By Geranium Battle

In April 2022, Voyage to the Sunken City released and brought the new Core Set with the normal yearly rotation. In that updated Core, Elise Starseeker returned and was free for any interested players. Blizzard did not anticipate just how many players would be interested, as THL’s Turtle put out a tweet advertising his new Monkey Paladin that carried him to high legend. Well, actually, it was THL’s Damon that made the deck, and THL’s A2Battleship that provided the 47 Legend screenshot, and one could notice the screenshot reaching that rank was played on a different class, if any scrutiny was used. 
Scrutiny avoided this tweet like the plague, and soon the HS ladder was swarmed with thousands of Monkey Paladins. Turtle’s responses would soon also be swarmed with scorned pilots, as the win rate of the deck sank and sank to a lowly 15%. This legendary bait would even receive recognition from Team 5 members like Myntyphresh and RidiculousHat. 

But would this scourge find any success in THL? In that season, Turtle and Damon were already on a Legacy team called “I’m a Legacy 3 seed :)”. The vibe on the team back then was very different, and the players weren’t particularly interested in trying to dominate as much as make each other laugh. That’s why this full Monkey lineup was brought by Cahnew the whole season long, and ended with a commanding 7% win rate.

​If I just featured decks with no tether to reality, this would be a sad article. Instead, this will be a collection of strange brews that found some level of success. We will celebrate the weird, the TechW, and the Wild side of THL.

By JediNinja

  I was introduced to Hearthstone when the game officially launched after the open beta, and I quickly became obsessed with it. I spent all of my spare time on r/hearthstone or watching various streamers, hoping the mobile release would come soon. The combination of creative planning and intense PvP gameplay was captivating like nothing else I had ever played.

  The problem for me was finding a way to enjoy the game. Ranked ladder was too grindy for me to ever stand a chance. I had a full-time job, a new baby, and little free time for gaming.  It quickly became clear to me that even with what I thought was a decent win rate, I wouldn’t have enough time in a month to grind my way to Legend rank. Tournament-style play didn’t require nearly as much time and had a more complex and rewarding metagame, but the problem with tournaments was that I wasn’t good enough to be as competitive as I’d like. I was looking for a casual tournament experience that didn’t seem to exist.
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​THL’s 30 for 30 series represents a fun opportunity for us to compare players across history. Typically, we’re focused on a single season or lifetime, but we rarely return to specific seasons to measure player success. Fortunately, PAR now allows us to look back on individual seasons and rank them in ways that we were never able to before.

For this piece, all seasons are included. Every season of Wild has been played under a best-of-5 format. Season Alpha featured teams of 3 but points held the same weight for individual performances that season. As was the case last time, we’ll also be including playoff matches, as lifetime PAR includes all matches someone plays in a season.

By MartyB

Everyone loves a villain. We all want someone to hate. Generally, THL isn’t a very good place to find a villain. Teams come and go in waves of dominance, and players enter and leave after they get tired of playing Hearthstone. There is one exception to all of this, however. The Wild Series was terrorized by one of the biggest villains THL had ever seen. Its name was F2L: Viridian, and I was at the helm.

By TAB

Fresh to THL in 2022, I entered the world of competitive Hearthstone looking to improve and make some new friends surrounding the game I love. After an exciting rookie season, my team made it to the Legacy finals with great momentum. Standing opposite from us were names most of you should know all too well: Nejiboston, DankestDad, RonMexico, Ricecryption, and kotomora—the Diamond 5. When I say that this team smacked us around so badly in the finals… I’d rather that match get lost in the archives.

As a rookie, I remember thinking: How is that roster even fair? They didn’t seem to have a weak spot to target, and they completely out-prepped us—we were blindsided by a winning Druid bring across almost all of their players. What mastermind was able to put these players together and create an environment where they could synergize to be so strong? Soon enough, I would get my answer. The puppeteer behind it all was Diamond. 
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As the winningest captain of the Standard THL formats (Marty wouldn’t let me write this without mentioning his eight Wild banners), Diamond has a storied THL career, joining only rebobson in an elite club of THLers that have earned a championship as both a player and a captain in Legacy, Hero, and Pro. Funnily enough, Diamond achieved that Pro player requirement on a rebobson-captained F2L team seven seasons ago. How was he able to find consistency amongst PR shifts, different series, and the chaos of THL? Let’s take a trip down memory lane, asking players—and the man himself—what made Diamond teams shine bright season after season.

