by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

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Written by @F2K_Varranis

If you’ve ever played in a Hearthstone tournament, you know it takes a different level of preparation than the ladder. If you’ve never played in a Hearthstone tournament, then you’ve come to the right place! First, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into.

FORMATS

Before you start playing, before you even choose your decks, you need to know the format of the tournament. The two most popular formats are:

Conquest – Each player must submit a set number of decklists from unique classes. A player must win one game with each of his decks to win the match. When a player wins a game, the deck used by the winning player cannot be used for the remainder of the match. The losing player can keep the same deck used or switch to a different one of their choice. Players will be told what classes their opponent has available, but they won’t know which class is picked until both players have picked.

Last Hero Standing (frequently abbreviated “LHS”) – Each player must submit a set number of decklists from unique classes. A player must win one game against each of his opponent’s decks to win the match. When a player loses a game, the deck used by the losing player cannot be used for the remainder of the match. The winning player must keep the same deck used. Players will be told what classes their opponent has available, but they won’t know which class is picked until both players have picked.

Conquest is currently the most popular format due to its adoption in most of Hearthstone’s competitive tournaments. However, you will still frequently see LHS tournaments which award Hearthstone Championship Tour points. Each format offers different strategic options which we will discuss later, however, there are several other potential caveats to your tournament format.

Most popular tournaments will either be single elimination or double elimination format with a scant few adopting a Swiss structure. Single and double elimination tournaments are fairly self-explanatory – your tournament is over after either one or two match losses, respectively. A double elimination tournament will send players who have lost one match to a loser’s bracket where every match means elimination for one player. Swiss is the format used by nearly all Magic: the Gathering tournaments and requires each player to play a number of rounds determined by the number of players in the tournament. After the end of said number of rounds, the tournament will usually cut to a top 8 or top 16 single elimination bracket seeded with the most successful players from the Swiss rounds. Whether single or double elimination or Swiss, it won’t affect your strategy much, but it’s always important to know all the details of your tournament ahead of time in order to plan your day accordingly.

Much more important to your strategy is whether the tournament is best of 3 (“BO3”) or best of 5 (“BO5”) and whether it includes bans. A BO3 tournament indicates that you will need to win two games to win a match against an opponent. Similarly, a BO5 format requires you to win three games to take a match. For Hearthstone, this also determines the number of decks you’ll need to bring. A BO3 format requires two decks since you’ll never play with more than two classes per match. BO5 requires that you bring three decks. Generally, the more games in a “best of” the higher the skill cap for the tournament. More games equals more decisions and (theoretically) less variance.

When a Hearthstone tournament implements a ban, each player is allowed to pick one of their opponent’s classes to “ban,” or disallow for the entirety of the match. This requires you to bring one more deck than the format requires. For example, a BO3 format with a ban will require you to bring three decks since one will be banned. BO5 with a ban would require four decks. Each player will choose which of their opponent’s classes to ban after being told the classes being used but before any games for the match begin. Bans add significant strategy to tournaments. Not only do they require you to build a line up that can survive losing any one deck, but you need to identify what decks your line up is weak to in order to make the strongest bans. Bans get even more complicated when trying to target a specific deck in a class with several archetypes. If your line up is weak to Freeze Mage, do you always need to ban Mage even if you expect your opponent is using Tempo Mage and your line up is strong against Tempo Mage? Answering questions like that is part of the preparation required to build a strong line up. No matter how many decks you’re bringing, you’ll want to bring decks which complement each other and cover potentially poor match ups.

One final caveat on formats is whether a tournament allows sideboarding. Sideboarding refers to allowing players to change the cards in their decks between games or matches – sometimes it even means allowing players to change their classes entirely! We’re not going to discuss sideboard strategy in depth as it can be very complicated in Hearthstone and is rarely used. Liberal sideboarding rules generally arise due to the difficulty of enforcing static decklists. To avoid the headaches of needing to deal with deck checking or impossible to determine he said/she said situations, some tournament organizers opt to allow any form of sideboarding (since then the content of your deck from a rules enforcement perspective is irrelevant). At a high level, you generally want to remove cards from your deck which are poor in a particular match up and add cards to improve the match up. For example, if you’re playing Secret Paladin in a tournament and can sideboard against a Control Warrior, you could side out Mysterious Challenger, Secretkeeper, and the secrets and side in brutal threats like Sylvanas and Quartermaster. These changes vastly improve the match up. While this may sound simple on the surface, you also have to consider that your opponent is also sideboarding and is likely aware of the sideboard strategies which work against him. While you may be packing your Paladin deck with more threats to defeat Control Warrior, your Warrior opponent may anticipate this and side into Aggro Warrior in order to outpace your now slower deck. If you ever have questions about sideboarding, feel free to hit up the fine folks of Fade 2 Karma on our BAND with questions.

