Pavel wins Hearthstone World Championship at BlizzCon 2016 in all-EU final

By Ozzie Mejia

Russian Hearthstone prodigy Pavel “Pavel” Beltiukov narrowly missed the BlizzCon cut last year.

This year, however, he defeated a tough field to emerge as the 2016 Hearthstone World Champion at BlizzCon, culminating with a 4-2 series win over Team Virtuspro’s Arten “DrHippi” Kravets.

The final series came down to Pavel’s Malygos Miracle Rogue deck versus DrHippi’s Malygos Yogg Druid. The match was decided early after a turn 5 that saw Pavel drop a 10/10 Edwin VanCleef onto the board. While DrHippi attempted to counter with an Arcane Giant, a Sap spell sent it right back to his hand, allowing Pavel to finish with a Sinister Strike spell, an SI-7 Agent to the face, and a Bite spell that was created by an earlier Swashburglar play.

Pavel nearly didn’t reach the finale, as he found himself down 0-3 in the quarterfinals to William “Amnesiac” Barton. But with a combination of skillful play and some unprecedented RNG luck, Pavel was able to fight back to a 4-3 series win.

In fact, Pavel’s fortunate RNG draws led to some of the most thrilling moments of the weekend. In a semifinal match with China’s Jason Zhou, Pavel was faced with a Curator standing in his path and his opponent only at 10 health. In a bold move, the 18-year-old Russian used a Firelands Portal directly to the opponent’s face. The gamble paid off when the spell spawned Leeroy Jenkins, allowing Pavel to finish the game en route to a 4-2 series comeback win.

With the win, Pavel takes home the first-place prize of $250,000. This will also be something of a farewell to the Hearthstone pro scene as it is currently constituted. Blizzard has announced that the Hearthstone Championship Tour will undergo some major changes for 2017.

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