Announcing a Hearthstone Tournament with a $100 pot For Blind Players

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Hearthstone is one of the very few mainstream games where blind players can have a well rounded and full gaming experience both against other blind gamers and their sighted peers. This means it is a great opportunity for us to put on events for fellow blind gamers to compete with one another, and it is made even better if there is a cash prize. The powerful @Gruntok was thinking this, and he sent out an innocent tweet saying there should be a blind Hearthstone tournament. BlurrySito and myself saw this tweet, got together to start working right away, and now we are announcing our first Hearthstone tournament for blind gamers. Read on to see how you can enter, participate, and maybe even win some cash for a top 3 placement.

Quick Info

• This will be a tournament for Hearthstone on PC.
• 100 dollar pot with a 50 30 20 split for first second and third place.
• Registration will open on the 23rd of June at noon eastern, and will close on the 9th of July at noon eastern.
• max of 16 participants, minimum of 8.
• The Tournament and stream will happen on the 23rd and 24th of July at 12:00pm(noon) eastern.
• Two and a half format possibilities based on number of registrants. Either round robin pool play with a re seeded top 8 afterwards if lower total, or a single elimination straight through if there is a higher amount of participants. Double elimination if there are no other choices.
• Conquest best of 3 format with standard cards. (more about this later in the blog post)
• The game region used will be Americas.

Timeline of Registration, Preparation, and Tournament Day

This post is coming out to let everyone know all the necessary information about the tournament before registration actually opens. This is so you have time to grind more cards, pick your 3 decks you’ll want to use, and to generally get prepared. You’ll have a week before registration even opens, so this should be more than enough time to make a plan and start the grind to ensure you have all the cards and decks you wish to use in the tournament.
There will be a maximum amount of players who can enter once registration does open on the 23rd of June, and that number is set at 16+2(more info on the +2 below). There are multiple reasons we are capping the tournament at 16+2 players. This is our first tournament and we would like to judge the enthusiasm of participation, while at the same time not getting in over our heads with the first tournament. We also want to stream every match and give everyone their time on stream; and 16 is the max amount of players we could handle while doing this effectively.
In addition to it being capped at 16 plus 2, it is first come first serve. This means the first 16 people who register are the 16 players who will be in the tournament. This is another reason why this post is coming out one week before registration opens, so everyone has time to decide if they’d like to join. Don’t hesitate if you want to enter. Something tells me we are going to hit 16 way sooner than later. I don’t see it taking the full two weeks to get there, but we shall see.
In addition to the 16 max who can participate, we’ll be allowing up to two alternatives to sign up. These two extras will have to follow all the same steps of submitting decks and adding everyone else to their friends list, but they will be held in reserve just in case someone cannot make it to the tournament.
So now that everyone knows when registration opens, and that it will be open for just over two weeks. The next point on the timeline is the last day you can sign up, which is on the 9th of July by noon eastern. This is two weeks before the first day of the tournament which is the 23rd of July.
After registration closes on the 9th of July, everyone will have 1 week to submit their chosen decks (Read the next heading to find out what the rules are and what cards you can use to make your decks). All participants will have to submit their decks through the official tournament form by 12:00pm(noon) eastern on the 16th of July. This is for a couple reasons. We want to make sure all cards being used are indeed standard cards, and also to protect against a surprise expansion being released last minute and someone being able to use gold to get all the new cards giving them an advantage. The card lists will not be published, we are going closed deck, butt the three classes you will be playing with will be published for all participants and spectators to see. Again more on this later in the blog post.
So now our tournament timeline is up to one week out from the tournament. At this point the last week will be used to wrangle everyone into the BSG discord server and to the tournament channel. This will be the main way of communicating with participants and giving them important information related to the tournament. If you are new to discord we’ll help, it is quite easy to figure out, especially for something as simple as getting tournament updates.
Also at the point of one week out, on the 17th of July a page will be released with the order of matches so everyone knows who they are playing against in their first match, and also what classes each person is using. We’ll also require that every participant adds the battle tag of everyone else so matches can start on time without having to invite people to get it going. These battle tags will be released on the Discord channel, not on the main tournament bracket page.
Finally the weekend of the tournament will arrive, and we’ll be going live at 12:00pm eastern and jumping right into the first match on the schedule. Everyone who is participating will have to be there and ready when their turn is up. The first person for each match will challenge the second person to a standard match, and the commentators on stream will spectate the participants on stream.