STRATEGY

Conquest

The generally accepted best strategy to winning Conquest is to bring a line up of two or three strong, linear ladder decks. The format provides less ability for counter play than others since each game is essentially a blind pick. Conquest also does not particularly award innovation since a risky, new deck has to win at least one game each match. This format is also less susceptible to “tech” (rarely played cards used to target a specific match up) since it is difficult to predict your match ups. This format leads to the prevalence of several powerful decks such as Secret Paladin, Combo Druid, Renolock, Tempo Mage, and sometimes Freeze Mage or Aggro Shaman. If I were to play a BO3 one ban Conquest tournament tomorrow, these are the decks I would play:

Let’s facilitate our discussion of the Conquest format by analyzing this line up. Secret Paladin and Combo Druid are strong (arguably the strongest) of the available proactive linear strategies. No matter what my opponent brings or bans, I feel comfortable that I can secure a win with either deck. There are several reasons why I’ve chosen these two decks over other popular options. Aside from being a generically strong deck, I’ve chosen to play Secret Paladin due to its favorable Druid match up. Druid has long been the single most popular class chosen in Conquest, so I want to play a deck that answers it. Secret Paladin also has few truly poor match ups, meaning it is more likely to secure a win than other choices even if I must play an unfavorable match up. Similarly, Druid is such a popular class in Conquest due to its ability to steal wins under any circumstances. Much like Secret Paladin, there is rarely a line up against which I feel I cannot secure a win with Druid. These classes are also comfort picks for me. While I could have chosen strong decks such as Renolock and Tempo Mage, I have more experience with Paladin and Druid. It’s important to bring decks you are confident playing since you have to secure a win with every deck. Sorry guys, no Control Shaman for me in Conquest.

The analysis gets interesting when we consider Freeze Mage. Freeze Mage has very polarized match ups. Freeze Mage cannot beat Control Warrior and is weak to Combo Druid. However, outside of those two match ups, the deck may have the best win percentages of any other option. If the tournament did not have a ban, I would not pick Freeze Mage as my third deck due to its almost unwinnable match up against Control Warrior and the popularity of Druid. With a ban, however, I can target decks like Warrior which are strong against my line up. With this line up, I would prioritize banning Warrior since Control Warrior beats Freeze Mage and Patron Warrior is strong against Secret Paladin. If my opponent is not playing Warrior, I would ban Druid – removing Freeze Mage’s only weakness in the opposing line up and one of my opponent’s most powerful decks.

One of the best things you can do when building a line up is to analyze that line up’s weaknesses. What is the worst case scenario for our line up of Secret Paladin, Combo Druid, and Freeze Mage? Let’s list some of the bad match ups:

• Secret Paladin is weak to Patron Warrior, Freeze Mage, and Renolock.
• Combo Druid is weak to Tempo Mage and Zoo.
• Freeze Mage is weak to Control Warrior and Combo Druid.

The only overlap is Warrior across Paladin and Mage and Warlock across Paladin and Druid. If we see a Warrior, we already know we’re banning it, so we can cross that off the list. What if our opponent also has Warlock and Druid? There are not many deck options in Druid and Paladin, so our opponent will likely know which we are playing. Therefore, if our opponent brought Renolock, he will ban Druid but will ban Paladin if he brought Zoo. An opponent left with Combo Druid and Zoo is likely our worst case scenario as our Druid has to win the mirror or an unfavored match up while Freeze Mage is at risk of having to beat Druid. Fortunately, I do not expect many Druid, Warlock, Warrior line ups and I should be able to ban Druid in most cases where Warlock is being played as well.

Our strategy above looks to play the best decks and leverage the polarized match ups of Freeze Mage to put us in an overall favorable position against the majority of opponents. An alternative to this strategy would be to target specific, popular decks. Ostkaka’s 2015 Hearthstone World Championship winning line up is an example of this:

First, it’s important to note that the 2015 HWC was BO3 Conquest with no ban. Ostkaka was taking a risk bringing Freeze Mage, but he knew Control Warrior was not a popular deck at the time and it would be unlikely that he faced it. All three of his decks are even to highly favored against Secret Paladin while two of his decks are even to slightly favored against Druid. Ostkaka targeted popular Conquest decks while using his knowledge of the meta to get away with bringing a high risk, high reward powerhouse like Freeze Mage. While Ostkaka more than proved that this strategy can be successful, it requires significant knowledge of the meta to pilot successfully. A mistaken prediction, and Ostkaka could have lost large percentage points going up against Control Warrior each round. Predict correctly, and you could reap huge rewards like Ostkaka.

