The Hearthstone Summer Championships kicks off today and there’s one name on the 16-player lineup that every Hearthstone fan will recognise: David ‘Dog’ Caero has been at the top of the scene since late 2014, when Hearthstone was still in its infancy. He signed for Team Liquid in 2015 and has been on the roster ever since with a plethora of podium finishes at a number of reputable tournaments. He’s coming into the HCT Summer Championship off the back of an impressive performance at HCT Tokyo and we got the chance to speak to Dog about the event and how he feels going into it.

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“My chances of getting out of groups aren’t too great,” Dog told us in a group interview with a few other journalists. “I’m like 45% to get out of groups, but I’m pretty favoured in my first matchup, like 53-55%. My second matchup is going to be bad regardless because I’m playing against a guy who has Miracle Rogue AND Big Spell Mage - I have a really low win rate against him. But the good thing is that it’s GSL groups so maybe I’ll play the first guy twice, and 45% isn’t terrible. If you count in player skill and if people mess up because they’re not too used to competing in tournaments then that might help me a little bit more. I’ve kind of low-rolled on the groups a little bit but it’s not too big of a deal, I’ve just got to high-roll the actual draw.”

One thing that might come in handy for some of those unfavoured matchups however is Dog’s experience. He’s been on the main stage countless times and has got used to the pressure of having so many eyes on him. “My experience will definitely help me. Especially against people who get nervous on stage, that’s a big deal for newer players, if it’s their first time on stage they’re definitely going to feel the jitters. I’m confident in my play, I’m not really sure how they are, we’ll have to see, wait till they play and see if they make any mistakes or anything like that. But I think it’ll help me, I’m pretty confident in my abilities.”

Competitive Hearthstone isn’t flourishing compared to how it used to though, it’s clear for everyone to see. We asked Dog for his thoughts in general on the current competitive scene and he said it boils down to “too many tournaments right now. They’re not relevant enough and people don’t really care.” He said part of the reason is because Witchwood, the latest expansion, was poor, but there needs to be bigger, more relevant tournaments. He said the current system “gives new players opportunities, there’s a lot of tour stops”, but for established players, it’s often not worth organisations flying players out to events like those all around the world because of the cost. “Blizzard’s trying pretty hard to push things, but I’m not really sure if the direction is right.”

Haven’t been streaming much because of summer champs, so here’s a picture of my shirt off pic.twitter.com/Sz78ptaR4T — David Caero (@Liquid_hsdog) June 28, 2018

We also touched on the lineup Dog has brought for this event, specifically the inclusion of Combo Priest. He’s the only player to have brought Priest from the Americas, and only one of four overall. Interestingly, the other three players with Priest in their lineup have brought Control variants, so we asked Dog why he’s opted for Combo. “I kind of expected one other person to bring Combo Priest but I guess they didn’t. I wanted the Combo version because I wasn’t going to ban Taunt Druid because my lineup is like okay against it - not great, but it’s like 50/50. And Combo Priest does really well against Taunt Druid, it does well against the Aggro decks, it beats Even Shaman despite what stats say because Duskbreaker does close them out. The stats on Combo Priest were also pretty bad on HSReplay and Vicious Syndicate and a lot of the sites people use because there’s not enough data on it. It’s one of those off-meta decks, people don’t really know the win-rates of it because people are either playing the deck really poorly or because there’s just not enough people playing the deck. So I just had to make my own stats for it and it has good stats for what I wanted.”

He went on to explain that in the HCT Tokyo qualifiers a few days ago, he played with the same lineup and he went 8-1. So despite it not looking good in terms of the matchups in the groups, he knows the lineup is solid and can get the job done, although he told us he’s miscalculated the Warlock matchup in his initial preparations. He also confirmed that he’s planning to ban Rogue whenever he’s up against it, so that’s one weakness he doesn’t have to worry about.

David 'Dog' Caero at the Esports Arena earlier this year. Image courtesy of @Liquid_hsdog on Twitter.

The HCT Summer Championship has already started and you can catch all the information including the official livestream here. Keep an eye out for Dog, as he plays against Turna first in a matchup he’s feeling pretty confident about. You can check out the current standings here on the official site.