German Hearthstone Grandmaster Seiko made a serious blunder in a match. This was because he was also participating in a qualification tournament for Auto Chess. Some Hearthstone players are astonished, finding his behavior disrespectful.
Who is Seiko? The Hearthstone Grandmaster’s real name is Linh Nguyen, and he is currently studying mathematics in Berlin, as Blizzard knows.
He has earned about $27,000 with Hearthstone (via liquipedia) and is one of only 48 Grandmasters in Blizzard’s card game. Grandmasters are an elite, hand-picked group of players who dominate Hearthstone esports and play their own tournaments and series: There are only 16 in Europe.
When they play against each other in their formats, a lot of people watch and expect to see Hearthstone at the highest level.
Grandmaster so distracted that he didn’t notice the blunder
What was the blunder? Seiko played a Paladin deck in Hearthstone that is built around the minion “Shirvallah”.
The “Win Condition” for this deck is to bring a copy of Shirvallah into the deck using the card “Baleful Banker” after playing it.
Later, the Paladin attempts to finish the match with the card “Holy Wrath”: This spell deals damage equal to the cost of the drawn card. If the card costs 25 mana, that’s a lot of damage and usually enough to end the match. Especially if you can play two Holy Wrath and deal 50 damage in one turn.
There are a few other subtleties to note with the deck, but it generally follows this plan:
- prolong the match by healing yourself and building armor while eliminating the opponent’s minions
- draw many cards, your own deck needs to be empty for the combo
- now you use the Baleful Banker to ensure one or more copies of Shirvallah are in the deck
- and then use Holy Wrath to draw Shirvallah, deal 25 damage to the opponent’s hero, and win in one turn
But Seiko overlooked the copying of Shirvallah; he had played Shirvallah, but did not use the Banker, even though he had it in hand.
Now the opponent could kill Shirvallah on the next turn, and all hope was lost for Seiko to win the game. Because he simply had no win condition left.
This was the reaction: The strange thing in the Twitch clip was that Seiko did not seem to notice this blunder at all, but was fixated on something else that was to his left.
The two casters, Sottle and ThatsAdmirable, could hardly contain themselves over this terrible mistake of the Grandmaster: This is unacceptable.
When Seiko then looked back at the Hearthstone board, he realized his blunder and was also shocked by what had happened to him.
What’s behind it? After the match, it came out that Seiko was simultaneously playing the game “Auto Chess” on another screen. He was apparently in a qualification match for a tournament for 1 million US dollars.
Seiko played Hearthstone at Grandmaster level and Auto Chess at the same time.
“If he doesn’t appreciate it, let’s make others Grandmaster”
This is how the community reacts: There were some angry tweets. Such behavior is an “insult” to Hearthstone and the Grandmaster program. It shows that he does not take Hearthstone seriously. Others should move up to these “coveted” Grandmaster spots.
Especially because there are so few Grandmasters and this format is still relatively new and controversial, the anger seems to ignite that one of the privileged is so careless with his privilege.
Grandmaster says: I thought I could play simultaneously – but I couldn’t
This is what Seiko says: He said he could not imagine that the situation would escalate like this. He had been playing Auto Chess for a while. He would have been used to multitasking and wanted to take that risk.
Seiko thought he could play both games at the same time and didn’t need much attention for Auto Chess. That was his mistake. He misjudged the attention that Auto Chess requires.
Although he was very much looking forward to the Auto Chess tournament, ultimately it was the wrong decision. He has now learned that he cannot play both games simultaneously.
He apologizes to everyone he disappointed.
