The second edition of the Millenium House Cup in Marseille ended with a surprising victor, as French player Thomas “TheFishou” Guedj came all the way from the open qualifiers to take home the trophy and the €3000 prize money.
With a field comprised of one half French qualifier players and one half international pros, the locals more than held their own against their big name opponents. With Guedj defeating Marcin “Gnimsh” Filipowicz in the final, his GamersOrigin team mate Gregoire “Un33D” Bodin took third place with a final victory over Janne “Savjz” Mikkonen.
It was a bad weekend for Team Archon, as defending M-House Cup champion Jason “Amaz” Chan and reigning world champion James “Firebat” Kostesich both fell at the initial group stage. Kostesich had a particularly bad time of it, finishing 0-2 for the weekend with losses to Bodin and Jon “Orange” Westberg.
Guedj is not the most high profile name in Hearthstone, but he did get within one game of qualification for the Hearthstone World Championships back in September. With his completely unorthodox aggro Mage deck he shocked many players at the European qualifiers in Stockholm, though he has appeared in virtually no international tournaments since then.
In this tournament it was another innovative deck that caught the eye — this time, a Hunter deck. Making use of the new card Feign Death and the new piloted mechs Fishou once again took players by surprise and used that element of surprise to triumph over Mikkonen among others. Guedj believes that the deck “doesn’t really seem to have any counter deck on paper.”
“I worked really hard to prepare myself to face some of the world best players in this tournament,” he told the Daily Dot. “I knew I had my chance, but I also knew it was going to be really tough.”
Guedj also said that he hopes to take part in more international tournaments in 2015, as his opportunities this year have been limited.
For second place finisher and Cloud9 team captain Filipowicz, the second place finish is his first tournament placing in over six months.
“Millennium Cup had a special meaning to me because of a couple reasons” Filipowicz said. “Firstly it’s where my casting career has started as after co-hosting it with Amaz I started to get some casting offers. Secondly it’s the last live event for this very rich year and I really wanted to perform well.”
Filipowicz also said he agreed with other players that Dr Boom was proving to be a real force in the meta game, and that he also believed Mech Mage was a deck with a lot of potential.
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