big a deal at this point. If you can get it down to turn three, turn four against Warrior,
They struggle to interact with it if you're doing it past turn five they can brawl they can do hostile and beta combos
The stuff's probably gonna die anyway
Your win for making that bigger board is the warrior has to skip a turn being reactive to what you're doing now at this point
Phil Phil sees the old manager set up from Gabby as well. So he's like, okay incendiars is going into the deck
My opponent still has not played their blood mage found us. They still haven't played any shadow steps
So I am going to be facing
Incindious with an upgrade with bloodmage thalnos with the maximum number of maulers and steps over the course of the game
So now I need to start thinking about how much armor can I stack on top of this to actually be able to stay alive
Which is currently a decent amount
With crocalis shield block safety goggles plus as zileaks as well because obviously in an ideal world
Gabby would be unleashing all his damage at once
but it's difficult to make your deck behave sometimes. Very often a couple of eruptions, a couple of meteors will come down and deal partial damage.
And Zileaks, if it can get full value lifesteal, is often just a complete difference maker at this stage in the game.
Mm-hmm. Gabby does currently only have seven real cards left in the deck, though, and he does have two zero mana draws from the weapon,
two more draws from the Coltis Mat and two Platysaur's in hand so he should be
able to do all relevant damage in a single turn from this point and Phil
Phil is just stacking as much as humanly possible here up to 49 the Gabby
is gonna start swinging for those fences he's going to one blood mage as
as soon as possible here.
That's two eruptions, that's three eruptions!
That's four!
This is a disaster!
Oh, oh my goodness, they were literally the top five cards in the deck.
That is a picture of disaster for Gaby.
Oh, that's heartbreaking.
I think that's a good point.
Has the full suite of more than
meteors ready to go, which is,
you know, a huge amount of
damage at this point in the
game, but I don't think he has
the manner to make it work on
this turn right with Thalmos as
well.
Yeah, I need it said 12.
damage and he's already attacked with a weapon this turn and used his own manager. So even in the
perfect world where he could do all of those things, Philpheal is actually already one armour
out of range of what Gaby could output. And just board clear after board clear coming through here
Philpheal. The fact that he saved the quest actually pretty relevant because there was a
a turn where he's had a free mana a few turns ago and just thrown it down but realized there's
basically no point save it for the spell burst and it's massively rewarded here because just look
at this amount of elf he's dropping with an essentially clear board on the other side.
Hey silver lining Gabby gets to push for three and I'll save him here. I mean it makes a
difference you know you need to get every single point squeezed in here like even that point on
turn five where he could have left his opponent at one armor to play around safety goals and
he still pushed the one with the width. Like all those little things that might seem inconsequential
can be the difference maker when so often we see in this matchup the warrior at two,
the warrior at three, just these very low health totals. But that just being the road completely
burnt out and it certainly feels here with even what is this going to be 12 asteroids in the
deck it's just not gonna be enough is it Gabby's gonna draw the juice not to
mention of course there is effective health which includes the health of the
minions that can tank the asteroid shots as well Gabby is just gonna go
through the motions here with the damage with the Bloodmage Falmos and make
that final board and just hope that it gets to push
He's going to load up the rest of this board, but very shortly he is going to get the disastrous news.
He's not even going to wait and see. He doesn't believe in the whatever burning Phoenix. He is out.
He is not hanging around. His World Championship is over.
is going to be progressing
through from Group C and the
vibes have been immaculate
throughout the tournament for
Fillfield and now he has the
results to match. He brought
the egg, but the player who's
ended up with egg on his face
here is Gabby as Fillfield walks
on through. What a series
Derek Brown. What a pleasure to
have you back with me for
that one. It was great fun to
cast. That was very exciting
of talent, still continuing to come through in Hearthstone eSports. That's what we're really trying
to push with our new revamped system. So really, really great to see that from Feel Feel and to
see a real community push behind him as well. You know, just not just because of the egg lock,
but just his exuberant person, about exuberant personality on camera. He's really getting
a lot of support as well. So that is really great to see. I know we've been pushed to
break before we go, I do just want to push our new system next year because Feel Feel is so emblematic
of that. As we said next year, we have an extra master's tour, we have a world championship final
at BlizzCon, we have more qualifiers, more prize pool, and I think most importantly of all we're
really trying to make a push for players who haven't competed before to have a go. It's
and easier to compete with shorter open qualifiers,
less emphasis on ladder where I know
it can be very time to compete.
So if you're watching a Twitch exclamation mark 2026,
read our blog,
and for where I like too much
and everyone loses their minds.
Join in next year.
The qualifying time is approaching January.
Plenty of ways to qualify and we'd love to have you.
It's a very welcoming community.
So hopefully we'll see you all there.
Yeah, great job, Derek.
worry. They can push us to break as much as they want. I wasn't going to let you go
without squeeze. I would have prompted you even if you had stopped talking.
I should have trusted you.
Check out, check out Exclamation Mark 2026. The highlight of course being worlds back
in person. At BlizzCon the promised land has returned. Look forward to that but also
look forward to plenty more Hearthstone coming today. We are going to go to a very
quick break and we will be back with Group D. Elimination Day continues here on
Hearthstone eSports. We'll be right back.
Hello everyone and welcome back. We're getting ready to get into our next match. I'm Raven
and joining me for this one is Rekvam. Very excited to have you in, get the chance to cast
with you. I think you've done a great job so far. How have you been enjoying so far?
It's been great. Today's had a lot of interesting games. A few missed leafels
here and there, a lot of excitement. I'm happy that I get to cast a friend in Fury Hunter,
a long time practice partner as well, so that will be great. I hope he can do better than
Pocket Train, but I'm excited to see this lineup hopefully finally perform and show
that it's not a complete blunder to bring it to worlds.
Yeah, it's it's always a tricky one. It's been a I think it's been a very stressful few days for these players as well
I mean, you'll know a lot better than I will about competing in
More than ten in the last ten years, I guess
But it's been a lot of pretty stressful and we've seen players handle it very differently, right?
Sometimes it can be a bit too much for players in place do some misplays across the board not pointing out anyone specifically, of course
But these this is the group we're gonna be jumping to now with group D
We're gonna start off with that elimination match, of course, and then we are going to have the winner facing Kuro to round out day three of world
So he's gonna be facing off against Tim Ming though as well
But just looking at this and just giving it I guess a bit of a spoiler
And the Druid is gonna be banned away
Oh, we can see now perfect timing and then the shaman ban
This is very similar to what we saw in pockets match a little bit earlier on today
But now that we saw towards the end of Saturday
How do you feel about this lineup overall? Like obviously you were joking a little bit about it before but the Druids pulled
Plenty of bands and now that we've seen it actually perform in this field that you pre you know help prep for
What what do you think about it now?
The results haven't been good, but I think the lineup has merit like
Instead of bringing this control control quest warrior that everyone has bringing dragon warrior instead to be slightly better versus
these other control warriors. We haven't actually seen that matchup at all, so we haven't had the chance
to see the matchup shine for Dragon Warrior. What we've mostly seen is Shaman struggling,
a little bit of struggles for the Dragon Warrior and other matchups, but that's not to say that
the lineup is a completeness. It's a small sample size kind of thing that shouldn't
and you know, fully color our view of the lineup.
The copy Druid, the Shara Druid, location Druid,
whatever you want to call it, has been drawing bands.
And I think that's a nod to the power of the deck.
It's getting more bands than the BBU control decay
that we've seen.
And a lot of players have that BBU control decay.
So they do deem it powerful
and the copy Druid is still thanking more bands
Even though it's worst matchup is always being banned from the side of the pocket train and fury in the shaman
So these players clearly respect the druid and know that it is well positioned into the DK warrior
Hunter lineups that we see from Tianming here and from other players in the tournament
Yeah, and then just to talk about that the lesson how these two lineups interact
We've seen obviously a lot of the warrior DK hunter and then shaman all rogue normally
Is one of those different classes like preferred, or is it going to be the Shaman or the Rogue
banned out and that's kind of the same thing when you're targeting this threat?
It is definitely preferred if the opponent doesn't have the Shaman, because that is
the number one ban for this lineup that the Fury and Pocket have.
So definitely prefer to have a shout-deaf for example, or some other players who
have the Cycle Rogue, then who doesn't have the Cycle Rogue? It's a deck that the lineup
tries to prey on with the Soft Target, with the Dragon Warrior match being quite decent
into the Cycle Rogue. We've seen a lot of Cycle Rogue do pretty well.
Yeah, looking at Greal getting into our game. Number one, we've got Fury on the Warrior
we were talking about, of course, Dragon Warrior going up against this DK. And having
a pretty good start already having that location down nice and early on turn one and having a couple
of two drops to pick from and at least a first few initial turns loaded up because that's the
number one fair isn't it if you go a little bit slow with this dragon warrior I feel like everything
starts to slip away very quickly absolutely especially versus DK it's so important to make sure that
you're the one with the board initiative that you're setting the tempo for the for the whole
game, because if the DK keeps up in the early game, keeps up a little bit on board, the swing
turns with Maladar cheating out the 9-drop or just too many leeches can really stop the
warrior from progressing their own game plan. And we see Fury aggressively using the Sanguin
steps just to clear off a 1-1 and make sure that is that the peddler sticks for a dragon
that he can play next turn and keep the snowball going.
Yeah, really good just base decision making, obviously not the most genius level play ever,
but you've got to protect these early minions, this dragon warrior, right?
Like the second these fall, it would be a problem and we can actually see Dreadhound
handler in hand for Tim being now coming down of course.
They're trying to help clear up some of this dragon over the course of a couple
turns but without the use of that location it would have looked very grim already for Fury.
And now does he have a few options with Welp and a Brood Keeper or just dropping down the slightly
stickier Welp of the Infinite instead? Yeah, I assume he will try to go for a 1 plus a 2 to
get Valley from his get trapped Welp off on the Welp of the Infinite. He misses, which could
prove to be detrimental because you know he has this ferak stacking his hand after next turn which
is not likely to see play this game except for maybe a desperation turn 10 or if a naralex is
drawn at some point but dragonware does not have the best card draw so that's not a really
a combo that you can count on every game but this might be the game for it and yeah fury will
So just keep trying to play for board, try to max out his board presence, and push the
control that he has established.
Yeah, I think it's going to be really important to look at Timing's hand here as well, because
there is the Xavius in hand for like a sort of clean turn four, let's say, but it depends
on what's picked up.
There's even an option to like calling out Hoss if he can just do something to get
him through this next turn. Zephyr's pick up as well. Zephyr's used for removal but there
is quite a big board. I like his location usage, knows that damaging his minion to push damage
is more important than trying to play around some removal like infested breath because
it's quite unlikely for Tengling to have a good turn with the infested breath 2
do so the link does go for the removal option from Zephyrus and picks up
Holy Moa and vanish. Yeah this is good as well because there's even yeah there's
even a small victory I guess in the having force in Timming to use the coin
here to try and just stem the tide so to speak. Oh okay I was gonna say the
Origins is definitely gonna need a good draw this turn and this is where
that to hold your breath a little bit as the warrior right where you sort of
done the initial push and like okay please just give me gas every turn so I
can keep going and this is like one of the better draws that Fury could have
got for sure. This is premium gas here yes this or stadium announcer it was
probably the best that he could pick up he will be considering the Zephyrus
options. He knows that Tianming picked the removal options, so he needs to judge how much
trading and clearing he wants to do. It does a fair bit, because he knows he needs to control the board
and he needs to dodge like a parol and then it's better to clean up some of these minions than
just play completely into it. And Tianming really doesn't have many options.
