Xiaomeng ‘VKLiooon’ Li took on all comers at the Hearthstone Global Finals at BlizzCon this weekend, defeating American Brian ‘bloodyface’ Eason 3-0 to become the first Chinese Hearthstone Global Champion.
The 23-year-old began the day by beating Chen ‘tom60229’ Wei Lin 2-0, sending the 2017 World Champ into the lower bracket. She followed that up with another 2-0 win against European Chris ‘Fenomeno’ Tsakopoulos.
VKLiooon entered the semifinals and took on Kevin ‘Casie’ Eberlein. After some back and forth, she emerged victorious, notching a 3-2 win and securing her seat in the finals. There she pitted her Druid deck against bloodyface’s Shaman build, which she swept with three straight wins to earn the title of best Hearthstone player in the world – and become the first Chinese player and the first woman to raise the trophy.
“I want to say to all the girls out there that have a dream for esports, for competition, for glory: if you want to do it and you believe in yourself, you should just forget your gender and go for it,” Li said in a post-tournament interview with Blizzard.
You can check out the final rounds of the tournament, and see both deck lists, over at the official Hearthstone site. Here’s the Twitch stream of the final rounds (and if you’re on mobile, skip to 5:55:12)
There’s plenty more Hearthstone news out of BlizzCon this weekend. The next expansion, called Descent of Dragons, comes out next month, and there’s a Hearthstone spin on the auto-battler genre called Hearthstone Battlegrounds on the way too.
You can also get our full breakdown of the weekend’s headlines over at our BlizzCon news roundup.