The second season of Hearthstone Grandmasters starts today, with 48 players split evenly between the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific going through eight weeks of competition to qualify for the Hearthstone World Championships later this year.
Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 will be split into two seasons with three phases each. The first phase will take place in the first three weeks of the season and will start with a Swiss format series of placement matches for the Group Stage.
Weeks Four through Seven will consist of round-robin group play within the two divisions in each region, as with previous seasons of Grandmasters.
Finally, Week Eight will be devoted to the Playoffs, which will see one player from each region qualify to the World Championship at the end of the year, while the three bottom players from each region will be relegated.
- VKLiooon becomes the first female pro to win the Hearthstone World Championship
- After 1 day, Blizzard has already nerfed Hearthstone’s new Demon Hunter class
Several format changes have been made for the second year of Hearthstone Grandmasters that players will have to adapt to. The first week of competition will be with the familiar Conquest with a ban format before transitioning into a Last Hero Standing with one ban format in Week Two.
Week Three will see players field all ten classes for Conquest matches where they can also ban six decks from their opponents’ repertoire. The remaining weeks will then be played in a best-of-five series with the standard Conquest format.
Here’s the list of participating players for each region:
Americas | Europe | Asia-Pacific |
---|---|---|
Brian “bloodyface” Eason | George “BoarControl” Webb | Yashina “Alutemu” Nozomi |
Eddie “Eddie” Lui | Elias “Bozzzton” Sibelius | Ng “blitzchung” Wai Chung |
Guillermo “Empanizado” Tolosa | Raphael “Bunnyhoppor” Peltzer | Cheonsu “che0nsu” Kim |
Fei “ETC” Liang | Kevin “Casie” Eberlein | Hyun Jae “Dawn” Jang |
James “Firebat” Kostesich | Theo “Felkeine” Dumont | Hyun-Soo “Flurry” Cho |
Frank “Fr0zen” Zhang | Casper “hunterace” Notto | Dylan “FroStee” O’Mallon |
Edward “Gallon” Goodwin | Jaromir “Jarla” Vyskočil | Sato “glory” Kenta |
David “justsaiyan” Shan | Aleksandr “Kolento” Malsh | Tsz Kin “Kin0531” Lo |
Mihai “Lnguagehackr” Dragalin | Pavel “Pavel” Beltukov | Wataru “posesi” Ishibashi |
Jerome “Monsanto” Faucher | Dima “Rdu” Radu | Dasol “Ryvius” Sim |
Muzahidul “muzzy” Islam | Linh “Seiko” Nguyen | Tsu-Lin “SamuelTsao” Tsao |
Facundo “Nalguidan” Pruzzo | Vladislav “SilverName” Sinotov | Wei-Chieh “Shaxy” Liu |
Jason “PapaJason” Meller | Joffrey “Swidz” Cunat | Euneil “Staz” Javiñas |
Francisco “PNC” Leimontas | Thijs “Thijs” Molendijk | Jung-Soo “Surrender” Kim |
Ryan “Purple” Murphy-Root | Torben “Viper” Wahl | Wei-Lin “Tom60229” Chen |
Paul “Zalae” Nemeth | Martin “Zhym” Prête | Tyler “Tyler” Hoang Nguyen |
Hearthstone Grandmasters 2020 will be broadcasted live on the official Hearthstone YouTube channel every Friday through Sunday for every week of competition until June 7th.
READ MORE: Hear her roar: VKLiooon’s journey from law student to Hearthstone World Champion