by Ani Nrusimha
When it comes to esports, one of the major problems for viewers at home is the constant metagame. Â For of those of you unacquainted with the term, it is the prevailing trends in the game, such as common strategies. Â One example would be conversions in football. Â 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. Â However, one competition is trying to change that.
Its called ChallengeStone, and the idea is simple: Â make seemingly arbitrary rules regarding the match, and let the players create decks around it. Â 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. Â This leads to a very weird deck that requires not only originality, creativity, and skill in game, but also in creating the decklist. Â This favors ingenuity more so than creating decks beforehand. Â Hopefully trends like these will continue to permeate throughout the esports medium.