The third iteration of GwentSlam was, as expected, once again fantastic. The line-up of player, the casters and hosts as well as the stream and production quality were excellent; so huge shoutout to Lifecoach and his crew for bringing consistently such top notch content.
The dust has settled and the pool is cleaned, now is my time for some number crunching. Don‘t forget, the dataset analyzed is has not a huge sample size and conclusions drawn can be flawed.
Gwent Slam 3 has just reached its conclusion and what a tournament it was! The Grand Finals were played between relative newcomer to the big stage, Dyuhaaa and one of the games’ best Pro Ladder players, Tailbot. Let’s take a deeper look at the Finals action:
After being declared the Blue Player who would get the ability to play second in 3 out of the 5 matches, Dyuhaa chose to ban the powerful King Bran. Tailbot on the other hand decided to ban Broover Hoog since while his lineup was quite powerful, it did notably lack answers to deal with the golden weather in the Broover Hoog deck.
Dyuhaaa did not waste any time showing exactly why he made it into the finals of this prestigious event. He made an astounding round 1 play by using the power of his Frightener and the red coin to force a pass from Tailbot. This not only setup a long round 3 which favored his Eredin deck, but it also allowed him to get great value out of his Succubus which may have otherwise been bricked. While Succubus is a very powerful card it is one that loses a substantial amount of value once your opponent knows that it is in your deck. Dyuhaaa leveraged this fact to control the pace of the rest of the game. His open pass round 2 led to a 10 card round 3 in which his frost was able to do a massive amount of damage against the units of Tailbots Radovid deck. This proved to be too much to overcome and Dyuhaaa drew first blood in the best of 5 series.
Tailbot chose to play his Unseen Elder deck in game 2 when he would have the advantage of going second. He masterfully crafted a round 1 in which he successfully baited out his opponents Geralt: Igni on a Toad Prince that could have been absolutely devastating later in the game. He also managed to setup both a Nekker and an Ekkimarra for carryover and timed his pass very well. He was able to leverage these powerful carry over units to secure a 1 card advantage going into round 3. Though round 3 was well fought by both players, the combined power of multiple Witch Hunters and the essentially free tempo provided by Dun Banner Light Cavalry proved too much for Tailbot to overcome, particularly since he had a Slyzard in his hand without a target in the graveyard.
Tailbot was now facing elimination and chose to rely on his prowess with his Nilfguard deck to win a mirror match and keep his hopes alive. His deck was well suited to the mirror match with powerful tools such as Muzzle and the Guardian. He was able to leverage his Muzzle in round 1 to steal his opponents Impera Enforcers, a key engine card in the matchup. Round 1 turned into an absolute slugfest with both players trading haymakers and eventually playing every card in their hands. Tailbot came out on top of the all-in round 1 brawl and was able to turn that win into a favorable round 3 scenario where he was up a card on Dyuhaaa. The extra card was too much to overcome and Tailbot was able to stave off elimination.
Game 4 showcased Dyuhaas’ very direct and straightforward approach to beating the Nekker focused Unseen Elder strategy employed by Tailbot. He was forced to go first, but managed to leverage this fact by taking the board over with Impera Enforcers on the very early turns of the game. This allowed him completely decimate his opponents swarm of Nekkers before he was ever able to really get their engine going. Tailbot tried to anticipate a long round by making an Arachas Behemoth from his Monsters Nest for some additional value, but his plan was not meant to be. Dyuhaaa forced him out of the round shortly after deploying his third Impera Enforcer which allowed him complete control of the board. In round 3 Tailbot gave it his best effort, but an unfortunate Roach draw helped to seal his fate. His hand was no match for the full might of Nilfguard as Dyuhaaa had all four of his powerful golds saved until the final round. Nilfguard triumphantly took down the final round of the tournament and Dyuhaaa was crowned the champion!
Dyuhaaa brought a very strong lineup which was much more focused on the powerful weather hazards than any of the other competitors. His great read on his opponents to not include a sufficient amount of weather clears in their deck paid huge dividends as he was able to ride his slightly unorthodox deckbuilding decisions all the way to the championship.
Congratulations to Duyhaaa our newest champion, and to all of the other participants at Gwent Slam. This was yet another wildly successful tournament showcasing some of the best players in the world at the peak of their game. I would also like to thank Lifecoach for hosting, the casters for providing very high quality commentary and all of the behind the scenes people who worked so hard to make this event as great as it was.