Hello again, Pro Enjoyers.  This week saw a bit of a shake up in the top ranks, with F2L claiming the #1 seed after a win over the former #1 seed, Unidentified Pet Tracking, who find themselves in third place this week.  Ada's Litter is nipping at F2L's heels right behind them at #2.

Brushy Tuna wins again but still finds themselves just off the podium at #4, and Play Green Card muscled their way up to the 5th seed after losing a close fight to the four seed.  We are four weeks into the season so all teams are in a place to make a playoff run!

We also have shake ups in the undefeated player race:  Empol (Staff of the Five Dubs) called in a sub last week so while she's still undefeated she gave up the top spot to Raimat (Play Green Card) at 4-0.  Also at 4-0 are abc (Ada's Litter), Eswaff (Unidentified Pet Tracking) and Rumham (ET Yogg-Saron).  There's another five players in that 3-0 bracket, good luck to all!
-Whodack​

By MartyB
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​THL’s 30 for 30 series represents a fun opportunity for us to compare players across history. Typically, we’re focused on a single season or lifetime, but we rarely return to specific seasons to measure player success. Fortunately, PAR now allows us to look back on individual seasons and rank them in ways that we were never able to before.

For this piece, Seasons 1 and Kappa are omitted. These two seasons featured Specialist format, where players brought only one deck for best-of-3 matchups. Points were more valuable during these seasons, making them incompatible with our comparisons. The different format also makes it difficult to translate performance to the rest of Pro’s history. As was the case last time, we’ll also be including playoff matches, as lifetime PAR includes all matches someone plays in a season.

By Geranium Battle

For Part 1 of Hero Dynasties, click here.
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Chapter 2: Geranium Battle, Cahnew, and APM

​For the purposes of Hero dynasties, Geranium Battle is a name that came out of nowhere. Other than the Legacy finals where he lost to Wild9 (who we will return to later), Geranium had failed to make much of a splash. He captained some Hero teams that had a lot of heart, but they often missed playoffs. Sometime between Season 17 and 18, he found a desire to be more of a player than a captain, and realized that some of the players that made his PR work were only available on rival teams. It was then that he decided to reach out to the creator of the APM organization, Bonemasher.
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By Geranium Battle

​In the beginning, there was only THL. Then, after 3 seasons, there was the SHL, and many of the players from the inaugural series gave it a try. Most players would enter and leave just as quickly, and the early years of this Last Hero Standing format saw a lot of overturn. Some prominent players made deep playoff runs in multiple seasons, with Kawasaki Ninjas Rule making it to finals in Season 2 and winning Season 3. The core group of Switters, Thatjester, and jimphilos reached finals in Season 5 and 6, but missed the crown both times. Lefty2111 with Tam Pam’s Surf Slam comrades Ozmanaut and ItsMeMikeV reached finals in Season 10, and returned to win Season 12. But for the most part, if there was a dominant team, it would fall early in playoffs the following seasons if it made it there at all. There were kings and rulers for a time, but hardly anything could be called a “dynasty” in what would eventually be known as Hero Series up to this point. 

Meanwhile, quietly, in Season 8, CmaccompH played his first season of Hero. It wasn’t a  glorious burst onto the scene, and he quickly disappeared soon after. The team that went on to win that season was helmed by BillSnyder, who also vanished from the series. Similarly, Nineeyebrows had a negative Season 11 debut and did not return the following season. Suddenly, BillSnyder returned in Season 13 and brought on CmaccompH and Nineeyebrows to make the Wild Aces.

What made Wild Aces the first of many seasons that Cmac and Nine would go on to win? Well, the amount of work that they both put into playing and learning Hearthstone certainly helped. Cmac joined an insane amount of open cup tournaments, which was how the players on the team met. It wasn’t uncommon to share theory and experience in calls, and the drive to prove themselves pushed everyone to the heights of their ability. This cooperation and friendship was the impetus behind the title of this article: a dynasty. 

By Wild9

On November 1, 2019, Blizzard announced their new battleground mode at Blizzcon. Inspired by Teamfight Tactics, at first, the only way to play Blizzard’s Autobattler was on a ladder system. Soon enough,  group play and lobbies were introduced.  Well before the news dropped, however, the THL team wheels were churning.

Once private lobbies were confirmed, it was only a matter of time before THL would create its own Battlegrounds Series for the community to compete in. Challenges existed, but the league would find a way to get it done.
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