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Active: 26231 users

About Myself, Teams, and Secret Tournaments

Blogs > monk
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monk
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States8476 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-12-16 18:34:19
December 16 2013 16:08 GMT
#1

About Me

Some of you know me as the Hearthstone player, monk. Some of you may know me as that Hearthstone guy from Teamliquid. But most of you know me from my roots in Starcraft II. I started off as a somewhat casually competitive Starcraft player, trying to get pretty good at the game, but without any progamer ambitions. However, my favorite part of the game was talking and writing about strategy. I wrote a few strategy articles on Teamliquid and eventually got on staff, as was the natural progression on TL.

While on staff, I wore many hats as a moderator, writer, and editor. I also traveled to many events to do coverage and interviews. (Of which this is probably my most famous.) Some examples of my work on TL include heading the development of the 100+ page PvZ guide, founding a new department of TL called TL Strategy, heading Proleague coverage, organizing the Best Games of 2012/2013, and serving a brief stint as the writer of SC2 Power Ranks.


Suck it, Kith and Strife
Then Hearthstone beta came out. I received a key from Teamliquid and decided to try the game with the intention to become a casual player. I thought I was pretty decent at this fun and addictive game, but didn’t really think twice about it. Then the first Hearthstone rankings came out and I surprisingly found myself rank 5. I remember being out that day, but when I got back home, I found six messages on skype telling me of my ranking. It wasn’t the actual rank that left the biggest impression on me, but more that other people thought that it was a big deal. Somewhere around that time, Teamliquid began to become interested in covering Hearthstone and I was suddenly the natural fit to lead the team.

On Practice Groups and Teams

It began from there. My first step was to develop our Hearthstone coverage team. Because there weren’t many(any?) big tournaments yet, we were limited to strategy articles and fun articles. I kept an eye out for the best players with the intention of having them write articles for Teamliquid. As a player, I think I have a strong eye for Hearthstone talent, picking up some of the best players on NA before they had achieved anything. Although it has been alluded to in many interviews, I’d like to give an overview of our group. Our members consist of myself, ChanmanV, curi, Kisstafer, Kithros, koyuki, Sylas, StrifeCro, and Trump.

If you’ve been following the Hearthstone scene closely, you’ll recognize most or even all of these names. Combined, we have over 20 tournament wins with many more top 2 placements (mostly from knocking each other out in finals). And as of this writing, a majority of members on the team are top 10 on NA ladder at the moment. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of members of the team is the development of curi Warlock and Kithros Rogue, the two decks that defined the metagame over the last two months.

The intention was never to form a practice group, but that’s what we became. Because of our often silly sleep schedules, we always have someone to talk Hearthstone with. To give you an idea of how much Hearthstone we talk about, we average about 2000 messages in our group on Skype every day. Because of the group, we also always had practice partners to custom game with, which was especially important because the pre-patch ladder system was frankly terrible for practice.

Here’s another example of our how effective a team can be. One night, we had eight members online, so we wanted to test a matchup. We all got in a skype call, paired up, and grinded that matchup for half an hour. Then we switched sides. For the entire time, we talked about just that one matchup, getting insights that we noticed throughout the games. From there, we had a huge sample size of 40 games, which we could use to accurately judge the %win rate for both sides of that particular matchup. We also gained an insane amount insight together on how to play the matchup and talked about the weak cards in each of the decks we played. You can imagine how much of an advantage this gives us over other players who don’t have organized practice groups like this.

Right now we’re one of the two most known practice groups in the scene, along with Team Doge House. So here’s another example of how influential these practice groups are. Our group is based in NA while Team Doge House is based in EU. When I talked with members of Team Doge House, they told me that the NA ladder is much more competitive right now because practice groups are driving the ladders and our NA practice group is simply bigger than their EU one. That to me is just mind blowing, the monster that we’ve created.

