Season 19 powered by Tt eSPORTS: Week 6 Report Card

The second casualty of Season 19, but the first to leave a gaping hole in the schedule, have been beaten into submission. The sheepy dog's hand-less Politically correct pander have called it a day, no doubt terminally intimidated by coolclan successfully picking up a golden cap loss point and building an insurmountable 2 point lead.

Seeing as so many will now lose out on the opportunity to fill their boots against them, I’ve expunged Politically correct pander from the ratings. Their games never happened, frags against them were never earned, Kissakala was never dangerously close to taking medic of the week 3 times causing me to be lynched by enraged Latvians.

So what chaos has this wrought on the ratings? Well… a bit

SUAVE

Even though they now fall farther behind in terms of maps played due to inactivity this week, on performances SUAVE are still top dogs although by a narrow margin. When they get to beat up on someone they’ll leap out into a distant lead again.

They still have a lot of games to play, but they’re favourites to reel off a series of wins. Until then there’s not much more to say.

Man of the people: WARHURYEAH

 

Awsomniac

http://logs.tf/530375

http://logs.tf/530431

Leapfrogging Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers into second spot the indefatigable Frenchies are once again the top pretender to SUAVE’s throne (OK, technically it’s nobody’s throne right now but you know what I mean). Splitting map points with Planet Express, Awsomniac still own top spot in the table by some considerable margin due to actually playing their games.

Captainhax was in once again for fl1p with Tek shuffled across to scout, and for once the legendary soldier wasn’t able to dominate on Granary. Planet Express owned the mids, Awsomniac seemingly incapable of finding a strategy to break up their defensive stance, simply making gifts of their frags and putting themselves on the back foot almost every round.

Awsomniac and its’ various incarnations have a history of being very hit and miss on Granary despite having great soldiers, and this was no exception against a Planet Express team who are making a habit of playing tight against over extenders and simply letting them give up their frag for free.

Viaduct can be summed up in one name: Flippy. The sniper completely dominated going 25 for 5 and singlehandedly winning the map. He was completely unpressured taking less than 2000 damage, in no small part due to him head-shotting scouts and soldiers attacking his position. Attempts to counter-snipe him failed.

So Awsomniac have finished their regular season matches and are sitting pretty in clear first on 26 points, guaranteed a playoff spot. Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers can’t catch them but SUAVE can overtake them and Salty Frogs can potentially tie on points.

Man of the year:  Exon.

 

Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers

http://logs.tf/530435

http://logs.tf/530356

The Nordic alliance also struggled, splitting the points against 4-25, taking Granary after a protracted battle but losing Viaduct. Granary was very close for a long time (and good to watch), mid fights were going against Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers and mistakes after failed pushes snowballed into lost rounds in their eagerness to make individual plays.

Ultimately Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers mastered the mids, neutralising ShaDowBurn’s fast rollout, and Zebbosai’s ability to Hymzi in and force the enemy uber (accompanied by cannon fodder zappis) paid off. In contrast to last week’s Granary game amppis was dominant, even more so than Zebbosai. zappis also set a season record for airshots with 18 (eighteen).

ryb was consistently effective if quiet, staying alive and supporting his combo, while the flank were unspectacular but not outclassed.

Viaduct is a bit harder to get a handle on as there’s no stv (at the time of writing) and no cast, and pov streams give a limited view of events. It does seem that sniper inferiority cost them, because Herr_P had a massive game on scout that Zebbosai nearly matched. Nowhere else were Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers outmatched.

Dropping these points leaves Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers potentially open to missing out on the playoffs, but then again their only game left is against coolclan. What can go wrong? It’s only phromelo, wltrs and Dennia (aka Team Sniper) on Viaduct.

Ruling by consent: Zebbosai

 

Planet Express

http://logs.tf/529261

http://logs.tf/529271

http://logs.tf/529333

So we come to the mid table clump of teams separated by effectively nothing, just the odd frag here or there, or a poorly chosen offclass. First amongst equals is Planet Express.

