Innkeeper's Invitational

The Innkeeper's Invitational is a professional Hearthstone tournament hosted by Blizzard as part of Blizzcon.

The Invitational features some of Hearthstone's most dedicated, passionate and well-known players, selected by Blizzard. These players duel each other in a best-of-five arrangement, until one player is left victorious. The winner is crowned "Grandmaster of the Hearth" and receives "a fitting trophy".

The first official Hearthstone tournament, the 2013 Invitational was notable for taking place before Hearthstone's release, in fact during the game's closed beta phase. The following year the Hearthstone World Championship was announced, succeeding the Innkeeper's Invitational as the official tournament.

Rules

 * Each player has 3 decks, each of a different class
 * Matches are Best of 5 in All-Kill format
 * For game 1 decks are picked blindly
 * The winner of a game keeps his deck
 * The loser of a game selects an unused deck

2013
The 2013 Invitational took place at Blizzcon, on November 8-9th 2013. A live stream of the semi-finals and final was made available online through www.blizzcon.com and www.twitch.tv/wow. The first round of duels were not shown online at the time, but were later made available through the Hearthstone™ Innkeeper's Invitational Videos blog, around two weeks after the conclusion of the event.

The 2013 Invitational was casted by TotalBiscuit and Kevin Knocke.

Competitors


Blizzard invited the following 8 players to take part in the 2013 Invitational:


 * Day[9]
 * Reckful
 * Hafu
 * Kripparrian
 * Trump
 * Husky
 * Noxious
 * Artosis

These players were each featured with a short interview in the Invitational Player Spotlight: Part 1 features Husky, Noxious, Reckful and Hafu; Part 2 features Day[9], Kripparrian, Artosis and Trump.

After the invitational's conclusion, full decklists for all participants were made available through the Innkeeper’s Invitational Decklists blog.

Bracket
After drawing 2-2, the fifth game saw Artosis' "ek0p Warrior" warrior deck against Kripparrian's returning "Turn Eight" mage deck. Both decks were described as aggro decks, with the warrior deck focusing on minion damage while the mage deck focused on spells. In the penultimate round of the game, Kripparrian found himself faced with imminent defeat by his opponent's minions, agonisingly capable of dealing precisely 13 damage to Artosis that turn, who had a combined total of 14 health and armor remaining. Unable to reduce his opponent below 1 health, Kripparrian was defeated the next round, choosing to use Blizzard to trigger Leper Gnome's deathrattle to 'suicide' the match, and concede the tournament.

Winner
Artosis was crowned "Grandmaster of the Hearth" and awarded a special engraved silver tankard in recognition of his achievement. Artosis reached victory after playing 12 games, 9 of which he won.