Some 180 odd games of Hearthstone later, ESL’s Trinity Series—the $150,000 team league that will look to crown a champion next month—is entering its sixth week of competition and with it heads are expected to roll. There are just two more matches remaining per team and literally each one bears meaning. Some teams will have to be perfect if they want to salvage their miniscule chances of making the top four cut, while others will spar against their rivals on the top of the table to untie the five-way knot that has entangled  G2, LG, Liquid, coL and Tempo.

Numbers are defining a lot of other talking points in Trinity Series land, as the best—and worst—pilots have established themselves and the metagame is taking a shape different from the standard 1v1 tournaments.

With the penultimate week just a few days away, here are the major storylines of the league on the verge of group stage’s conclusion.

The top is stacked, but also surprising

Although all invited teams were good on paper, there were clear winners and losers in terms of their players’ career records. G2 Esports, Luminosity Gaming and Virtus.pro had enough concentrated talent to separate them from the rest with good lead: G2 as the ATLC champions, LG as the North American super-team and VP as the home of two World Championship finalists, including the runner-up.

Five weeks into the league, the numbers are much closer than expected and the format is to be thanked for that and five teams are tied at 3-2. No team has fully figured out the correct way to play the Trinity Series rules, although G2 Esports (+8) have come the closest, segregating their player communication into roles. That said, they are only three points ahead of Luminosity Gaming (+5), and the rest of the top five aren’t that far behind: Tempo Storm is at +2 and Team Liquid and compLexity are at +1.

The five-way tie makes the following weeks beguiling as only four teams can move to the playoffs in March and the scores are too close to call. Even G2 aren’t insured against failure, and two consecutive losses could mean lights out for Hearthstone’s best team. The ATLC champions have proven remarkably durable, however, and both of their losses have come after eleven games, while their victories have been for the most part one-sided, including a 6-0 sweep over Alliance in week one.

Two other teams in the top five—Luminosity and compLexity—were predicted to perform well and they have, with LG demonstrating a comparable spirit of camaraderie and friendship to G2’s and coL being very strong on their control decks. The other two, however, are a pleasant surprise.

Team Liquid’s and Tempo Storm’s odds weren’t great at the start of the tournament. Tempo’s players have been struggling to secure high tournament finishes for two years with their most experienced player Gaara in competitive slump and their current best performer Eloise not taking part in the tournament. On top of that, despite brief tournament appearances in the past, VLPS and JustSaiyan remained undisputed but also untested talents.

Team Liquid have also been off the competitive grid for some time now, as even Dog—their most prized possession—being less active than his peak in 2015. Currently, both teams are contesting the top four cut and have left other on-paper favorites behind.

While it’s hard to pinpoint why exactly Liquid is succeeding, apart from their huge cumulative experience, Tempo Storm’s qualities are very apparent. The team is determined to bring off-meta decks every now and again and are looking at Trinity Series as the perfect ground to experiment with untested archetypes, including Handlocks, Hunters, Zoo and Pirate Paladins. In addition, the strong, commanding voice of VLPS is contributing invaluable shot-calling. That said, both Tempo Storm and Liquid are very much under a question mark. Liquid haven’t had many tour de force marches, while Tempo Storm could very well become victims of their own off-meta approach.

Photo: Blizzard

The doomed Blizzcon grand finalists

Firebat (2014 World Champion), Ostkaka (2015 World Champion) and DrHippi (2016 Runner Up) are all playing in the Trinity Series. All three of them might not make it to the playoffs.

It’s almost like a curse has befallen this trio of exemplary Hearthstone competitors and/or their teams. Neither of these players have broken the 50% win-rate barrier as pilots, with Ostkaka just on the breaking point at 8-8. Cloud9 is gasping for air on the bottom of the table at 1-4 and this could be their last week as playoffs contender as they are on the verge of mathematical elimination. Virtus.pro (2-3, -1) and Alliance (2-3, -6) are also endangered.

Of course, that curse thing is just a metaphor, but there are glaring problems in each team. With TidesofTime in their roster, Cloud9 are relying on a player whose relationship with Hearthstone has been on an on-and-off basis for his entire career. Three-way communication is also holding the team behind, as it seems all C9 players are much more used to privacy of their thoughts during a match. In fact, the one victory C9 recorded—the 6-5 upset over G2—saw a missing TidesofTime and Firebat and StrifeCro keeping communication to the minimum.

Communication problems are also present in the Alliance camp, but the Swedes have also struggled with figuring out the Trinity Series meta, both in terms of what they want to play and what their opponents might bring. Being underprepared caught Alliance with their pants down against Anyfin Paladin which rewarded them with a 2-12 score after week two.

Luckily for them, the Swedes are finding their stride and have now started doing what other teams have been doing to them so far: One-class destruction. Ostkaka’s 5-1 run with Mage against Tempo Storm and Powder’s 6-0 RenoLock play against Virtus.pro saved Alliance from certain death, for the time being.

Virtus.pro is also not performing to the level its roster suggests and the bears have been losing matches they really shouldn’t have, including the aforementioned sweep by Alliance. Unconvincing is a suitable adjective to use to describe Virtus.pro’s play, especially considering the team almost recorded a loss against league’s worst team playing a N’Zoth Reno Rogue. BunnyHoppor has been VP’s top pilot, while DrHippi’s has been underperforming big time, even on his favorite Mage. VP’s counter-game has also been shaky and in each of their losses they’ve allowed their opponents to achieve kill-streaks, often very early in the series.

So far, neither Alliance, nor Virtus.pro—and especially not C9—have shown they have the needed team stability and metagame read to make the top four cut, but the last two weeks are as much time for culling as they are for redemption. You never know.

Fr0zen, king of Pilots; Jade Shaman, king of decks

Fr0zen is not a name that’s discussed too often, which is a shame, really. The American broke out in 2016 by becoming the best swiss player in Hearthstone win-rate wise, went on to win a major gold and a major silver and has showed enough promise to be considered the next big name of North American Hearthstone. Now, he’s also contributing to LG’s Trinity Series success.

As pilot, Fr0zen dominates all the charts. He is currently at 68% win-rate, the highest of all 24 pilots, and at 25 games played, which is another top score. In the opening weeks, he played the finisher role against Team Liquid and Tempo Storm, winning five and six games in those matches, respectively, and is largely responsible for popularizing the Tempo Mage within Trinity Series. Together with ThijsNL (Paladin, week one) and Powder (Warlock, week four), he is one of only three players to have won six in a row in a single match. With his team-mates Chakki at 40% and Zalae at 46.15% win-rates, LG do owe a lot to Fr0zen’s killer instincts.

To move away from player and team stories, Jade Druid gets the award for the most successful deck among those played more than 30 times in the tournament, the rest being Reno Mage, Anyfin Paladin, Dragon Priest and Combo RenoLock. At 32-27 or 54.24% win-rate, Jade Druid shows just how powerful its core mechanic can be in a world where aggro decks are hunted down through the ban system. With nobody to put pressure on the ramp and control decks being the predominant archetype, Jade Druid’s infinite value makes for clean kills against the highlander decks.

The worst of the popular five is Anyfin Paladin, struggling at 42.55%. In spite of some sweeping victories early in the league, the combo deck is still at -7 game deficit as its slow and reactive nature has shown its ugly head.

Lastly, in a classic Max McCall stat reference, Hunter is the best class of the nine at 6-3 or 66.66%. Who said Rexxar was dead?

Week six predictions:

Alliance > Cloud9 Luminosity > Virtus.pro Tempo Storm > Liquid G2 > Complexity

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