‘Pro is different from us’, Prepare to compete

Blizzard’s Kevin Hovdestad had the opportunity to chat with pro Hearthstone player Cydonia about competitive decks as well as a list of tips for creating your own competitive deck.

In the “Where is the Pro different from us” series, Julien “Cydonia” Perrault will join us to guide us in creating decks to participate in the Hearthstone tournament. Famous for winning the 2016 Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) Americas Spring Championship, Cydonia remains active in Hearthstone professionally and often gives great advice on her Twitch stream.

I want to join a tournament. How should I choose a deck?

According to Cydonia, there are many steps to having a deck. The first is to know if you can play all the strongest decks out there (or have enough cards to make that deck). Otherwise, you should just play with what you have and are best at. Cydonia adds, “If the strongest decks can be countered and you anticipate a lot of players will bring those decks, create a deck that counters them. If that deck can’t be countered, use them.” He further explained that if Hearthstone is balancing the metagame (i.e. hammer wins scissors, scissors wins sack and sack beats hammer), you also need to correctly guess what deck your opponent will use.

How do I change my strategy based on tournament rules?

Cydonia says the first thing to know (if possible) is which classes you will ban. “Find out which decks will be banned, then line up the decks in line with what is expected to happen,” explains Cydonia. In many tournaments, the deck list will be published, which means you can clearly see what the opponent has got – but they can also see yours. “With tournaments like that, you need to strategize, because you can’t expect opponents to not know how to deal with your deck,” he added. “You also can’t hide important cards and expect your opponent to ignore them.”

What is the most effective method to train for the tournament?

There are two phases to tournament practice, says Cyonia: in the first phase, you can use a lot of decks to get used to your picks. However, as competition day gets closer, he suggests focusing on a few separate, difficult matches: “Test the odds of matches that are hard to play and not as popular as when climbing ranks,” he said. said.

Talking about her training routine and preparation, Cyonia says, “I want to make sure I play enough matches with all decks to get a general sense of them, and then try practicing in different areas. Different difficulty levels. If I don’t have enough time to practice everything, I talk to other players to plan well and have a good mulligan strategy for every game I believe I’ll be facing.” He said there is no specific schedule for the events, because travel requirements and competition environment do not allow, but he makes sure to eat well and drink a lot of water.

What should I review after a tournament?

A step that top players take, Cydonia encourages players to review their matches when the tournament is over. “Save matches and watch them with other players to spot bugs or other ways of playing,” he said. “Evaluate the prepared process, and determine the reasons for winning and losing.” What’s used in the tournament will vary from tournament to tournament, he added. “You have to be good at figuring out what you did right, and what went wrong, and find ways to improve them.”

Source: Playhearthstone