Hearthstone Global Inn-vitational, possibly the biggest invitational tournament in Hearthstone’s history, will start soon! The tournament is organized by China, but it will feature players from all major regions (Americas, Asia-Pacific, China and Europe). They will compete in three different game modes – Standard Constructed, Battlegrounds and Mercenaries. Coincidentally, it will be the first global Mercenaries tournament, so the format is still very much experimental.
36 players in total will compete for their share of over $200,000 prize pool!
I have to say that the entire tournament has slipped under the radar. It hasn’t been promoted very well (at least outside of China) and if I didn’t stumble upon it on Twitter I could have missed it completely.
Rules
The tournament will be played in “Olympics” style, where players earn points for their regions for wins in different competitions (in this case, different game modes). Players from different regions will play individual matches against each other and the region winning more will score points.
After the first round, the best region will advance straight to the finals while the weakest one will get eliminated. Then 2nd and 3rd region will fight for their spot in the finals, and face the first winning region during grand finals.
Heare rare the rules for each of the game modes:
Constructed
- Best of Five (playing until 3rd win)
- Last Hero Standing
- Each team will bring 10 decks and have 4 bans – resulting in 6 decks to pick from.
Battlegrounds
- Each region will play 3 lobbies.
- Lobbies will be “silent” – there will be no communication between players
- The team having a better score after 3 lobbies will score points for their region.
Mercenaries
- Best of Five (playing until 3rd win)
- Conquest with 1 ban
- Each team will bring 4 decks, but with extra rules.
- The first rule is that no team can share more than 4 Mercenaries with each other. The second rule is that no single Mercenary can appear in more than 3 decks. This is on order to diversify the builds players have to bring.
Competitors
Each region will bring nine players in total – three for Constructed, four for Battlegrounds and two for Mercenaries. Here are each region’s line-ups:
Americas
- Constructed: Nalguidan, NaySyl, and Monsanto
- Battlegrounds: Dog, EducatedCollins, Slysssa, and WtyBill
- Mercenaries: Fr0zen and Lunalove
Asia-Pacific
- Constructed: Alutemu, Glory, and Posesi
- Battlegrounds: Dalonge, Jinbae, Tylerootd, and Younjoy
- Mercenaries: Jia and Surrender
China
- Constructed: Caimiao, Lionking, and Murphy
- Battlegrounds: Islandcat, Lalala, Taotao, and Xichen
- Mercenaries: Valeera and Windfish
Europe
- Constructed: BabyBear, Bunnyhoppor and Gaby
- Battlegrounds: Avelline, RDU, Simi and Sunglitters
- Mercenaries: Hunterace and Thijs
Where To Watch & Schedule
You can watch the English livestream on PlayHearthstone Twitch channel or Hearthstone Esports YouTube channel. Sadly, it looks like no Twitch / YouTube drops or any extra rewards will be available.
Update: Stream times were moved 90 minutes back for the upcoming days (so the images below are not correct, but they still showcase the order of play so I’ll leave them).
The transmission starts every day at 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET / 2:30 CET / 10:30 KT. Keep in mind that if you’re in Americas time zone, the transmissions will start a day earlier compared to the Europe / Asia dates. So if you’re in Americas, the tournament will be played between November 10 and 13 (and probably finish somewhere during in the middle of the night/morning on 14th).
And here’s a full schedule with the order in which each region will play each mode:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
To anyone curious, some card has been leaked for Alterac Expac.
https://www.eurogamer.it/articles/news-hearthstone-nuova-carta-barorso-glacius
Quick detail, 7 cost 6/6 Shaman Legendary minion. Summon 3/4 elemental that freeze for each frost spell cast.
Why couldn’t they couldn’t organize such simple card reveal and letting this happen. I guess it’s ironic, seeing how little they care about publishing this “Huge” Tournament. That’s Blizzard for you.
(A bit of typo there, I hope it can be edited)
Back to the card, it seems they gonna try freeze Shaman next. But since there’s no Frost Spells in Standard Shaman, I think this time we get to see a bunch of freeze spells coming our way.
Some thought about a spell like First Flame, I think they’re going for this one.
First Frost. 1 cost. Deal 2 damage to a minion and freeze it. Add a 2nd Frost to your hand.
Okay, but that’s really not Blizzard’s fault. They give cards to reveal ahead of time so people can prepare articles etc. And if someone leaks it, it’s on the website doing it, not Blizzard.
I’m getting some info ahead of time from time to time too and if I would post it too early it would be on me, not on Blizzard for providing me with the info.
Sometimes Blizzard leaks stuff themselves, but this time it’s on Eurogamer Italy. If I had to guess, they were supposed to reveal it a week or two from now and they put in a wrong date.
Well then, I’m gonna start asking why they decided to leaked it. But I’m sure it’s gonna be left unanswered. I did read the article translated version, and they started by commenting how little Blizzard talk about any of it.
It was taken down right away anyway. But I’m sure there IS something wrong somewhere for this to happen. But for now, Eurogamer Italy it is.
Oh. 🙁 That schedule here in Argentina make me sad, so late at night. Anyway i will see on the next morning. Best wishes for Nalguidan and his girl NaySyl. <3
Yeah, the schedule is clearly targeting Asia (since the tournament is based in China) – it’s bad for both Americas and Europe. At least I wasn’t sleeping in the middle of the night so I could even cover it in the first place, haha.
I watched it for like 1.5h after it started and then some more today. The format seems pretty fun and interesting, I like the “team aspect”, but I’ve noticed a bunch of issues and bugs with Mercenaries
Sad for bugs. :/ I also saw a bit at night. Bgs “blind and mute” is a good idea.
No pack drops? There goes the only incentives I have to ever watch this.
you’re not watching? there goes the only incentive I have to watch this.
I’m gonna die laughing from this cringe jabs.
Understood. It’s not like you would be able to learn anything.
Just so you know, it’s not about the “why should I watch”, it’s about “why they didn’t do better”.
Blizzard couldn’t even make something worthy to promote the so called “biggest” promotional tournament. There’s only like 2 people from Blizzard Publisher doing this.
But I guess you wouldn’t care, because you only saw me asking drops in terms of letting people know that this is happening, instead of seeing that this is a bad way to do tournament promotion.
I’ll let you digest that.