The opening day of the Americas Championship was a triumph for the United States.
Justin “JAB” Black and Victor “Nias” Shelstad will wake up this Sunday with the comfortable feeling that they’ll be competing at the Hearthstone World Championship this November.
JAB was dealt a group of death as the Americas Championship seeding placed him in the same boat as former Archon coach Ryan “Purple” Root and Jeffrey “Trump” Shih but that wasn’t an issue for the Hearthlytics player. His debut match against Trump was a memorable opening of the event, as the two went to full five games with the Mayor going for a reverse sweep against JAB’s tempo mage. A greedy play by Trump on his Druid, however, cost him the game, as a perfect RNG storm gave JAB a [card]Spellslinger[/card] off the top into [card]Tracking[/card] into [card]Fireball[/card] for exact lethal.
Although picked by Hearthstone experts to be the top dog in the race, Purple offered even less resistance to JAB and after a clean 3-0 sweep, Group A had its winner.
In Group B, eyes were fixed on Nias, the player who became known as a Patron Warrior killer during the online qualifier. Once again, the American had chosen to omit the powerful combo list and instead focused on a Hunter/Handlock/Tempo Mage line-up. Just like in the previous tournament, staying away from Patron proved a smart decision for the underdog and a 3-1 against Hotform and 3-2 versus Vlps qualified him for the biggest of stages.
Both groups will complete today and be followed by the playoffs. Nobody is yet eliminated from the tournament but the lives of popular streamers Trump and Hotform are at stake as they are to open championship Sunday with the losers matches of their respective groups.
