The Hearthstone World Champ Contenders 2019 are here!

Hearthstone fans are gearing up for the 2019 Hearthstone World Championship this April. More specifically, the event is happening between Aprl 24th and 27th, starting at 7pm Pacific Time on each of those days. The event is taking place in Taipei, Taiwan, and if you can’t make it there in person or just don’t want to, you can enjoy the whole thing on the official Twitch.tv/PlayHearthstone channel.

More importantly though, the list of players that will be attending has been revealed! There will be:

four players from Europe,

six from the Americas,

two from China/Taipei,

three from China and

one lucky talent from the APAC region.

There are several familiar names among the attendees of the event, with plenty of new and exciting players in there as well. From Europe, Raphael “BunnyHoppor” Peltzer, Kacper “A83650” Kwieciński, Torben “Viper” Wahl and Casper “Hunterace” Notto will be attending. That means that several different countries will be represented, including Germany, Poland and Norway.

From the Americas, we’ve got David “killinallday” Acosta, Mihai “languagehacker” Dragalin, Brian “bloodyface” Eason, David “Justsaiyan” Shan, Mark “Ike” Eichner and Muzahidul “Muzzy” Islam starting in the tournament.

As for the China and China/Taipei delegations, Wu “BloodTrail” Zong-Chang and Luo “Roger” Shengyuan will be representing the former, and Guan “SNJing” Zhendong, Xu “LFYueying” Kai and Wu “XiaoT” Juwei the latter. The sole player from the APAC region is Tyler “Tyler” Hoang Nguyen.

If you kept count, you know that a total of 16 players is going to be facing off in the tournament for a staggering prize pool of a million dollars overall. In order to get to the big prize, the players will first spend the first two days in an initial group stage comprising of elimination and decider matches.

The quarter- semi- and grand-finals are taking place on Sunday. The winner of the event will get to take home a quarter of a million dollars, while the second placed player will receive $150k, with the third and fourth-placed players receiving $100k. Spots 5,6,7 and 8 receive $50k each, and the remaining 8 ranks will receive a generous $25k still! All in all, that’s more than many people’s yearly salaries even for the lowest tiers – definitely one of the most high-profile and high-stakes esports events of the year!

Those will be a best-of-five Conquest type competition with each player banning one single deck. All in all, expect plenty of excitement and some interesting strategies from the players that qualified.

Qualification happened via the Year of the Raven Seasonal Championships of Fall, Winter and Summer, and the Regional Point Leaders. In other words – the top four of each of the Seasonal Championships and the single-highest Point Leader of the Americas, Europe, APAC and China will be competing, leading to a bright and mixed bag of players, play-styles and hopefully some exciting plays!

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