2017 Hearthstone World Championship

The 2017 Hearthstone World Championship is the fourth year of the Hearthstone World Championship and the finale for the 2017 Hearthstone Championship Tour. It is scheduled to take place in Amsterdam from 18 January to 21 January 2018.

Structure
The top four players from each of the regional Season Playoffs get to compete in the corresponding global Season Championship, and the top-performing players in the Season Championships get to compete in the Hearthstone World Championship. The 2017 Hearthstone World Championship is set to take place in January 2018.


 * Season Playoffs
 * Winter, Spring, and Summer Playoffs take place toward the end of their respective seasons. These playoffs determine who moves on to the Season Championships.
 * Season Championship
 * Sixteen players comprised of the top four players from each region will face off in the Season Championship to compete for a portion of a $250,000 prize pool and a spot in the Hearthstone World Championship.
 * World Championship
 * The Hearthstone World Championship will take place in January 2018. In this final showdown, the top 4 winners from each of the Seasonal Championships as well as the top overall Hearthstone Competitive Point earners from each region will compete for a piece of the $1 million prize pool and the fourth title of Hearthstone World Champion.

Changes since last year
The format for the Hearthstone Championship Tour has changed from the previous year. The following list includes some of the key changes made for the 2017 Hearthstone Championship Tour:


 * Season Championships are no longer regional and are now condensed from nine Championships into three global Season Championships, seeing players battling against each other across different regions in each Season Championship. These three Season Championships are titled the Winter, Spring, and Summer Championships, named similarly to those of the previous year. Each Season Championship will take place at a select host region, and will be held in public spectator venues.
 * "Season Preliminaries" from the previous year have been retitled as "Season Playoffs" and remain region-based. Each of the 4 regions (Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and China) will send 4 representatives to the Season Championships each season. Each Season Playoff will use the Swiss Tournament format and continue to include local Tavern Heroes, but will be more competitive to qualify for and will include deeper prizing to reward more participants.
 * HCT tournaments are now synced with the Standard year and each global Season Championship will take place during its own content cycle and expansion release. The World Championship will take place at the end of each Standard year.
 * The amount of points earned from tournaments and Ranked Play mode have been adjusted to be more evenly distributed to include more players. Changes to the Cup system were also made. Cup events on the Hearthstone Championship Tour are the most numerous and offer the greatest number of chances for the greatest number of players to join the HCT tournament system. Points can only be earned from one Cup event per month and a player's best Cup result for the month will be the only result used to grant Hearthstone Competitive points. HC points from Ranked Play began with the November 2016 Standard Ranked Play season.
 * The total HCT prize pool will be over $2 million USD. The World Championship will continue to have a $1 million USD prize pool, each Season Championship will have a prize pool of a quarter million USD, and each Season Playoff will have at least $20,000 USD in prizing.

World Championship
Instead of taking place during in the fall, breaking the tradition of previous years, the 2017 Hearthstone World Championship will now take place over 4 days from 18 January to 21 January 2018, to accommodate the timing of the Standard year rotation.

Winter Championship
The 2017 Winter Championship was held in the Bahamas on March 23, 2017 with a $250,000 prize pool. Sixteen players from around the globe earned their spot in the HCT Winter Championship to compete for their share of the $250,000 prize pool and a seat at the Hearthstone World Championship. Four groups of four players (one from each region) will compete in a double-elimination tournament format until only eight remain, at which point the competition will shift to a single-elimination bracket. All matches were played in a Conquest format with a ban.

The Winter Championship is the only event in the 2017 HCT cycle that is played using the Year of the Kraken as part of its then-current Standard format. The Spring season and the remainder of the 2017 Championship Tour will use the new Standard year, the Year of the Mammoth, for their Standard formats.

The Asia-Pacific Winter Playoffs now have the same structure as the Europe and Americas Playoffs and include a Tavern Hero Tournament.


 * HCT Winter Championship overview - Reddit
 * Winter Championship
 * Winter Championship - Brackets
 * Winter Championship decklists - Hearthpwn
 * Winter Championship video playlist - YouTube


 * Europe Winter Playoffs decklists - Hearthpwn
 * Americas Winter Playoffs decklists - Hearthpwn
 * Asia-Pacific Winter Playoffs decklists - Hearthpwn