3 undefeated players, 2 crazy Yoggs, 1 weekly ESL UK Hearthstone Premiership Recap

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Last Thursday saw the second week of the ESL UK Hearthstone Premiership group stages take place.
HelloLeeroy, Mysterious and BoarControl all secured victories to remain unbeaten following their success during the prior week. Here are the current standings:
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The VODS can be found here
The first match of the night was Cipher vs Jambre
After a very early concede in the Control Warrior mirror, it looked like Jambre was going to have a tough series. This was not to be the case however as he then took the next three matches, his final win with the ‘Meme Hunter’, whose win condition is normally a turn four Barnes + Y’Shaarj (into another Y’Shaarj) combo. This was his first win of the groups and puts him on the board with points.
The next series was HelloLeeroy vs GreenSheep
HelloLeeroy managed to maintain his impressive win/loss ratio, only losing one game to GreenSheep’s Discard Zoolock, which was too much for his Maygos/Yogg Druid.
Next up was Mysterious vs Raven
The first match-up would be an interesting one, with Mysterious’ N’Zoth Warrior up against Raven’s N’Zoth Hunter. Whilst in the mid-game it looked like the Warrior may be able to outlast the Hunter’s damage, the N’Zoth coming out from Raven was too much for the Warrior’s double Brawl, which allowed Raven to burst Mysterious down and take the first game.
The second game would be taken convincingly by Raven’s Dragon Warrior, which had too many threats and too much tempo for Mysterious’ N’Zoth Control Warrior. To stay in it, Mysterious had to win the Maygos/Yogg Druid mirror match.
After trading spells and Arcane Giants back and forth, the game came down to the Yoggs. Raven went first and had what looked like a great Yogg: three secrets, cleared some board, drew some cards, became shadow form.
It was slightly overshadowed by Mysterious’ Yogg which was played the following turn and had the assistance of Malygos. The highlights of the Yogg were Flare, which removed Raven’s secrets, Polymorph Boar onto the Infested Wolf which was then removed with along with Raven’s Yogg, Force of Nature to give Mysterious a great board, Solemn Vigil to replenish his hand, and to top things off, a Beneath the Grounds which procced twice on Raven’s turn. The Yogg was too much for Raven to deal with and Mysterious took the game.
Having lost some of his momentum, Raven struggled in the next game, with a Malygos/Yogg Druid vs N’Zoth Control Warrior, where once the warrior has empowered hero power it becomes very hard to burst down. Mysterious took the game making the series even at 2-2.
The final match up would be Renolock vs Malygos/Yogg Druid. The match-up is considered favourable to the Druid due to its ability to deal burst damage with the Malygos + Moonfire + Living Roots combo.
Raven was not able to execute this combo and was slowly defeated by the Renolock’s endless board clear and healing. A great series and really worth a watch.
The final series of the night was BoarControl vs Osha
The series would begin with an N’Zoth Midrange Hunter Mirror match. A very close game saw Osha squeeze out enough burst damage to take the first game despite BoarControl’s board control.
The next game was the N’Zoth Midrange Hunter vs Dragon Renolock. Hunter is a tough match-up for any Warlock with lots of sticky deathrattle minions and a lot of potential burst damage, so it was always going to be tough for the Renolock.
A turn eight Reno Jackson would not be enough to stop the Call of the Wild and Savannah Highmane so BoarControl takes game two.
Game three of the series would be Dragon Warrior into Dragon Renolock. A huge tempo-breaking Doomsayer on turn two for the Warlock gutted the Warrior’s aggression and BoarControl from that point onwards was just fighting to get back the tempo. He did not succeed and Osha took the game.
Game four was another great example of how Control Warrior can struggle to deal with tempo decks, which deal out constant threats and mana-efficient cards. BoarControl’s Dragon Warrior made short work of Osha’s Control Warrior to even up the series.
The final match-up would be Malygos/Yogg Druid vs Control Warrior. As stated previously, the Warrior is favoured in the match-up due to being able to put itself well out of combo range, and having enough removal to deal with the few big minions that come out of the Druid deck.
After many turns spent removing the Druid threats and surviving the Malygos burst, it looked like Osha might survive the Yogg. The Yogg started off well for Osha with a healing touch putting him further from lethal, but a Stand Against Darkness and a Ball of Spiders filled BoarControl’s board.
This may have been certain death had it not been for a Thoughtsteal that secured BoarControl with a Grommash Hellscream of his own to give him lethal next turn.
So, the current UK Hearthstone champion BoarControl takes the series and maintains his place amongst the top players in the group.

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