Exactly, yeah, I think this bill a very nice board for fury because the more single target focused removal
Is expensive right? There's only five mana for Tim being so that's fine
So if the six sixes gets removed sure you still got a board and then a lot of the AoE
That's available at this mana cost outside of arguably brawl isn't going to clear the six six right?
So it's kind of a just a nicely sort of spread stat wise which is pretty good
It's gonna go for the Elise and go for the one cost location. Weirdly enough the rarer location nowadays in the game
does get pretty decent though three armor and a raptor not
Nothing crazy, but it's a one cost location probably close to as good as it was gonna get it
I think that was exactly the location. He was looking for definitely wanted the raptor to clean up the
the gift wrapped wealth and then
Just getting some armor is nice. I believe he passed up on this cover to get the armor
So he is scared of dying a bit
And now fury with his own Elise pickup, but probably going for a five in this spot
For what? Oh, he's still still goes for a one. Okay
wants to tricky because I
Feel like the problem might be any given turn in the next couple of turns fury might feel he wants to be the ability
To solve easily play chronology park, right and not think not worry about well
Now I have a five cost location and Chrono Lord. Which one do I go? Is that gonna be too slow?
So getting copy and raptor pretty good for the amount of pressure he wants to put on obviously getting the reborn
Well, as well, it's gonna be a pretty nice bonus for any of these awkward minions. That's him ink and put down. Oh
That is another pickup. Oh, yep. Nevermind. I'm gonna take it all back
On six is backbreaking
Uh, however, Corona Lord Epoch is absolutely massive here.
It really is because with the poison as well, it's like gets rid of the one
zilex, it doesn't get removed from this, right?
Yeah.
Exactly.
About as good as it was going to get to Fiori in that situation.
Yeah.
Both players kind of doing the best possible thing against each other right now.
another giant and Hulisk is available
Holy Nova does look quite good on this board
yeah there's a raptor obviously in that location as well right so that's an extra way to properly
spawn or just to clean up the epoch true if he is just doing Holy Nova with the hero power
Okay, but he decides he wants to
Xavier's and picks up pterodact, which five corpses means that he gets to full clear now
Really strong the blob looks good folks. It has the reborn enchantment, right?
He is not scared of the epoch because of 30 HP
plus an 8 8 on the board and
And yeah, he needs a good discoverer here
I mean to be fair he's getting to the manna right the game is
It will get there not maybe not for two fire acts needs a little bit more board presence
Oh, that's a that's a good pickup
You can get a cheap minion, you can develop once again.
Oh, I've tripped about quite twice.
It really gets rid of all the stuff that Tianming will play next year.
It makes it so you can't rewind that decision near the player, can it? Can't change it back?
Yeah, this was just good for Fiori to just get something to be played, right?
anything to build that board back up again obviously we're gonna see how I guess I'll say fun this
Bob of Tar is gonna be if you're interested to deal with but Timming is I guess there's a chill
fallen Baron but DK sometimes can get into that spot where they actually just went out of juice a
little bit right if they're being forced to just aggressively fight back on board so this
actually still feels fairly close like do you think this is anyone is like overly winning the game
at this point? I would not like to be Fury in this position, seeing Tianming's hand. Maybe
if I didn't see Tianming's hand, I'd say it's fine, but seeing the husk, seeing the
vanish, seeing the reborn blob, that makes me unhappy as a dragon warrior.
So what we're saying is Fury is going to be fully reliant on Fyrek performing
Miracles at this point. I think that's the most likely yes needs a needs a supernova
Maybe to fill up this hand that could do the trick. Oh, oh, I think we'll see if Iraq hold
Anything can happen
Yeah, I mean if if something was gonna pull fury back into this game, this is it
I mean you can't blame him. He's like oh this is literally the one you like the one run of events
that could have helped fury hunter out here and there's good good cards as well
that is so much burn damage so much value
I would think that solar flare would be
something that you might want to save for for blob of tar
He has another lot of low and it might be better to space out the overloads.
And he agrees.
And now the big question for Tian Ming is, is he forced to vanish this board?
Kind of is.
But he can't get the blob of tar in, so Fury can try to just redevelop a little bit.
Unfortunately for him, he doesn't get the naralex and the feroc because of hand space.
But he has a really good hand to develop more stuff with searing reflection.
Zephyrus?
Okay, that could be more burn damage.
More burn, yeah.
We're on the same page here, I love it.
It's like, well that can go face to an extent, right?
Let's go.
Yeah.
yeah I'm actually still a little bit shocked that just how good this fire rack
was for fury just offer it a bit like these kind of spells to get him really
back in the game things are looking very yes absolute baller of a ferak and now
does the coyote can come onto the board for free if fury plays a lava flow and
maybe a solar flare just turned to kill off the 2-2 which he will be doing so
that's a 5-3 and a 2-2 stealth and then just spends all of his other mana I'm
guessing to develop more board. Picks up an egg basher instead of a charging
merchant and okay it goes yeah straight into deal damage when you face
malt strike and frostball frostball could be a little bit useful as well
blocking out at least the foam render we can see my worry for fury is that
this hideous husk plus blob of tar turn is going to be a bit OP.
He was counting on Epoch to get through this board, but the reborn with full health is going to be annoying for him to deal with.
I am just quickly sure how much damage is available for Fiori as well because there is also another
air he can he can discover another dark gift right with a shadow flame yeah but he has
to start with the epoch to be able to clear the the blob and he can discover now but
Looks like he will just...
I'm not sure about the sequencing here.
He could have just discovered first.
Yeah, if you were going to discover, you could just do it anyway, right?
Yeah.
At first I thought he was going to just quit weapon and call it a day,
but you have to remove the poison, right?
Mm-hmm.
Dragon Turtle will be active next turn.
And he can push a with the using the frost ball
But the problem is there's two leeches still on the board and
and the poisonous
One two I
Didn't catch the dark gift on the sienna the duper chance
I did not
and I don't think something I can check as well unfortunately now just there's
too many too many cards going on to keep around everything this is yeah it was
it was crazy yeah from here as well as we could just see that ceaseless in
air timings hand timings hand right so this is gonna be a problematic for
fury here even though it looked like there was a slight chance from to fight
back into this. Deming's looking pretty good still, but it's a little bit scary because
he can't deal with both of the big minions right a ways and he doesn't want to use Ceaseless
because Fury Hunter does have a lot of value left. Snowflurry with double battle cry could
give an answer and he will take it and go for it. This on average should stop the big
minion from connecting face and it does with the frost bolt on your side. And that's
a full clear. And now that three leeches as well that's going to start stacking pretty
quickly if you already have anything to do about it. Does he have charge? If we
The third was hovering the seer map for a second there. That's like what?
He played it really quickly. Yeah, that's what I mean.
On the moral strike. Wow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And off the back of the seer map,
that I think Timing's going to be very upset with that one because
not only did he, you know, Timing was doing a great job of fighting back and stopping the
the big push from Fiori early on. And then of course, not only the Farak coming down,
but a turn earlier arguably as well, and it being so good was just if that whole game slowed down
a turn, that's probably going to go Timing's way, right? So that was huge from Fiori getting the win there.
I think it's only fair that we get a game decided by Farak at the World Championship.
these guys have played so much for rack this year to qualify. It was it was about to happen once.
It wouldn't be right. So I'm I'm glad we got to see that for rock even in his nerve state,
just carrying fury to victory. How important do you think the backer?
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, a lot of people can be talking about that game for sure.
How important do you think getting the warrior over the line
was here was the what do you think the warriors the tough one in this in this
lineup in this matchup or do you think the shamans the bigger question mark
i think shaman is the better deck overall so we've seen it when games versus a quest warrior
today we've seen it when versus dk as well uh like overall i'd say the dragon warrior is
definitely the weakling in the lineup. So Fury will be glad that it got a win for sure.
It will be a load of his mind. The Shaman, I think Shaman can get there versus quest warrior in DK.
Maybe not versus the Hunter, but the Hunter that Tianming runs is the Chinese staple with
with Elise and Shalagro and Nisera, no brewmaster for the Sylvanas, which can be really effective
versus the Shaman usually, but we are getting DK versus Warrior.
Yeah, this is one where the DK definitely wants to be the aggressor here, because as
usual with warrior it's it's very defensive until it's not right so that's
gonna be the number one goal if you'll be looking for some again just the usual
early aggressive openings building up those corpses to be able to you know
potentially drop Maladar down with a big push and timings just gonna try and
fend it off and what do you think if you're always looking at here in terms
of Mulligan like what is all of this going away morbid swarms being kept
to you yeah just morbid swarm looking for at least try to get get the a good five
mana location and hopefully dodge a demolition renovator just looking for
maybe creature of madness to to try to make sure that he is pressuring throughout
the early game because if you miss the early curve as the DK the warrior can
just stabilize away too easily and if your hunter does not have any tech
cards in his DK like steam cleaner or demolition renovator to stop Tianming's
Elise so it's imperative that he gets a good start and just pressures
pressures the warrior which even though he's missing turn two his follow-up is
pretty good with coin Sadius into Elise probably just to push that one extra
damage in the in the early game there is the demolition renovator though so the
Elise is a lot less powerful and Tianming chooses to not trade it away yeah I
like this because I think you always want to in this scenario because it's not
like Tianming's gonna trade it away into something that's gonna make a huge
impact right now right there's nothing like that crazy I guess apart from
ramp that would be really good this turn not one next turn at that point
trade but I like hold on to it because you think okay if they coin out at least
you are set right you can you've got your plan locked in and it's gonna see of
course as you mentioned as Avis come out first and it's hard for Fury to say no
to a double battle cry husk that is quite strong as a follow-up to at least
into a location he's hoping he gets five five copy and then he will he
will want plus to attack and hope there's no renovator but since there is a
renovator the optimal would be copy plus the death rattle of course they would
play around the renovator destroying the Elise location we'll see what he picks
up looking good for fury so far the good thing is about the double leech as
well is that it needs to be dealt with and that's taking removal where
Fiori's not exactly had to commit too much to make the war like make Timming remove it, right?
So it's a it's a pretty good dark gift on the ask
see the offerings and
Fiori got three
Quote-unquote bad options which forces him into the that I'll pick on the first one and
Then picks up the copy. So he got the perfect copy for the perfect location for the situation. So
he'll be happy with that and
and Tian Ming has nothing to do except just play a yore and hope the location is not good.
It is funny to see that Tian Ming is picking up new heights into Elise after having one dead draw
because he kept this location renovator in his hand instead of trading it. His curve would have
worked out quite a bit better and since there's a death row location his renovator is not very
useful anyway. Yeah it's one of those things where at least for me I feel like the right decisions
were made and it was still punished right because of just how everything sort of fell
I think Tim being holding on to the renovator is absolutely correct it was just unlucky how
everything's lined up. I think okay once the renovator is in your deck that that is the
correct decision but I personally say putting the renovator in your deck is the wrong decision so
okay okay having it at all might be a big mistake. I hate the head cards.
