The semi-finals and finals of the World Championships for Hearthstone were held today at Blizzcon 2014, to decide the first ever Hearthstone World Champion.

The games had started a few days previously with 16 competitors from around the globe being brought in to compete, with the best 8 going onto the quarter finals. They were placed in 4 groups with a European, American, Chinese and Taiwan/Korean player in each group like so:

Group A

• Firebat
• Kolento
• RenieHouR
• RunAndGun

Group B

• StrifeCro
• Greensheep
• Tom60229
• Lu Xiaobu

Group C

• DTwo
• Kaor
• Kranich
• Tiddler Celestial

Group D

• Tarei
• NumberGuy
• FrozenIce
• Qiruo

The deciding matches for each were played yesterday live at Blizzcon with most matches going smoothly although an electrical fault later in the day put paid to the broadcasting of some of the matches between RunandGun and Kolento for a good 40 minutes or more which led to both players being able to take a break between matches – and it showed for the match played when the livestream was resumed was between two players who were on top of their game mentally.

Eventually the final 8 were decided with Firebat being matched against Kaor, DTwo facing StrifeCro, Kranich against tournament favourite Kolento and Tiddler Celestial as the last Chinese player in the running being matched against Tarei.

Tiddler Celestial showed off some of his talked about skills against Tarei, winning their match up 3-1 and advancing to face off against Kranich who won an upset victory over favourite Kolento with a 3-2 match. Of that match-up T. Celestial once against came out on top winning a clean 3-0 sweep and advancing to the finals. Facing him there was Firebat who after winning his original quarter-final match up against Kaor with a 3-1 victory, faced DTwo who was a relative unknown and beating him in a close 3-2 match.

The finals saw both players facing off with a Druid Mirror, which ultimately Firebat came off as the victor of. Celestial then tried to beat Firebat’s deck with both a priest and a Handlock deck, but Firebat managed to emerge the victor ultimately with an impressive 3-0 sweep in the finals against a player who some thought could win it all.

As the winner of the World Championships and the first Hearthstone World Champion Firebat won $100,000 in prize money, with T. Celestial receiving $50,000 as runner-up, both Kranich and DTwo winning $15,000 each as semi-finallists, the other 4 quarter-finallists winning $7,500 each and the remaining 8 players each receiving $5,000 prize money. The broadcasts for the finals also set a new streaming record for a Hearthstone tournament, bringing in around 135,000 viewers at peak.

Congratulations to Firebat, the first Hearthstone World Champion!