The Hearthstone competitive recap: June 13th - June 19th

Welcome to the second edition of GosuGamers' "Hearthstone Competitive Recap", where we keep track of what has happened in our favorite game each week.

The "Hearthstone competitive recap" will be issued every Monday and will go over the major events in - and often outside - competitive Hearthstone. Blizzard's card game is in the middle of of its HCT campaign but there are also lots of other third party tournaments running in parallel, and this post will summarize everything for your convenience.

Enjoy!

Tournament recap:



RDU wins DreamHack Summer

After starting his career at this very tournament two years ago, Dima "Rdu" Radu returned to DHS victoriously. A 3-1 win against ex-Hearthlytics player Fr0zen won the Romanian his second DreamHack title of his career. This puts him in the exclusive club of players with repeat franchise victories, joining Firebat's double Gfinity trophies and ThijsNL's two European Championships.

Handsome guy wins HCT APAC Spring Championship

Korea secured a second representative at Blizzcon 2016. Handsomeguy, who barely missed the spot in the Winter Season by losing to fellow countryman DDaHyoNi in the finals, defeated two of his compatriots in Cater and Foot (4-3 both) before 4-2'ing Australian player EdwardElric for the coveted World Finals seed.

The line-up for the $50,000 StarLadder i-League finals is set

StanCifka, Naiman, Izoro and XieShuai joined JAB, DrHippi, Hoej and Xixo after the last stages of the World and China divisions. The grand finals themselves are coming on stream July 8-10 and will award the tournament winner with the meaty $20,000 cheque. Full coverage available here.



Major news and content:



IeSF seeks formation of "Athletes Commission"

Moves to legitimize eSports internationally continued today with the International eSports Federation (IeSF) announcing their intention to form an ‘Athletes Commission’. The formation of such a group would provide a link between the participants themselves and the world organisers, and the IeSF hope it is the next step toward eSports gaining IOC accreditation.

Sky announce airing of first UK 24/7 esports TV channel

Sky - a popular broadcasting, broadband and telephone service provider - have announced the airing of a 24-hour eSports channel, which will reportedly broadcast various eSports events, one of which is Turner's ELEAGUE, currently underway. The initiative comes as part of the expansion of eSports into the mainstream, with millions of individuals already spectating said events online.

DreamHack Valencia expands slots to 280

To accommodate the huge interest in their circuit, DreamHack are expanding to 280 slots for the swiss round starting with the Valencia stop. It remains to be seen whether this will mean increase in swiss rounds too, or the tournament will keep to the current format of nine swiss rounds into 16-man single elimination bracket.

Firebat, the Priest purist

RedBull talked with 2014 World Champion Firebat on the state of Anduin and why is he not seeing competitive play. Firebat addresses issues like consistency of card draw and class' reactive nature in a must-read article for all Hearthstone fans.



To watch/play next:



HCT Americas Spring Championship - June 25-26

Tune this weekend to see who will join Amnesiac as Americas' second representative at Blizzcon 2016. The player pool consists of Cydonia, Napoleaon, Rosty, PNC, Joster, Duane, DeerJason and Bradfordlee, guaranteeing us a break-out performance for a lesser known, aspiring card-slinger. Event coverage hub • Stream

GosuCup HCT Europe June

GosuCup HCT Europe is GosuGamers' own circuit of open events, with cups every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 17:00 CEST. Everyone's free to join, compete for the prize pool of 7 HCT points and kickstart their world championship campaign by playing Hearthstone from home! Registration links here.

Decks and guides:



StarLadder World Division decklists

GosuCup SEA #3 decklists

Firebat's Patron Druid

Trump's Teachings: Dragon Priest

Trump's Teachings: N'Zoth Paladin

Trump's Teachings: Zoo