Um yeah so now he doesn't really have anything to do other than because he has to get the ramp in
so he's just tanking up and saying okay hit me as hard as you can. If Fury had a let's say a foam
render here that would be the ideal turn just right you like equipping that weapon
anytime there's a there's an off-turn for for the warriors where they are just
tanking up a board for a turn trying to find their removal but fury has no such
luck so he will probably just spend his mana the best he can while making a
little bit of a board and he holds the handler because he doesn't want to
board lock himself. Yeah, this is fine because you know, the chill
phone just going to be able to draw some cards regardless. If
there's AOE gets removed, great, draw more cards perfect. And
yeah, like you said, don't want to get board locked with that.
So you're looking good overall. If you're looking strong here,
but Timing has managed to, I guess, hang on. But the problem
is what's the follow up now? Because quickly get into the
point where Timing can't just say, Oh, just hit me and I'll
deal with you later. What kind of at later right now?
Yeah, he really does not have any removal in his hand. The best he can do is,
and now he's forced to trade a renovator, the best he can do is just bulb freeze,
use croclists to board lock fury. So fury passes a turn. I wouldn't be surprised if
if you're a hunter just place sanguine infestation to get it out of hand and try to find a better card
that would that would lead him to overdraw so he might be against doing that
he is tough drawing anyway because of the baron dying yeah it's really tough isn't it because
in most outcomes you would just take the draw and just say fine but in this bit of a rare
a circumstance, Fury is so heavy on the hand as well already, which feels like it's not
normally the case with Death Knight.
Yeah, this hand looks like it's expensive, but then you take a look and there's two
mana stitch giants because of the double pterodax, and then there's four fewer cards in your
hand, and you're saying, oh, that's kind of fine.
I've got everything played.
What is also interesting is the double battle cry husk with the 4 threes is going to be
pushing quite a bit because there's also another coffee location.
So there is quite a bit of armor but the health total is not that high.
If there wasn't a Azaleax that could be an angle of attack for Fury.
you might be looking at that. So now, Fury needs to decide what kind of board he wants
to make. He can have a pretty good read that there's not really any board clears in the
hand.
Yeah, because that was using Bob on that board, obviously board lock, so that's a benefit.
It wasn't strictly the most threatening thing in the world, right? Maybe because they all told Shawl, but
Look at this though. It's gonna be tricky as well because I think here the the pterodax depend on how many are gonna be
Yeah, it's all gonna line up with what Furio wants to do here
But there's a world where you can just he's gonna try and just push the fall with the minions right?
I'll just think he'll trade the one one just to keep some keep some calm. Yeah
It looks like he is just making a board with the corpse giants and then hero powering at
the end of the turn so it doesn't want to be too wide into brawl and this is a nice little
medium plate that presents a good board and it will be a brawl check.
He can be pretty sure that there's no hostile invader from last turn but Tianming does
pick it up off the top and I like this as well because it pushed the three with a
lease right so it's just you chipping away in the armor just any bits of damage
are valuable because this is the point in the game where warrior can start to
stabilize and the second they do you're in trouble so fury hunter will
definitely want to be trying to accelerate this game as quick as possible
now because these start to become the scary turns at least I feel like in
this matchup is the DK. Yeah this is where the warrior can stabilize and then
if you like since Fury does not have that good of a turn here it will be
pretty hard for him to actually get through these these silly axes. Is it
time for Husknail? It's not really good at this port so he's just just
first to get the wondrous one, then say, okay, the location is popping next turn, that's
going to be his swing turn. When the Vettraddle AOE comes into play. And until then, he'll
just develop the Marin, get one for card draw and try to hit some good stuff off the top.
Yeah. That is something we see a lot of players do where when they know they're
going to have a bad turn, they sort of if anything, lean into it, right? And say,
my turn so I'll use it to play Marin because that's a horrible card to actually have to play
you know to actually get the wand and just say fair enough one bad turn and then it'll sell better
turns in the future so we do see that happening a lot all weekend so far and I'm gonna respond in
kind play his own Marin and try and sell the wand for himself because this quest is getting
dangerously close to being completed what is it next turn it's done
it should be next turn I believe yeah and then he can use one either to draw
removals from his deck or just try to get the quest reward onto the board just
go just go okay yeah okay that is all very spicy yeah that's definitely some
stuff isn't it okay okay decide to go Maladar I wonder what he'll use the the
rest of his mana on though our reborn freebooter is interesting with the copy
location because that's if if it gets full cleared in the same turn that's
potentially 15 phase damage that's a really juicy copy target hero parts first
to get a corpse and then freebooter copies it and where's the board pushes
phase damage and that's a very sticky board that he's made in the one bad
turn paid off in the end yep yep absolutely really good wand
well turn into a wizard battle as Timming does have access to a wand as well I'll
try to see what you can do obviously the quest did proc there as we can see the
invader gonna come down and clear up the... well I'll say clear up start to clear up
I guess is there more accurate a decent chunk of the board yeah good
usage of the bulwark to stop the free
booter damage as well because that's
gonna be six aoe from the hostile
invader and then most of the board will
be gone so that's a that's a pretty good
turn for for the warrior can't get in
the your so it's probably ending on a
uh, the Militian Renovator trade.
Yep, makes sense. As you can see, that will work so can a decent chunk of the damage, but still.
Solid board left over for Fury Hunter, right? You made it sticky enough,
but there was still something going on after the fact.
I'm wondering if this husky's gonna see play this game.
I reckon we're gonna play this husky's like that, literally, to now.
Yeah, Fury has been trying to use it as a little bit of a finisher, I suppose, because of the
warrior's ability to heal with Zileaks and then Amara afterwards.
Oh, these look flashy, but they don't actually do anything.
Yeah, these are ones where you just look at the stats on the menu and that's all
you really need to know.
Plays his Andret to make a stickier board instead of Adriana because he knows the Seasluss is active already.
There's still a brawl.
Adriana would corrupt Shaladrasil, but the effect isn't really that relevant.
One brawl gone, that's nice, but it's gonna be hard for Fury to run Tianming out of
removals or out of resources and theory doesn't have that many boards left himself
Yeah, it's the usual story right obviously. I'm not saying the game is not over yet
But it's the usual story where Timming did did the job right?
He got to the late game safely and now he's been rewarded for it
Which is basically what this quest warrior deck is and so we could see him more or less do whatever at this point
Looks like he's gonna be jumping back. I sure
and now can pretty much do whatever that can even play the Barnabas for free if he
wants but just goes in new heights plus your to not waste any any maximum mana
like he can get passive ramp this way so that makes sense and now if you reach
just in a position where he will eventually lose to the to the quest
OTK in him because he's stuck at 30 max HP. He can pick it up to 40ish let's say with
all these leeches but that's not nearly enough as we've seen in the warrior OTKs. Warrior
mirrors the OTK happens from a lot higher health than 40.
Especially when we see the flight, for example, like the Gavadon's already in hand,
right so it's not like you have a bottom card that can help a lot with potential damage and so on so
on so yeah it's just uh taking all the boxes here for taming looking pretty good
the big problem for fury is as well that he already used his elise and uh elise is usually
your uh your reach in in this these spots in the late game when the warrior has stabilized
the way you try to win is get at 10 mana at least with
a copy and plus 4 attack but he doesn't have access to that anymore so it's
it's looking a little bit hopeless from his position but maybe he can pull out an upset.
Yeah it's just tough isn't it because you look at you look at the board state and the ability
that warrior will get to effectively an OTK soon but then you look at the health on timing as well
and it's just it's just a lot isn't it like the number is just too big if timing was on like 30
you'd be like okay well there's there's a chance right we could see she'll address so in hand
that there's things that can maybe be done but on 64 whilst having a board as well is a little
a little bit rough.
Kruptyk, Awakening, can I get some work done here, though?
Push some damage.
Yeah, Fury is pushing a little bit this turn.
But it's hard for me to say that that will be enough.
He really needed his form render much earlier in the game.
Now it's bottom five cards.
And it's been too many turns of of miss damage. He's just sitting on 18 corpses with nothing to use them on
15 20 damage at this point easily yeah, at least at least
Good former under climbing
The warrior would be a lot a lot scared a lot more scared than he is right now
know. Yeah, I was going to say, is this the enough to trigger the ceaseless term and just
say, you know what? All of this should go away. It does have us all invaded to clear up the
last little bits of ooze that are going to be left over. See, I do like this from Timing
because he's so close to just getting there anyway. Now you can just use the ceaseless.
There's still plenty of options going forward as well. Still has the queen to rush
into something if you know desperation happens but yeah and there's a time warp
that should be lethal damage even if he misses wind fury it will probably be
enough so he has another Karnasa so 8 plus 8 16 plus another 16 plus 3 yeah he
doesn't even need wind fury it's already lethal just with all the
free minions. But when Fury is the sign for Fury 2, it's top counting and just get out.
Yeah, it's just the easy one where it's like, okay, fair enough, you've won. Let's move on
to the next game. But really good job there from Tian Ming, I think just really well controlled
in the way just to manage to get to that late game. And just a good understanding
of the deck and the matchup as well, doing everything possible to deal with those
early game minions, slow them down a little bit. And I think making good decisions
on when to say yeah you know what hit me for a turn or so I can take it and it will actually
help set up the late game a little bit better as well.
Yeah just a nicely controlled game not much that Fury could have done. I think he did well
in making that early board. He wasn't scared of over drawing with Sanguin infestation
just made sure he spent his mana as he can trying to find the foam render. Didn't
find it at in time so you can really pressure enough after the ZLX came down from the warrior
the great stabilizer on the nine mana and that was that was just that no no coming back after that
look at what's left over now for both players it is is fury expecting that the hunter is
going to probably get through if it's played you know initially and it's this is going to be
about stopping the DK, getting the win from Tianming, is that kind of the approach with
the decks he has left now?
It would be, yeah, DK is the more likely deck that you're trying to bully at this point,
but the Hunter, because it is the Elise build, I think is a lot more vulnerable to Fury
Hunters lineup than the non Elise build.
So it's not as bad as it might seem, because of that.
Just really depends if Tianming gets a hand with a Sarah Shaladrasil.
There's a lot of bricks in the Yali's field, and the deck does tend to brick a lot more
than when it has the lower curve that most of the Western players have.
It's probably even more impacted when you don't have it's always bad when you don't get nail early of course
It's hunter, but this build is probably even worse
Right because then it means you can't even fish for the tools you need at the time
So it gets a little bit harder. We are jumping into this game though
And just ticking the initial boxes both place having very a mirrored start so far
But if you're always opening hand, this is doing this is the work you want and you can see to be straight away
is like oh no because Hagatha I've said you know we talked about this all weekend but like Hagatha is
the one card you don't want your opponent on the shaman to play on well I say on curve arguably faster
than on curve yeah this is the prime opener for shaman the on the play parat sanctuary into
Hagatha he if you really did miss on the second copy of frosty decor so he will have to go
for Elise this turn to fill out his mana which I mean are you happy when your opponent plays
Elise on the play on turn 4?
I was going to say oh no, oh no, I've got to play Elise on curve, how terrible.
Is there any value for playing Bumbling at all?
Is there any benefit that you can see Fiori here thinking about this I guess?
It is very tempting now with just to put 12 power on to the board.
His problem will be that next turn is just a Frosty Decor in that case or an Elise Off
Curve.
He could decide to go for a one mana Elise in this scenario and just say ok put 12 damage
on to the board if there's no double sister.
