I recently got to visit the Blizzard campus in Irvine, California to be a fly on the wall while shooting took place for the Heroes of StarCraft Showmatch - a showcase of the new StarCraft-themedHearthstonemini-set. The broadcast featured some figures that should be very well-known to fans of both games, and I had the time of my life getting to know the cards and strategies in Heroes of StarCraft on set and backstage.
Walking into Blizzard’s on-site studio was a real trip. I’ve been to the campus before, but seeing the way Blizzard’s production team had transformed a couple of simple rooms into film-quality StarCraft sets was pretty unbelievable.
On Set At Blizzard HQ
The entire program was put together in just three rooms. The room where the casters worked was transformed into an industrial Terran ship: bleak, weathered, and filled with flashing screens and moody overhead lights. The players were in another room designed to look like a ship’s command center, but this one was slowly being taken over by Zerg Creep. Gooey purple strands covered the walls and crawled across the desk like the tentacles of so many octopuses. As cool as it looked on stream, it looked even cooler in person.
After ogling the set decoration, I found a place to set up camp in the third room, a backstage area where the production crew managed things like graphics, camera changes, and audio levels for the broadcast. It also served as a combination green room, hair and makeup, and video village. There I met two of the mini-set’s senior designers, Leo Robles Gonzales and Aleco Pors, and got to watch rehearsals
Legendary StarCraft casters Nick Plott and Dan Stemkoski, better known as Tasteless and Artosis, hosted the event and provided commentary for the match. Sean ‘Day9’ Plott and Jeffrey ‘TrumpSC’ Shih played the five-game series. Day9, who hosts the annual PC Gaming Show, and Trump are both massive figures in both the StarCraft and Hearthstone community, and they put on exactly the kind of funny, high-energy show you’d expect them to. After watching these guys grow as pro players, casters, and livestreamers over the last 20 years, it was a real treat to get to see them play in real life.
Before recording started, I sat down with Gonzales and Pors. They talked about how Heroes of Starcraft came to be and its connection to the most recent main set, The Great Dark Beyond. They shared their philosophies about bridging the thematic and gameplay gap between Hearthstone and StarCraft, and how they approached fitting them together. They also shared their favorite cards in the set and explained the process of adapting StarCraft’s three factions in a way that felt true to both the identity of the factions and the deck archetypes in Hearthstone. You can readmy full interview with the senior designers here.
Five Rounds Of Intense StarCraft Strategy
The matches, whichyou can watch on the PlayHearthstone Twitch channel, were phenomenal. Each of the five games was a great showcase of StarCraft’s factions and the way that they’re expressed through each of Hearthstone’s classes. We got to see both of them pilot one Terran, Protoss, and Zerg deck each, but using totally different classes.
All of Heroes of StarCraft’s cards belong to one of the three factions, and each faction is shared between four Hearthstone classes. It’s similar to the way factions worked all the way back in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan.
In the first match-up, Day9 played a Terran Shaman deck against Trump’s Protoss Mage deck, and it may have been the most exciting match of the entire series. Round after round the players took turns taking big swings back and forth, Trump with powerful board clear tools like Colossus, and Day9 calling in his massive starships over and over thanks to his Terran hero card, Jim Raynor.
After some early game back and forth, the Protoss hero card Artanis ended up shifting the game in Trump’s favor thanks to its hero ability, which gives you a minion and a divine shield. By the time Trump got his Colossi out, Day9 was low on cards, and it seemed like the game was over. But thankfully for Day9, Raynor’s hero power allowed him to bring a taunt back onto the board every turn, eventually wearing Trump down with a single card in his hand. A scrappy win, just like a true Terran.
Over the next four games we also got to see Day9’s Protoss Druid and Zerg Death Knight, as well as Trump’s Zerg Warlock and Terran Warrior. The series was tied 2-2 going into game five, with Day9 back on Protoss Druid and Trump on his third try with Protoss Mage. In this Protoss face-off, Day 9 used classic Druid tools like Swipe and Innervate to control Trump’s board and outvalue him with bigger threats. This match was a nice showcase of how the same faction can be played in completely different ways across different classes. The broadcast ended with a caster grudge match - Day9 and Trump commentating a match between Tasteless and Artosis, playing decks that match the Starcraft faction they’re known for.
As much as I loved watching these matches in person, my favorite part of the day was watching Gonzalez and Pors geek out the entire time. They’d whisper play lines to each other, cheer at the sight of useful top decks, and sigh at misplays. They were acting the same way we all do when watching competitive Hearthstone, but with infinitely more passion and satisfaction. The affection they have for Heroes of Starcraft and the work they put into bringing it to life radiates from them, and their enthusiasm made me even more excited to dive headfirst into the expansion as soon as it launched.
Hearthstone
Hearthstone brings Blizzard’s storied Warcraft series to the digital collectible card game space. Free-to-play, it features thousands of cards to collect and several different modes, from Arena to Tavern Brawls.
