The Competitive Recap: September 12-18

Ban lists, 9-deck formats, championships, and more than $100,000 in prizes: That was the last week in Hearthstone, summarized here for your convenience.

The "Hearthstone competitive recap" is issued every Monday and goes over the major events in - and often outside - competitive Hearthstone. Blizzard's card game is in the middle 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 news:



HotMEOWTH is the AM Summer Champion, denies Tarei a repeat Blizzcon appearance

After seven games, Hong Kong player HotMEOWTH was crowned the newest king of the Americas region as he took the $25,000 first place prize at the Summer Championship. HotMEOWTH now joins Amnesiac and Cydonia as the third member of the Americas' line-up, with the fourth and final representative to be determined via the Last Call qualifier next month.

Tessin wins PGL Bucharest 2016

Despite being considered an underdog among his more esteemed colleagues, Nicklas "Tessin" Dittmer bested every opponent and won PGL Bucharest undefeated. Tessin navigated the tournament's 9-deck format with mastery and defeated Stanislav Cifka 3-1 in the grand finals to pocket $8,000.

SuperJJ wins Batstone #1 in front of almost 50,000 viewers

The unusual format of Batstone #1, featuring a 13-card ban list and a line-up of notable players, entertained more than 46,000 concurrent viewers in its peak, a testament to what a different format and proper marketing could do for viewership. The eight-man invitational was eventually taken by Jan "SuperJJ" Janssen who bested Cong "StrifeCro" Shu in a five-game closing series.

Major news and content:



Do Blizzard need to start reigning in its RNG?

GosuGamers' TheUrbanSheep chips in on the hot topic of RNG in Hearthstone - no, not JUST Yogg-Saron - and through a palette of graphs illustrates just how much randomness there is in Hearthstone and how much of it needs to be put to moderation.

How to deal with tilt in Hearthstone

In another GosuGamers featured article, Devt gives important lessons on how to deal with a very familiar problem: Tilting. Hearthstone is a volatile game which can lead to table flips and broken keyboards, but through discipline and a different mindset, tilting can be easily avoidable, or at least managed.

Team Dignitas drops Hearthstone roster

Following the disbandment of NaVi's Hearthstone division, another top organization said goodbye to Blizzard's card game, likely to never return. At the time of disbandment, the line-up featured Lewis "Blackout" Spencer, James "Greensheep" Luo, Hak-Jun "Kranich" Baek and Todd "Anakin" Rolls.

Tyrande will be the new Priest hero

The Night Elf Priestess of the Moon will be obtainable through a yet to be announced promotional event and will give Priests a second skin to use besides the good old Anduin.

China's Team Story will invite two western teams to the $40,000 playoffs

China's premier team league will once again feature foreign invites. After the twelve Chinese teams have been reduced to just two through several phases of group stage and playoffs play, they will be joined by two yet to be revealed western team. The expected date of the final stage is mid January 2017.



Decks and guides:



Video deck guide: Worgen OTK Warrior by GosuGamers

All decks from HCT AM Summer Championship

SuperJJ's winning decks from Batstone #1

Ness' winning decks from the Batstone #1 qualifier

The Chinese N'Zoth line-up which qualified for Blizzcon

GosuRankings Top 10 players