So if the Sylvanas cannot AoE away the board, he will just push a lot of damage and he has
double furious foul as follow up and he can just smork away freely.
And Kenwing does not pick up a sister off the top, so his Sylvanas is only doing 2 AoE,
so it is an IEL off the top which will pick up a Vareesa for next turn, but it might
be too much damage taken already. We'll have to wait and see. Yeah. A lot of this will rely
on I think what Furienter goes for this turn. He's gonna go looks like a leeson one I would
guess. Because there is now sister coin sister right which is gonna be a little bit painful
for Furie if there's not something he can this location can leverage. He's definitely
looking for plus one attack now because pushing mini roll five this turn and get
same there it is took one one copy takes one one copy because it's good with
Nomelia in the future turns so we count the damage now so that's 12 from the
two fairy tale slimes plus a location click that is exactly 30 damage if you
can connect the one damage from his face so that is uninteractable damage if
there is a taunt in the way then Nomelia will push push through and clear the
board so it's not looking very good for Kaming if he can pick up grift that
this is way out. Needs to hit Grifta healing and that's that's gonna be what
the game is gonna come down to probably. Fury will just fair kill slime. Fair kill
slime in the face and then it all comes down to Grifta 3 and 7.
Yeah this is a tricky one. The benefit here Fury had was that by having the
board it meant that Timing was unlikely to be able to clear the board and put
taunts up right and now there's more are done as well so we can add that to the
list of potential damage going forward but it was too much for Timing to like
tick all the boxes this had to be a two turn cell so Timing as we can see did
clear the board and as you mentioned does have to go for healing or taunts
I guess in in his mind right one or the other or preferably both would be
the the ultimate outcome for him which is possible potentially with the
Yeah, the end encounters here's furious foul number one fury hunter doing the classic lean forward hands-on face
Hope for the best. This is a fury hunter classic for sure
And here we go Rift of three and seven to decide the game
Yeah, I fear is praying and no healing is not healing
This count is pretty interesting. That means that Yanming could play Zileax maybe next
turn if he picks it up with these trackings. He does. So now Fury Hunter needs to be
off-board but he cannot be off-board and he cannot push the damage face.
Well that's the thing right?
One of the problems right now is the 6x6 lives, all the 3x3s live right?
Yeah, so the copy location is going to be lethal with Nomiya now.
Yeah.
Okay, okay.
Yeah but there you go.
You're instantly locked in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I thought for a second that Timing managed to stay alive with the taunts, but he couldn't clear all of the minions, so the Nomelia Inclusion in the Shaman just gets there.
Yeah, that was huge. I'm very close to both players, obviously Timing there trying to fight back and honestly did very powerful things, right?
It's just that Fury was just that one step ahead,
good recognition with what the hand was.
And I do think the decision to not play the Elise
and just go for full board really paid off massively.
Great choice.
And I think it was a great decision.
Yeah, and I also think to an extent,
there's, you'll probably know this better than me, of course,
but there's maybe a mindset of,
I can just make this big board.
And what if they just don't have it?
have just won the game in for your tournament life just like that right and it was a bit
more complicated than that in this game specifically but I think that's a very valid thing to think
about is like I have this great thing this great turn on offer early in the game if I
do it and they don't have to clear yes only two one up and that's just one more game to win so
really paid off a fury hunter there Timming just couldn't quite get it done even though
everything he was doing was very strong got the two sisters to help with the clear
then had great follow-up didn't hit the heel but got the reductions as you mentioned access
zileanx opens up some crazy turns once you do multiple reductions furians was just a little
too fast so we're going to be going to our game four maybe the last game of this series is furiant
if furiant is sorry can lock it up with the death knight but temming is by no means
like that happened too easily as we step to the death knight mirror we saw a very unconventional
death-knocked mirror earlier between Chonso and Suyoren, where Chonso just spent all his mana and
killed on turn five. That didn't involve a Zephyrus, and Tian Ming does play a Zephyrus himself as well,
so maybe that could happen again. He has the Curve for it with the Morbitz Warman one, but
Fury's no slouch and will be answering with his Morbitz Warman, the creature of
Madness curve as well and there's already a Maladar in Fury's hand which is usually not
that great to see at the start of the game just because it takes so many corpses to actually have
the payoff be worthwhile but with when you have the morbid swarm start into creature of madness
you can usually have it active on one pretty pretty early on turn uh six seven uh something like that
and uh living paradox both players oh yeah living paradox is gonna help living paradox uh
is really tempting uh so he will already have 10 corpses if he picks uh a lease uh for a
10 mana location, he can get it down on turn 5 already.
If I'm counting the corpse is right and so that's 3 and 3, 8.
One corpse short, one corpse short on the curve if the Elise dies as well.
This is pretty nuts to see that like both players' curves are very good for this early
focus on the board right it's going to be a chill form into tar potentially for
Tim Ming which is a bit of a pain to deal with Furion to obviously now has
access to a few different options himself but it is something that I think
generally people aren't the biggest fans of mirror matches because just the
nature of them basically the same decks but I do think throughout the
history of our stone we've had some really fun ones where players have
to suddenly play or work out a way to play very differently before the mirror match to
actually, you know, basically out scale the opponent, right? A lot of the time. So I think
that's been very interesting to see in some of them develop and already we've just seen
how aggressively both players are fighting for this board.
Yeah, both very similar curves for both players. And they both have enough corpses
for Maladar, so it's just whoever gets the big payoff first in these kinds of games.
Fury I'm sure is considering a Tenmana location at this point, and if he is considering that
he might as well play Xavius instead is what he thought, but he just says, okay let's
get to the 10 mana location, discover out of the way.
Just wants to end it quick.
Plus 4 attack is really good.
That was a copy attack.
And that is the perfect location for just
blowing your opponent straight out of the game.
That it pushes so much damage.
Yeah when you look at that location just in isolation you think like oh well how good is it and then you realize what the Death Knight Hero Power does and you're like oh actually yes quite good.
Quite good just how much is damages that 12 plus 1123 burst just from just from location Hero Power any minion left on board and Tian Ming is just dead.
um
Fury will have to have one more turn to set up uh enough corpses
Did Tianming just spend mana from zefris?
Oh
Yeah, that didn't even
register in my brain that I'm staring at a lion hands in the spring he must have
right I don't yeah he definitely did oh yeah it's for yeah yeah so hope if
something for good for Maladar right yes but okay does it offer anything good
for Maladar? That's Tyrion, King Draxus. That's about it. The spend mana options are usually
a bunch of card draw cards. Just a casual lay on hands in the world championship of
half stone 2025 now we are gaming
and uh my cobs count looks bigger than 10 to me there is no uh renovator in tian
mings deck as well so if this location does come down
uh it it will be available for for use later on
It might be better for Kiri to just, uh, Isera instead then, and spend the mana on the location, uh, on a later turn, because it is a much bigger board.
So is it the sort of thing where it's not lethal now, so you don't need it? Is that kind of the idea here, where you could build a board towards lethal by doing this instead?
Yes, yes. You're presenting a board while doing basically the same thing as the location, right?
And then any minion sticks, you can just go location and copy pterodax.
You don't have to copy the hero power right away.
You can also just have more options by going Shaladrassil if there's something that you want to sap
or if it ends up being more damage if you can't directly copy a charger from your hero power just yet.
Just basically making your opponent deal with a big board, which they have to have their corpse explosion off, which is a one-off.
And then they don't have the corpses for Maladar as well, so it just makes more sense to make the big board
make your opponent react to it rather than just going for a 10-10 in the 5-5 and not having this this ramp
yeah you want to ask the big question of your opponent right it's like the second that clay
doesn't exist it's just game anyway right so who cares so yeah fury hunter did get the board
cleared timing doing a good job there of clearing it developing a threat as well and still keeping
the corpse count reasonable for a potential future maladar but fury hunter now just going
get this work done where it's like well okay I'll make another board push some more damage
there's a 14-10 now clear this again and then again and then again obviously with some gaps in
between because that's how locations work it's still lacks been picked up now from tim ming so
that actually can go down next turn that will be pretty good to stop the lethal if if he can
deal with this tent and somehow or block its path to the face. Messmaker is actually pretty good
with Elusive, can't get the Shaladra Silled back into the deck or anything like that.
And the other options are kind of scary to pick up when you're facing a tent then.
Yeah like the Welp is actually really good to just look at right, but in this scenario
maybe not the best choice, but maybe that's the sort of thing you need.
He might pick it up just because he could be thinking that taking the 10 damage isn't that
big of a deal because there is a Zileax, but he does choose the mess maker, but goes for
a lease into a 10 mana location.
Okay, so the idea must be to get the 10 mana location with Kopi and then go Maladar
10 mana location with messmaker and Kopi the messmaker and that's pretty strong
And he'd get 10 Kopi and then gain 12 armor. What's the choice in the end?
Really nice defensive one
To play around Fury's
pressure. Yeah, as long as
makes out for it. It's really
good. That's it. As long as
fury can not sort of self
punished, right by like, oh, I
went for this and okay, they
pushed me off. Fury's always
had a backup plan every
turn, right? If it's not
closing, if it's not lethal,
fine, I can do this. If it's
not lethal, fine, I can do
this. The second that runs
out is when fury would be in
trouble, but I think he
has enough time just judging
from what the hand looks like
There's a little zero corpses in Elm Fury side though, so this corpse explosion is basically nothing, but maybe Grifter can get a steal or get some kind of help, but that is some large minions, so we'll make sure it works for them, but it's a lot of health.
So he can copy a pterodax and have it rushed and then if he just kills off the 10-10
Trying to count if it's lethal doesn't appear to be
He can't push a lot
How's he from one way?
Oh wait a minute. He has mana to hero power that
Okay, okay
The Ysera mana thing off here. Okay, wow, and I missed that one. That's so much damage
And I'm just gonna trust you and I'm gonna trust fury here where that looks like one million damage
That's I didn't bother counting fury hunter takes the win not only in the game, but in the series
Unfortunately for Tian Ming, but I think Fiori played super well this series. I think that the heads up plan was just perfect.
Obviously you need the draws, but I think having that recognition to say every single turn is going to set up for this location.
I'm going to get to it in efficient ways. He had to alter the plan as the game went on because that's how games work.
But I think he did it very well had backup plans for every time Tianming fought back and actually defended against that threat
Which I think was very good from Timming as well
But it was just too much and I think this match was something fury needed
After how his first performance went in world. So I'm glad even just for him that he's you know had a pretty solid match so far
He'll be much happier with himself after this one. I'm sure of it
He played some nice Hearthstone,
Hyrule'd a little bit maybe with the Farak,
but that's going to happen.
He put himself in a position to succeed.
He did succeed, and that's going to make him happy,
much happier than after his series versus Maxi,
where he really didn't play up to his standard,
and he's always his harshest critic.
So I'm sure that this will
be a much happier outcome for him,
Just because of the people.
Exactly. It does mean we get to feel a little bit better and say that EU isn't washed.
That was looking a bit scary for a minute there.
We're not the bragging we like to do. We're a bit worried, but it's sweating a little bit over here.
But we are going to get ready to go into the next match, but before we do, I believe that is you done now joining us.
It is.
I do just want to say thank you. I had a great cast this time.
