Tournament suggestion: All-rounder format

General Discussion
1

(repost of a proposal I made on the US forums)

For many years the Hearthstone tournaments used one of two formats: Last Hero Standing, or Conquest. Both required the players to take 3 decks, for 3 classes (sometimes 4 if a ban round was added, sometimes 2 for short best-of-3 matches).

This year Blizzard introduced the Specialist format as an experiment. Players now bring a single class, with three decks that differ in at most five cards. I am sure that there are as many opinions as there are people, but I myself do not like the new format. The old format already had too many of the same or similar matches and I feel that this is now getting even worse.

I would like to propose a format that I think will result in much more variety in the games. And that also challenges the competitors to learn to play more different decks, different strategies, and different matchups.
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Format: All-rounder

Competitors need to bring nine decks. One for each class. During the match, the same deck can never be played more than once.

Standard matches are a best of five. For the first game both players lock in a class (without knowing their opponents’ pick), then they play. After the first game, both players get to ban one of their opponents’ remaining classes (this ban can be either simultaneous, or the winner of the last match bans first). So for the second game each player has seven classes / decks left to choose from, This repeats until either one of the players has their 3rd win, or a 2-2 is reached. At this point there are two classes left for each player; at this point the ban round is skipped and the players get to choose their final class from the 2 remaining.

For tournaments that prefer shorter matches, they can play a best of three. In that case the players start with two bans, then play a game, then they get two more bans, then play the second game, and if a decider is needed the players then get to choose from their three remaining decks.

For longer matches (e.g. the final of a large tournament), a best of seven can be chosen. In this case, players get to play two games, then ban one deck, then play two more games, one more deck, and then no more bans and all remaining decks will be used if it goes to 4-3.

(And yes, one might even choose a best of nine where no bans are done at all).
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I personally think that this format will result in much more variety. It might even have a secondary effect of more variety on ladder, due both to pros practicing their decks, and viewers copying some of the decks they see.

Comments?

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I’m gonna use a little HSReplay stats to color my thoughts.

The current best classes are hunter, then druid, warrior, shaman and mage.

If another conquest tournament were to be played now, chances would be that we’d see these classes almost exclusively.

I think the All-Rounder format would produce the opposite result, meaning we’d predominantly see the bottom 5 classes of the meta: mage, warlock, rogue, paladin and priest.

Player’s also can’t tech against one good meta deck to beat it because they don’t know when they’d be playing against it since deck choices are hidden and simultaneous (if I understood correctly).

edit: just found a flaw in my thinking. the first match can be played with a ‘meta deck’ and the opponent can’t ban all ‘good’ classes immediately, so it’d kinda be a ban race.

hmm interesting. it would become much more unpredictable than I first thought.

still, wouldn’t there be a huge luck element when it comes to matchups? say your opponent chooses token druid as his first deck. if you choose zoolock as your first, you’re golden. if you choose secret hunter, you’re f***ed.

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Thanks for your thoughts, Khisana.
You are right - the “best” classes would run a chance of being banned all the time so we’d still see the same classes over and over again.
But I think this format does allow players to either add some tech against meta classes and then not ban them. And also, when tournament players are forced to come with oood decks for the other classes (b/c they likely will not be banned), then maybe some of that creativity will also leak into ladder? (Or am I just wishful thinking here?)

With a closed decklist it would be very RNG dependent (though there might also be mindgames: “I know they’ll probably start with the strong hunter, so I’ll queue my anti-hunter tech choice”).
With an open decklist format, there would be even more of those mindgames. (“Hmmm, my opponent has a lot of anti-hunter tech in their Paladin deck, if they expect me to start Hunter, they’ll pick Paladin, so I will start with my Warlock deck instead because that one is strong vs Paladin”).

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I think you are wishful thinking when it comes to stuff leaking into the meta. I think that the meta always plays what’s best. If a deck emerges, that counters a Tier 1 deck and is good against all other decks, that deck will become a Tier 1 deck itself, but I’d say it would emerge with or without influence from a tournament.

I might be wrong though :wink:

Yea, the mindgames element. maybe ‘opponent research’ would become an important part of tournament preparation :smiley:

I’m having trouble closing this post. I was working on a little analysis based on my own perception, but this seems to be especially dark today and I don’t wanna taint your thread with it.

To still give you a taste of the direction I was thinking: I like your creativity, but I feel that Hearthstone isn’t the right game for it, mainly because of 2 things that I view as core design principles: simplicity and naiveté.

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I’ve see 2 types of tournament that use all 9 classes.

1 was a simple best of 17 - i.e. win with all 9

The other had alternate class ban system, but not 1 to 1. I think it went opponent ban 1, player picks 2, opponent bans 2, player picks 2, opponent bans 2, player left with final class. So it was 5 decks but in theory your playing your 2,3,6,7 and 9th best decks.

Wish I could remember the name of either as a quick youtube/google search gave me nothing :frowning: