David “dog” Caero has finally broken free of what many have called the “second-place curse” to grab the win at the Hearthstone Masters Tour Las Vegas. Now considered the First Masters Tour Champion, dog beat out Edward “Gallon” Goodwin 3-1.
The Masters Tour 2019 Las Vegas was started last Friday, June 14, and finished on June 16. As the champion, dog, who is signed with Team Liquid, gets to take home around $100,000. The prize pool of the tournament was $500,000.
Aside from dog and Gallon, the other six players in the tournament where:
- Wataru “posesi” Ishibashi
- Yoann “Hypno” Pfersich
- Maxime “Kalaxz” Thierry
- Eugene “Neirea” Shumilin
- Chen “tom60229” Wei Lin
- Chris “Fenomeno” Tsakopoulos
In an article, dog claimed that it felt awesome considering that he has “never won anything, so this is cool.” He initially lost to Hypno in the Group Stage 0-2. However, dog bounced back, winning against Neirea 2-1 in the Elimination Match before grabbing a win against Hypno 2-1 in the Decider Match. He took second place in the group after the Group Stage.
In the Semifinals, dog faced off against tom60229 and easily won the match 3-0.
In the Finals, the match would be dog versus Gallon. For the Finals, dog made use of a hybrid Freeze Mage deck built around Luna’s Pocket Galaxy, which had recently been buffed. What this does is changes the cost of minions in a deck to 1. This helped dog bring out cards like Alexstrasza and Kalecgos, among others. He also put in Deranged Doctor, which restores eight health to the hero.
According to dog, the reason why many players lost against a warrior is not because they managed to outvalue the opponents, but they simply try and hit the other player, making it important to add Deranged Doctor. According to him, he “needed a heal card that was big since we were using Luna's Pocket Galaxy.”
After Las Vegas, the Masters Tour moves to Seoul with a $250,000 prize pool. The Seoul Masters begin in August. The Masters Tour then wraps up in Bucharest with the tournament also offering a $250,000 prize pool.