We did only get to have the one match together, but it was great listening to you with the other casters as well
I think you did a fantastic job, but any any final words before you get to leave in the finals tomorrow
Yeah, I just want to say it's been a pleasure. I hope twitch chat youtube chat
You enjoyed my casting and I hope to see you again sometime in the future
This this has been lovely
Well, again, thanks so it was a great, great fun to have you here and providing your expert
level knowledge of course is always a fantastic help.
So thanks a lot for that.
But for everyone else, we are going to go to a quick break while we set up the next
match.
There's still more Hearthstone to go, so don't go anywhere and we'll be right back.
music
Welcome back every body to the Haasilwa Championships 2025.
elimination day and so far we have eliminated seven players and we're going to eliminate one more
that's going to be either Furyhunter or Enkuru. Enkuru for me actually Sottle might be the most
impressive player of the entire tournament so far would you go with me on that? I would tend
just because I'm me and you're you to argue with you on basically anything that you say
But yeah, it wouldn't be the most controversial topic or controversial take that you brought up in recent memory
I think he's played very very well
I think
Even during a tournament where the European players have not performed particularly well
He was a shining light even early on now, of course
there's the recovery from Fury Hunter to get back into the decider with incuro so
Things are looking up just a little bit for everyone's favorite region
But yeah, I would agree. I think day one, day two in Kuro was one of the standout performers
even though he did find himself down in that lower bracket
Yeah, he did technically miss a two-turn lethal with Vogue in the mirror against Maxi Bond
But it took several people in a call on Twitch this morning
20 minutes to find it. So I think he's
Was that the Maestro into
Yeah
Incindious guys, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like good luck. He did technically miss a lethal
We can't say he didn't but yeah, he's not meant to find that so
If he had it would have been instinct rather than calculated. So, yeah, we'll let him off that one
But yeah fury hunter and incur both with a slightly unusual lineups. We're gonna get to see this
Potentially dragon warrior take on egg lock. I'm sure you'll be thrilled for that one. I know you love a bit dragon warrior
Yeah, no, I was talking about this earlier, you know, I think a lot of attention went
on to the location Druid, the copy Druid coming in this one. I think the the copy Druid actually
ended up being a pretty good bring. It's eaten bands pretty consistently. It is up in this series,
which is great because we have not really got to see it do its thing. It's either got annihilated
or been banned from from my recollection throughout this whole tournament. But I do think that
ended up being a good bring and I would like to go back in time, hit the rewind button hopefully
without crashing the spectator and take a look at what a lineup looks like with copy Druid plus
three of the good decks, right? And then bin off the shaman and just play location Druid and
three of the other decks. Look at it that way, see what that would look like. My problem with
the Fury Pocket lineup has always been the inclusion of Dragon Warrior, the idea that
you can force a ban on your Druid and therefore you get to play Hunter, but they didn't bring Hunter,
that doesn't make any sense to me either, and then the Shaman making the cut in there as well
was already was very very bizarre. But before you go on to make the point that you wanted to
just there, just to cover in terms of bringing decks and eating bans, look what ate the
a ban this series for Fury Hunter. So there we go. One of the points I was going to make actually,
but yeah, the point I was going to make is I think that I'd have liked to see, I'm not claiming this
would be better than what you're saying, just to say I'd like to have seen this lineup without the
Sharma, but with the Hunter. I think Fury Hunter, a pocket train of two of the best players
the game has ever had, and Hunter gets better the better the player who's playing it. And
to prove that point I think is how Inkeru did against Warrior in his opening match where
He just made it that easy.
I know he hit the deal civic, which always makes it a lot easier.
But he had infinite lineups for, you had two or three goes at hitting deal six.
He had pupils after pupils lined up ready to go.
He managed his hand size.
I think Furyhunter on pocket train.
Not necessarily because the deck is better in their lineup.
I'm sure they put a lot of time into percentages.
They always do, but they're so good at good decks.
This might be mine.
It might be my first look at Signature and Neutron, by the way, that's a fantastic piece of art, huge fan.
Yeah, I tend to sort of blank the signatures, because I'm a bit that way built, but I also notice it straight away, it's like, this is cool, I like this.
Right, Hunter vs Death Knight, my take on this is that the Hunter is slightly favoured, I think, but my take on Death Knight is that everything's slightly favoured against it, that's how I feel about Death Knight in general.
lorinda's take on death knight is if he pretends all death knights are all
unplayable all of the time then they never have to play them so yeah that's
just how it works that is exactly correct yeah but also if they're terrible
at the time I don't have to play them I don't pretend anything it's not terrible
it's quite clearly a very powerful deck I just think that the other powerful
decks are better
How are we feeling about a coin release with no follow-up here?
Yeah, that's like that. It's going to be the case.
I'll take 10 this time in the real world.
Simba situation, but minus 8 pups is the last time around,
with minus 6 or 7 in the way.
Yep.
Oh, do you want to press the button?
I'm pressing the button. Who's pressing the button?
I'll press the button.
Oh that button! Yeah, my god, it's been such a long day I've completely forgotten about the button. Yeah, go ahead.
One of us has to press buttons, but if we both press the buttons, disaster's a production happened. There we go.
Raptors and Discover, nice.
I think Discover has gone up and up in value, the longer people have played Elise for, I
think at first it was fairly ignored and now it's just almost picked in any sort of value
matchup as a really powerful card, especially in Deathman.
I think Elise in general has got a lot more interesting and decision based over time
because it was first introduced into a meta where you just wanted to one man a copy your
starships basically all of the time and that's that's kind of all the least was used for and since
that's a thing that's gone away it's opened up a lot more flexibility in terms of you know death
night once five five copy plus savage rule for the hero power burst damage other things want
discover a spell you know warrior against shaman for example really really good discover a
Spell is also really good against like random decks that you need to find disruption against like an egg lock for example
Yeah, I think I think a lot more roots with Elise have opened up this time. I've gone on. I think that's very cool and healthy for the game
Yeah, I do too is sort of the intention of the card right we want cool cards to be used for many different things and
Okay, it's powerful you play on four you tend to win games of hardstone, but
You do have to use it well and these players use it
What's happening with this board? So I feel like Fury hasn't had the most great starts but also
included doesn't have an IELS, that kind of comes to mind. Yeah huge pick up, well I mean fairly good
pick up there with the minus five minus five but a great tempo snipe on the four five sister but
sadly for Fury it hit the ceaseless in his hand which was the absolute one in seven worst
outcome of anything else that it could have possibly done.
Decision here because if you take give plus two health and it ends up in your pupil you can go for a new return later.
Yeah.
That's what he got. He went for the draw the card to immediately rifle through his deck and now he's just going to fill it up.
Go for bird watching, trying to find that Nile that's eluding him so far.
That was a good pivot mid-sentence there. Well done. Very proud of you. Nicely done.
I don't know what's wrong.
Do you like pivot?
You pivoted harder than Ross carrying a sofa up a set of stairs now.
You can fix me both of those things to me later.
There's no way even you must know that reference.
reference. That is the most normie baseline reference in the history of internet referencing.
Me known for being very normie. Okay. There you go. Raven's got to be covered. Okay. I
have seen that scene. I just didn't know the phrase. Okay.
happening with we can't see half stones on something distracting me you don't have
any friends anyway I'm hanging out with all of my friends right now they're all
just out of camera smiling as well okay we've got it in Cindy is in play I've
got a small that away because it's just ruining my day okay what are we
going to get here from this. I was going to get early Zileaks, get an attack on the board,
which is the underrated part about Zileaks, because everyone used it to gain 12 health
and then it dies, but actually just 265 on the board.
This is why the handbuff spell from earlier was such a bummer that it landed on the
Ceaseless. Obviously the Zileaks was the absolute nuts outcome because he was always
doing this. He had the Colt's count to be able to do it, but also as a consolation
prize it could have hit the stitch giant or the teradax each of which could have been cheered out
instead using the corpses and then you would have had this huge buff on board regardless so
kind of a bummer that it ended up hitting the ceaseless but it'll absolutely take the
consolation prize here and incuro is going to need to go fishing for eruptions right now
he's going to get anywhere close to getting out of this game and that is not looking likely
double glacial shard with the sanctuary reset slope will at the very least keep him alive for now
something i've noticed about inco is played by the way which i don't see many players do most players
like uh i'll put in the fast player or the slow player category and not much in between
inco does the things he knows he's going to do rapidly but when he needs to think he will take
as much time as he wants to think until he's happy with this decision which is yeah i think
I think the important balance that some players have missed in this tournament, I mentioned
this, I think it was yesterday, but because players are playing cross region, the ruling
for the tournament is each matchup is happening on the intermittent server, so this one will
just be on Europe, for example, if America's plays, I know it will be on neither of those
servers, it will be on a third party server that's equally mediocre for both of them.
So a lot of players are playing a lot of games with a level of ping and a little bit of lag
that they're not usually used to, and they're still doing that thing where they start a
term with lots of actions, yes, but also still branching decision trees based on what you
draw, what you discover, what your location hits, etc, etc.
And they start it on the rope because they're familiar with being able to complete all
of that stuff on ladder, on their home server, and that's just not the case in this tournament.
So we have seen quite a few players roping out and missing actions and most kind of things later on
I think you know in Kura like said he has a thing but he commits with plenty of time left to react to whatever the rest of the
term presents
Case in point here. He's just you know the first two parts is really quick. It's fairly short of this just his time and
setting up for
Potential lethal if things go his way
Take control, perfect combo, it's the, well it's actually, it's very important now, right,
because he only has one mana remaining and this clears up both of the zileaks, whereas
pointing a deal 6 at one of them would have left the other one up on board, so ends up
being even better in that spot.
In an incredible role reversal by the way, as he tries to get his own grift or
stuff going on.
So is it going in a bit harder on players for the region thing than you were?
Because a lot of these players this tournament play on two or three regions regularly anyway for quality throwing points.
Oh, I don't... I... like that ruleset was, you know, published in advance.
The players have had every opportunity to get used to it.
I'm not issuing that as an excuse. I'm issuing it as an explanation as to what happened.
Sure.
But I'm still not... I'm not going to excuse Fury roping out with like six actions still left in his charm in turn.
that's you should be doing better than that at the world championship yeah but
even to follow up on that like a few we will play on America's on an incredibly
particular basis anyway oh yeah yeah 100% yeah it's just yeah top 20 on all
three servers is just the best 20 European players we all know that to be
true yeah we I don't think we're in a position to talk about the European
dominant in this tournament at the moment. That's how it goes tomorrow. Obviously I still
position myself with the America's region after many years of casting America's Grand
Masters. Of course, of course, of course. Okay, 32 seems a good number, 30 not quite
such a good number. Any niris required? Oh no off the top! Fury Hunter cannot believe
it! That is such a beating! Four Fury Hunts who had this set up with the steal, the double
amulet for six damage in hand off his own, Enkura rips the niri off the top and steal
plus 12 damage twice from the six damage amulets means incuro is going to go 1-0 up in the series
and you can see what a heartbreaker that was for fury hunter. Absolutely when hunter one of the decks
that i think this lineup is there to challenge i'm not saying it's going to hard counter it
because it's not it's hunter but normally when the hunter gets through the the caster line is
well the hunter tends to win at some point anyway done it it's all right not this time
This lineup is quite good into the Hunter. It's a deck they don't want getting out of there early.
If you really look like you had that in the bag, top deck, it suddenly changes around.
This is a big, big start for Enkoro.
Also, by the way, we had the Warlock band. We touched on the Dragon Warrior band.
