clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Swedish player Ostkaka wins the 2015 Hearthstone World Championship at BlizzCon

Today during BlizzCon, Blizzard held the semifinals and finals for the 2015 Hearthstone World Championship. In the finals, Canadian player Hotform went up against the Swedish player Ostkaka, and the latter emerged victorious in a powerful three-win showing.

As with the rest of the tournament leading up to this point, the grand finals were a best-of-five held in what's known as the "conquest" format. In this format, each player brings three decks, and they must win a game with each deck to claim the victory.

Both Hotform and Ostkaka brought mage and rogue decks — notably, they were among the only players to bring rogue to the tournament. For their third decks, Hotform had a druid, while Ostkaka ran a warrior.

In the first game Hotform played his tempo-focused mage deck against Ostkaka's mage, which is designed around freezing enemies and slowing the game down as much as possible. Ostkaka ended up winning by increasing his spell damage and burning Hotform down with a flurry of spells.

In game two, Hotform broke out his burst-damage-heavy rogue deck and went up against Ostkaka's mid-range warrior. The game was extremely close, with both sides getting low on life and on number of cards in hand. In the end, Ostkaka took the game by playing Grommash Hellscream, the powerful warrior legendary card that has charge and a powerful enrage ability.

Down two-to-zero in game three, Hotform turned to druid, often considered his most familiar and comfortable deck. Ostkaka's rogue deck was similar to the one Hotform ran in game two. Ostkaka established an incredibly strong board early on using Violet Teacher to fill his side of the board with smaller minions. Hotform managed to clear the board with a swipe spell, but it was too little too late and Ostkaka won the game a couple of turns later.

Following the final game, Ostkaka was awarded a Hearthstone trophy by Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, who promised that the developer will continue growing Hearthstone's esports scene in 2016. The Dreamhack event in Sweden later this month will be the first official Hearthstone tournament providing points for the 2016 season.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for Patch Notes

A weekly roundup of the best things from Polygon