With the upcoming Open#2 we wanted to take a closer look on the qualified players, especially on the players coming from the CIS community (Commonwealth of Independet States).
If we look back two seasons and turn to the second qualifiers of the Season of the Bear in April, one may note an interesting tendency of the CIS players to snatch tickets to OPEN#2, because the winners of this particular top 64 qualifications were Russian players Akela114, representing GwentDetta, and BigKukuRUzina35 (also known as iluxa228), a Team Legacy player.
This trend continued in the Season of the Elf, taking place in May, which culminated in Team Phoenix’s Russian player Ch.ase qualifying for the GWENT OPEN#2 as well as Ukrainian Nik_r, the representative of GwentDetta.
(You may also recognize, that in the most recent top 16 qualifier of the Season of Magic BigKukuRUzina35 could secure himself and again for the CIS community his next ticket for Open#3 already, which underlines their current dominance in the pro scene.)
Have you ever wondered what is behind the success of professional players? What decisions – both during the game session and in the process of preparing decks – allow them to become the best among the best?
In a series of three articles, we will try to explore these two sides of the game in more detail using the example of the top 64 qualifications from the Bear and Elf seasons. In the first two parts, we will talk with the winners to try to better understand how professional players think, how they manage tournament rulesets, as well as some particular in-game decisions. In the final part, we’ll dive into the stats of the top 64 qualifiers to see how much the meta can change in just one season, comparing the most played cards, bans, and favored factions for tournaments to also have an outlook on the upcoming OPEN#2.
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