ESL "Play It Cool" Hearthstone Marathon & Drama (Placeholder until i think of abetter tittelt dickass semen)

The ESL "Play It Cool" Hearthstone Marathon was an event sponsored by ASUS that took place in 2015 with two competitions: the first one in May 1st and the other one in October 17th, Forsen participated in both of them.

The main idea consisted of four players climbing the ranks of the Hearthstone EU server with a limited amount of cards in a run of 24 hours, the best rated player at the end takes the prize. In theory this format rewards a flexible playstyle, efficiency and creativity.

The First Marathon: "NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL A WELL ORGANIZED TOURNAMENT"

The first instance of the event took place in Cologne, Germany in May 1st, 2015. The four players invited to this competition were:

The Rules & Conditions:

• The accounts will have all classes unlocked with 20/20 Mage basic cards and 10/20 basic cards for all other classes.
• Before the action starts players will take turns banning classes which other players will not be able to use. Each player will have 3 banned classes.
• Naxxramas and Blackrock will be unlocked but not completed. Players will need to choose whether trying to complete them is worth the loss in time that could be spent laddering.
• Players will also be allowed to disenchant cards and use any gold they earn. However, they will not to permitted to play the Arena.
• Head to head: if players meet on the ladder, the winner will choose a card of the loser to disenchant.

Extra packs!

• Every hour, each player will be able to open three new packs. They can choose between classic packs & Goblin and Gnomes packs
• Every three hours, the player in last place will get three packs.
• Every two hours viewers will be able to participate in a Twitter vote in which they can select which player will receive an additional five packs.

Highlights

In the banning phase we get the next bans:

Due to the difficulty of obtaining cards in this format, players are encouraged to first complete, or partially complete, single-player campaigns to unlock cards and packs, allowing them to build a decent ladder deck.

Here Forsen shows his amazing deck building skills by equipping a 5/1 minion in a PVE scenario where the AI deals 1 damage at the end of every turn:

Forsen aimed to obtain a few particularly strong Warlock cards to center his deck around, moving into Ranked immediately after the first hour, similar strat as Kungen. Reynad, on the other hand, spent twice as long unlocking cards through PvE for his Priest deck, while also making blunders along the way:

One of the casters makes a prediction right before Forsen opens up a pack:

Chadsen gets involved in some rank 14 shenanigans:

Connection drops making the Swede mad:

Savjz experimented with several decks throughout the event, including Warlock, Paladin, and Shaman.

Despite being last for most of the event and unsuccessfully trying multiple decks and classes, Savjz's Shaman deck makes an impressive comeback towards the end.

With Reynad giving up at rank 9, the final moments of the competition centered around Forsen, Savjz, and Kungen. Forsen comfortably held the lead at Rank 4 with three stars and decided to sit back and camp his rank for the last couple of hours, even taking a short nap believing that stars would count toward the final results.

However, after a caster and donos began telling him that the stars did in fact not count, doubts started trickling into the god gamer's head. With Savjz at his heels in at Rank 5, Forsen was forced to play several matches during the final 40 minutes, putting his lead at risk.

Later, with only 30 minutes remaining, the casters and his chat finally cleared up the confusion. By then, however, the damage had already been done. Forsen had lost two stars and was now sitting at Rank 4 with only one star. This would prove costly, as Savjz reached Rank 4 with one star during his final game in overtime, tying with Forsen.

Also is worth mentioning that in a similar manner, Kungen was at Rank 4 when they tell him stars do matter. So he keeps playing and falls back to Rank 5 where ultimately gets stuck.

When the timer finally reached zero, Forsen and Savjz were tied. They reach and agreement and the winner would be decided in a single tie breaker game instead of a best of three:

Forsen loses and Savjz is crowned the winner of the event, claiming the $5,000 prize pool. This video summarizes the confusion that tricked Forsen into losing his lead:

"I asked an admin he said that the stars actually counted, and then they changed it in the last 30 minutes to that they didn't count. So I had to play because my stars were not worth anything, even though the difference between zero stars at one rank and five stars at one rank can be 3 hours of grinding at that level [...]" - Forsen

Overall we get a positive reaction towards Forsen for his humble attitude during his defeat, as he was the victim of unclear rulings and ineptitude from the tournament organizers.

