Pikeville, KY – UPIKE Esports battled with MSC rival Shawnee State Thursday evening in the team's second Hearthstone competition of the season. The Bears defeated SSU 3-2, improving to 2-0 in the Hearthstone Open Tournament.

Hearthstone is a collectible card game that uses a turn-based system between two opponents using a deck of 30 cards along with a selected hero. Mana, which is the currency in the game, is how players determine what card they can play. The object of the game is to get the enemy hero down to zero health.

The Bear's lineup consisted up Jeremy Stacy, Dylan Osborne, Nick Letherbarrow. UPIKE brought a deck lineup that consisted of a quest-hand warlock, face hunter, quest mage, and anacondra druid.
Shawnee State's deck lineup featured a face hunter, garrote rouge, elemental shaman, and token druid.

SSU banned UPIKE's quest hand warlock while the Bears banned Shawnee's token druid.

In game one, UPIKE's face hunter defeated SSU's elemental shaman to start the match out 1-0. Game two saw UPIKE's quest mage battle the Shawnee's face hunter in a tight game that came down to an extra card play that pushed the Bears to win, going up 2-0.

Games three and four went quickly as SSU won with their elemental shaman and face hunter cards to tie the match at 2-2.

UPIKE bounced back in the final match with the anacondra druid, defeating the garrote rouge to take the match and improve to 2-0 in the tournament.

UPIKE Hearthstone returns to action on Monday, October 18^th for the third match of the Hearthstone season. Opponent will be revealed this weekend.