The first Grandmasters Season of 2022 begins! The swansong year of the elite format will be a lot different and shorter than what we have been used to in the previous seasons. You can find everything you need to know below.
This Week's Format
Every week will follow the same tournament format, with only the gameplay format changing.
- Best-of-five Conquest with one ban.
- 4 Dual Elimination groups with top 2 players advancing (only Decider matches streamed on Fridays).
- Top 8 play through a single-elimination bracket to decide the winner.
Players will be gaining points based on their performance, and at the end of the three-week period, top 8 point earners of each region will advance to Playoffs.
To learn more about the competition format for 2022, check out the spoiler below.
Quote From Blizzard Season 1
During weeks 1-3, players will compete in a Weekly Dual Tournament format, starting each Thursday, to earn placement in the weekend Top 8 Stage. Players will receive points based on total number of wins each week, which will determine final standings before Playoffs.
- All 16 players in each region will compete against each other off-broadcast in Dual Tournament Group play on Thursday.
- On Friday, the 4 Decider Matches will be played to determine who joins the Top 8 per region, live on YouTube.
- The Top 8 players compete in a single-elimination tournament on Saturday, with the Top 4 advancing to Sunday.
- Gameplay format changes every week:
- Week 1: Conquest
- Week 2: Trio
- Week 3: Last Hero Standing
- Playoffs: Conquest
Season 2
Season 2, Grandmasters: Last Call, will feature the top four of each Season 1 region, joined by the top four players by Masters Tour Points from the last three Masters Tours of 2021 and the first three of 2022. This group will form a singular 16-player global region. The final four-week season will feature high-stakes matches, with the winner advancing to the 2022 World Championship.
Trio
Grandmasters is being retired in style, with an experimental new format! Joining Conquest and Last Hero Standing is the brand-new Trio. We are excited to see how the Trio format performs when played at the pro level and if well received then we’ll consider how to possibly implement it in other Hearthstone Esports tournaments. Here’s how the format works:
- Hearthstone Esports team will create 5 unique groups of three classes each.
- Groups may share one or two classes.
- Players will choose one of the groups.
- They’ll submit three-deck lineups that include each class within their selected group.
- Group selections will be private, without any knowledge of what other players have selected.
- Matches will be best-of-five, with each winning deck becoming unavailable for the rest of the match.
This Week's Pack Drops
The pack distribution follows similar guidelines than in the previous seasons:
- Grandmasters Week 1-3: Fractured in Alterac Valley (max 2 packs)
- Grandmasters Playoffs: Fractured in Alterac Valley (max 2 packs)
As this is the opening Week of the season, everybody should be watching the stream to get their packs, although the same packs will be available for the next two weeks as well.
Stream Schedule
You can find the starting times of each region's streams below. The schedule is the same each day.
West Coast PST (UTC-8) | East Coast EST (UTC-5) | Europe CET (UTC+1) | Korea KST (UTC+9) | |
| Asia-Pacific | 2:00 | 5:00 | 11:00 | 19:00 |
| Europe | 7:00 | 10:00 | 16:00 | 24:00 |
| Americas | 12:00 | 15:00 | 21:00 | 5:00 |
You can find all the matches, results, and decklists (including the off-stream matches) on the official tournament site.
Asia-Pacific Grandmasters
AlanC86
Alutemu
Bankyugi
Che0nsu
DragonMan
GivePLZ
MegaGliscor
Mighty
Shaxy
glory
grr
hyung
lambyseries
okasinnsuke
posesi
trahison
Europe Grandmasters
Bunnyhoppor
Casie
Felkeine
Floki
Frenetic
Furyhunter
Gaby
J4YOU
Jarla
Leta
Rdu
Seiko
SuperFake
Viper
ZloyGruzin
xBlyzes
Americas Grandmasters
CaelesLuna
DimitriKazov
DreadEye
Fled
Fr0zen
GamerRvg
LeandroLeal
McBanterFace
Monsanto
Nalguidan
NoHandsGamer
Pascoa
Pun
killinallday
languagehacker
lunaloveee
Watch Live
You can watch all the action on the official Hearthstone Esports YouTube channel. Don't forget that you should be following the games on YouTube while logged in for those sweet pack drops!
Comments
I got my first 2 packs, when exactly I will have the chance to get the other 2?
During Grandmasters Playoffs starting on March 25th. The second Masters Tour event will take place the previous weekend on March 18th-20th, and it will have packs too though.
I thought there will be no grandmasters in 2022. Did I miss something?
Yes, you did. :-)
This is the final year of Grandmasters. There will still be two shortened seasons of 4 weeks: one in winter/spring, and the other this summer.
They are also introducing a new match format during some weeks, but all I know is it's called "Trio".
The Hearthstone esports YouTube channel posted a concise video explaining what "Trio" is a few hours ago: What is Trio?
It looks like a very good way to address complaints regarding the homogeneity of the tournament meta, if the organizers so choose. As the video mentions, if a certain class is over-represented in a particular environment, the organizers can simply exclude it from all the lineups to force players to try alternative strategies.
Actually this is the first and only season for 2022 when Grandmasters follow the similar pattern as in the past, except this time it's only 4 weeks long (rather than 8 weeks), including playoffs. So it's really more of a proper - if short - final season than actual season 1.
At the end of this run, only 12 GMs will "survive the bloodbath" for Season 2 (4 top players from each region), and all the remaining 36 will become essentially eliminated from this competition. Then Season 2 will be just these 12 victorious GMs plus 4 top players from Masters Tour points competing for a Worlds Championship spot.
And yep, we're going to see how this Trio format works in week 2.
The "connected" button doesn't appear to me anymore ..Anybody has the same problem?
It was there when the stream started and I haven't refreshed the tab so I still have it, but many people in chat and Reddit are also saying they can no longer see the connected status. Hopefully they'll fix whatever is wrong with the thing soon.
about free packs ... I didn't received the YouTube packs ... did you?
I´m watching the stream 6+ hours today - just opened the game and got one pack. Works for me just fine.
EDIT: Received another pack and opened Captain Galvangar, lucky :)
Well last time around I just got robbed 1 pack, never received it. Sure hope I get them this time.
It can take up to 2 days after the *end* of competition to receive packs (i.e. Tuesday). Going from previous years, packs tended to be delivered right by that deadline the first week or two, and within 24 hours of accumulating the watch time the weeks after.
It really should be instant nowadays, as soon as you log into the game on any region once the 2 hours mark has been passed. It's important to follow all those steps listed in the official blog and make sure your account is properly "connected" (with the text and the diamond icon showing). Also the "live" icon on YouTube video should remain red - if it has turned gray at any point, that means you are out of sync/offline and it's not counting your watchtime towards any packs (ideally you can turn volume off for your system or that browser tab, but don't mute the YT video itself).
0 packs received over here also.
Last week with Masters Tour they arrived the same day, so let us hope for same day premium shipping and delivery again ^_^
EDIT: I got my first pack!
EDIT2: Also got my second pack!