It seems like a long time ago that Manuel 'GrubbY' Schenkhuizen competed in Zotac. But yesterday the Dutchman made a successful comeback to the weekly cup scene. He defeated last week's winner Hyo Sub 'FoCuS' Eom by three maps to one, becoming the 3rd orc winner in a row and closing the gap on Remind for most Zotac victories.

It was a good run for Grubby, who defeated upcoming nightelf star 'moonfans' 2-0 in the semi-final. He saw off another rising talent earlier in the tournament with a 2-1 scoreline against Mihail 'Kas' Hayda. Focus, on the other hand, narrowly beat the more old school player Wenrui 'Kenshin' Zeng 2-1 in his semi-final game.

It was Focus who started the better on TM. He took a farseer/shadowhunter combination from last week and teched much faster than his opponent. Despite a level three blademaster, Grubby was unable to hold off a tower push from the Korean and was soon 0-1 down.

Grubby took the hero level advantage again on TR but this time he made it count. He out-crept Focus and picked up much better items. The game looked to be heading Grubby's way and when Focus lost his BM trying to creepjack the Dutchman, the game was over. Focus got four towers up in his base but was down by 12 food at the start of the fight. The fact that his BM was still in the altar when the game ended tells its own story.

Secret Valley was a typically fast orc mirror, lasting a mere 11 minutes. With roughly equal heroes and identical armies, the two met at the tavern. Grubby simply out-micro'd his opponent to take a 2-1 lead in the match. The last map, EI, was a similar tale. The first major battle took place at Grubby's orange murloc camp, where Focus was forced to retreat with a similar but damaged army. While he healed up and came straight back, Grubby crept his merc camp and picked up a pendant of mana for his SH. When it hit level three in the ensuing battle, he had more numerous and stronger healing waves, which proved to be decisive.