eSports

GWENT Gets New Champion in Salt Mine Tourney

CD PROJEKT RED, creators of The Witcher series of games, announce that Damian “TailBot” Kaźmierczak has won the April 2018 GWENT Challenger tournament.

The event took place this past weekend in “Wieliczka” Salt Mine, Poland, where eight of the best GWENT players from around the world competed for their share of the $100,000 prize pool, Crown Points, as well as the Challenger winner’s gold signet ring. The tournament also revealed Kaźmierczak as the third champion, after Adrian “Lifecoach” Koy and Frederick “Freddybabes” Bird, to join the cast of GWENT World Masters — the grand finale tournament of GWENT’s official esport series, set to take place in 2019.

Continuing GWENT Challenger’s unique approach to esports, blending high-stakes competitive action with narrative storytelling, online audiences were treated to live-action shorts in-between matches. Starring talented cosplayers also present on set of the event, the shorts depicted the origin story of the April 2018 GWENT Challenger winner’s ring and how it made its way into “Wieliczka”, that for the duration of the tournament became a dwarven salt mine.

Recordings of the coverage from the April 2018 GWENT Challenger are available on the official CD PROJEKT RED Twitch channel.

The final standings for the tournament are as follows:

WINNER
Damian “TailBot” Kaźmierczak (Poland)

FINALISTS
Damian “TailBot” Kaźmierczak (Poland) — $61,000
Frederick “Freddybabes” Bird (Great Britain) — $16,000

SEMIFINALISTS
Andrzej “Adzikov” Bal (Poland) — $11,000
Zehua “Huyahanachann” Zhao (China) — $11,000

QUARTERFINALISTS
Nikolay “Cmel” Sakharov (Russia) — $1,000
Jan “Superjj102” Janssen (Germany) — $0
Benjamin “Kolemoen” Pfannstiel (Germany) — $0
Cameron “I_aPOROgise” Cook (Australia) — $0

CD PROJEKT RED would like to thank the participants, as well as everyone watching the event online, for making the April 2018 GWENT Challenger a great tournament. GWENT Masters will return with more Witcher Card Game rivalry this May with the next GWENT Open.

GWENT Challenger is part of GWENT Masters — the official esports series of GWENT: The Witcher Card Game. For the complete overview of GWENT Masters, including the ruleset, tournament dates, and format, visit masters.playgwent.com.

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John Breeden II

John has spent his journalism career covering just about everything, from small-town meetings and crime scenes to Capitol Hill and the U.S. Congress. He got his start writing about games and technology with a computer column called On the Chip Side, which grew to more than 1 million in circulation and ran in newspapers across several states. Today, John is an award-winning journalist with more than 25 years of experience. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek and many other publications, and he writes a regular technology and government column for Nextgov/FCW and hosts security and educational webinars for FedInsider. He is also the founder of the Tech Writers Bureau and the chief editor of GameIndustry.com. He still loves disappearing into games, whether that means crawling through Baldur’s Gate dungeons deep into the night or planning one more big offensive in the latest wargame.