GreenSheep: "Every time I qualify for something I have higher expectations from myself."

In competitive Hearthstone there are very few people who have repeated a major performance at a specific tournament. Rdu has won two DreamHacks, and Firebat twice was the best player at Gfinity Masters. Kranich and ThijsNL both have made it to the world championships twice, with the latter of the two being the first player ever to win a regional championship two times. More recently current world champion Pavel continued his HCTn streak by winning the European Winter Championships straight after his first place at BlizzCon. However, that's about the entire list of repeated major perfomances.

But if it's up to James "GreenSheep" Luo, that list expands. This year. With his name on it. Having appeared on Hearthstone's biggest stage in 2014, Greensheep knows one thing for certain: he wants to make it again. Last time, after making it to BlizzCon, he was swiftly eliminated after conceding a loss to Chinese player Qiruo and later semi-finalist Kranich. With redemption in mind, Greensheep went all in on the 2017 HCT season, and it paid off. He qualified for the Winter Championships at the Bahamas, at max being four matches away from the World Championship. Unfortunately for him, though, the third hurdle proved to be too high. In the elimination match in his group GreenSheep was defeated by SamuelTsao.

The day after his elimination from the Winter Championships, GreenSheep sat down with Matthieist. They talked about the peaks and valleys in a competitive Hearthstone career, being part of a tight community and grinding open cups for HCT points.



Today I'm joined by UK's pride, GreenSheep! What's up man?

Well I'm doing much better than when I lost yesterday, but obviously still feeling a bit sad. I'll get over it though.

I hope you're also proud of your accomplishments.

I'm happy with how I played. I felt that my plays were amongst the best within the tournament. I lost some unfavourable match-ups against SamuelTsao, but I think in general, like me, SamuelTsao played very well this tournament. He maybe made one or two blunders here and there. So I'm not that sad, but I really wanted to make it back to the world championships.

You were at the 2014 World Championships, but after that we didn't see too much of you, until now. Could you walk me through what happened?

In 2015 I had a relatively successful year, which is when I won DreamHack Valencia. I also reached the top four of DreamHack Winter, so that year was actually relatively good for me. I won one major title plus I finished high in another major.

As for 2016, I didn't have that much success. I think I did really well in the Swiss stages of every DreamHack I went to. I either went 7-2 or 6-3, not making the cut based on tie breaks or just losing the last match of the Swiss. Besides that I was also grinding for the Last Call tournament in 2016. By the end of that I was tied in points with ShtanUdachi, so we had to play a tie breaker match. That unfortunately didn't go my way: I got swept 4-0 quite quickly. I felt sad at the end of 2016, as all my hard work that year felt like it had been for nothing. From my point of view it was as if I had not made any impact on the scene or whatsoever.

Another factor that played a role is that there were also no team leagues in the first half of the year, with the ESL Trinity Series being announced at the end of 2016. That, along with Dignitas being bought by Philadelphia 76ers, led to the inevitable disbandment of the team. First Chakki left after he won DreamHack Austin, and he joined Luminosity. Then a few months later the whole team disbanded which left me, Kranich and Blackout without a team.

I felt sad at the end of 2016, as all my hard work that year felt like it had been for nothing.

It was a rough time, I was thinking about what to do. Should I carry on with my Hearthstone career? I had tried so hard but fell at the last hurdle, and even though I tried my best nothing came to fruition. I gave myself until January to find a new team, and if I didn't find a new team I was considering quitting the game and pursuing something else in life. Fortunately I found my new team, The Gosu Crew, which I'm on now. They're really great guys, all on the same wavelength as I am. Even though they're a really new organization I kind of want to grow together with them. I think I'll be closer to the organization than I was at Dignitas, which was already a big brand when I joined it. At Dignitas I had a lot of pressure to perform, but with the GosuCrew I feel that they'll support me even if I don't perform well in a tournament.

And now after a long time without big accomplishments, you immediately place incredibly high on the biggest stage.

