Collegiate Hearthstone 2021 Preview | College Esports

Activision Blizzard Collegiate has announced its collegiate Hearthstone program for the 2021 season. Starting on March 10th, the first official Battlegrounds collegiate competition will be held, placing 4 teams of 2 in direct competition with each other in each match. Also, the Standard-format Collegiate Open Division will start play on March 22nd with a total prize pool coming in at $22,800. Each match will be a BO5 Conquest match with 1 ban.

BG season (6 rounds) will end on April 14th and Open Division (9 rounds) will end on April 19th.
Open Division is particularly interesting because it begins around the same time of the Standard Format rotation which is a huge meta shift (440 cards released in 2019 will no longer be playable in Standard). Additionally, a new Core set is being introduced that replaces the existing Classic set that has been the staple card set of Hearthstone since its 2014 release.

Teams to watch include University of Utah, University of Akron, Rochester Institute of Technology, UCLA, and Northeastern University (Varsity level)