I am in the grand finals. I'm in the winners finals so I have to lose both series to not get first.

Who do I play? I play whoever wins the loser brackets final.

No, I don't. It's going to be RenieHouR and whoever progresses to RenieHouR.

I'm TidesofTime a former Dota 2 player. I played for PotM Bottom and Dignitas along with players like Aui_2000, Universe, WaytoSexy, SneyKing and Fogged. And now I'm a professional Hearthstone player and streamer.

I'm on Tempo Storm.

It's going good.

What do you mean how's Reynad?

I feel like he's a very misunderstood. Sometimes he speaks his mind a little too much but even he knows that. I dunno, he's a good leader for the team.

I didn't know I was going to be a pro.

I was playing Hearthstone over any other games because my fingers hurt if I clicked a lot. So does my wrist, and in Hearthstone you didn't need to click a lot, you just need to think your play. So I ended up at rank 1 legend and someone said I should stream and it all started up from that.

No.

I think it's very viewable as a stream, if someone new pops into a stream they can understand immediately what's going on. It's a very easy to understand compared to something like StarCraft, League of Legends, and Dota. If you've never played any of that those before, you look at the screen, you have no idea what's going on. Hearthstone is much easier, because the screen is a lot simpler to look at.

Consistently yes, but since RNG is involved, you can't guarantee anything. Think of it like a poker pro but to a lesser extent since I think there's a bit more RNG involved in that than Hearthstone. You can do so much to reduce RNG.

Since the scene isn't as developed as poker, there's particular players in tournaments that can dominate for a while. RDU who has a 75% winrate, I'm pushing 70%, StrifeCro is 70%, Amaz is around 70%. So i think over time when the scene progresses more and more people know how to play tournament format I think it'll be closer to 60% winrate with all the pros or the top players.

The ability to think ahead and not many people are familiar with tournament format so you have to predict what people are going to open with. I'm really good at predicting openers in a favored matchup off the bat. So the best quality is just to plan ahead.

I played Magic as a kid and I played in a couple tournaments but I never took it seriously. My only goal when playing Magic was to beat my brother. It happened a few times but not often though.

Yeah me and my brother grew up playing video games together. Any board game or video game we played together I'd make him play me until I beat him. So he ended up getting sick of it and let me beat him. But my brother is probably better than me at card games.

Cause he has a job and he's super busy

I think he's a banker type of person, I'm not exactly sure what he does.

Yeah, but he's going to be a programmer which is equally exciting.

I'm 22.

Yes.

I went to a college in Suntry, Minnesota, and I just went there to see what I wanted to do. I actually took a class to see what I wanted to do and that class didn't help at all and I didn't know what to do.

No major, it was just for my generals. But yeah when it comes to education, I don't really know what to study for and in college in America you just empty money for no reason if you don't know what you study for.

My parents were never happy with my job but I don't know. I'm old enough now.

No.

They're like 'it's cool'. but you can tell they still disapprove.

Oh my brother is completely supportive. My brother and his girlfriend are completely supportive of me. My brother is actually pretty envious of me, he wishes he went down my path like me.

I would never advise someone to do that. It's very unreliable to do that at the moment.

I dunno, if it's their passion and they're set on it to give it a go, I'd say give themselves a reasonable limit to how long they can be a professional and that's exactly what I did. When I moved to League of Legends I gave myself 3 months to hit challenger and since I almost hit but didn't, I quit. I think give yourself a limit, not only does it push you but you'RE also not going to spend the rest of your life on it.

Yeah but I was playing Dota before, and a lot of the skills transfer across.

I still keep in touch with my old teammates but overall not really.

No, not really at all. I actually expected Dota to increase a lot. I'm not jealous at all, they worked their asses off day and night practicing and it's a very intense high stress high risk job.

Yeah in the end. I'm doing stretches now, whenever I play a game for a week or so, the pain comes back, so maybe I'm not sure.

Nothing.

Nope.

I watch streams

I watch SodaPoppin, I watch Aui, I watch Kripp. You can check who I'm following, I watch all those people.

Minnesota, but I'm going to be moving to California with my teammate Reynad pretty soon

Yeah maybe? I think it's going to be more of a roommate house, not a gaming house.

There's a lot of them looking at me right now...that could be...

Deck building wise, I'd say Firebat. Gameplay wise I'd say Darkwonyx.

I don't know. I can't say I'm unhappy with it.

A lot of people are qualified for the qualifiers, and theres two sets of qualifiers. The first is you got to win a lot of qualifiers or you have to get top 16 in ladder. There's hundreds and hundreds of people qualified for the qualifiers.

I think blizzard gave as much as a fair chance to everyone who plays hearthstone as possible. Whether or not I'm happy about the 2nd qualifiers, depends on the format. If its a bo3 I'll be unhappy, if its bo5 I'll be happy.

Very well designed, there's only a couple cards I have problems with. Webspinner and Haunted Creeper buffed the hunter too much. Maybe the cards themselves aren't the problem but maybe you can do some minor nerfs to hunter to make the cards more balanced.

Yeah cause they're beasts, they have death rattle, they're hard to get rid of. More often they're two for ones and they're cheap. Like you change Buzzard for example, you could change Hunter's Mark, you could change so many things and hunters would be much more balanced than what it is currently.

I don't like the idea of Magic having dead cards. They have a bunch of cards that will never be played in competitive. But Hearthstone release more cards? Yes. But I like releasing a lot of cards, just not dead cards.

Draft.

Yes, I got addicted to drafts actually. My brother could go infinite in drafts but I could not in Magic Online.

Yeah I know the format really well and I know the cards really well, but it would take a month of practicing and a lot of money.

oh yeah for sure, i think you get all the cards for free and a lot of fun doing so, which is was i did and if you want to get them all immediately you can do so.

To blow up anyone's computer who emotes me.

No they're not because some Blizzard employee said so in an interview, or they aren't planning on it.

Shoutout to all my old Dota team mates, they've been always good friends and I miss them and I'm glad they're doing well. Shoutout to RDU and ignite for helping me out when I was sick last night. And shoutout to Tempo Storm of course. And callouts?

I'm trying to think of something. I honestly don't know anything to call out.

For what?

I thought they'd be much weaker than they currently are. Actually RenieHouR is a very creative player.