David "killinallday" Acosta is in Asia for the first time in his life this week to compete at the HCT 2019 World Championship in Taipei. On day one of the tournament, he defeated Mihai "languagehacker" Dragalin in the first round, only to fall just short of cracking the top eight in a 5-game series against China’s Xu "LFYueying" Kai.
“I think I played pretty well,” said killinallday. “[but] I roped out a turn and didn't have time to complete the turn, so that was pretty bad. To be fair, I’d say that Chef Nomi Priest is a harder to play than what other people here are playing.”
He now sits in the Group B decider match and will face the winner of languagehacker versus Muzahidul "Muzzy" Islam for a shot at the final bracket. After besting him the first time, killinallday would prefer to play languagehacker again over Muzzy, who is a markedly more challenging foe on paper. Killinallday is leaning on this heavy-cycle Priest list to give him an edge.
“It would be close,” killinallday said. “I brought Nomi Priest because it worked well with my ban-Warrior strategy and it was one of the only decks I could find that beat Zoo, Token Druid, and Shaman. Me and Muzzy have [nearly] the same three decks, while his fourth is Shaman and mine’s Priest. So, the only difference is that my Priest beats Shaman, whereas his Shaman only beats Token Druid and Zoo. I think I have a slight advantage there.”
Killinallday feels prepared to face the rest of the field but knows lineups that run Hunter and Mage alongside Rogue and Warrior—such as the lineup brought by LFYueying—will give him the most trouble. Brian "bloodyface" Eason, who emerged victorious in Group D late Friday evening with a win over Luo "Roger" Shengyuan, was the only other player to bring this class combination.
With all those matches going on in the background, killinallday put in hours of prep work in order to maintain a clear psyche on game day. “I don't like to practice on the game day,” killinallday said. “The games start getting jumbled in your head like, ‘did I already play this or was that in practice?’, so yeah, just want a fresh mind going into it.”
A fresh mind is exactly what killinallday will need to make it out of his group. With players like LFYueying and bloodyface waiting in the wings with powerful and now-proven lineups, the homestretch of fulfilling the #YOKAD (Year of killinallday) prophecy of winning the World Championship promises to be the most difficult part of his campaign.
Check out the event page to see just how the group stage has played out so far and tune in for day 3 of the HCT 2019 World Championship when the broadcast goes live at 7pm PT at Twitch.tv/PlayHearthstone!
