As the HCT 2019 World Championship and the Americas’ Hearthstone Grandmasters draw near, one of world’s top Hearthstone players, Ryan “Purple” Murphy-Root, is in the middle of all the action.
Recently, he won first place in the WESG tournament, taking home $100,000. This helped make him the top prize-money earner, qualifying him for the Hearthstone Grandmasters.
He will also be at the HCT 2019 World Championship in Taipei, where he will be dueling fans alongside players like Fr0zen, Kolento, Pavel, and Orange.
Purple sat down with CGMagazine to share his thoughts on the Hearthstone meta, his esports journey, and his thoughts on his WESG tournament win.
Going into the tournament, Purple was focused on the process of narrowing down which decks to bring and which would be viable. He noted that the most challenging part of preparing for a tournament is figuring out the expected and shifting meta-game.
“Spreadsheets are good at telling you what beats what in general. There’s like nine classes of which is probably about two decks each, so there’s always about 18 decks that are viable in tournaments,” Purple said.
During the WESG tournament itself, the deck Purple used in the final game was a Control Mage against a Deathrattle Hunter. While his peers believed he was “dead like that whole time,” Purple saw it differently.
“So I have some friends who are also incredibly good at the game and they had the benefit of watching my opponent’s hand, and he did powerful stuff in general, but I felt the game was under control,” Purple told CGMagazine. “I’d already, on turn five, planned out the next four turns. I was like, “All right. This looks like a win.””
A memorable moment he had during that tournament was the appearance of Kathrena Winterwisp, an eight mana 6/6 card with the Battlecry and Deathrattle “Recruit a Beast.”
Purple acknowledged that it was a very powerful and good card, and it’s an excellent challenge for him against an opponent once they draw it. “The deck relies on power spikes and that one was the power spike of the deck,” he added.
Since the release of Hearthstone’s Rise of Shadows expansion, Purple is excited about the game’s fresh meta. “So every time there is card rotation, it’s always bittersweet because there’s always something that you enjoyed about the game,” he said.
Although he misses cards like Arfus and Marin the Fox, he is also glad that the Death Knights, Genn Greymane, and Baku the Mooneater have rotated out of Standard.
When the new Rise of Shadows decks take the stage at the HCT 2019 World Championship, fans at home can watch all the action on Hearthstone’s official Twitch channel.
