by Elanshin

Trump gave away first blood, Kisstafer made it a double kill and last week Lothar fed the triple to Realz. Will Realz's killing streak be stopped this week or will he make it a quad-kill?

King of the Hills is a weekly tournament run by IhearthU.com and casted by Artosis and DoA. Each week the winner of the previous week will face off against a new challenger in a best of 7. Each player must bring 4 different classes to battle where the loser will swap decks.

After destroying his previous 3 opponents and only dropping 1 game in the 3 series, Realz looks to continue his streak and equal Savjz's record of 4 wins. The man sent to stop him is Liquid Value's latest recruit, Razor. Razor is a high ranking North American player who developed and popularized the old One Turn Kill Warrior which propelled him to Rank 1 during test season 1. He's gone as a far as being called "The Warrior Expert" by Artosis and will look to Execute Realz this week.


We sat down and had a chat with both Realz and Razor about their upcoming match in the King of the Hill.

Interview by Elanshin

Hi Razor, could you introduce yourself as I'm sure many people don't know who you are yet.

Hello! My name is Eric Chen, and I work as a full-time web developer from New York. I'm an oldie at 30 years old, and I have over a decade of gaming experience with games such as Starcraft, Magic the Gathering, and World of Warcraft. While I've never played professionally, I've always been very intrigued by the strategic and tactical aspect of these games and would always approach them like puzzles and find ways to compete at very high levels on casual playtimes.

You mentioned that you played Magic: the Gathering before, did you play Magic competitively?

The majority of my competitive play in Magic the Gathering was actually through Magic: the Gathering Online. I played the Limited format almost exclusively there, and being a poor college student at the time, I was unwilling to shoulder the burden of the cost of the ever changing Constructed format. In the end, I ended up being pretty successful, never really needing to spend money on the game and winning a number of their weekly Limited tournaments.

Cool that sounds great. You are now of course playing Hearthstone, did your experiences playing Magic help you?

Absolutely. Almost everyone will argue that Magic is more complex, but a lot of the core principles are the same and translate well. Deckbuilding, metagaming, mulliganing, tempo, card-advantage, etc. But what I found most useful though was that playing Magic at a high level helped me develop an almost obsessive amount of attention to detail and making reads on my opponents, helping me make better decisions that would otherwise be complete guesses.

I'm sure those skills were a big factor in your selection as the next challenger in King of the Hills. How do you feel about being selected?

I'm really, really honored. I didn't even know I was in consideration until the last moment! For me, it's kind of like watching your favorite sports team while growing up, then being drafted by them and told you're about to start in your very first game to represent them. It's very surreal considering only two months ago I thought I'd be at most a hardcore fan. And I also must say, as a long time Starcraft fan, hearing Artosis describe me as the "Warrior Expert" out of the potential challengers made me go all SQUEEEE inside.

Your opponent is Realz who is on a dominating 3 game winning streak. Do you have a lot of information on Realz?

I don't know very much, but I do know he's a top-notch player. He's going to be very tough to beat. All I know is I'm going to need to do some serious preparation if I want to end his streak.

Speaking of preparations, because King of the Hill requires you to use 4 different decks, how are you going about preparing for this and do you have any secret strategies you are working on?

It's unfortunate that Realz hasn't had to show a whole lot in the matches so far, making it difficult to gauge what his deck selection strategy might be. Despite this, I do have a vague idea of what he might run and could gamble by choosing decks that are more specialized than ones meant to be well-rounded. As far as secret strategies go, I've been flirting with the idea of using couple oddball decks but I don't know if I'm going to follow through with that yet. While they could backfire spectacularly, the payoff might be worth it. It'd be pretty cool take KoTH with something like Miracle rogue, hehe.

Miracle Rogues eh? But you are the "Warrior Expert". Surely you must be planning on bringing a Warrior deck. What kind of warrior deck could we expect? The standard control deck or maybe something different?

Let's just say if you see me playing a Warrior deck, it's not going to be any standard build. There are a lot of cards the Warrior class has at its disposal to specialize for the appropriate situation. It might resemble something you've seen before, but the exact build certainly won't be something you'd normally play or see.

I can't wait to see you bring something new to Warriors. Regarding Warriors though, how do you feel they are doing on both the ladder and in tournament play?

I feel like while Warriors are beginning to decline in popularity, they're still a really solid pick. Warrior decks are both great choices for various tournaments and climbing the ladder. I still see people doing really well with Warriors in both formats. The fact they have both a viable control and aggro build is also really good because it makes it more difficult to chose starting cards against them. Right now I would put them in the top 3 with Druid and Shaman being the other two as the classes with the best all-round decks.

Maybe I should try some Warrior on the ladder. Unfortunately, this is all we have time for. I'd like to thank you for this interview, any shout outs you'd like to make?