"Congratz to Savjs, he's one of my favourite players, but I feel so sorry for Forsen. He was fucked over so fucking hard."

"I was rooting for Savjz but with all these unclear rules it did feel unfair towards Forsen >.< Maybe they should've just give both of them 2,5k and end it."

"Forsen at Rank 4 with 3 Stars no intention to play again. They tell him stars dont matter. He plays again and looses two games. They tell him stars do actually matter. gg"

Alextheseal made a video about this event, showing some highlights:

"Loser - Reynad"

The Second Marathon: The revenge of the hobo

The second and last instance of the "Play It Cool" Heathstone Marathon took place in Stockholm, Sweden from October 17th to October 18th, 2015. This time the invited players were:

• James “Firebat” Kostesich
• Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk
• Sebastian “Forsen” Fors
• Janne “Savjz” Mikkonen

In addition to the rules from the previous marathon and the removal of the banning phase, a few new gimmicks were implemented:

Class Rules:

• All players will end up with two classes they can play
• Player will choose one class for the first 12 hours, and one class for the second 12 hours.
• The classes will be selected through a drafting process at the start of the competition, then once again after 12 hours.

Highlights

The marathon came to a good start by suspending all of the four participants accounts after the first two hours:

After Forsen loses to Savjz in the ladder, he gets punished by losing one of his strongest cards, even tough he tries to hide it.

We can find a couple of snipers helping Forsen by giving him some wins, this would not be the last helper in this tournament for him.

Even Reynad had some helpers in front of a clear defeat:

Savjz would also have Massan conceding to him as seen in this clip. This would fuel the bajs to try to help Forsen even harder.

Massan would later answer to the accusations of win-trading in a reddit post:

"whoa, my apologies to any disturbance I caused here. I saw savjz in main stage when he hit legend, and I thought it was over, not to mention chat was encouraging me to congratulate him with a free win, and that I was well behind and he just needed an owl to kill me.
I did not want him to be in trouble in any means by this, hope everything is well for other competitors as well."

In the final hours Reynad and Firebat already threw the towel, only the Swede and the Finn remained, in similar fashion to the last tournament. Savjz finished at Legend Rank 115, with Forsen reaching the same exact rank almost simultaneously. Due to discrepancies caused by the constantly shifting ladder, where other players results could affect rankings, the staff opted for a draw.

The tournament also sparked controversy over at least three instances in which stream snipers helped Forsen by conceding their matches. The most controversial example occurred during his final game, when an opponent had lethal but chose to concede instead, giving Forsen enough rank to draw level with Savjz and force a best of three tiebreaker.

If you were watching Forsen's stream you can clearly see that this opponent was in fact a streamsniper. He recorded his perspective, and even donated to Forsen during the very same final match.

Despite an unfavorable matchup Savjz starts the best of three by winning the first game of the tiebreaker.

However the hobo proved to be too strong, specially when streaming with no delay and having donos giving him the hand of the opponent as quoted by multiple comments in the hearthpwn forum:

"I mean what kind of idiot writes what your opponents card are in a donation message? So disgusting."

"During the untie matches between them, twice donators revealed Savjz's hand to Forsen with messages from the donations.
Final conclusion: bs tournament"

And in the hearthstone subreddit:

"Pretty sad forsen won because of people donating wins to him and giving him cheating info vs savjz."

"To that guy who donated money to tell Forsen his opponent's hand. You suck man."

"Donators were donating savjz's hand to forsen at some point"a

With this morally questionable victory Forsen gets to chose between keeping the money or his honor. As a good standing man obviously goes for the honorable thing to do and picks the MONEY. HE GOES FOR THE MONEY, FOR THE $5000 DOLLARS. This time reactions towards him in the community are the complete opposite to what they were the last time, in the previous marathon.

Also don't forget that Reynad lost again even with five minutes delay.

In forsen's shoes what would YOU have done?

Also related

• AlexTheSeal
• HearthStone

WIP :)