The Warlock was also banned on the other side.
We're down to Normal Rogue, Normal Warrior, which again, this lineup was meant to be good into those three decks.
To some degree that's why it was brought to this tournament. It's not showing that level at the moment
But still chances for fuel even that was a tough tough one for him there
Yeah, bad beat towards the end for sure
But in current still has the Rogan warrior left remaining as you mentioned fury hunter with the DK to go back to
The shaman that we haven't seen and the location druid copy druid whatever you want to call it
Which if you weren't watching on day one
You will not have seen Interfrey in the tournament just yet because it has been eating the ban in every other series
that either Fury or Pocket have featured in.
And this is the king of the lineup to me.
This is the one that I do feel like they have absolutely got right in terms of the web form.
This is a deck that I have just played a lot for fun even prior to the testing for the tournament.
It's a deck that I saw or deck list for and thought, that looks cool.
looks cool and this this looks like a me kind of deck and it certainly was I had a good time playing
playing it but didn't ever really take it to the level where I was like okay maybe with enough
investment this is actually like a world championship line-up level deck so then wrote it off again
when I went into line-up building mode for this which perhaps I shouldn't have
based on the way things are panning out but there we go you've got to take the shot
sometimes talk about Druid long enough and it will appear there is the the
Zinajari the the key piece of the deck one of the fabled pieces that enter the
deck and the only one that really gets used with the the other one quite often
being blown up along the way. Yeah the other one you sort of if you play it you
press it because you know it's not hanging around for long you press it
the next turn and use the spells and get out of there. That is how I've been
playing it. I just want to make very quick to go back to that last game
by the way, incurred getting very lucky there off the top of the deck to win it.
He took draw a card from a potion very early on that he put in a pupil to fill up the pupil.
He took two deal sixes when there was nothing else to do on the turn, just to fill a turn
out as well as get the steal.
He did everything he could to dig through his deck to find, he was looking for an ale,
but it found the neary.
He had dug through his deck and set up a chance to lethal when he realized the
game was going against him.
So yes, he did top deck at the crucial time, but he gave himself a really good chance
get in that position last game. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes halfstone is just like that. You've
got to play to your outs. You've got to put yourself in positive positions, put yourself
in positions where you can get lucky. And he did absolutely do that and ended up panning out.
Don't think that'll offer too much consolation to Furyhunter though. Yeah, I won't be mentioning
that to him. Yeah. Your planet played really well to get that one into 18 top deck instead
of one in 19 I'm sure won't console him very well. Evan flow off the top. Yeah great draw off the top
to snipe the O manager which is a big deal we've seen it many many times the O manager's principal
job in the deck if it's not used for a little bit of burn damage at the end with the blunt mage
to go over the line is just to ramp that extra coin into your hands you can cheat out the
the Incindious at turn early, which can absolutely be super relevant in this matchup. So that
is a nice little draw for Fury Hunter. All even now, right? One top deck apiece, right?
Everything's even in the series now. That's how it works.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's how it works. It was really good as well because the
Shadow Step on the Platinum might be required to get the engine at turn if it could
fancy going for it on three.
We need the weapon already in hand, so it's having a fatty drawing an extra card, could be a big deal.
So that's gone.
And now it's counting time.
Yeah.
Eating some imps.
this is the key to this this rogue deck is knowing when to say okay I've eaten an
imp and now I'm gonna chill
and Kuro looking for cultist map here playing this a little bit slower with
the weapon then we have seen a couple of players notably Gabby doing earlier
on in the tournament no real explosive hand set up just yet so he's gonna hold
on to the weapon for a further turn still are you there now this is you are
sounding better to me at the moment I'm sure viewers are very confused just
because you are apparently sounding absolutely fine to the stream but we are
having a problem or two with our own little communications platform to hear
each other. It's a apology.
I'm not just pretending you can't hear me as per usual.
Ah, excuse me, excuse talk straight through me, honestly.
Anyway, EMG.
Oh, my God.
That was a large hello.
Hello, minions.
Hello, large minions.
So I guess just to cover the basis
before we get into any intricacies.
If you aren't familiar with this deck at all,
that card Dread Deserter that you see in hand
for Fury Hunter, that's kind of the linchpin of the deck
alongside various copy locations
that you can get either from Zinijari or from Elise.
The original copy of Dread Deserter, of course,
does not have charge because the text reads,
if this did not start in your deck,
gain charge as we can just highlight for you here.
But obviously any further copies
that you get from that through locations
do have charge which means you can buff up massive versions of it especially if you get the doubled stats
from the Zinjari location to be able to do massive, massive damage to your face
with a couple of other minions possible to have similar effects
but you do also have massive ability to do anti-aggro stuff as you're seeing here with the life steal taunts
which unfortunately are not putting up much of a resistance against the cane that incurs someone
Yeah, from me everything must go.
Yeah, we're really rough on that.
This other lifestealer, which obviously is hugely important,
double swipe, does that do anything here?
Quite a bit I should think.
It's reasonable clear, right?
You end up getting the health back, you end up killing the cane.
It's your starting point for the turn, can you find anything better?
Do you get in a cheeky sleep for draw two and then
use your six mana for instance?
Yeah I suppose the other question is whether you can ever get away with not
clearing the board because you're just healing for ten anyway with the
minions attacking? I have a plan.
I don't think that's a possibility. Go on, what's your plan? We get the board.
yes we let them have a turn or two and then we just hear I'm up for 15 so you
don't ever kill me here but the problem with that is that you are down double
swipe and they can still make their own EMG board which I know is where the get
the board part of your equation comes on but yeah that is a little bit more in
there you do have a silly axe at the bottom yeah you're not wrong you've got
three drop coming from the um from the
and meager still there we go before i get fired on the spot
and meager still like me a cat oh while we're sending up the celestial on signal
here's here's one here's one for celestial we were looking at the names
and the art of the elise uh location options earlier
and they all make sense right snapping plants for the savage rule type effect
maybe a little bit weird but otherwise like the one that's named moon something gives you spell damage that fits with the
with the existing thematic stuff in hardstone, right?
Lava, the one that's just an erupting volcano and it gives you armor
Can someone explain that to me please?
Somebody who isn't rave and explain how that works
Yeah
Because it makes sense to rave immediately so he can't explain it to us
He just gets that lava is armor
it's actually super powerful and it's been super powerful in this game so fast to be first.
I mean the first one was fantastic, yeah the difference between that old manager being
in hand and not, you know, accelerate that whole incendiary process forward by an entire
turn and I think Fury Hunter would be having a much worse time trying to deal with it.
This is great from Fury, by the way. Obviously the scrapbooking student in matchups where
you need the wind condition is more often used to create additional copies of the Zinjari
location so you can create more copies of your giant charging minions and deal more
charge damage. Fury Hunter recognizing, as Lorinda was
alluding to earlier that he just has to survive rogue. That's what every deck in the game has to do.
Just survive the damage cap of the rogue you are playing against. So doing this on a midrocyl instead
gains more armor, more card draw, which gets you more armor, more cheated mana, which gains you
more armor from from the sleep as well I'm not sure you said scrapbooking to
student the tree spend a bunch of manner refresh the manner twice and then play
sleep at the end of your turn I'm not sure the board and I get 15 armor he got
board his own way I could have given him many different ways of getting the board so which would
have been worse and then he got the armor okay and then play the Ziggrax it's what I said I'm
having it my suggestion for the next game is win the game and have more than one health when
you win if he doesn't do that you look silly I didn't say anything about winning
I think it might happen though yeah I think it might
I'm having it. I even mentioned that you get a 3 drop from Amir Drasil to get more stuff as well.
That's true. That's true. You did.
Which by extension means you do it twice.
Right. How much damage though? Joking aside, the Fury Hunter is down to only 41 and facing a large board as you've been predicted.
I think it has maximized this output to a large degree, chilling through that armor.
We'll just beat Nonzileax, I think it might.
It would have a very good chance of beating Nonzileax now.
It's one of those things.
You see this happen with Rogue basically all the time, right?
you're kind of resigned to the game ending, but you just have to go through the motion,
you do the max damage you can do, that results in you having a board at the end of the turn
anyway, so then you just see if your opponent has the answer.
Quite often though the rogue is fatigued massively here, so without this zilean, the rogue
is on 25, that board if it stuck would get to actually board for eternal 2, he knew
what the win competition was, he gives it up, fuel it back to 1-0.
And the game pans out precisely as Castor Extraordinaire,
Lorinda predicted Fury Hunter squaring it all up,
gets a win on the Druid.
And like I said, honestly, it's a very, very impressive deck
for the field, I think.
When you understand the different win conditions,
like this, this took me a while to get to when
I was playing the deck.
I would try and race the Rogue for far too many games.
The first day or two, I played the deck.
and play against Cycle Rogan, I try and race them
to the wind condition, which is generally not the way
to do it.
Understanding then to sit back, play defensive, gain armor
instead, doing things like Fury did, which was copy the tree
as opposed to copying the wind condition location,
if you want to look at it like that.
When you start to do that, more and more consistently,
you do start to hit that kind of 50-plus total
that Rogue really struggles to hit as a moving target,
especially if they don't get like turn five in Cyndias down like that.
So yeah, I think very clean performance from Fury Hunter there and
clean performances I think is something that Fury is going to need for
the remainder of this series because this is kind of a truism, right?
But because of his first series, which ended in such catastrophic fashion,
a series which he was kind of visibly tilting throughout up to that point as
well. It only takes one, an
unclean game, one game with a
couple of mistakes in it. And
suddenly your mental state goes
back to that position from the
previous day. So as long as
Fury even in defeat can keep
playing well, he's going to be
in with a great shot taking the
series down. Which honestly has
been a feature of how he's
played through the years and
why he's been such a great
player. Like he's always been
animated. He's always sort of
X, Y, Z, etc. But he has always, and you pointed out, yes, so right before he made a cataclysmic
turn.
Yes, yeah.
As is always the way with casting, he has always kept it like, that's his outlook to
stop him playing badly, the way he sort of expresses himself. That is how, and that
is how he is. He is not playing to the camera. That is how fury hunter is, wherever he
plays Hearthstone, no matter where or what it is.
hard on himself which is why he became very good. On the other side, we talk about unflappable
players over the years, Inclu really doesn't seem to flap. This is his first world, right?
So he seems incredibly calm as all things are going on. Just conceded there, got onto
the next game as soon as he saw the Zileaks, you know.
Oh, hello. Double bellhop from the Firehawk has Parrot Sanctuary in hand to be able to
cheat the second one out a little bit as well. Very, very nice indeed. This is the kind of
start that you're going to want against the Warrior. If you can back this up with a Haggathor
into a Wish Upon a Star slime, he's going to be in a fantastic position to even go
long if he needs to but there is every chance that these five fives just beat up in Kuro too
rapidly here but does have a very nice response with the the raptors and for glory he does but
he also doesn't he has neither the five drops he doesn't have ball he doesn't have the three five
he actually has none of the traditional look turn five warrior starts to do reactive stuff it
hasn't got there yet so these might go to turn six to the bob and that's an extra turn of hitting
use charmant cards and that's very powerful. It is worth noting though they have at this point
pushed negative free damage to the warrior itself. Just good start.