Thanks for interviewing me! First, shout out to my girlfriend Jessica - without her support and understanding, managing a full-time job and relationship while pursuing Hearthstone would be completely impossible. Shout out to my practice group, Liquid Value, and especially monk and Koyuki for doing a lot of play testing with me this past week. I'd also like thank all the people I met along the way since I started getting involved in the Hearthstone community for their support and encouragement - I wouldn't be here without you guys! <3

If you would like to watch Razor climb the ladder feel free to visit his Twitch channel at http://twitch.tv/badrazorInterview by monk

Hey Realz, Mr. proud 3x champion of the IHearthU KotH, can you introduce yourself to our readers with anything you think is relevant?

Hello! I am a long-time World of Warcraft and Magic: the Gathering player and I love competition. This has made Hearthstone a great fit for me and I'm enjoying everything so far!

Yes, Hearthstone does seem like the perfect marriage of games for you. Maybe that explains some of your success. Speaking of your success, most people know you these days for your performance in the KotH. Right now you have a 12-1 record in games. Can you first describe how you first came to be known and invited to KotH?

Ultimately my KotH invite came down to being a member of Team Managrind. Before the first Test Season most people knew of two major teams: LiquidValue and DogeHouse. At that point Managrind was mostly known for its tournament series, but consistent finishes in the first two Test Seasons and a strong tournament presence has helped highlight Managrind as a team that also has some of the best talent in the game. Artosis approached Managrind and I was chosen as our first representative into the KotH.

We'll talk more about Managrind in a second, but first more on the KotH. You took out three opponents already with fairly convincing scores. Of the three, which opponent did you think would be your most difficult opponent going into each series? Which would you consider to have been your hardest challenge in retrospect after playing the matches?

I was most concerned going into the match with Lothar, and it ended up being the closest match despite the 4-0 scoreline. I incorrectly assumed he would bring just one aggro deck to the table (the Hunter) and he ended up bringing a second (the Paladin). I had some luck on my side to secure all 4 wins with Druid and not need to dip into my other decks, none of which were very well prepared for lots of aggro.

You mentioned in your last post game interview that you considered your preparation to be one of the strongest reasons you've been performing so well in KotH. Can you describe your preparation process for each match?

Before each of the previous matches I've been able to figure out at least 3 of the 4 decks that my opponent would be bringing into the KotH. Trump played on the KotH previously and streamed his constructed practice before we played. Kisstafer keeps a HearthLog which tracks every card he has played over his last 20 games. Lothar had played a recent tournament and had 3 of his decklists posted from that. Even if I did not know every card for every deck, I was still able to make an educated guess as to what type of players they were and prepare my own decks against that specifically.

Let's talk more about your team! I know this will be a challenge but you can introduce each member of your team and tell me a tiny tidbit about each of them?

On the NA side (in addition to myself) we have Spoh, Chakki, zRusheR, and LuigEzz. Spoh has probably the most tournament experience of anyone on the team. Chakki finished top10 NA (#7) in Test Season 2 and won something like 4 tournaments in a row recently. zRusheR and LuigEzz also finished very high on the ladder (#9, #12) and between them have some of the most consistently high tournament finishes among all players to date. We have some solid talent! EU Team also includes Darkwonyx, Forsen, Kolento, DuckWingFACE, Timbolt, and Wuaschtsemme.

Sounds like a great team. How did you come to join Managrind?

Earlier in the beta after I got a few cards I started playing in tournaments and landed in the top spots multiple times in a row. Sp0h, who was already on Managrind, recognized my name from WoW (we are both formerly sponsored pros) and we got to talking about the team that was forming under the MG banner and I decided to join up!

Your next opponent is Razor, according to Artosis "the Warrior expert". How much did you know about Razor when it was announced that you would be playing him?

To be honest I know almost nothing about him. I know he hit #1 at one point with Warrior during Test Season 1. This will be the first match that I don't know what my opponent will be playing beforehand, so it should be interesting!

Have you done any special preparations for him or is mostly the same as with other opponents you've faced?

I was able to prepare rather specifically against previous opponents, but this time I will have to go in with a more general strategy. I have a lot of good decklists at my disposal and hopefully that will be enough!

If you win this match, you'll be tied with Savjz as the only other four-time KotH winner and you'll get a chance to overtake him. Does this match hold any more significance to you because of this?

I would love to hit that four win mark and tie Savjz! I admire his play. It definitely is more significant than any of the previous games. If there was ever a time for RNG to be on my side this is it!

Finally, do you have any shout outs to give? Any plugs? Any exciting new events to tease?

Big shout out of course the the rest of Team Managrind! I've been quiet in the tournament scene the last couple weeks but the rest of the guys have been seemingly taking turns smashing events. I promise you'll be seeing plenty more of Managrind in the near future!