I hope more of these practice groups or teams will form quickly in the future. Competition and rivalries between teams will advance the metagame of Hearthstone by a great deal, create storylines, and bring legitimacy to Hearthstone as an esport. Who knows? Maybe we can even have team leagues in the future. Speaking of team tournaments…

On Secret Tournaments

As some of you might know, I participated in a “secret” Hearthstone tournament over the last week hosted by ESGN. The idea was to get members of the two most known (only known?) practice groups and have them face off in a team format. For the purposes of this tournament, our team borrowed Kripparian as an honorary member.


Team Doge House
Ek0p, Nyhx, Artosis, Gnimsh
I don’t want to bog you down with details, but teams will face off in a five bo5s in the Blizzcon format. Each player from one team will at first play once against one player of the other team. Then, there will be an ace match bo5, even if the score isn’t 2-2. Of course, you can expect Teamliquid to cover all of this with previews and reviews of all the matches.

We all flew in two days before the filming, so on the day before filming, both teams held Hearthstone bootcamps. Yes, that’s right, Hearthstone bootcamps. While on the plane traveling to the event, Hearthstone was actually patched with significant changes, completely rebalancing the metagame. Our team spent the entire day coming up with the best decks for this metagame. Meanwhile, the practice group members that were still back at home laddered to the top of the NA ladder and gave us advice on what they were seeing at the top. They also shared deck advice and even gave us entirely new decks to use.

Obviously we can’t reveal anything about the results before the matches air. But I will say this: every single person who participated agreed that the games played were the most high-level and exciting games ever played in any Hearthstone tournament yet. Both teams were literally on the edge of our seats at one point in every match, very often even jumping out of our seats at the excitement and surprises of the matches.

Team Other Team No Name Yet
Trump, myself, Strifecro, Kripp
Probably my favorite part of the tournament was that it was hosted in a team format. With the team format, each match means something more beyond that match and storylines can be more easily developed. Emotions and tension run high on the bench with every draw, every move, and especially every RNG. Partly because of the team format, Artosis, probably one of the most traveled personalities in esports, commented that it was the most fun event he had ever been to. It was especially nice meeting everyone from Team Doge House in person. Though we have a sort of rivalry, everyone on the EU team was really cool and we all had a great time together.

But let's talk more about me. Out of the eight players at the event, I felt like I had the most unique experience going to this event. Artosis and StrifeCro are very used to going to event as players and celebrities. Kripp and Trump are also used to being in the spotlight with their streams and Blizzcon. Meanwhile, the rest of Team Doge house was used to going to WoW TCG tournaments as players, even though this was their first esports event. For me, however, I was used to always being on the other side of the coin; even though I very frequently traveled to events, I always worked behind the scenes, mostly interviewing players, personalities, and game developers. Being a player for the first time taught me two lessons: One is that you never think you’re prepared enough for the tournament; you always think you could have used that one extra day. Second is that god, it’s nerve-wracking up there.

But seriously, this tournament is the real deal, the first top-level Hearthstone offline event ever(sorry Blizzcon). The level of production was top notch, probably the best I’d ever seen for an esports event. The play was top notch. The decks were cutting edge, the best that existed at the time. All in all, it was the perfect event to launch Hearthstone into the next step of becoming an esport. I know you guys can’t wait, the event will start airing Janurary 6th after a lot of post-production. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

Thanks to ESGN for hosting the event and treating the players so well. Thanks to everyone in the practice group who helped us with games and I’m sorry in advance if I missed one or two of you when I was giving shoutouts during filming (there’s way too many of us to reliably list without practice atm ). Also thanks to Exactable and sp0h for practicing with me when everyone else was asleep. Special thanks to kyouki for helping out with one of my decks in particular. That’s it for now, but I’ll leave you all with more pictures of my experience in Germany.



