The Hearthstone World Cup took place last weekend. German Bunnyhoppor, winner of the Masters Fall Championship, proved to be the strongest once again!
Last November, German Raphael ‘BunnyHoppor’ Peltzer won the iconic Masters Fall Championship.
This time, the Team Liquid player repeated that feat by winning the 2022 Hearthstone World Championship! He got to leave with the top prize of $100,000. Surprise, his colleague from the same team, Englishman Jack ‘DeadDraw’ Bancroft, came second.
“You know, we are teammates and our contracts both expire soon,” he said afterwards. “So it just makes sense for us to come first and second respectively.”
The format of the competition was the usual Conquest format. Only the latest cards were allowed to be used.
In that format, the league starts with a group stage: four groups are formed of which only the best two advance to the play-offs. Each group sees its players compete in two matches in Bo5 format.
The 16 world-class participants were divided into four groups. Bunnyhoppor was part of group D along with Russian Levik, Chinese Xiaobai and Brazilian Pascoa.
He won his opening match against Pascoa (3-1), suffered a heavy defeat against Levik (0-3) and finally won from Xiobai (3-1). Thus, he finished second in the group, enough for a place in the playoffs.
BunnyHoppor then defeated Chinese Xmg and YuYi. Thus, he ended up in the final against his teammate DeadDraw.
The duo held off for four matches. In the end, Bunnyhoppor won the gold medal with a Mirror Priest deck.
This World Cup marked the end of the Hearthstone season for 2022. But December was not only good for a great World Cup. This month also saw the release of the game’s latest expansion, March of the Lich King.
This new expansion, released in early December, introduces a new hero and a new take on the metagame. See you next year, for another competitive Hearthstone season!