by Ani Nrusimha
When it comes to esports, one of the major problems for viewers at home is the constant metagame. For of those of you unacquainted with the term, it is the prevailing trends in the game, such as common strategies. One example would be conversions in football. Even though there is the option of the 2 point conversion, it is rarely used due to its great risk. Similarly in one online card game called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, the Collectible Card Game has a fairly consistent meta. However, one competition is trying to change that.
Its called ChallengeStone, and the idea is simple: make seemingly arbitrary rules regarding the match, and let the players create decks around it. For example, in the first challenge, Odds and Evens, minions (the creatures created) must have a certain stat (Attack) be odd, while spells must have an even cost. This leads to a very weird deck that requires not only originality, creativity, and skill in game, but also in creating the decklist. This favors ingenuity more so than creating decks beforehand. Hopefully trends like these will continue to permeate throughout the esports medium.
