Hero Dynasties Part 1

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. 

Chapter 1: CmaccompH and Nineeyebrows

Wild Aces would go on to win Season 13 of Hero, and that’s where it could have ended. As so many season-winning teams had before, it mostly dissolved. CmaccompH and Nineeyebrows, however, had other plans. Instead of the open cup tournaments that originally brought everyone together, THL would soon become overrun with a wave of collegiate players. Nine was from Arizona State University, where he reunited with his longtime friend SkrtReynolds. Though from other schools, Tespa grinders AlwaysJustinTime and Turtle would join the team and attempt to recreate the magic. 

It makes sense: if they were already going to put time into the game to compete for $10,000 in scholarship money, and the format they were playing incentivized players to cooperate in call and improve together, then practice for THL came easy. Coming from collegiate Trios play had another, more secret advantage that would become very apparent in Season 14: lower starting PR. It was much more common for collegiate players to become skilled without training on ladder, contrary to the philosophy THL’s starting PR calculator relied on. A player like SkrtReynolds could learn how to play while on call with other ASU players and can become much better than the other 50 PR players of the season without ever playing a game on ladder.

For most captains at the time, this wasn’t a new phenomenon. Many invested captains who want to win a THL season will find a low PR player who wants to improve and will help them reach their potential. However, what was more novel that season was the ease of connecting to these players. Their prior connections through collegiate play gave them a head start over many other lower seeds in addition to a direct line to THL that many other new players weren’t privileged to. I won’t be doing this for many other teams, but I’d like to illustrate how strong some of these collegiate teams could be at the time.

A Gungan, Us Among was one such team from Hero Season 14: Dardarbinks, Aviously, Molestar, Skritch, and robocats. If we took their current Legacy PRs, they would be a team with 2379.33 PR in a series with an (at the time) 1850 PR limit. This is higher than any champion team, and probably higher than any other team throughout THL history. The nearly 550 excess PR represented an entire extra 1 seed. Not only were they undervalued, but these players have a litany of THL achievements: Dardar won Pro Season 8 and Legacy Season 17; Aviously won Pro Season Kappa and Hero Season 15 and had the highest winrate and PR of any player for most of THL’s existence; Molestar won Hero seasons 16, 20, and 22, Legacy Season 23, and Wild Season 6; Skritch won Legacy Seasons 5 and 6; and robocats would not only win the following season of Hero but would ask to be given 350 extra PR by the Board so that he would play against the 2 seeds he felt he should be playing. 
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Now that I’ve established how much power was concentrated in that one team, this Cmac+Nine team, Tonk if you are Corny, beat that team twice in the same season, eliminating them from playoffs. Tonk if you are Corny won Hero because they had players that came together and worked hard to theorize and counter the lineups that their opponents would bring. Even if their opponents were favored on paper, it was off paper where they gained the edge. During Season 15, Cmac and Nine change the team slightly, and although they didn’t achieve a 3rd straight finals appearance, they set up their PR precisely to field another championship team. As their new name suggested, Even Without Turt, they Must Still Skrt.

EWTWMSS kept the structure mostly the same. Cmac, Nine, and Skrt, the 3/4/5 seeds,  were now joined by SuperChicken and Molestar, two more collegiate players. Once the team made it through the main season, playoffs once again lit the fire beneath them. Even though the teams around them had changed, Cmac and Nine stayed the same. Prioritize the playoffs, prioritize the championship, prioritize the team. A record of 5-4 before playoffs might have looked rough from the outside, but that only meant that the team lost enough PR to be able to return the following season. Once playoffs came, the focus was set. In quarters and semis, EWTWMSS didn’t lose a single match. In finals, though, they would face another team with accomplishments like A Gungan, Us Among—F2L: Black

F2L: Black had a team with 4 players that would at one point or another be 550 PR, and another around 200. If we combined them at their peak, the team would reach above 2400 PR. The team rostered the player that would end up with the highest Legacy PR of all time in Nejiboston. NiceJewishOwl—a player who now sits above 700 True PR (PR stops at 550)—was their 4 seed. But, we’ve already seen Cmac and Nine work their way through a team like this. And, when all was done, they achieved their 3rd Hero championship in 4 seasons. The only teams that had repeated success like this were the incredible Hearthstone Academy team in Legacy and the dominant F2L Viridian team in Wild (they accomplished their 3rd title in the same season as EWTWMSS). And, just like those teams from other series, they weren’t done yet. 