That's some billa. True. Yeah. I'm glad you got that. Will you pick up how obscure this is?
here okay I mean there's a couple of bumbling bell hops that play for Aston
Villa I can tell you that one yeah don't tempt me right what's this little card
off the top of the deck
it is not a removal card and furious fouls will dodge the Bob it turns time
if the board isn't full, of course.
Right, so what's the plan here?
I think Fury assumes that if he doesn't get clear or Bob next turn, he wins.
He doesn't have to worry about that, right?
He has to worry about what happens if something does occur like a frozen board or clear.
The best way to use this shutter block is basically what I'm talking about here, because it doesn't have anything great to go with it right now, but it will have no infinite Murlocs at some point.
Or infinite Elises.
Or infinite I mean threes. It's an approximation.
Yeah, right now it does look like an Elise angle, still I think you'd be holding out a little bit of hope that if this game does reset
like if your opponent does just have the hostile invader clear here or something really nasty
I think you're still holding out a little bit of hope that you can reset to the like shutter block
which upon a star slime kind of angle if you can get there
If that doesn't materialize in the next turn or two, I think shutter block Elise locations absolutely fine
I mean you get two uses out of it and you do nothing this turn if you don't jam it on the board. I think I just want to jam it on the board.
Yep, agreed. I think you would have to see Haggitha there off the top to keep considering the line that I'm talking about.
So without seeing it, just out of the shadow block.
Yeah, let's see what I've got. And at the moment the answer what have I got is nothing.
Apart from this brawl.
I really like to have every card of the game as well.
All the signatures.
And the two-three wins.
Procacery strike will clear up nicely.
Draws an Elyse for some more clearing power on the next turn
with a potential five-mana location.
This is now a relatively slow turn
if Fury is going to go for the Elyse's,
which he absolutely looks like he is.
slow more ways than one right slow on the board also you've got to go because
you've got lots of choices yeah there you go
we'll do this the old fashioned way for you so we have one five five copy with
We have one Discover a Spell with Savageryl and we have one way, 5-5 copy with 3 Raptors.
Now we get to play the Murlocs. Do we now play the big Murlocs given that we all came off the top? Do we play the mini Shut-A-Block now and just go all in on some, well not all in, but largely in on some A-Tates next turn?
can still do it because you have the location available right you don't have to necessarily
telegraph the turn to your opponent as much as that they still know they still know that
you have the a drop in hand but you do have the flexibility that comes from the location
it's kind of annoying board right it's it's very good with plus two it doesn't appear
to do a lot but it's threatening what 17 that's why I like this more that's why
I think it's better to do this than to just load up the shutter block in advance
because you do have the flexibility with the location
Bialcry discount.
This threatens three locations in your hand
with Savage Roar effects.
It also threatens Wish upon a Star.
So it's the kind of board that the warrior has to respect
that they don't want to.
It's the kind of board that makes this matchup really
annoying if you don't have Dracarx specifically
in your hand, because Dracarx is the one card
that you're happy to just throw out on any board
like this.
Ooh.
Oh.
well now now we've got options
as you go without the plus if you get the haggis and the plus two down here
just just push the what
two and eight
how much is that that sounds like ten
get a haggis down for next turn
now you're missing a character there
sort of character
i am a character
It's give friendly characters plus 10 times.
Oh yeah, plus the other two shorts, like 10, it's 12.
It is a lot like 10, alright.
Probably is 10, but it's in a different base.
Base 12 or something.
Anyway.
Oh?
You clear?
I've got enough going on right if it sticks, it sticks if it doesn't, you know.
Yeah, same here.
You just don't really have to commit anything because all of your balls threaten lethal because
of just all of the million savage roar effects that you have available.
And now you do have mini-shutter block possible if you're on a star available as well, so.
And that makes the game so different because all of your cards are in the entire game.
Speaking of things that make the game different.
Yeah, that is the anti-Sharman card.
When Draker X hits the board and is established like that,
especially when it gets to attack into a zero attack minion,
that is a tough swing turn for the Sharman to recover from.
Fury Hunter might just be forced to take one slow turn here,
just to set up a little bit. Yeah, absolutely.
Sign of a good player bite.
more like the panics there, gets a load of murlocs which is fine, getting rid of the
drakox but I don't have the ongoing game for the future turn set up. More than happy
just to play a 7, 10 and a 13, 16. It's a slow turn, so big for the rest of the game now.
Oh, all right. Oh my goodness. Yeah, there's some guards. Yep
I love it when a plan comes together the Dracorex attack just perfectly lines up the 11 armor shield slam on the biggest minion
It's the kind of stuff that makes you want to play half stone right there
I'm sticking with the America's casting honestly. They've got a 50% record of this tournament, how's your lot doing?
My lot! We just beat Everton 1-0 away, thanks, top of the league.
Namelya...
Very weird that Namelya doesn't explode and kill everything there, just kills everything anyway.
Unusual card.
They used to have Deathwattle or something.
Fury has a lot of stuff in hand here.
We've seen Charm start to peter out around here normally.
This is just ongoing stuff.
He's just cleared up a lot of guards from his turn,
and he's out carding the warrior.
He's always out helping the warrior.
This has been close to the ideal Charm and game against Warrior.
A massive tempo early to force the warrior on the back foot
and then back that up with both of your big power plays.
Shutter Block and the Haggathor, right?
To be able to just do disgusting things with the hand buff,
the board buff, the deck buff.
Everything you have is massive for the rest of the game.
You've got tons of value from a lease locations,
tons of burst damage from a lease locations.
Your alloc here is enormous when you draw it.
Like everything you could possibly need
is lined up for Fury until this game.
This was one of the dream shaman draws, I think.
Yeah, he's made the most of it.
There's still ways to make this worse.
Keeping his options open all the way along has led to this.
Oh, for sure.
Even going all the way back, a non-zero number of players
would have just played their location on two.
And Fury went, now screw that, coin firehawk,
and then just hit double bellhawk, right?
Like a lot of people just don't do that.
Absolutely.
and then holding onto the shell of block ability to the right time,
not panicking and hitting Merlox into Drucker.
Again, all things that you'd expect a top player to do, but, yeah,
all things were a totally horrible diversion path.
Very nicely navigated turn there from Incuro as well,
clearing up as much as possible,
getting the ballwork of Azenoth down to resist the attack from the two minions.
also lots of actions done cards drawn cards played minions killed really
smashing down the cost of that ceaseless expanse over the course of that turn as
well which is going to end up being very very relevant if he is going to be able
to stay in this game over the next turn or two yeah yeah really enjoy how
who's played so far in this tournament.
Also good to see Furyhunter back on full concentration.
Really great way to round out eliminations that day.
So these two remaining locations in hand, one of them is 5.5 copy with plus two attack
and one of them is 5.5 copy with raptors.
So probably wanting to just re-establish a significantly wider board
before allocating any manner to either of those.
especially when your uh when your slimes are 12 15s yeah like take some of this and then
oh no ziliac ziliac is really really annoying obviously as is the um ceaseless in hand
that we're gonna have from fuel's perspective like weapons fuel is fouls it was hanging in there
So come to madness is huge zero mana discover a friendly dragon that died this game resummon it
Can you think of any dragons that died this game that you might be interested in resummoning?
Take it a horse. Yeah, yeah, that'll do actually a hidden text on the cart. It does resummon horses as well
Yeah, take it old Dracoex. What's favorite horse?
What when and where did and why and how did you decide this was a horse?
just did right I'd never know why I do things right knew that I'd have been
successful in life
renovate renovate to one of these which was all those about to get its last
use but it's five mana in the bin for fury and more tempo for inquiry who is
still on 44 health 49 health after all that beating by the way yep
But that is very much this matchup. Warrior can survive and survive and survive right up until the point they don't, right?
They have a limited number of hard removals. We are running pretty low on them.
In fact, let's take a look at what we have got left. Still one brawl remaining and that zero manaseasless expanse in hand.
So it's got to be said in Kuro is doing a fantastic job of resisting all of this pressure without bleeding all of the removals.
And they are still in short supply at this point
And it's really just got to not panic quite it's so easy to think as a regular player at least
Oh the warrior has all the answers well they've used a lot of them
They've got five cards the ones on the left hand side up probably not removed because they just been sat there waiting to be played
Or game you're probably doing all right here
Oh my goodness. Yeah, please.
Thank you.
Moment there. You have to
consider trading the 14 whatever
it is for into a five nine. It
looked horrible. Oh, time has
been found off the rip which
gives you so many options to
find some counterplay against
you don't even necessarily get the immediate two-turn lethal set up with the
time walk to cheat out those two turns consecutively it is still the opportunity
to to break the game in some disgusting ways that no other card would be able
to manage. Right and in Koho has identified this right he is in danger of
dying particularly soon like in the next turn or two so he can just start
drawing cards. Something I mentioned earlier, we've seen mainly warrior mirrors in this
tournament where your time warp is not particularly amazing until you get combo bit. Right, that's
lethal set up. But here you can quite often just set up lethal against someone with only
37 health
Oh
Barnabas ceaseless yeah
Yeah, fury saying hold on chill hold on chill. How much have we got here so furious gets to push
So that is 12 more from the selfie so furious taking him down to
22 16 right
I'm doing it turn by turn and you're doubling it automatically.
Okay, so we're going to confuse each other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, so if you're in the hero power pushing 12 and then you can load up either the mega fin with Merlux alongside it, or you can play the Barnabas alongside as well.
play the Barnabas and alongside as well.
I think there's enough, right?
212 is 24, but Penn is 34.
That's what I'd have done.
Mm-hmm.
Just don't need anything else at all.
This is enough already.
That's just the same.
I'm going to take a look at that.
I encourage shaking the head, what's going on there?
Okay, he didn't get the hero power, okay fine, good.
Okay, yeah, probably just embarrassed the thinking so long about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maybe it was the only reason the head shake was there, because yeah, it was pretty comfortable.
The only tricky part is that in order to play a five drop, either the gigafin or the barnabas,
you have to skip one of the hero powers, but you still have more than enough damage to couple of that.
the other hero powers. I like it again. I think I think in Kuro just kind of got in his head for a while
they're trying to like think of the special way of doing that when the damage was just there with
the Sulfurus, maybe not including the weapon hits, maybe only counting one hero power, you know
there's a million things that you can do. Well maybe you don't count it, you just try to maximize
it because you know it's there. If you maximize it you know instinctively it's enough, you
haven't actually counted it if you need anymore, you just play the most stuff you can.
Yeah, but I think the shake of the head at the end was like betraying the idea of you idiot
Like they were so obvious like what were you thinking about?
So, yeah, we're gonna see but whatever like digging back into it, right?
What I think the actual good talking point about that was is we spent large periods of that game
Talking about how good Fury's draw was how well he'd set it up, you know, everything that he'd navigated
strong cards at the right time putting him in such a dominant position but then it
was that moment when I clicked remaining cards and there was still a brawl left in
the deck and there was a zero mana ceaseless in his hand that brawl never
got played the zero mana ceaseless was used offensively to set up the two turn
lethal with time walk like somehow he spent the entire game killing 15 15s
without using any of his removal how on earth did he do that he did what we
we were talking about in the death night match which is took discover from Elise
he hit the guards which allowed him to slow down one turn with the two four six
drop way hit the current Ken stuff and feel you have to mess around you know
with Namelius and things he hit the get your Dracorex back which is another
turn that he just held on for use that basically clear another board with and
yeah he made sure to take discover from Elise realizing the wraps the stuff
wasn't really that exciting right now I don't what the other card was on it
but he knew that discover was the way to hold on.
