Posted in: Blizzard, eSports, Games, Hearthstone, Video Games | Tagged: Blizzard Entertainment, eSports, Hearthstone

Blizzard Reveals Plans For Hearthstone Grandmasters 2021 Season 2

Published Sat, 03 Jul 2021 15:42:14 -0500

Along with the announcement of the latest expansion this week, Blizzard revealed more details to Hearthstone Grandmasters 2021 Season 2. The company laid out its plans from the initial kick-off all the way to the World Championship, as Season 2 will officially begin on Thursday, August 12th. All 48 players will face off against each other with the fresh Alliance-based meta cards and tactics in the Week 1 tournament, which will broadcast from August 13th-15th on YouTube. We have the full rundown from the team about how this season will play out below.

Weekly Formats

We're keeping things consistent for Hearthstone Grandmasters 2021 Season 2, with a primary focus on improving weekly formats. In 2019, we introduced Specialist as a simplified replacement for Conquest that would still require high-level strategy from players—while we are happy with the Specialist format itself, it hasn't proven to be the all-encompassing mode we had hoped. Specialist succeeds in the high-level competitive thinking we aimed for, but with individual matches often lasting several hours, the community enjoyment of watching top players has suffered. Though we plan to revisit Specialist in the future, we are removing it from the next season of Grandmasters. In its place, we will be alternating between Conquest and Last Hero Standing—the formats players and viewers are most familiar with, and that still provide high-level competition.

Week 1 – Conquest

Week 2 – Last Hero Standing

Week 3 – Conquest

Week 4 – Last Hero Standing

Week 5 – Conquest

Week 6 – Last Hero Standing

Week 7 – Conquest

Week 8: Finals – Conquest

New Hearthstone Grandmasters

The conclusion of Season 1 forced us to, sadly, say farewell to the bottom four players from each region. Yet, the top four Masters Tour Points—earners from Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe –have been promoted to Grandmasters! These 12 new players will compete over seven weekly tournaments for their shot to compete in the Season 2 Finals, where the winner of each region will advance to the 2021 World Championship.

World Championship

The Season 2 champions will advance to the 2021 World Championship, where they will face the top two Chinese players from the China Gold Series as well as the Season 1 regional champions. However, the Season 1 champions—Nalguidan, Posesi, and Frenetic—must avoid relegation to hold onto their invites, otherwise they'll pass down to the Season 1 runner-ups. The pressure is higher than ever for everyone this season, and it'll all come down to which players can master the all-new United in Stormwind expansion and earn their spot in the 2021 World Championship!