by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my first Fireside Gathering. I’ve participated in local Hearthstone Tournaments in the past but this experiences was, overall, so much more enjoyable. There was still the fierce, competitive nature that typically accompanies a Tournament Bracket, but instead of people taking their bruised egos and leaving when they were eliminated, they stuck around and swapped gameplay war stories and cheered on the remaining competitors. 6 hours after I showed up at the event knowing 1 other person, I ended up having the pleasure of eating dinner with dozens of new friends! I’d like to think that experiences like mine are what Blizzard truly had in mind when they developed Hearthstone to be the fun, friendly and fiercely competitive game it has become.

Intentional or not, Fireside Gatherings have become a huge success and BlizzPro had the honor of participating in 3 fun filled Gatherings last weekend. Heather, JR and I chronicle our unique experiences below.

Huge thanks to SteelSeries for supplying us prizes for these events.

Toronto

– Shauna –

Perhaps I’m slightly biased when I say this, but the Toronto Hearthstone Community is probably the BEST Hearthstone community in North America, maybe, even the world! This was the 3rd Fireside Gathering held by the Toronto Community and the event has grown in numbers each month. August brought the largest turn out yet, at least 60 people attended! The house was packed when I arrived and attendance remained high for the entire 6 hour event.

The Gathering was held at Net Effect Lan Cafe in the heart of Downtown Toronto, and I’d like to give a shout-out to Matt, who kept our tournament brackets updated and had to clean up behind us after we left. The venue provided us with a rock solid internet access and had enough space and bandwidth for us to qualify 6 people for the upcoming ZOTAC Pre-quaifiers all while allowing us to host a simultaneous Collaborative Arena Run Competition. I also had the pleasure of participating in what was probably the fiercest game of Hearthstone Pictionary I’ve ever seen! If I may, I’d like to take a second to congratulate myself for finishing 2nd in my tournament bracket! I came “THIS” close to qualifying for the qualifier!! I used the DKMR Control Paladin but ended up losing in a very close 3rd game to a Handlock. In all seriousness though, a huge Congratulations to all of our tournament winners and best of luck to you all on August 17! I’ll be waiting to hear how you all do – especially you and your Handlock Kosta!

The Gathering concluded with a raffle and tickets were earned throughout the day based on participation and success in the various events. Who would have figured that the RNG on the ONE ticket I earned for finishing 2nd in my bracket would actually earn me a prize? I won one of the 2 much coveted SteelSeries World Of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Mice. As difficult as it was for me, I did the right thing though and drew another raffle ticket, seeing as how I was the one who brought the prizes on behalf of BlizzPro and SteelSeries in the first place… /sulk!

Once our pre-booked time at the cafe was up, many people just didn’t want the fun to end so a large group of us headed out afterwards for some All-you-can-eat sushi. Props to Andrew for trying some new foods and not throwing up on me! I have to admit, I was a little bit more than worried a few times there!  One final thank you to Chris Chan and Rebecca Tsang from ESN for running things and keeping track of all of the fine print!

Overall, the event was a HUGE success and we can’t wait to see what the turn out will be like for the next Gathering.

Washington, DC

– Heather –

The Washington D.C. Fireside gathering was held in the Fathom Gallery. The space was graciously donated by Fathom Creative, one of the sponsors. It was a beautiful space with tables set up inside and a large outside deck as well. When I arrived many of the seats were already taken and the hosts, from Netland Gaming were moving tables to accomodate more players as they arrived. In all we ended up with 116 players competing in the tournament. A number far and above what was expected.

The large number of guests caused some disconnects on the wifi. However, gamers being the helpful bunch that they are, soon started using their phones to create hotspots for them and their nearby neighbors to use. With that the tournament began! As BlizzPro was just a sponsor for this event and not a host I unfortunately do not have any details on the classes used in the tournament or the deck list of the winner. You can view the full bracket here.

It was a great gathering for the DC Hearthstone community that lasted eight hours. (Thank goodness for the Red Bull sponsor!) Eight competitors walked away with entry to the BlizzCon qualifier, four of them also walked away with some awesome prizes from SteelSeries and the top two with $60 in Battle.Net gift cards from BlizzPro:

1st: HixN36 (Rogue)
2nd: Rwinn (Warlock)
3rd: RS10 (Rogue)
4th: RogueMonkey (Shaman)
5th-8th: BobDaHui (Shaman)
5th-8th: EbonWolfe (Druid)
5th-8th: GodsCreator (Druid)
5th-8th: Rayijin (Druid)

Kansas City

– J.R. –

The Kansas City Fireside Gathering was our smallest yet, but that was purely by design. The Microsoft Store graciously let us use their space and wifi and even had Surface Pros available for us to use with Hearthstone pre-installed on them. However, their space was a lot smaller than past venues and there was no way we could host the 80+ people we’ve had in the past.

Our primary objective was to hold a tournament where people could have a chance at qualifying for BlizzCon. Lots of familiar faces were there including past KC Fireside winner Pickle and the runner up Argyle.

We ended up with 18 participants in the single elimination tournament and most surprising is that both Pickle and Argyle lost in the first round they were in. I personally finished in the semi-finals by running a Miracle Rogue deck using Loatheb but was beat out by Handlock which ultimately got beat out by NaxxLock Zoo to win the the entire tournament.

Yes folks, not only is Warlock dominating the ladder, but they are seemingly doing well in tournaments as well. Congrats to Kyubbi for being the regional qualifier from Kansas City! You can view the full brackets here.

Thanks again to the Microsoft Store in Overland Park for hosting us and we plan on doing another one there sometime in the future. We’re still working on details for another Fiberside Tournament at the Google Fiber Event Space in September and hope to have more details there soon.