This article was written by Joesn0w. You can find more from him on his twitch
Now that Gwentslam #3 is over it’s time to have a look at all the decklists people brought! We have them all listed here for you:
GwentSlam #3 kicks off this weekend. The quarter finals take place this Saturday, with the semis and grand finals taking place on Sunday. Eight players will be battling to take home the lion’s share of a $10,000 prizepool in Vienna. With the brackets now released, is anyone in for an easy ride? And which match ups look particularly tough? We’ve taken predictions from across the Gwent community to get a feel for who is the favourite in each match-up.
We spoke to a range of people from the community in order to get a broad flavour of how people think these games will go.
Our ten fortune tellers are:
So what did everyone think?
The TailBot vs Shaggy match up is the least contested. Everyone except Metranos expects Shaggy to take the set. Shaggy is the previous winner of Gwent Open #1, whereas TailBot came second in Gwent Open #2. When asked for his reasons, Metranos said “he has more live experience than Shaggy so I think that’s an advantage, but this will be the closest match because Shaggy obviously also has some experience.” In fact, Metranos played (and beat) TailBot during GwentSlam #2, so may have a good idea of how he plays. With that said, Shaggy is the clear favourite amongst our panel. “Shaggy’s only tournament run so far was tremendously dominant and he’s consistently been at the top of the ladder for a large amount of time” said Lamios. Indeed, he has the cleanest record. Impressive considering he qualified as the ‘wildcard’. Although our panel is one-sided, this is sure to be an exciting set.
The eiSloth vs Freddybabes set sees 70% choosing Freddybabes. Hot off his Gwent Open #2 first place, many expect him to continue on the victory train. Swim, vaysh, and Panda went against the grain, calling a Sloth victory. Many feel this will be a very close set however. Vaysh said “sloth will win vs freddy in a very good series”, whereas in Jaggerous’ opinion “Freddybabes always brings interesting decks. I think he’s hard to predict, and that gives him an edge. He does his own thing, and while some people criticise him for it, I think it can throw off his opponent. Sloth is a great player though. I wouldn’t be surprised to see five games”. It is true that Freddy has the strongest tournament history of the competitors, with wins at GwentSlam #1, and Gwent Open #2. We’ll have to wait and see if he can defend his crown and take this set, or if eiSloth will cause an upset.
Dyuhaaa is seen as somewhat of an unknown in this tournament, but interestingly 30% of our panel chose him as the winner against Adzikov. Adzikov is a very strong player on pro ladder, usually sitting comfortably in the number one spot. But he has a history of losing in the first round of tournaments. Merchant said “Dyuhaaa is my pick because he just fought through a tough qualifier to be here, as he was invited due to qualifying to the previous GwentSlam. Going up against Adzikov, a strong player, but marked by a run of first round exits from Tournaments. Adzikov has a tonne to prove in an offline setting though so really this is anyone’s game.” Either way, fans will want to see Dyuhaaa showcase himself, but will Adzikov break his round one curse?
Finally, we have Petrify vs GameKing. GameKing is a tournament regular, whereas this is Petrify’s first tournament. It is perhaps surprising then that only 7 of our 10 think that GameKing will win. According to crokeyz, GameKing will win “because GameKing spent 12 hours practicing Gwent while Petrify watched Baby Driver on reapeat on the plane.” It is true that GameKing is well known for the number of hours he dedicates to Gwent, and the pro ladder. But more hours doesn’t necessarily lead to a better player. Merchant perhaps knows Petrify the best out of all our panelists. He says “GameKing v Petrify I found the hardest to call out of all of them. GameKing is in my opinion Gwent’s most consistently brilliant player, and he’s going up against drunken buffoon Petrify. However Petrify is a unique player who I speak to daily, so I know he has some tricks up his sleeve and his read on the game is immense. This is my most anticipated series and I’ll give it to Petrify just because he will be moody if I don’t.” Petrify definitely has a lot to prove, and going up against previous GwentSlam winner GameKing is going to be a tough set. Seen as the underdog, will he come out on top in this set?
From our panel, the predictions favour Shaggy, Freddybabes, Adzikov and GameKing. But who is actually going to win? Find out during GwentSlam #3, this Saturday at 2pm CET on Lifecoach’s Twitch channel.
To find out more about the players, check out our recent article, GwentSlam#3: Meet the Players.
This piece was written by Francesca “Jaggerous” Jagger, with the help of the Gwentlemen team. You can find her on YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter.
In the recent CDPR dev stream new cards were announced. Click the image below to check out the new card reveals on the playgwent website!