Every time I qualify for something I have higher expectations of myself. Going into the Playoffs of course I'd be happy with qualifying or making top eight, even. But after you've actually been to the big stage and this amazing event at the Bahamas, you kind of push yourself more. You expect more of yourself and if you don't meet the goals you've set, you're really sad. Of course my goal was to qualify for BlizzCon again, but if I reflect on it a few weeks later I'll realize that it's such a huge feat to make it this far into the championships. So many players have tried, and so many players have failed. Although I didn't make it this time I think I'll be happy once I reflect on it. But at the moment, of course, I still quite can't get over it. [Laughs]

As someone from the UK and an active player, could you shed light on what Britain's Hearthstone scene is like?

Well ESL hosts the UK Pro League twice a year, which is a nice tournament. They're helping grow grassroots Hearthstone in the UK and it's definitely bringing out some really good talent.

In the UK scene some of the bigger names are Blackout, Cipher, BoarControl, Ness, GeorgeC and me, because we've all done well in big tournaments or are always high up on the ladder and have a lot of HCT points. Other than that there are many up-and-comers in the UK scene that are Legend grinders or open cup grinders. I think that partially due to the ESL league up-and-coming players are really given a big shot. Going against top players from the UK scene is great, and it also provides them a starting point into international competitions and gameplay.

On social media like Twitter I generally get the idea that the UK scene is really tight and sticks together. Is that idea correct?

We're all close friends in the scene. All the bigger names I mentioned earlier have known each other for a long time. We all see each other at UK LAN events, like Insomnia which happens three times a year. It's basically like a UK Hearthstone get-together. It's nice to see, they're really close friends and I hope they do well. Hopefully in HGG tournament the UK will do well. We have such a solid team, no matter who plays.

You say that open cups are good to grind for up-and-comers, but you do play a huge amount of open cups yourself too, right?

Yeah, I do. I don't really like this year's open cup system for HCT points compared to last year. Even though last year you could get points from cups each week, this year you can only get points from a cup each month. However, they didn't reduce the amount of open cups, there are still as many as last year. If you reduce the cups it's harder to get points, of course. It's not a given that you'll get five points, but with so many open cups it's basically the people that grind the most who will get rewarded at some point. You expect other people to get five points too, so you'll have to grind open cups too and get those five points to keep up.

Last year, even though you could earn points each week, which rewarded grinders like me and Sintolol, people weren't as incentivised to work that hard for it. There's more pressure now. You don't expect people to earn three points every week, but this year you have more time to win.

Having open cups reward points per month is good, but I feel like [Blizzard] should have reduced the amount of cups, and give an incentive for people to play. Currently we're playing open cups for no money, just for HCT points. I'd much rather they have, let's say, one or two big open cups a month, maybe three or four, that have a $1000 prize pool. That rewards people for doing well in these open cups and there's also not too many.

Going to the world championships and meeting all those people was the best experience I've had in my life, ever.

After getting the five HCT points from an open cup in a certain month, it's back to playing on ladder. Blizzard has scaled down the HCT points rewarded for top legend finished, do you think this is a good idea? Should ladder reward HCT points at all?

I feel that ladder has to be involved in giving HCT points. Unless you travel a lot to Majors it's really hard to get HCT points if it was just open cups. Ladder is a good starting point for relatively unknowns to prove themselves. If you're not known you don't have the funding or the backing to go to big LAN events, which reward the most points. The only way you prove yourself then is through open cups and qualifiers for big tournaments.

I think scaling down the difference between points for ladder finishes is a good idea. It makes it more competitive. There aren't really big swings in play, but of course every boundary still matters, such as top fifty or top twenty five.

To wrap up the interview, is there anyone you want to give a shout-out to?

Well firstly I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me, people tweeting at me and those who watch my stream. Also I'd like to thank my team, The Gosu Crew, because without them I think I would've quit the game at the beginning of the year and I wouldn't even be here. I really like to thank them for supporting me. As I said I will keep trying for the world championships, at least for this year. I really want to get back there, at least once more. Going to the world championships and meeting all those people was the best experience I've had in my life, ever.