Celestial Invitational
The Celestial Invitational pits pros against each other, forcing them to win against every class in a best of seventeen tournament. The formats also changes throughout the five weeks of the first stage of this tournament.
Formats
There are two brackets consisting of six players. Group A consists of Breath, Eloise, Lifecoach, RDU, Xixo, and Zhangbo. Group B consists of Dog, JasonZhou, Kolento, Lovelychook, Reynad, and Thijs. It is a round robin format, meaning each player plays every player in their group. At the end of the five weeks, the top two from each group advance.
All five weeks of games have been scheduled already. Weeks one through four are all Last Hero Standing. Week five is Conquest. In week one, the cards allowed are from the Standard format. Week two allows all cards from Wild except those from Goblins vs. Gnomes. Week three allows Wild except Naxxramas. Then week four is entirely Wild. Week five shakes it up by going back to Standard for the single week of Conquest. A full list of formats and a schedule has been compiled by the Hearthstone subreddit mods, found here.
In Last Hero Standing, each deck is played until it is defeated, so players could technically play nine games with one deck. Conquest has decks eliminated after they win a game, so a player will need to win with all nine classes. Hopefully Last Hero Standing doesn’t turn into a Shaman fest!
Prize Pool
The Celestial prize pool is $60,000, spread amongst the players. Half is pledged for the playoffs, while the other half goes out during group stages. Each player who wins a best of 17 match will win $1,000! Since the players are playing from home, and not travelling, this is quite a good prize per match.
The tournament is being hosted by Celestial and NeoTV. Celestial has a foothold in the Asian Hearthstone scene, hence so many Asian players. It is also being broadcast on Twitch over the official TempoStorm channel, found here.
Xixo vs. Breath
There have been several matches so far, but Xixo vs. Breath is worth noting. Two exceptional players with nine decks. They actually made it all the way to game seventeen. They were also never more than two wins apart. Almost two hours of straight playing ended in Xixo’s Zoolock vs. Breath’s Miracle Rogue. An incredibly well fought battle on both sides, but Xixo came out ahead, winning the first match of the tournament.
Looking forward
Celestial’s Invitational is a Hearthstone tournament like no other we’ve ever seen before. Hopefully we’ll continue to see matches that end closely, seeing every class played on both sides. I am excited to see how players deckbuild differently each week. The fact that a player wins money after every match is nice so that players who excel at one format will reap the rewards. Overall I’m very interested to see where this goes. I never thought I’d say it, but I hope for many more two hour matches.