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Hearthstone Rule book

  • Rulebook

Last Modified: July 26, 2020.

These rules are subject to change at the administrator’s discretion. If rules should change, all captains will be notified accordingly.

The Handbook’s General Rules apply to all CEA games, please read them first!

I. Hearthstone Overview

  1. Player Eligibility: All players participating in Hearthstone competitions must have an active (Americas) account in good standing. Only registered team members playing under their own account are allowed to play for a team.
  2. Team Roster: A team may start the season with 4-10 participants. Rules for qualifications for rostered members can be found in CEA general rules.
    1. After the beginning of Regular Season play (Week 1 matches), a player rostered on a team may not transfer to another roster within the same company for the same game without the Game Lead's approval.
      1. The main circumstance permitting a transfer would be a team losing players and falling below the minimum team size
      2. Companies with multiple teams playing the same game may have players on multiple rosters as outlined in the general rules under “Team Eligibility.” Being a floater is not considered transferring.
    2. After Week 5, removing players from the roster does not free up additional spots.
  3. Registration: The Hearthstone registration fee will be $160 per team. The captain pays this fee during registration on the CEA website.
  4. Game Version: All players must have their game up to date with the latest patch.
  5. Weekly Structure:
    1. Monday: Matchups for the week are released (assuming all previous match results have been reported).
    2. Wednesday: Team captains submit a starting lineup of players for each of the first 4 Rounds (note: the final “ace” Round, if necessary, will follow a special selection process on the day of the match. No player shall play more than once in the first 4 rounds, however, any player may play the "ace" round, even if they have played already in the first 4 rounds. The starting lineup must list the player's Battle.Net character name and character code. Lineups must be submitted through the Guilded tournament. Contact us if you have questions or need help with conflicts.
    3. Thursday: All lineups are made public. In the event that a team does not submit a lineup on time, the opposing team’s lineups will remain hidden until the late submission is complete. The penalty for late submission is a “class ban”
    4. Saturday: All matches are played starting at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern). Captains submit results after the match.
    5. Thursday to Friday: Team captains of opposing teams may independently coordinate a different match time for any round of their series to accommodate the players. The captain does not need to be present for each round. Note that the default time is heavily preferred and captains should be looking to field alternate players if their players cannot make the default time. Reschedules must be mutually agreeable. If there is no agreement, all matches will be played at the default time. Failure to show up for a scheduled match will result in an automatic loss and a warning.
    6. See General Rules in the handbook for rescheduling rules and post in the #reschedule-reporting channel if a reschedule is agreed upon. Forfeits will be reported to the #forfeit-reporting channel in the CEA Discord server by the team captain.

Season Format: Exact season format will be announced before the season begins when we know the exact number of teams. This section will be updated along with an announcement email for all captains. There will be two at least two stages: Non-elimination Regular Season (~8 weeks) and Elimination Playoffs

II. Rules

  • Match Overview
    1. A match is collection of rounds. A round consists of a 1v1 conquest series between two players.
  • Basic Participation Rules.
    1. Players may not look at an opposing player’s monitor or projected screen
    2. Players who quit out of a game before it has ended, (unless disconnection rules apply), will lose the game.
  • Team format
    1. Teams must submit their playing roster and each player's decklist for the week on guilded.
    2. Format. Regular season matches are played in a team best-of-5 series, where the last match, if needed, is an ace round, the rules of which are defined below.
    3. Round Order. The first 4 rounds may be played out of order, or even in parallel, according to player preference (default is serial and in order). Rounds played out of order will be scored as though they had been played in the published order.
    4. Ace Round. If neither team has won the match after the first 4 rounds, the final round should be played in order to determine a winner for the match..
      1. Eligibility. Any player on the team roster can play an ace round, including players from the first 4 rounds. However, no player may play more than 2 rounds total during a match.
      2. Selection process. Before playing an ace round, each team captain privately submits their team’s player and decklist to the referee (or neutral third party if no referees are available). Once both teams have submitted, the referee reveals the players and decklist. (Note: an ace player’s decklist need not match their decklist on previous rounds.)
  • Individual Round Format
    1. Rounds will be conquest format. A player must win one game with each of his three decks to win the round.
    2. Each player must submit decklists from three unique classes with their captains lineup submission.
    3. When a player wins a game, the deck used by the winning player cannot be used for the remainder of the match.
    4. The losing player can keep the same deck used or switch to a different one of their choice.

III. Stoppage of Play

  1. Disconnecting from a round should put the round in a paused state.
  2. Players will have 10 minutes to return to the round. This is cumulative multiple disconnects exceeding 10 minutes total will result in forfeit of round.

IV. Contact Info

  1. Discord Server: discord.gg/cea
  2. Email Contacts:
    1. Game and Rules related: tournaments@cea.gg
    2. Business, money, and sponsorship related: business@cea.gg
    3. Other: administrator@cea.gg