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After Gnimsh took the nailbiter in a team internal battle of DogeHouse against Artosis, StrifeCro finished off teammate monk in the last match of the quarterfinals. He will now move on to face one of the favorites of the tournament: Savjz.

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The grueling team-kills in the quarterfinals of the SeatStory Cup of Hearthstone have come to an end for now. First Gnimsh edged out Artosis in the closest series so far, now just moments ago StrifeCro sent LiquidValue's captain monk down to the Lower Bracket. In the match up it wasn't so much his trademark Druid with the feared [card]Force of Nature[/card] / [card]Savage Roar[/card] combination that decided the series, but more the tanky presence of his control Warrior.

That being said his Druid got him off to a nice early start against monk, only until monk brought out his Warrior control deck in the second game of the series to level the playing field at 1:1. StrifeCro switched to his Handlock, brought the fierce Warrior to his knee, but just like we saw before, monk came right back and answered the bell. It was Rexxar hunting down the Warlock, who tried to hide behind big creatures only to be hit by the accuracy of the Steady Shot and the relentless charge of the Hunter creatures. So it was at two a piece, with no one really having a massive edge, but trying to perfectly counter each others class choices.

This is exactly what StrifeCro did with his next choice, bringing out the tanky Garrosh as his third choice - a matchup that is more favorable for the Warrior because of the tremendous ability to gain "life" with the passive ability and other cards like [card]Armorsmith[/card] and [card]Shield Block[/card]. As expected it was a close match, ultimately going in favor of the Warrior because of the absence of [card]Starving Buzzard[/card] or [card]Leeroy Jenkins[/card] in monk's hand, while a [card]Frothing Berserker[/card] on the board went up as high as eight attack. Monk lost the race and the battle, leaving him with only one more deck option outside of his "secret deck", which he didn't select to play here. 

He rather went for his Token Druid with two [card]Savage Roar[/card], [card]Power of the Wild[/card] and the essential [card]Violet Teacher[/card] to create a completely stacked board for the OTK potential or relentless overwhelming needle stings. Unfortunately for monk, the needle didn't quite go through the thick armor of Garrosh, who elevated himself to become the match winner of the series for "The Nuts" StrifeCro. Turn 8 [card]Ragnaros the Firelord[/card] into a Turn 9 [card]Ysera[/card] with no answers from monk for those cards got the two off to the races, in which monk aggressively [card]Swipe[/card]d the face to set up potential lethal with the combination. StrifeCro on his own was pushing for lethal and so ek0p hit it the nail on the head in monk's last turn with "[card]Force of Nature[/card] or bust". It turned out to be bust for monk, as StrifeCro wins the series and is now going to face Savjz in the Upper Bracket Semis. Monk on the other side goes down to the Lower Bracket already, where he is scheduled to face the Korean Warcraft 3 legend Lucifer.