Over the weekend, another Filipino’s name was added to the growing list of eSports athletes to make the country proud in their chosen game.

For Filipino fans of the runaway-hit digital card game Hearthstone, Richard “Pompi” Castillo’s Top 8 finish at the 7th International eSports Federation Worlds Championship  is a cause for celebration.

While Pompi is now back in the Philippines, ready and rarin’ to fire up his client and get back to the grind, he did give eSports Inquirer a moment of his time as he was in the thick of the competition in South Korea.

Here are Pompi’s thoughts on a number of topics, from the strange tournament format at the tournament to the metagame and state of Hearthstone to the giant shakeup that is the League of Explorers.

And before you complain, don’t worry: There will be decklists! Enjoy.

On the IeSF tournament format:

eSports INQ: Just wanted to get your thoughts about the format. What do you think about the Best-of-3 (Bo3) format for this tournament and what do you think about the other countries in your group?

Pompi: My initial thought upon hearing that it would be Bo3 was literally WTF (or let’s just say ‘shocked’ for formality). I thought that format already went extinct upon Blizzard’s introduction of standard conquest with three decks for a Best-of-5 (Bo5), like the one used at Blizzcon 2015. Instead, they went with a Best-of-3, bring three decks format like the ones used in Blizzcon 2014.

I honestly cant remember the last time I competed on a Bo3 tournament. Even the local qualifier for this IeSF Worlds had a way better format of conquest Bo5 double eliminations and conquest Bo5 groups to single eliminations. Some local players in the Philippines consider Bo3 to just be glorified coin flip giving the player who luckily blind picked two decks an advantage over the other. There isn’t much strategy going into a Bo3 format in Hearthstone.

The format was talked about by a lot of players during the group stages and some even had a few choice words for it. Pavel of Team Empire and I agreed that its extremely weird to have Bo3 when we have the whole day to play, enough time to finish everyone.

READY FOR ACTION. Pompi won the Philippine qualifier for the 7th International eSports Federation Hearthstone Worlds Tournament. The young Hearthstone player traveled to Seoul, South Korea to compete against 31 other competitors of different nationalities.

On the competition and facing Pavel in the Quarterfinals:

eSports INQ: What did you think about the other competitors in your group? What was it like going up against Pavel, the favorite to win the tournament, in the quarterfinals?

Pompi: Going into the tournament with the whole finalized list of competitors being posted online, there were only 2 names that stood out the most: China’s TiddlerCelestial and Russia’s Pavel from Team Empire. Both are accomplished world class players and I was lucky I wasn’t grouped with either of them. In all honesty I didn’t have ANY idea about the people in my group except for Vietnam’s Crazymaaaage who is also a regular in SEA tournaments and had been on my friend list for more than a year.

Going into it I was thinking that he would be the toughest opponent. But I googled a bit on my opponents and learned that the South African and Swiss players both have a few big stage appearance in their local scenes so I kinda had to set my mind to not just let my guard down against anyone.

My semis against pavel was probably the most scary match up I had so far. I spoke a lot with Pavel a lot of Hearthstone stuff  the day before the quarters. None of us had the chance to scout each others deck on the group stages. We were both allowed to change decks but after the semis we learned that we both kept the same classes and archetype, I just replaced one card from each deck I used from my lists in the group stages. Turns out it worked better cause the tech cards I replaced fits perfectly against Pavel’s line up.

THE BROTHERHOOD SHALL NOT FALL. Pompi represented the Philippines together with EnDerr (StarCraft 2) and Choisted Tyrants (League of Legends).

On the Metagame and League of Explorers:

eSports INQ: Why did you choose these specific classes? How do you view the metagame right now?

Pompi: I just brought generally high winrate decks. It’s hard to prep for a multiregional/global tournament knowing that you are going to go up against three different metagames.

I think that it’s still a midrange dominated metagame for some reason. Slow decks gets pressured and fast decks gets out-valued. The only slow deck now that can compete is control warrior and the only aggro deck decent is face shaman.
eSports INQ: Is there a best class right now in the game? How about a worst class?

Pompi: It’s hard to say if there’s a best class right now but somehow Paladin and warlock are represented well in most recent tournaments even here in IeSF.

For worst class, rogue is still under-represented even after Ostkaka’s success with it at Blizzcon. But still i dont think that there is generally a “worst” class right now as every class has its competitive-viable archetype.

PUT YOUR FAITH IN THE LIGHT. Together with Thailand’s Ledah, Pompi stormed through the group stages of the tournament to cement Southeast Asia’s place as a competitive region for Hearthstone (Photo: Blizzard SEA).

eSports INQ: How did League of Explorers (LoE) change the meta?

Pompi: Two wings into LoE slowed the meta down because only shaman got a potentially aggro-ish card from it (Trogg). And most players want to try something new from the expansion.

LoE factored a lot for me and my testing simply because it revived one of the best decks for me which is Malygos Warlock. I’ve been experimenting with it when Reno Jackson came out but it turns out that Brann Bronzebeard was actually a better fit.
eSports INQ: What are your thoughts about secret pally? Is it still the “best deck” of the format?

Pompi: Secrets Paladin is probably still the best deck mainly because it only loses to its own draws, otherwise it is unstoppable. People just got tired of playing it so its numbers on tournaments dropped. A lot of players also learned to play against it.

And now…the decklists:

Group Stages

Quarterfinals

Same Mage and Warrior from group stages with the following changes:

Warrior: -1 Harrison Jones, +1 Loatheb
Mage: -1 Antonidas, +1 Ragnaros, the Firelord

Semis

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