Visiting the Fireside Gathering
It’s the weekend, time to hang out with friends and go for a drink! This weekend the girls from Girl Gamer Galaxy and friends chose to visit the Fireside Gathering 15th edition at game café De 2 Klaveren in Amsterdam. Fireside Gathering is a small Hearthstone competition hosted by Lucas a.k.a. ’the Innkeeper’. The moment we entered the café Lucas came to say hi and made us feel welcome. He was very enthusiastic and was willing to tell us about anything we wanted to know.
What is this gathering all about?
We took a sit at the bar and ordered our drinks so we could take a look at what everybody was doing. All around us guys and girls were sitting across from each other with their own gaming gear and tense faces. The Innkeeper explained to us that what we were seeing was a tournament for fun, where beginners and pro HearthStone players could join to participate. Lucas works with a Swiss format, which basically works like this. Over the course of 5 rounds you play against people with similar scores as yourself. So let’s say you have an awfull start, your matches will be against other people who’ve also had a bit of bad luck. If you start to do better, your opponents will better. Within the Swiss format you have a chance to redeem yourself. At the end the finals are played with the last two people standing.
Girls are competing too
When the first rounds were over people got some drinks and started talking with eachother about the games. This is when we spoke with two different girls to see what brought them to the Fireside Gathering. First we spoke with Lumi, a cheerfull girl that has been visiting the Fireside Gatherings every month for a year now. She streams mostly Hearthstone and sometimes Path of Exile or Overwatch on her own Twitch channel. Needles to say, she loves playing HearthStone and she’s been playing the game since the bèta. She even managed to get Legend a couple of times and is rank 3 at this moment. Curious to see how she would fare in a real life competition she decided to participate. Ever since she loves to participate because it’s nice to talk to people and share frustrations and being salty together after losing a game. Much better than sitting alone at home moping.
The second girl we got to talk to was Ilu. Even though it was her very first time at the Fireside Gathering she managed to get to second place! She’s been playing the game ever since it was in bèta and then quit for a while. A few months ago she got back into the game again and noticed it was going well. During her games at the café everything worked out for her while she was playing her Shaman, Warlock, Hunter and Mage decks. During the finals she didn’t get the best hands to play, but she was already excited to have gotten this far on her first try. We think this lady is very talented and we hope to see her again at the next Fireside Gathering.
Get out of your house!
At the end of the day we had so much fun and met new people. The Fireside Gathering is really a nice place to visit once a month even if you don’t play the game yourself. The coziness of a small café combined with talking to other gamers makes it worth your while. And if you like to participate at the tournement, you can. You need to visit the Fireside Gathering Facebookpage to register. Let us know if you are planning to go to the next one. We hope to see you there!
