It feels like only yesterday I was sitting down to embark on Hearthstone’s latest adventure, One Night in Karazhan. Just over a month later and the scene is completely lit. Blizzard announced it would remove 45 cards from the game’s arena mode to try and restore some semblance of balance to the otherwise rigged casino, and the game’s competitive scene is still recovering from the introduction of the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion earlier this year.
What a perfect time then to watch some top level play and see what you’ve been missing. There’s also plenty of Counter-Strike and a tinge more Overwatch to hold you over until the years big events start getting underway later this fall. So without further ado, here’s what you should be watching in the world of esports this weekend!
Hearthstone
The Americas Summer Championship is this weekend, with eight of the best players from across the two continents competing for a $100,000 prize pool, and even more importantly, a spot at the Hearthstone World Championship taking place at BlizzCon this November. Meeting in Los Angeles, Abar, Dude7597, HotMEOWTH, Monsanto, Pascoa, Rooftrellen, Tarei, Topopablo11 will play in a best-of-seven, single-elimination bracket using the Conquest match format with a ban.
In light of last weekend’s invite-only BatStone tournament, where top players competed with a number of different cards banned in order to analyze the effects of randomness in the current Hearthstone meta, it’ll be interesting to see how the results fit into the ongoing debate over how Blizzard structures competitive formats. Games today and tomorrow are set to kick-off by 12:00PM EST, and you can watch below.
You can also catch the last 2016 edition of the Tavern Tales series featuring a $25,000 prize pool. This tournament, taking place at DreamHack Bucharest, is best-of-five and requires attendees to bring nine separate classes to the battle with. Matches are on-going throughout the weekend with the finals taking place Sunday at 12:30PM EST. You can watch all of it right here.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
The DreamHack Open Bucharest 2016 got underway yesterday in Romania with eight teams battling it out for a piece of the $100,000 prize pool. The top two teams in each group of four will advance into single elimination playoffs with the finals set to kick-off on Sunday around 11:30AM EST. So far Virtus.pro sits atop group A with two games played, while Cloud9, coming off of last week’s loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas during the StarLadder Season 2 semi-finals, are trying to re-assert themselves by so far dominating group B.
You can watch the rest of today’s group matches, going on now, as well as tomorrow’s grand finals, here. If that’s not enough Counter-Strike for you, however, you can also catch up on the iBuyPower Fall Invitational where eight North American teams, including Team SoloMid and OpTic Gaming, will compete over $16,000 in prize money. Look for Team SoloMid to try and take first place in the tournament after narrowly losing out to Cloud9 during the summer. You can find those matches, beginning today at 12:00PM EST and going throughout the rest of the weekend, here.
Overwatch
If you enjoyed last weekend’s European qualifiers for the Overwatch World Cup at BlizzCon, don’t worry because they aren’t finished yet. The knock-out bracket was revealed earlier this week, and Iceland will be taking on Germany today at 12:30PM EST. Sweden vs. Italy follows on Sunday starting at 4:00PM EST. Each match is a best-of-five and can be watched here. You can also catch up on all of last weekend’s action here.