Undefeated in solo matches in WC3L, won 80% of x6tences points, and led them to  a 2-0 record and 8 points total over two of the best teams in their group. Juan ‘Vortix' Moreno Durán has put x6tence in the driver's seat in their group in WC3L.

Part of the next generation of young gun European players, Vortix is 16 years old and the younger brother of Meet Your Makers Superstar Pedro Moreno ‘LucifroN' Durán. The two Spaniards live together, with LucifroN just turning 18 and also have an older brother and former semi-pro player Jose Luis ‘Ryo_' Moreno Durán who was pretty good himself, who now does organizing for x6tence.

Vortix has brought a very aggressive and micro intensive way of playing Undead, following in the tradition of Dmitriy 'Happy' Kostin and Zhuo 'TeD' Zeng before him. When asked about whether he looked to the two top undeads he says while smiling, "You exactly guessed it. I used to watch reps of TeD and Happy, I still do it though..."

Of course living with his brother, one of the top Orc players in Europe, if not the world, he has gotten plenty of Undead v Orc experience and this has shaped his view of the game and the strength of his matchups. "Yes of course (I have a strong Orc matchup), to be honest I can't really see the big imbalance that many people are whining about. I guess it's because of training with him, but yes, my UD vs Orc is quite good." However, it doesn't always end up as a great thing. "We usually train a lot even though it's not really good, since we meet at almost every Spanish tournament final."

This is both Vortix and x6tence's first season in the WC3L and he admits it has given him a bit of a lift as he enjoys the new style. "I really think (the format) is good, I really like it. Old styles were starting to be a bit repetitive, and with this new system everyone, even the ‘lower' players have a chance to win to the against better ones."

He's now already helped to beat Millennium and now he has led them over Raptor in close matches. "I didn't expect that, even when I saw the lineups I thought it was pretty bad for us, because I didn't want to play versus psyko, but I relaxed myself and did the best I could, it turned up great." You have to raise doubts about the team somewhat as other than Vortix, Yange seems to be the only player capable of getting points, at least thus far, but Vortix doesn't seem to put pressure on them. "It's hard to say who are the strongest on our team, everyone is pretty good, it's hard to judge that, and I'm quite happy with them."

Perhaps even more impressive was the recent match against Raptor. "When I first saw the lineups I thought it was nice to meet Cash... The first game started pretty well when I killed his two grunts at the beginning, after that I got more confidence and I kept playing well, despite an error I did in mid game. I didn't like second game quite much as I did many mistakes, but a bad choice by him making exe kinda gave me the game."

The match came down once again to the Ace map where he would play one of Europes better Night Elf players, Daniel 'LiiLD.C' Claesson. "I kinda felt that it was such a weird game, I got a great beginning making his DH waste TP in early game, then I surrounded it again and killed him,  but as game went on I started to mess up with my gargs, I lost many of them, but then my wyrm came up and he decided to fight vs all my army under 50 food, so I took advantage of the situation."

He has used both ghouls and fiends with regularity without it affecting his aggressiveness or overall playstyle. "I prefer to play fiends, I feel safer using them, but it's quite hard to start with fiends versus Night Elf or Human so I normally switch to ghouls vs those races, also depending on my opponent or map I play one strat or another. But I guess I prefer the fiend wyrm destroyer stuff."

LucifroN and Happy made up the last generation of young guns in WC3L and it looks as if Vortix may be the next fast rising star. When I asked him if seeing his brother win huge events like ESWC Cheonan gave him confidence in performing internationally, he had this to say: "Well, I think he always had more talent than me to play videogames, so I've always thought it is quite hard to be as good as he is, but yes, it kinda gave me quite much confidence."

Having just defeated one of the best players of playday 1, the Russian Orc Cash 2-0, I guess he knew what he was talking about with his Orc matchup. Even so, there are a ton of top Orcs in WC3L such as Grubby, Lyn, WhO, Violet, Fly100% and his brother, but it seemed to bother him not the slightest. He said laughing "I think I am quite good vs Orc, I fear most those humans around with their sneaky towers." Somewhat surprising, Vortix fears Humans the most, "After (World Elite's 7-0), and having so many humans in their team, I am quite afraid of meeting WE, but anyways the style Chinese humans have is quite different from the European ones, but still I wouldn't like to meet Sky or Infi."

While sometimes up and coming professionals that rely on micro as a part of their strategy have trouble when they play against superior players, Vortix acknowledges the difficulty in playing against top micro players like Moon and Fly100%. Light natured as ever he said, "It will be tough for sure, I think it'll be possible anyways, I train quite much my surrounds and guess that it will work fine vs higher level players, except ThomasG possibly, I tried surrounding his demon hunter a hundred times and most of them were epic fails."

He is obviously standing in his brother's footsteps and has huge shoes to fill. I asked him if one of his goals was to become a top professional player and he had this to say:
"That's hard to answer, I think that when you play you never look forward to becoming professional, it's just something that occurs while you are enjoying the game, suddenly you realize you're on a high level. I would like to become a professional player of course, but I have other things in mind at the moment, like studies and so on, unless I get very good in little time and I really see a high chance of becoming professional I guess I'll keep on with studies."

Now that x6tence has beaten 2 of the top 3 other teams in the group, Vortix is extremely confident about his team's chances. "I really think we have chances to qualify, even though it's gonna be very hard for sure, but anyways I considered one of the toughest [M] and we managed to win them. I think that we can beat everyone, considering how well our team is playing lately, I think we will have most troubles versus Mojawi, but I think we can manage to win the other teams if we play well."

When I asked him if x6tence could win WC3L?

"Yes, and we will!"