If you’re new to playing Conquest and want to try your hand in the various grinder tournaments awarding 2016 HWC points, I recommend a line up similar to the first one we covered. While unexciting, it’s safe and resilient to the unpredictable meta you could run into in a 250 – 500 man open tournament.

Last Hero Standing

Much of the advice we’ve already gone over applies in some form to Last Hero Standing. However, LHS has much greater strategic demands when it comes to choosing which deck you play when. In Conquest, the order you play your decks is frequently irrelevant as each game is essentially rock, paper, scissors as to which decks are chosen. You can sometimes force a good match up in Conquest if your opponent requires a win with a specific deck, but those situations are rare. In LHS, however, every game after the first requires a decision that can increase your odds of winning.

Let’s assume we’ve brought the same Paladin, Druid, Mage line up to a BO5 no ban LHS tournament and we come up against an opponent with the dreaded Warlock, Druid, Warrior line up. First we need to make some assumptions about which decks our opponent is playing. To help us do this, let’s analyze our opponent’s potential weak match ups:

• Combo Druid is weak to Tempo Mage and Zoo.
• Control Warrior is weak to Combo Druid and Paladin.
• Patron Warrior is weak to Freeze Mage, Midrange Hunter, and Tempo Mage.
• Zoo is weak to Freeze Mage.
• Renolock is weak to Combo Druid.

Our opponent’s line up is fairly weak to Druid if he’s playing Renolock and Control Warrior. If he’s playing Zoo and Patron, Freeze Mage could ruin his day. Thus, it’s safe to assume our opponent is not playing either of these combinations of Warlock and Warrior and is either playing Zoo and Control Warrior or Renolock and Patron. I would take this a step farther and assume he’s playing Zoo and Control Warrior due to his weakness to Tempo Mage if he were playing both Combo Druid and Patron Warrior. It’s possible he’s playing a different Druid deck, but Combo Druid is so pervasive that it’s always safe to assume it’s what you’re facing. The fact that Control Warrior is marginally more popular than Patron Warrior is additional positive evidence to support our assumption of Control Warrior.

Assuming our opponent is playing Control Warrior, Combo Druid, and Zoo, we can now choose which deck we want to open the match with. Secret Paladin is by far the safest deck to start with. It is relatively strong against both Warrior and Druid and even against Zoo. Due to its solid match ups, Secret Paladin gives us a fair chance to 3-0 our opponent. The match ups we want to avoid are Warrior against Mage and Zoo against our Druid. Since classes are eliminated when defeated in LHS, we want to save Freeze Mage until Control Warrior is beaten and Druid until Zoo is defeated.

My guess is that our opponent will open with Druid. Druid is not an unlikely deck for us to open. Our opponent will not want to queue Warrior into our Druid in game one, but will want to save Warrior for Mage if he’s correctly deduced our deck selection. Additionally, he won’t want Zoo to be paired against Mage in game one. Druid is by far his safest opener. While we consider Secret Paladin favored against Druid, it is not so far in Paladin’s favor to preclude him opening with it. There is a chance he will open with Zoo if he expects us to open Secret Paladin. Not only does this give him his best match up against Paladin game one, but if he wins he will force us to bring out Freeze Mage against Zoo in game two. Assuming we win our good match up, he can then counter Freeze Mage with Control Warrior in game 3 and force us to win against Control Warrior and Druid with our own Druid.

As you can probably tell by now, whoever wins the first game in LHS is at a large advantage over their opponent as they can proactively counter their opponent assuming they brought a strong line up. When playing LHS, it is crucial to bring a line up that covers all possible match ups. If the tournament allows a ban, analyze each variation of your line up depending on what your opponent bans. If a particular line up becomes weak to a popular strategy if your opponent makes the correct ban, consider a different line up for the tournament.

LEARNING MORE

I hope this discussion of tournament formats and strategy has been helpful to all those aspiring to take down a Hearthstone tournament and reap the rewards. To help the community even more, Fade 2 Karma will be hosting a live chat AMA on our BAND. Join Chalk, Matpakke, Falconepunch55, and others on Wednesday January 27 from 10 AM EST till 12 PM EST using BAND’s live chat feature to get advice directly from Fade 2 Karma’s professional players and analysts. BAND is a relatively new social media platform which facilitates communication by personal interests in the form of groups, or “Bands.” While you’re there, check out the Hearthstone BAND as well and say hello!

If you want to see more from Varranis, check him out on Twitter and Twitch.

If you want to learn more about Fade 2 Karma, check out their website and their YouTube channel.