Epic Gaming TV’s first Hearthstone league finishes with a bang

Stream production company Epic Gaming Television wrapped up the first season of its Hearthstone league (eHL) over the weekend with quite the rousing finale.

About 25 players gathered for the grand finals in Singapore’s Alienware Arena, bringing with them friends, teammates, and girlfriends. The final fight was between team Manasurge’s Wensushi, and team Impunity’s Crea.

Narrowly missing out on a grand finals placing was 26-year-old Artto from Thailand, who flew down for both the eHL and a holiday. Thailand was having a holiday of its own, he explained, which was why he could take time off from both his programming and acting work to come participate. Artto, who was there with his girlfriend, said that he had always loved mage decks, but decided to play druid ever since the mage got nerfed.

(See: Southeast Asia’s first ever offline Hearthstone tournament concludes in Singapore)

Manasurge’s Wensushi ended up taking first place, with Crea finishing second. Philippine player Celedor placed third, with Artto finishing up in fourth place. Between them, the top four winners walked away with total cash prizes of S$580, or about $464, from the grand finale alone.

The Hearthstone community in Singapore is small but flourishing, with three different teams being present at the grand finals.

There was team Spectral, consisting of four players aged 17 to 26. Its leader, Alvin “unistar” Yap, took second place in Southeast Asia’s first ever offline Hearthstone tournament last year.

Spectral’s biggest achievement in the first cycle of eHL was to have a member finish in the top eight.

There was also team Manasurge, which started out back in December following the abovementioned tournament Yap took part in. Founded by seasoned trading card game player, Bjorn Tan, Manasurge later expanded to eight players, then split into two groups for better diversity in the scene, one of those groups eventually becoming team Spectral. Manasurge has four players at the moment, aged 18 to 25.

Apart from the many individual players, there were also a couple of representatives from Impunity. Team Impunity began as a Heroes of Newerth team back in 2010, and seems to have recently acquired a small roster of Hearthstone players. Crea, who finished up in second place for the first eHL season, is their newest member, and focuses exclusively on Hearthstone.

UPDATE: 14-04-2014: Artto placed fourth, not third; Celedor from the Philippines played online and finished in third place. The article has also been corrected for some technical errors regarding the league season. We apologize for the errors.

Excited for the next cycle of eHL? See what Jayf Soh of EGTV has to say about it:

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