Photo: Blizzard Entertainment

▲ Hearthstone Battlegrounds is off and running in early access.

Activision Blizzard's take on the popular auto-chess genre, Hearthstone Battlegrounds, has been live for only 24 hours but that hasn't stopped players from grinding to the top of the game's leaderboards.

Currently, the title is only available to those who attended BlizzCon, purchased a BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, or pre-purchased the upcoming Dragons of Descent expansion card bundle. For those who haven't done any of the above, Battlegrounds is scheduled to go live on Tuesday, November 12 at 10 a.m. PDT.

The game's official leaderboard, which can be found here, shows the top players from all three regions around the world according to the in-game points they've accrued from performing well.

▲ North America's top-12 players feature a few household names.

One quick glance at the North American leaderboard reveals that quite a few popular figures within the Hearthstone community are as good at auto-chess as they are at the traditional card game.

Prior to falling asleep after streaming Battlegrounds all day and night, Octavian "Kripparrian" Morosan, who goes by "LettuceKing" in-game, was the highest-rated player. Known for his skills in Hearthstone's draft-mode, Arena, Kripp didn't skip a beat when tasked to take on seven other players at once in Battlegrounds.

Close behind him are former-pro-player-turned-Blizzard-employee, Keaton "Chakki" Gill and gaming guru, Andrew "TidesofTime" Biessener. Right outside the top-10 are long-time Hearthstone caster who also joined the development team, Cora "Songbird" Georgiou, and auto-chess/card game veteran, David "Dog" Caero.

Time will tell whether this stands once the rest of the Hearthstone community who couldn't get their hands on early access hops into the game. But, so far, there appears to be a correlation between being a top-tier card game player and Battlegrounds stud.