Conquest Format, Permissible Cards, and How It Will Work

Normally the conquest format is played in a best of 5 match, but due to time we are lowering it to a best of 3, also known as a first to two wins. This means that instead of bringing 5 decks each person only needs to bring 3 decks to the tournament. With that in mind all the same rules apply, and you can check out the below video from Hearthstone to see how the conquest format works.

Video On Conquest Format From Hearthstone

Text Description Of Conquest From The Hearthstone Wiki

If you prefer a text description, here is the description of how Conquest works from the Hearthstone Wiki.

Conquest is the main match format used in official Hearthstone tournaments. The first player to win with all of their decks is the victor.
• Each player brings a specific number of decks, depending on tournament rules.
• Each deck must come from a different class (e.g. having two Mage decks is not allowed).
• Depending on tournament rules, an optional ban phase may be given to players before the start of matches, with each player being able to “ban” a number of their opponent’s decks, preventing them from being played for the entire match.
• To begin playing a round, each player chooses one of their decks to battle the opponent with, with the deck choice hidden from the opponent. Games are then played out with the following rules:
• Any deck that wins a game cannot be played again, and another deck must be chosen to play the next game.
• Any deck that is defeated may be played again in the next game.
• The first player to win with two of their decks (in a best-of-3 series) or all three of their decks (in a best-of-5 series) wins the match.

Note: we are not using the optional ban rule, so you cannot ban one of your opponent’s decks, and they cannot ban one of yours.

The Standard Format Of Cards

The only cards you can use for building your decks are the standard format cards. This means all cards released in the past 2 calendar years, and all core set cards. In Hearthstone terminology this means cards released during the year of the Hydra(2022) and the year of the Griffin(2021) and all core cards.
If you would like to read an in depth explanation on the Standard format you can read the standard format page on the Hearthstone Wiki.

If you have any additional questions about the Conquest tournament format, or about the standard card format feel free to join the BSG Discord server and ask your question there, someone will be around to answer all questions.

Info About The Stream & Commentators

The stream will be taking place on the 23rd and 24th of July on the BSG Twitch. Both days will start at noon eastern, and we’ll be going until all matches are completed. This will make for long stream days, but we believe it will be worth it for the benefit of giving everyone the opportunity to be in a tournament and win some cash for being good at gaming.
The two who will be commentating will be myself(Smoke) and the great and powerful BlurrySito(Check out Sito on Twitch).. We are by no means great, or even good Hearthstone players, but we know a thing or two about streaming. What you can expect is us to be very excited about what happens, but with very limited knowledge of planning, setups, and everything involving the deeper aspects of Hearthstone. We’ll be having a fun time and encouraging everyone to do the same, and that is what it’s all about. This means that even if you don’t know a lot about the game you can stop by and enjoy the stream and competition with us as we all get educated by some great players.
I am fully aware that most BSG streams are a blowing off of steam and making everything into a joke as we drink copious amounts of alcohol. This stream won’t be one of these streams though. Myself and sito won’t be getting drunk and having a crazy time. We’ll be presenting the tournament in a much more reasonable manner, having fun with the game, and staying sober. This is about giving everyone the opportunity to participate and potentially win some cash, not getting drunk on the weekend. The stream won’t be PG of course, but it will be a much more relaxed stream without the normal BSG insanity.

Very Important Information About The Stream

One thing which is inescapable is the streaming of someone’s cards when they are playing. There are two very important things to keep in mind about this to ensure you do not get disqualified from the Tournament.
The First thing to keep in mind is once someone’s match is streamed everyone viewing will see their cards. This means that your cards for a deck will only be secret until you play with that deck. There is no way around this, it is simply how spectating in a 3rd party tournament works.
The second and most important thing about the stream. If you are playing, you must leave the stream and not watch under any circumstances. This is referred to stream watching or stream sniping, and is the worst rule you could ever break in any online tournament. You cannot use the stream to spy on your opponents cards, and doing this will get you an instant ban from the tournament and from every BSG tournament or event in the future.
To put it simple, don’t cheat and be a jerk, we are putting this tournament on for the benefit of everyone and to give back, don’t be the ass hole who ruins it for everyone.
In addition to the above, if you need to send a message to the commentators during your match you can use the Tournament channel on the BSG Discord. That is the exact reason it is there. This is a very serious topic, and we want to ensure a fair and balanced tournament experience for everyone who plays. Again, don’t ruin it for everyone else.

