by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

My Hearthstone eSports Play of the Week returns to the Hearthstone Pro League! This week we take a look at game 3 of Zalae vs Sjow, in which Zalae ran a version of Midrange Hunter that included tech cards to defeat Grim Patron Warrior. Zalae expertly queued something similar to this deck against Sjow’s Patron list, and used his tech cards to completely dominate the match and give Sjow no chance of winning.

The Tech Cards

Harrison Jones is pretty straight forward, destroying a Death’s Bite really messes up Grim Patron combos, and getting a draw out of it just makes the deal sweeter. Has a 5/4, Jones can also eliminate most of the threats a Grim Patron Warrior can put on the board.

Then we have Snipe, which also has the potential to wreck Grim Patron combos. Killing a Warsong Commander will completely screw over your opponent’s big combo turn, killing a Grim Patron is also extremely effective. Killing a 5 mana card using a 2 mana one is a great bargain.

Stopping the Sjow

As you can see on the video above, Zalae’s turn 4 consists of Snipe and Hero Power. The Snipe throws a huge wrench into any possible Grim Patron shenanigans on turn 5. But more importantly, Sjow knows from a previous game that Zalae might be running Snipe. Since the Team Liquid ace doesn’t have any minions to try to deal with the possible Snipe, he’s forced into a very awkward Battle Rage for 1 card into a Hero Power. Without the ability to develop his board and far removed from a big combo turn, Sjow holds on to his Death’s Bite trying to get value from it, rather than killing the Webspinner or going to the face with it. This plays right into Zalae’s Harrison Jones, destroying both halves of Sjow’s weapons and drawing 2 cards.  This key turn 5 play puts Zalae in a extremely dominating position, but like that wasn’t enough, Sjow’s turn 6 is almost completely negated as the Snipe kills off a Grim Patron. From there the game is mainly just going through the motions as Zalae has all the answers in the world and he continues to methodically dismantle Sjow.

Zalae’s tech cards allowed him to completely dominate this match-up and allowed him to take Sjow all the way to the museum, this is enough to net him my play of the week.