MZ Infographic: GwentSlam spectacular!
From contributor OtakuMZ comes your postgame breakdown for GwentSlam!
This weekend, September 23rd and 24th, the first-ever CDPR licensed community tournament happened in Vienna Austria: the GwentSlam! It was organized and hosted by none other than the first Gwent Challenger champion Lifecoach. Matches were cast primarily by MegaMogwai and McBeard, both are already known from casting multiple Gwent events. MegaMogwai’s teammate from Fade2Karma, the most beautiful face in Gwent, AshCosplay, did interviews in between matches and functioned as a host with excitement, insight, and professionalism. SuperJJ, Lifecoach’s stream buddy, also joined to make the crowd complete.
There were a lot of people working behind the scenes as well, and before we move to the content, a huge thank you to all of them for making the experience as smooth as it was!
Without further ado, here is your postgame recap for the first ever GwentSlam!
Competitors
There were eight competitors, two of which qualified through open qualifier tournaments: Freddybabes (UK) and ImpetuousPanda (Spain) from our own Team Gwentlemen. Another member of our team was invited: Swim, representing the USA. The other invitees were TidesOfTime (USA), a famous former DOTA 2 and Hearthstone pro of Cloud9, and Meleeman (Russia) a known Siberian Streamer. Adzikov from Poland qualified by being the #1 player on Pro Ladder at the set date before the tournament and Austrian player Shaggy reserved his seed by winning the first GwentOpen. Last but not least, the second Austrian Gameking secured his spot by winning Lifecoach’s GwenTogether tourney.
Day 1
Quarterfinals were held the first day. They started off with Gameking versus ImpetuousPanda. Panda started strong gaining a 2-0 lead over Gameking, the GwentTogether champion, who had to face his previously most-feared deck in the third game: Emhyr Mill. He made the impossible possible achieving a reverse sweep in some of the most incredible games of the series. If you want to know how to play the mill matchup correctly, we highly recommend watching this series. The following match featured ProLadder menace Adzikov versus Meleeman. The latter decided the series in his favor in a back and forth battle 2-3. The third encounter was a Team Gwentlemen face off with Fredybabes against Swim. They too played five games with Freddy being the victorious 3-2. Last series of the day matched Shaggy vs. Tides which resulted in a sweep kicking out TidesOfTime.
Other interesting information from day one: Regarding the coinflip, going second resulted in a 56% win rate (WR) on first day. 5 of 18 games (28%) were mirror matches and starting last “only” resulted in a 60% WR in the mirrors. Northern Realms got banned half of the time. Mill did not perform that well this tournament losing five times and just winning once resulting in a 17% WR.
Day 2
Semifinals and the Grand Finals took place on day two of the tournament. In the first semis, Gameking faced Meleeman and the Russian player was defeated 3-1. In this match, we saw the unconventional Nilfgaard deck from the Austrian player for the first time. It used The Guardian, Nilfgaardian Standard Bearer, and Spotters in a Calveit deck. In the end, Meleeman could only take a win with his own Nilfgaard deck and lost the series.
The second semifinal was Freddybabes against Shaggy. Finally, nerves got to the dominating Shaggy in the first match when he misclicked his Shani rez-target, resurrecting a useless 3-strength Temerian Infantryman instead of a valuable Nenneke. This rare user error sealed a defeat in an already-tough round 3. After that, the GwentOpen champion seemed to never fully recover, and finally lost 3-1 only winning with his Radovid deck.
Before the finals, the caster duo of McBeard and Mogwai (Team McMogwai) played a show match against the team of Ash and SupperJJ (SuperAsh) in a best of three.
In the grand finals, our last remaining champion, Freddybabes, contested Gameking who already had won the GwentTogether in the exact same house a few weeks ago. It was suspected that this fact gave him a slight edge, along with the fact that he was in his home country. The Nilfgaard showdown was up first and Freddybabes took this one decisively - managing to overpower Gameking’s unconvential build with his own trusty Mill strategy. A critical read in round 1 effectively decided the result - Gameking played an extra card while ahead, attempting to bait out Freddy’s Avallac’h, upon which Gameking would have passed and then slain a Renewed Avallac’h in round 2 with his tech choice of Leo Bonhart, ending the mill for good. Freddy correctly read Gameking’s trap and passed round 1, allowing him to execute his gameplan unobstructed forthwith. In the following match he took another win with his Radovid list. In the third match of the series, Gameking showed why Kaedweni Siege Support is such a feared card, especially if three of them are on the board at once, winning against Freddy’s Dagon decisively in a tough round 3. Following, we saw a Dagon mirror - which was not a real mirror match as Freddy brought an unpopular non-hybrid consume version versus the more standard build of Gameking. The first round ended abruptly with an unexpected early pass by Gameking allowing Freddybabes to win round 1 on even cards. Gameking gambled that Freddy’s tutor-heavy list would be heavily disrupted by the early round 2 draw, and thus weaken Freddy’s mulligan; a gamble that proved fruitless as Freddy drew a decent hand and was able to bleed down to a power combo of Yennefer, Woodland Spirit, and Commander’s Horn in round 3. In the end, our valiant Gwentlemen took down the GwentTogether champion in a close final game, securing the tournament win, precious crown points and $5675 in prize money!
Special Awards
(Q=quarterfinals, S=semifinals)
Worst Misclick: Shaggy (S); runner-up Meleeman (Q)
Biggest misplay: Freddybabes (Q)
Best comeback: Gameking (Q)
Most dominant player day one: Shaggy
Tech card of the tournament: Iris; runner-up Bekker’s Twisted Mirror
