Introducing the new format for Hearthstone – The Shielded Conquest

As many of you already know, in the middle of the Hearthstone qualifiers for the A1 Adria League Season 4 Blizzard changed the format of all of their official competitions from Specialist to Shielded Conquest.

In agreement with Blizzard, we will also make the same change. Starting with the Open Qualifiers in October we will be using Shielded Conquest. Hopefully until the end of Season 4. It’s important that players compete in the same format throughout the whole competition but the main reason still cannot be announced publicly. For that one, you’ll have to be patient just a little bit more.

The Shielded Conquest – How does it work?

• It’s a best of three series
• The two battling players bring four decks, each from a unique class.
• The match starts with a Shield Phase where both players will choose one of their own decks to “protect” that cannot be banned.
• Each player will then ban one of their opponents’ decks, removing it from the pool.
• Each player then selects which of their eligible decks they would like to play first, then begin their first game of the match.
• After the first game has concluded, the winning deck is removed from the pool before both players pick which of their remaining decks they would like to play next.
• If after the second game one player is 2-0, then the match is over!
• If the score is 1-1, then the winning deck from the second game is removed from the pool and both players will choose their third and final deck to decide the series.

One of the biggest problems with the old Conquest format was that the player had to win with all of his decks but this way, you’ll only have to win with two of them!

We hope the new change will light up your will for competition even more! We have only four spots left open in the Online Playoffs so make sure to qualify for them during October.

First Open Qualifier for October will be played on Saturday the 5th!