Before returning to our regularly scheduled beatdown, I want to introduce AlwaysJustinTime among a few other names. During his relatively short time in THL, he’s been successful in every series he’s tried. When he’s not fielding a meme team based around players who have the name Justin (which just won the Legacy Season 29 championship despite that), he’s winning with the majority of teams he joins. He has the ability to bring up all of his teammates through his deckbuilding ingenuity and his work ethic to review plays and write detailed analyses. His name popped up when Nineeyebrows first started steering the dynasty in Season 14, and it should be no surprise that he returned to win Season 17. Because he skipped Season 15, that puts him at 2 championships out of 3 attempts. That 3rd attempt was with @Diamond @Diamond, which features the return of Turtle alongside Diamond and Wild9. Diamond found success earlier in this article on BillSnyder’s winning Tap Last team in Season 8, and Wild9 will find success later in this article…

In Season 18, Justin (Time) and Justin (Skrt) rejoined forces alongside Cmac+Nine, recruiting 2 new players to their collegiate player conglomerate. Nejiboston had jumped ship from F2L: Black just as Molestar had left A Gungan, Us Among. YouKittenMe had joined ASU from Nine’s IRL friend group in a similar fashion to SkrtReynolds. Nineeyebrows had to step back into a captaining role, but that wouldn’t stop the team from collaborating. Even through 5 seasons, 4 of the original team that Nineeyebrows had assembled were participating. I’m going to keep hammering this point, as this level of camaraderie had not been seen in the Hero series, especially among successful teams. 

Once again, the plan was to squeak by the main season and prioritize winning in playoffs. This time, however, was closer than ever. Somehow, At Least I Don’t Have Chicken managed to make playoffs with a 3-5 record. They were losing their matches, but only by a few points. These matches mattered for reaching playoffs, but that’s as far as their value went. Recognizing that fact was one of the strengths of the team. It may seem obvious to readers, but I’ve caught myself underestimating teams that scrape by into playoffs. Sometimes their luck comes around and fixes itself from a lackluster main season, and sometimes they just need the momentum that comes with a ride through the single-elimination bracket. The momentum of At Least I Don’t Have Chicken, for instance,  was no joke— they only needed 4 matches to dismantle the top teams on their way to the finals. 
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In finals, the strength of the Hero series once again presented a super team. Awake Past Midnight was another 2200+ PR team, but this was well-trodden ground for the most successful Hero players. AlwaysJustinTime, as established, was a great deck builder, and this was the week that Blizzard had released Prince Renathal. Justin built the Renathal Druid list that led the top 1k meta for the following week. Knowing that deck’s strengths and weaknesses determined a lot of the preparation for finals. With innovations in their back pocket, ALIDHC fought back and forth with APM, eventually culminating in a streamed match between CmaccompH and Geranium Battle. Hmm, that name seems familiar. Who wrote this article again? If you introduce someone, their name shouldn’t be coming out of nowhere…

This concludes Part 1 covering the Hero series through multi-season domination. Today, the first 18 seasons of Hero were touched on, but tomorrow’s article will feature an in-depth look at the most recent 8 seasons and what has changed. Cmac and Nine were the first to repeat dominance at this scale, but there are also lessons to learn from the championships of APM, Diamond, Defias, and APMountain. Perhaps it can help one of our readers begin writing history in Season 30!