Day 1 and 2 of the Hearthstone World Championship group stages have gone past already, half of the matches being played before Blizzcon to cut down the 16 player field down to just 8 to allow them to play in the big finals at Blizzcon itself next weekend. These two days were dedicated to setting up the matches that would not only decide matches for the next two days – it also served to knock out 4 of the players at the end of the second day.

The four regions; North America, Europe, China and Asia Pacific have each fielded some of their best players for matches that were streamed over Blizzard’s PlayHearthstone Twitch channel live. Divided into their four teams of four, going into the tournament while Europe were the favourites both the Asia Pacific and China teams proved hard to beat, with many of their players putting up difficult fights against their opponents and three of the four Asia Pacific players making it through their first matches.

The first day saw a lot more of one particular player per pair dominating their game of 3, with the very first match-up being a 3-0 sweep in favour of Thijs verses opponent NoTomorrow; while the second day saw matches going on a lot longer with many 3-2 matches especially during the four elimination matches which resulted in the losers having their tournament runs end at that point. The second day also saw a nail-biting final match between Neirea and Purple coming down to the very last turn and saw Purple’s Rogue deck pull out an amazing one-turn kill that amounted to more than 20 damage done to Neirea’s face, winning Purple the match.

Deck-wise despite the worry that Paladin Warrior decks would die out with the change to Warsong Commander, two of the Warrior decks used Paladin tactics to great effect. Also out there were decks for the lesser used classes: Shaman decks, Rogue decks and even a Priest deck from European player Thijs.  The most popular class by far was Druid with twelve of the sixteen fielding a Druid deck, and Paladin was also pretty popular with the Mysterious Challenger/Secrets Paladin deck being the favoured type of that deck. Another common deck types being used was the standard Freeze Mage set up containing cards like Frost Nova, Doomsayer and Alexstrasza which were commonly seen. Among all types of deck it was also common to see Piloted Shredders and Dr. Booms being played.

In the end the second day saw the end of the road for four players – NoTomorrow and LoveCX from China, Nias from North America and Neirea from Europe. This means that after two days only the Asia Pacific team had all players still in the competition to make it to Blizzcon.

There are of course two more days worth of matches to go, which will decide exactly which eight of the remaining twelve will be going to the final matches at Blizzcon next weekend. Day three will sort out four who will guarantee their place on the Blizzcon stage, and then the remaining spaces will be decided on the forth and final day on October 31st.

If you missed any of the matches so far, catch up at Blizzard’s Hearthstone Youtube with the posted VoDs so far.