Photo: Millenium
Thomas "Thefishou" Guedj is the last LAN champion of 2014. The Frenchman defeated Marcin "Gnimsh" Filipowicz in a seven game thriller and triumphed with the M-House Cup trophy on home soil.
After two days of rumble in Marseille, a champion was crowned. Coming from the open qualifiers, Thefishou had to play established names like Gnimsh, Amaz and Savjz before standing tall as M-House Cup king.
The tournament saw several upsets, starting with the early elimination of world champion James "Firebat" Kostesich. The American had tough matches against open qualifier winners Un33d and Orange and went out with a total score of 1-6. In the same group, Team Liquid's Janne "Savjz" Mikkonen escaped by the skin of his teeth, finishing second after almost losing to Orange in five games.
In Group B, defending champion Amaz was also ousted, finishing third in his group, losing to eventual runner-up Gnimsh 2-3 in the deciding match and the Pole followed group winner Thefishou into the playoffs.
Thefishou, who became known during the BlizzCon European qualifiers for crushing face with his aggressive mage deck, had a tough road ahead of him. The first game in the playoffs was against Savjz but with the help of his [card]Feign Death[/card] Hunter, the Frenchman was able to take a 2-0 lead which he later turned into a final 4-2 score, putting him in the grand finals. There he faced Gnimsh again, who had just beaten the other French player Un33d in the semi finals.
Despite losing 0-3 to Thefishou in the group stages, Gnimsh now gave the Frenchman his toughest fight yet. Thefishou took an important win in game one, eliminating Gnimsh's mech mage but the Pole recovered on his druid and swung the score around. The two then traded set for set and the series game down to a druid versus miracle game seven, with Gnimsh piloting the rogue. It was then that the pressure from the druid broke Gnimsh and the Cloud 9 captain broke, giving Thefishou his first major tournament victory of his career.
