Cydonia wins HCT Americas, pulls off upset with Young Dragonhawk

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Cydonia's road to victory wasn't an easy one as he dropped the first game in all three of his matches, leaving him to have to win four-of-six each time. His opening round match against Jason "DeerJason" Niu got the weekend off to a poor start. DeerJason was able to clear Midrange Hunter against Cydonia's favored Aggro Shaman thanks to Harrison Jones putting the Doomhammer in a museum and drawing six cards. In the championship match against Rosty, Cydonia had to make multiple comebacks, being down 1-0, 2-1, and later, 3-2.

Particularly cruel was Cydonia's loss to Freeze Mage with Midrange Hunter in the final. Hunter is favored against the Mage here and falling behind 2-1 while allowing Rosty to clear his most difficult deck put Cydonia at a significant disadvantage.

"I felt pretty bad because I felt unfavored in matchups I could get afterwards. It seemed to be the consensus from the other players in the top eight who were watching that I couldn't come back easily," Cydonia told ESPN.com when discussing the Freeze Mage loss. "But Duane believed in me since 'I always win game seven.'"

Rosty lost at the end, but played nearly flawlessly, and unlike several of the players this weekend, was able to keep his composure in front of the cameras. This is a not-insignificant advantage in a tournament that featured many players that have little tournament experience, rather than a field of seasoned veterans such as Amnesiac or Chakki.

Cydonia's deck choices

There's little doubt at this moment that the tournament meta is quite established and unlikely to change without new cards. The start of the spring championship season started only a couple weeks after the Old Gods expansion landed and you saw quite a lot of experimentation in the preliminaries. Nearly a month-and-a-half later, the cards are tested, the matchups played, and there are fewer surprises out there. With so many similar decks played this tournament in a refined meta, eking out a small gain is tricky.

"My lineup was super balanced and was built to ban Zoo but I feel like something like Patron or C'Thun Warrior could have been good against me," said Cydonia. "I think Tempo Warrior is pretty bad and can be targeted more easily by decks like Control Warrior, Rogue, Druid, and Hunter. Dragon Warrior has a stronger nut draw, so [it] will get fewer polarized matchups and has a way better early and midgame. It has a bit less synergy now due to Whirlwind/Battle Rage, so it's a bit worse against Freeze Mage and Zoo but felt better against anything else."

To get a mathematical look at Cydonia's deck choices, I set up a Monte Carlo simulation -- the curse of being a journalist that majored in math -- that mimicked the HCT tournament format (conquest with a ban) using deck vs. deck data that was collected by Vicious Syndicate's Data Reaper report. By the simulation's estimate, Cydonia's deck choice of Dragon Warrior, Aggro Shaman, Zoolock, Midrange Hunter, and C'Thun Druid was the optimal lineup, giving him an estimated 14% chance of winning the tournament, the best of the eight players.

Young Dragonhawk for the win?

Just because the battlefields of the deck vs. deck matchups are fairly set at this point doesn't mean that there won't occasionally be a real surprise moment due to the volatile nature of a card game. This weekend's big moment came in the final when Rosty was at match point, up 3-2, and playing Midrange Hunter against Cydonia's Zoolock. Playing Dark Peddler on turn four, Cydonia had a choice between a Tournament Attendee, Reliquary Seeker, and Young Dragonhawk. All three are essentially bad cards that aren't played in constructed or in arena. But with two Power Overwhelmings in his hand, Cydonia had a chance for a play of nearly unimaginable greed: Young Dragonhawk and two Power Overwhelmings for 18 damage and lethal.

With Young Dragonhawk on the board, it put Rosty in a quandary. Did Cydonia just have a terrible Dark Peddler or was he looking at lethal next turn? Without a board, the only way Rosty could remove the Young Dragonhawk was to burn a Kill Command on it, a phenomenal waste of resources if it turned out that Cydonia was bluffing. Cydonia wasn't bluffing and forced a Game 7 on the back of a card that nobody ever plays.

The six-hero meta?

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the disappearance of Priest in the tournament format. That hasn't changed and probably won't unless Priest gets at least two of a strong two drop, a strong three drop, and a board clear that doesn't require a combo or a significant downside. Paladin, a struggler in tournaments of late, was also completely missing in action this time around.

Now the question is if Mage joins Paladin and Priest on the bench. When almost everyone's bringing Tempo or Dragon Warrior, Aggro Shaman, and Midrange Hunter, it gets quite difficult to bring either of the top Mage archetypes, Freeze or Tempo. Freeze has good matchups against Miracle Rogue and Zoolock, but all three of those other matchups above are quite bad, in the sub-40 percent range. And with three of them, it's nothing you can get around with the hero ban. Tempo's not much better -- the Warrior, Shaman, and Hunter matchups are winnier (though still tricky) but without the benefit of being solid favorites over Zoolock and Miracle Rogue.

The simulation data from above demonstrates the challenge of playing Mage in tournaments right now. Of the 12 deck archetypes seen, in overall expected winning percentage, Tempo ranked 11th (45.9%) and Freeze in last (42%). We've already seen Mage drop off in popularity -- and nothing in this tournament really suggested the data are wrong -- and if Mage disappears from tourneys, then Zoolock and the Miracle Rogue become even better.

Au revoir, Midrange Shaman

After a long time of Shaman not appearing in tournaments until the rise of Aggro Shaman after League of Explorers, we had a period in which two flavors of Shaman were widely played thanks to some terrific midrange cards released in the Old Gods. But with the emergence of Midrange Hunter, the Aggro Shaman has pushed out its slower brother and the Aggro vs. Midrange matchup has gone from near parity in the preliminaries to a shutout.