Photo: ESL
The Archon powerhouse is about to face the European rankings leader for the World Championship for a spot in the grand finals.
Barely catching the train to the playoffs after defeating James "Greensheep" Luo, world champion James "Firebat" Kostesich was determined to go all the way in the first Gfinity Arena for Hearthstone. With all the achievements on his account, however, the Archon marquee came very close to elimination in what would've been yet another Gfinity upset.
Firebat was paired with Group A king Stanislav "Anaro" Jirák, the Czech player who made waves last night winning the group that was the death of some of tournament's favorites in Thijs "ThijsNL" Molendijk and Harald "Powder" Gimre. At one point of their quarter-final face-off, Anaro was ahead in the series 2-1. As his Mech Mage lost to Firebat's own Frost control the score was tied and it all came down to game five. In it, the Oil Rogue was Firebat's salvation once again and the only American in the tournament came a stop closer towards the grand finals.
In the second quarter final, the #1 EU seeded player so far in the 2015 World Championship campaign Ole "Naiman" Batyrbekov took a 3-1 win over Sebastian "Forsen" Fors. Naiman came second in Group D earlier today, knocking out Sebastian "Xixo" Bentert out of the tournament and making for one of the more anticipated face-offs in the first round of the playoffs.
"Forsen's Warrior might be his downfall," Gnimsh and Monk commented as the series went underway, as they watched the deck become easy prey to Naiman's hunter. Omitting [card]Brawl[/card] from the decklist, the casters continued, could be a major flaw when facing minion-heavy decks, which was exactly what Naiman was bringing. In the end, though Forsen did steal a game out of the Kazakhstani, a 1-3 loss sent him packing.
Eyes now turn to the next quarter final, where Group B's winner Jan "Faramir" Engelmann faces one of the surprises in the tournament, local contender Simon "Sottle" Welch. The Brit will get the chance to shock out another Trig Esports player out of the tournament after beating Powder twice in the group stage 3-2 and 3-1.
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