ESGN Behind The Scenes Sneak Peak
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Author: soulwarrior - Twitter
Earlier this month ESGN debuted their Hearthstone Fight Night series to much fanfare and applause. IHEARTHU Content Contributer Oliver “soulwarrior” Gehrmann was in attendance for the outstanding games played by both Team Dogehouse and Praise Ragnaros.
For your viewing pleasure, we have compiled the interviews in chronological order below. Stay tuned for more coverage of more events by soulwarrior!
It’s been a long day at the Filmstudio Babelsberg where the first epic battle between teams “Dogehouse” and “Team No Name Yet” was recorded for a number of action-packed episodes of ESGN TV. While the final result looked completely stunning and polished, during the actual production we needed several takes for many of the parts that would air later.
For most of our players, this was completely unfamiliar terrain. They have never been part of such a production and most of the tournaments they attended always went down “live”, so there were no takebacks and certainly no re-takes, much to their dismay - we’ve all been in a game where we were hoping to take back a crucial misplay.
Often even after a seemingly perfect take, Chief Production Officer Morgan would shout “do one more for safety”, indicating that he wanted to make absolutely sure that he had a backup plan in case something went unnoticed during the first take that might have ruined the shot.
Our moderator Dan “Frodan” Chou was taking this exceptionally well, never showing any signs of exhaustion after being forced to repeating his lines, delivering them with even more excitement the second or third time. While the spotlight and most of the pressure seemed to be on the players today, the show wouldn’t have been as great as it turned out without Dan calling the shots during the matches and introducing the many different segments of the show in his charming ways.
So while it’s been a long day, it never felt like a drag, with plenty of epic games going down between some of the games’ most prominent faces. We’re looking forward to the upcoming matches that will decide on the winner between team Dogehouse and team “Team Other Team No Name Yet”!
So the first event has come to a close and team “Team Other Team No Name Yet” ended up wiping the floor with team “Dogehouse”, winning 4 out of the 5 matches in total.
It certainly didn’t look that way after Gnimsh beat Trump 3 - 0 on the first day of competition, however, as Artosis pointed out, his slightly too conservative approach cost him big time and Nyhx had made a similar mistake. Ekop on the other hand had a favorable match-up, picking the correct deck for the first game, however, his draws let him down a little and there was next to nothing he could do to come out successful despite his great call.
Constructed superstar Strifecro then also won the champion match against Gnimsh, not leaving the Pole the slightest chance and continuing his impressive win streak with 6 games won and 0 losses.
In almost all of the matches we saw, the first deck chosen went on and won a second time, making it obvious how important it is to select the right deck for the first game. Sometimes, this made it seem like one player was clearly outperforming the other when in fact none of them were making any major misplays and instead “the little things” were coming together, leaving one player in a desperate position from which he couldn’t come back again.
Artosis explained this with the high level of competition. Not surprisingly, when two veteran gamers are facing each other, it comes down to who will draw into what card at what time rather than their mastery of the game and their individual skill.
Another thing we noticed several times were players committing a lot to the field when it didn’t appear like they had to go “all in”. In all of the talks I had with the players after their matches, they explained that they did so consciously since they were “playing to win” rather than “playing not to lose”. So what they were saying was that they knew they were putting it all on the line and that there was a chance their opponent had the perfect answer. This, at times, resulted in them not having another chance to turn things around, however, they still didn’t regret the move.
“It was a case of go big or go home”, Ekop explained, “even though it might look like we were taking unnecessary risks to someone who hasn’t been playing the game that much. It’s just that you’re putting yourself in an unbeatable position when your opponent does not have the answer while you only have a very slim chance of winning if you’re trying to ‘play it safe’. So why play it safe in the first place?”
In fact, the great show of skill this week convinced us to invite both teams over for a second face-off. Would team Dogehouse be able to tie the score or could “Other Team No Team Name Yet” come up with a more ingenious team name? We’ll know in just a week, so make sure to check back to our site regularly to learn more about Fight Night and all the other exciting shows that will air on ESGN TV!
Love it! =]