And he just limped along and hoped to get lucky
when he got his quest down, you know, get some good stuff.
And he was allowed to draw good stuff.
He's like, you said he's got all that removal left in his deck.
So yeah, he did what he did in game one,
which is hang on, hope to hit something
because my drawer is pretty pants and got there.
And this one, the first one was a top deck,
which was very lucky.
This one, sure he needed it in time,
But he had a lot of outs to get there this time around.
It was a different kettle of fish, I think.
Please don't call me pretty punks until the camera is off,
Florender.
We will move on to the road game, which
is what's left for In Kuro.
Yeah, really, really impressive stuff.
Obviously, people will talk about the fact
that he just slammed Quest and hit Time Walk, right?
Which is just the best card out of all of them.
It's just absolutely nuts.
But with that Brawl in reserve,
with that Ceaseless Expans in reserve,
He still had, you know, a good couple of card draws left in him, from his perspective.
He had one afterwards, and then he had one more turn, and then, if you had that lethal set up with the Alakir draw on the previous term, with all of his copy locations and savage draws, right?
So, he had the two that he found immediately, plus two more cards after that, to hit Timewalk, to be able to do it.
Yes, again, similar to the first game, right, where he topped X the nearer.
Yes, that is fortunate, but basically every other player in the world and most players in this tournament by the way people have been playing
Would not have navigated themselves successfully into that position to begin. Yeah, I very very well
I will be incredibly sad if fury hunter goes out of this tournament
But I will be incredibly happy to see more of inco because I feel like he
Has the aura of a world champion in waiting right now through this tournament
He has been so solid the only flap
we've really seen him do was at the end there where he couldn't add 24 and 10
the easy way and sort of you know just try to maximize when he didn't need to and that doesn't
matter because it was still lethal he was just going to over lethal and take a bit of extra time
about it yeah and in his defense neither could i because you know my co-caster decided to do that
thing where we were two people counting is clearly much better than one thousand yeah i'm sorry
back in the day you'd have left me to it and trusted my mathematics
No, no one in Evans was my mathematics where he comes accounting.
Don't take the rewind.
It might just be the best card here.
It's probably the best card here, honestly.
It's got plus two plus two elusive on it, which is just such a powerful tool.
Sure. Take the huge minion.
Yeah, I suppose it's rogue, isn't it?
not pointing spells at your minions anyway they're just using dubious purchase to kill
large minions he might as well take the even larger minion yeah and you have got
stuff on the board to go with it you have got a curfew of future turns the rule of
thumb I use for whether to take plus four plus five because it's always the option
I want is do I have things to do if you know I miss two draws and the answer
the blood of tar and teradax and things is probably you do.
The doobies are big, a huge pick here.
The MG's at the farm.
It's still fitty-fitty.
Yeah.
Well, the MG's six, we're currently under a prep.
It's still functionally six at the moment.
Sure.
We're just looking at a prep.
Either way though, he's got the MG.
He's actually looking for the other one saying,
You know what, you're 7-7, it's not late.
Because if he hits the other EMG, he can take the 10,
kill off the rest of the board and do be the 7-7 next turn.
If that 7-7 can only fight one minion at a time.
Well, I think this is just good order of operations
either way, right?
Because the prep still saves you two mana
whether you use it to play the map for 0 or the doobie for 2.
So you might as well just have a look at the situation
and see if anything changes.
He's got to go.
No, he's got to win the 50-50.
He's got to go.
Still has prep.
Preps out.
Preps out the ever-burning Phoenix for 0.
We're going to land the imp on it so that he does get EMG.
And he can hit the second EMG here as well.
And he does.
Does he get the actions in?
Is the rope his friend?
It is.
He gets both fury mouth a gate cannot believe it or that is exactly what we were talking
about Neil just enough time to get the actions in on the road.
Look at her spaced it down to the absolute millisecond.
That's the first time I've really seen him come like, Oh my goodness, that was a little
bit close.
I liked.
All right, back to game face.
And he lost the 50-50 by the way and this is the position he's in on losing the 50-50
That's how good the rest of the turn was
Also he has picked up another huge purchase
I do think there was too long spent debating the map pick which left that being a little bit too tight in the end
But absolutely, you know the difference between completing the turn with 0.3 nanoseconds and completing the turn with 10 seconds remaining is
Functionally zeros
I'm actually on the side of well if anything happens at that point, if you get a tiny bit
of lag or anything, you do now lose the game because of it, so yeah, I'd like to have seen
you pick the map a little bit quicker.
But then he made the right choice, so okay, well I assume he made the right choice as
this is the outcome.
Might not have been the right choice, I'll admit.
Alright, now how do you proceed from here?
Because Blob of Tarn is 7-7, I'm still here to be dealt with no matter how much
you're getting down two AMG's on turn four. Some of this stuff is going away to the blob.
Gets the doll.
Looks like we are setting up DB number two this turn, yeah.
Yeah, eats the poison into the five-three, uses the space rock to combo the DB.
Yeah, Fury's sort of face says it all at the moment.
Yeah, little rough.
Shall we set Gryff to looking for draw, probably, I'd imagine.
Heal might not be a disaster.
Yeah, I think he still has a little bit of flexibility with it.
He can take his time here.
Fury's going to have the ability to reset just a little bit here with the pterodax.
No, he isn't because there's just no
Heartstone cards in his hand to play alongside it
It's an absolute disaster
He just needed a playable to potentially still be in this game
But that is a full five-man a pass for fury hunter in terms of cards in his hand
Okay, I need to very quickly look at what has been played here. How good is this webweaver?
No, don't you think it's particularly great, right? I think most of these cards are still waiting to be used.
Doesn't get draw.
Control versus, uh, Steel versus Six Damage is a pretty tough choice here, I think.
Honestly, he is going to go directly with the damage.
Normally for removal, a lot of the time.
Like a point plays a husky, you can just Six Damage it and get all your life.
Well the next thing you're playing instead of the S580 trillium is the time right?
Yeah, the problem with that plan is that your mana crystals do say 7 next turn.
You are pitching illegal plays, I'm afraid.
Wait, so you just crossed 7?
That's what I mean, you do that instead is what I was meaning.
Yes.
Yeah, so the the amulet will never be used on the house because you just be jamming in sims. Yeah
Um, you have got the dog buff on your
Oh
Was you just need some hand can we not care manager no way you do a manager
Three six ten four four from the hero as well the dog buff wins it the dog buff actually wins it for incoro
ah
Speaking of illegal plays, that's how you know that you're a gamer.
When you spot lethal on turn seven with incindious in your hand,
that's how you know you are a freaking gamer because doing anything else,
apart from playing incindious, is a strictly illegal play.
But hey, sometimes the technically illegal play is still the morally correct thing to do, Neil.
And that's a lesson for your life.
I think that makes up for the 74 second spot on 2, 12 and 10 being 30, whatever it is.
By spotting that counting and launching it, I didn't see him register it, let alone double-check it.
Like, he must have been thinking, oh, if I draw a manager I have lethal before that turn began.
Because he just started playing a foul-nose when there's an incendiary and immediately there,
and we're like, uh, okay, cool, he's doing a thing.
Oh, these things are lethal.
The second the second EMG.
So I don't know I saw is no eruptions in the whole game, by the way, just roped him.
There was one there was one drawn.
There was one drawn.
I think it hit a minion.
It didn't actually get no face damage in the whole game was done by the normal
road victory. He just wrote.
Yeah. Yeah. And it just ended up being the second EMG was backbreaking, right?
like the the doobie was thrown out end of turn as I was saying like that was
just the good order of operations I think just because it doesn't matter where
the prep discount ends up going you might as well look at the map information
first then throws out the the doobie's purchase it misses the 50 50 but the
three cards bring in the prep which was the last card to take the Phoenix
in hand down to zero so he plays the prep his Phoenix then becomes zero the
eat the imp that he already has is zero from the prep that can eat the Phoenix, draws three
more cards and on the rope hits the second EMG to go along with the first EMG that he has in hand
and that was just always going to be too much of an uphill climb from that point for Fury Hunter
as you saw from Fury's reaction to that term. You know not to mention the persistent divine
shield that was coming from the four drop actually saved a bunch of damage for Incura
who was kind of bleeding out at the time as well so certainly that that was a world championship
performance because what in Kuro did was played well and got lucky at the same time and that's
the formula that's the formula that you need in a card game to become a world champion because
you know you can consistently be one of the top performers but it's just the nature of card
games that in order to win any individual tournament on any individual day you are
are going to need some cards to run your way, right?
And then we absolutely saw that from Incuro, that series.
But that's not taking anything away from him.
That is just what card games are.
And he absolutely put himself in every possible position
he needed to be in to make those eventualities happen
and played incredibly well.
To round out a top eight, which
is looking phenomenal, Larinda.
What are your thoughts on these eight handsome faces
that we have in front of us?
I mean, my first thought looking at lineup, honestly,
was, there's two egg locks at the top, right? And then I started looking at the matches.
Feel-Feel and Kuro both making it through despite Feel-Feel sort of getting egged in
the very first round. They're both through. Shouty versus Yanming jumps off the page though.
I'm in the incurred boat with them. I think the Kuro has been playing fantastic. But
current world champion versus the person who hasn't been the world champion somehow
is very exciting for that third match of the day, I think. What about yourself?
Yeah, I would be inclined to agree, right? I think narratively the Xiao Ti Yang Ming series is the most interesting.
It does mean if Xiao Ti is going to realize the prophecy as the lovers have been talking about of how he is one of those kind of
un-crowned world championship type players, him having to defeat Yang Ming along the way is going to be a huge boost
boost to his confidence going into the semifinals and finals if that happens but
likewise right I think these the China players do hold each other in very high
regards in terms of the strength in the field overall right so I think if Xiao
if if Yang Ming is able to get past Xiao Tee he might think okay you know what
that's the toughest challenge out of the way like Xiao Tee is defeated maybe
I'm on my road to a repeat world championship so I think there's that is
a huge one to get into tomorrow. Maxibon, the new young savage as well, trying to make a run from
the bottom of the bracket with an egg lock in his way. That's super interesting as well. And then
of course, Chonsu, one of the old guard, going up against one of the newer members of his own
region there in definition as well up top is super fascinating as well. And not to mention
Incuro again, who we've just been bleating on about for long enough at this point.
What a day it's been. It's been a long day, but I've enjoyed every single second of it.
Larynda, I'm going to pass it over to you for some final words in a second.
But again, if you are watching today and you're not able to watch tomorrow,
we would be remiss to not point out that Hearthstone Esports is going to be back with a bang in 2026
after we have wrapped up this World Championship.
You can find out all about that with Explanation Mark 2026 in the chat.
world championships back live
and in color at BlizzCon next
year. So if you are fancying
your chances at a live in person
world championship, make sure you
look up all that information as
to how to get involved.
Larynda, what we saying?
Yes.
That is so that happens.
I ain't reading all that.
Exclamation mark 2026.
that you can. Exclamation mark 2026 in the chat. You can read to your hearts content and yeah, we'll wrap it up there. We will see you tomorrow. We have a world championship, a world champion to crown about one of those eight players over there is going to be taking home the title of Hearthstone World Champion. We will see you there. We have had a great day. Great job, Neil. You also pointed in the right direction. We will see you tomorrow.
you