Single Elimination Verses Round Robin

We are expecting to get 16 participants signed up, and if that is the case we’ll have a simple time of it with single elimination brackets. This means that everyone is matched up against someone else in their best of 3. If you lose the best of 3 you are eliminated from the tournament and the winner advances to the next round. This continues until there is only two left, and those two play for first and second place. Third place is awarded to the winner of a match between the two players who lost their semifinal match.
If we get a low number of participants or a funky number we’ll sort everyone into pools, and each person will play against every other person within their pool. Then when all pool play is done we will reseed everyone based on their records into a top 8, or a top 4(depending on participants) for the finals which will be a single elimination finals. This is the same way sports organizations like the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL handle their regular season and finals.
No matter what format we end up going with, it will only be based on amount of participants. This information will be given to everyone well before the tournament to ensure everyone knows exactly what to expect. I am just putting it out so everyone is completely aware of what the possibilities are, the reasoning behind it, and so there are no surprises.
We would like to have 16 people sign up, so don’t hesitate to register, hop into the tournament and make this event a reality. It will make everything much easier since we really don’t want to adopt a double elimination bracket since that makes everyone’s heads hurt, but if it is inescapable we will have to attempt it.. Share this post far and wide, and sign up to charge through the competition and take home one of the top three prizes…just read the rules first.

In Case Of Game Updates Breaking The Mod

Due to Hearthstone updates and the nature of the mod needing to be updated. If we are unable to access the game at the time of the tournament we will postpone it for the shortest possible time before starting. This could be minutes, hours, or over a day.
This is not ideal, and it would really make things difficult, but it is one of the things out of our control which we cannot help. We will do everything possible to limit the amount of scheduling frustrations this may cause to ensure that everyone can still participate. This is just a precaution, and most likely will not be an issue.

Rules *Must Read*

Some of these are covered in the above sections, but they are all being listed here as well.

1. This tournament is open to anyone no matter their affiliation with BSG.
2. This tournament is only open to Hearthstone players who are blind or visually impaired.
3. you can only use standard cards. This means only cards from the past 2 calendar years, and all core cards. This is currently the year of the Hydra and the year of the Griffin cards. Cards outside this time period are considered wild, and they are not permitted.
4. it is first come first serve for the tournament. There is a maximum of 16 people plus two alternates who can enter. Do not hesitate to sign up.
5. for the tournament to be scheduled we need a minimum of 8 players to register. Less than this and we won’t have enough to make proper brackets.
6. If you register make sure you will be available for the tournament dates of July 23rd and 24th, you’ll be scheduled based on your time zone specified on the registration form.
7. You will need 3 30 card decks (or 40 card decks if they contain the Prince Renathal card) from 3 different classes. You will submit your decks to the official deck submission form by 12:00pm on July 16, 2022. You will use these 3 decks for all your matches.
8. Once you submit a deck it cannot be changed, and if you play a card in the tournament not in your submitted deck (not including discovered cards or other cards added through normal game mechanics) you instantly lose the match.
9. The winner of each match is the first player to win two times against their opponent.
10. Once you win with a deck in that match you can no longer use that deck for the remainder of the match, and have to use one of your two remaining decks instead. If you lose with a deck you can choose to continue using it or switch to another.
11. 1 week before the tournament you must add every other player in the tournament to your friends list in Hearthstone. A list of everyone’s battle tags will be released to all tournament participants. You also have to add the stream commentators as friends prior to the tournament stream date. This is so everyone can play together, and so the commentators can spectate the match for the stream.
12. under no circumstances are you allowed to watch the stream while you are playing. If you are suspected of this you will be disqualified from this tournament and all future events, not only hearthstone tournaments. There is no protesting or appealing this decision, we are taking this very serious. Do not cheat by trying to stream snipe to see your opponents cards. We are doing this to give back and to have fun, don’t be a jerk and ruin it for everyone.
13. You can watch the matches you are not playing in, this is encouraged. You just have to close the twitch stream page when you are in a match.
14. These rules may be updated in the future if important information was overlooked, so make sure you check back. The last update occurred on July 16, 2022 at 12:11pm EDT to clarify some rules.

Registration Form

Registration is officially open for the tournament. The following link will open up a Google form which you must fill out fully and submit to register. Please make sure you have read the above tournament rules before registering.
Open the registration form for the Hearthstone tournament in a new window.

You may also want to follow @BlurrySito_ and @BSG_Blog on twitter to follow all updates in real time. In addition you can Join the BSG Discord.

If you want to support BSG and future events like this you can sign up to Patreon. No matter the tier every bit helps, and everything goes back into the sites and making sure we can keep bringing great content to everyone.
Support BSG on Patreon.