****
Moderator
Spoh
Profile Joined March 2007
United States57 Posts
December 16 2013 16:32 GMT
#2
Hope you guys did well! Looking forward to the matches.
THM
Profile Joined November 2010
Bulgaria1131 Posts
December 16 2013 16:39 GMT
#3
sweet stuff.
NB
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Netherlands12045 Posts
December 16 2013 16:50 GMT
#4
the more i look at Trump, the more i see a Gretorp.... Is it just me or they are somewhat similar in term of character?
Im daed. Follow me @TL_NB
TheDna
Profile Joined March 2010
Germany577 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-12-16 19:37:51
December 16 2013 16:56 GMT
#5
lol @Trump drinking beer, looks really weird.
StillRooney
Profile Joined April 2010
Sweden106 Posts
December 16 2013 17:03 GMT
#6
Cool to read about this, really looking forward to the tournament airing! Cheers monk
ratbert
Profile Joined July 2011
Germany1041 Posts
December 16 2013 17:27 GMT
#7
lol can't wait til the show airs! the picture with the three guys at Kaufland really cracked me up for some reason
what if Nat Pagle and RNGesus are the same person?
Slardar
Profile Joined April 2010
Canada7593 Posts
December 16 2013 17:54 GMT
#8
I wasn't super excited about the tournament (largely due to the secrecy surrounding it) but now this I'm pumped. Didn't even know the team compositions! That last picture is a keeper.
Zealously
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
East Gorteau22261 Posts
December 16 2013 17:56 GMT
#9
Hopefully the hearthstone illuminati gets you for this affront to their secrecy
AdministratorBreak the chains
Jono7272
Profile Joined November 2010
United Kingdom6330 Posts
December 16 2013 18:05 GMT
#10
Haha, Trump with those girls. Such a ladies man.
Innovation | Flash | Mvp | Byun | TY
Teoita
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Italy12246 Posts
December 16 2013 18:13 GMT
#11
MONK IS ESPORTS AS FUCK
ModeratorProtoss all-ins are like a wok. You can throw whatever you want in there and it will turn out alright.
Hollandrock
Profile Joined January 2012
United Kingdom158 Posts
December 16 2013 18:49 GMT
#12
That's a really cool story. I do, however, think that the tournament you mentioned might struggle in terms of interest because it is being aired so long after it took place. By then it is likely we will have had additional patches and other big meta-game changes, resulting in the strategies in the tournament not seeming quite so 'high-level'.

Still looking forward to that and all other Hearthstone tournies! :D
jubil
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States2602 Posts
December 16 2013 19:09 GMT
#13
Hype! I can't wait to see what the Heartstone epsorts scene can develop into. Will look forward to watching this.
Marineking-Polt-Maru-Fantasy-Solar-Xenocider-Suppy fighting!
Firebolt145
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Lalalaland34486 Posts
December 16 2013 19:24 GMT
#14
Was looking through the gallery, thinking 'woah this is cool, seems like pretty good production' when suddenly, Trump and girls. I lost it.
Moderator
TheEmulator
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
28085 Posts
December 16 2013 20:16 GMT
#15
The Clauf dog seems like such a boss. Also cute.

Anyways, great pics Monk. Looks like fun
Administrator
FranzP
Profile Joined November 2010
France270 Posts
December 16 2013 20:44 GMT
#16
Can I ask what's the font you used for the title ? I'm kind of in love with slab serif even though I don't know a lot about typo.
"Cyberhacking is kind of like masturbation I guess, all countries do it but nobody actually talks about it. China just was accidentally doing it with the door wide open." Newbistic
YourGoodFriend
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States2197 Posts
December 16 2013 20:45 GMT
#17
Man I am actually pretty excited to see the tournament and I really am glad that it was team based, thats really cool! NIce blog. GO TL Hearthstone! (You heard it here first hahaha)
anonymous is the most famous author that anyone can be
TheDna
Profile Joined March 2010
Germany577 Posts
December 16 2013 21:07 GMT
#18
Also nobody will be interested in those games on Jan 6th. They will be sooo out of date, but I will be watching the show anyways just for entertainment.
Torte de Lini
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Germany38463 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-12-16 21:25:46
December 16 2013 21:23 GMT
#19
Was awesome to meet you man (:

I'm glad to hear you had fun and I hope we can bring you back again!
https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
ZeromuS
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
Canada13389 Posts
December 16 2013 21:27 GMT
#20
WOOOO monk! GOGO! I can't wait to see how you did!
StrategyRTS forever | @ZeromuS_plays | www.twitch.tv/Zeromus_
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