Earlier this week, former Magic: The Gathering Hall of Famer and pro player Owen Turtenwald broke his silence on Twitter and Twitch to reveal his participation in the Hearthstone Masters Tour Seoul event and to stream Hearthstone, after Wizards of the Coast replaced Turtenwald at PAX East's Mythic Invitational and removed him from the Magic Pro League, the 32-player competitive league featuring the best Magic players in the world.
Over on Twitter, Turtenwald shared photos from the Hearthstone Masters Tour Seoul event, where he placed 113 out of 328 players for $500 in prizes. Turtenwald said that he downloaded Hearthstone on May 1, 2019 and qualified for the Masters Tour Seoul event. He also qualified for the upcoming Masters Tour Bucharest.
"Most fun I've had in years was playing pro-level Hearthstone in South Korea at #MastersTourSeoul," Turtenwald said. "Feels good to be back competing for my share of the $1,000,000 in prize money (Seoul + Bucharest). In 1-hour I will go live on Twitch and share my experience with this amazing game." Turtenwald said that he wasn't sponsored to play Hearthstone.
During Turtenwald's Twitch stream, he was wearing a Hearthstone t-shirt and you can see that he also has a Hearthstone blanket and pillow.
"[Hearthstone] is my favorite game," Turtenwald said (via HipstersoftheCoast). "It is the most skill-intensive game I've ever played, that's for damn sure."
Turtenwald left Magic over sexual allegations but Wizards of the Coast didn't officially announce the reason why he was removed from the Magic Pro League. During his stream, viewers kept asking him about the events leading to his departure from Magic, so he acknowledged, saying, "I recognize that I'm getting a few keyboard bullies here in the chat, and d that's something I used to do when I was younger, I used to harass people on the internet. But then lately, I've had to think, ‘What would I rather do? Harass strangers on the internet or play a game of Hearthstone?'"
Turtenwald talked about the lessons he learned playing Hearthstone. "Learning to play Hearthstone actually made me a better person. Just the amount that it taught me to study statistics, data analysis, calculations, and I had to be ruthless with my self evaluation."
Turtenwald's Hearthstone username is ZhangFei, the name of one of the characters of the Peach Garden Oath, a fictional event in Luo Guanzhong's historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Turtenwald, Peach Garden Oath was also the Magic team name of Reid Duke, and William Huey Jensen.
Wizards of the Coast also turned Peach Garden Oath into a Magic card in the Portal: Three Kingdoms expansion.
Last March, just one day before the Mythic Invitational at PAX East, Wizards of the Coast announced that Turtenwald would not be participating in the Magic Arena event, and that he would be replaced by retired Pro Tour commentator Brian David-Marshall.
Kotaku later reported that Turtenwald had been accused of "exhibited a pattern of predatory behavior toward female Magic players that spans several years" but it was unclear whether these allegations played into Wizards of the Coast's decision to remove him from the Mythic Invitational and the Magic Pro League.
The DCI and Wizards of the Coast didn't officially ban Turtenwald but the former MTG Hall of Famer hasn't been participating at high-level Magic tournaments lately. It's amusing to see Turtenwald enjoy playing a game other than Magic competitively, and this shows that he has a talent for card strategy games.
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