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Western Clash Coverage To Include New Hero Announcement

by - 7 years ago

We are less than 24 hours away from the start of the Western Clash and there is a lot to look forward to.

Not only will we get our first look at cross region play in the HGC as teams from EU, NA, Latin America, and Australia/New Zealand square off, but the opening day coverage will also include an exclusive announcement.

Many fans had been speculating that Stukov would be the next Hero released, but this most recent tweet clearly points to a Protoss Hero. Karax and Fenix are two of the more popular guesses in light of this new information. According to some sources, which I am still trying to confirm, there is an exclusive announcement scheduled for 9:20 AM PST. This is certainly when the new Hero will be announced, but with a 20 minute block of time set aside it is possible that there could be other announcements as well.

The Western Clash gets under way at 3:00 AM PST with the tournament favorite, Misfits, squaring off against the ANZ representative, Nomia. Other Day 1 matches include Team 8 versus Team Dignitas, Tempo Storm versus Infamous, and Fanatic versus Gale Force eSports. You can watch all of these matches, as well as the exclusive announcement, on Twitch or on the official HGC website. This site also includes schedules, brackets, VODS, and top notch articles related to the HGC.

There should be a ton of interesting story lines in this event. This will be the first major event to be played on the Lucio patch, which also includes the Murky rework. While Murky may have dominated Quick Match and Hero League after the change he will probably still be more of a niche pick in competitive since teams will be better prepared to respond to the threats he poses. Lucio however, could play a major role, especially for European teams. There is also the LAN dynamic, which could affect play. Certain teams, like Fnatic, thrive in front of a live crowd, but others seem to struggle on the live stage. Team 8 in particular has several players who haven’t played up to expectations in LAN events so it will be interesting to see how well they perform at this event. Then there are the underdogs from Latin America and Australia/New Zealand. How well will these teams do versus the best teams from EU and NA and do they have any tricks up their sleeves to try to throw the top teams off their games?

We will see how these stories, and others, play out in a few short hours.


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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