Having finally recruited atomic- to fill the roamer spot Planet Express set about demolishing coolclan on Snakewater and Logjam, and embarrassing Awsomniac on Granary. The former nearly went wrong, Planet Express going 3-1 down but as always sheepy dog's hand was instrumental in bringing his team back into contention and they went on to swiftly win the golden cap.

Logjam was a more straightforward affair, Planet Express’s early dominance effectively sealing the win, but slowly waning as the map progressed. A monstrous 21 minute round ate up the remaining time so there could be no come back. Setlet, atomic- and sheepy dog's hand were all top performers, the pocket kaptain having a quiet game although judging from medic deaths his body guarding duties went well.

On Granary against Awsomniac Setlet was once again strong, with kaptain and atomic- also putting up strong numbers. The scouts were unusually quiet, but pursuing a tight no-waste strategy probably robbed sheepy dog's hand of his usual raft of cleanup kills as the heavies were alive to do the finishing off themselves.

On Viaduct only sheepy dog's hand and kaptain were able to keep pace in any meaningful way, everyone else simply being decimated by Flippy’s sniper.

Despite being out of the playoff race Planet Express’s remaining fixtures against Salty Frogs and SUAVE mean they will still have a big say in the fate of this season’s title.

Household name: kaptain

 

4-25

Surely the unluckiest team of the season 4-25 managed to actually get some reward from excellent play for a change, against Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers on Viaduct. It started out well on Granary, taking the lead at 3-2 and 4-3, winning mids and rolling uber advantages straight through to round wins. The round to go 3-2 up was a heartbreaker for Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers after a failed last push was turned into a round loss, but at 4-5 down after a couple of failed Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers last pushes 4-25 weren’t given the same chance and the round loss effectively ended the map.

After that depressing loss on Granary, a map that they took a full part in, it looked like it was going to be another competitive but losing outing, until kensi. picked up the sniper rifle and ShaDowBurn put on his survival kit. kensi. top fragged keeping the rampaging enemy scouts under some control while ShaDowBurn neutralised sniper threats.

ShaDowBurn also tanked the most damage (apart from the always suicidal Shyyou, the most extreme waster of buffs in 6v6 TF2) by use of the blackbox and concheror, his massive airshot count (18, that’s eighteen) giving a clue to a relatively passive style shooting down incoming targets and letting the kills come to him rather than doing the bombing himself.

4-25 have played out a bizarre soldier situation this season, where Shyyou appears to value his life even less than Muuki and the roamer is tasked with staying alive and picking up kills but in total isolation from his medic. There’s no doubt this works better with ShaDowBurn, the quality he brings to the roamer spot making the plan semi-viable, but you’ve got to think that with totally average pocket soldier play some of those golden cap losses would have been regular time wins. Still, someone has to be the spearhead, maybe it all falls apart without Shyyou’s sacrifice.

4-25 round out the season against SUAVE on Viaduct and Badlands. Can kensi. and ShaDowBurn pull out another Viaduct upset? No doubt IPZIE will have a plan to deal with all eventualities.

Housewives favourite: gdk

 

Salty Frogs

Salty Frogs’s game this week against Politically correct pander has been struck from the record so there’s nothing to report, they sit slightly behind 4-25 and Planet Express, but really there’s nothing between this mid table 3… well, to be honest the thing that’s probably dragging Salty Frogs down a bit is droso’s sniper rating. The only people who’ve played sniper more are Flippy, kensi. and Zebbosai, and they’ve all played it far more effectively.

With two sets of Viaduct coming up to round out the season, will droso’s seniority cost his team by self-selecting the perma-sniper role?

People’s champion: baud

 

coolclan

Goal number one achieved: don’t finish last. Scraping another point from a golden cap loss to Planet Express was enough to break Politically correct pander hearts and ensure 7^th spot, yet it could have been so much more. After going 3-1 up, Admirable made a Kritz switch in later rounds when coolclan were trying to contain a resurgent Planet Express, a decision called out as a clear mistake by the TFTV commentary team. Despite managing a two Kritzkrieg advantage in the final scoring round coolclan couldn’t protect the lead.

Smirre did well in rounds not including the Kritz as well as with it, and as usual wltrs was one of coolclan’s better players. Despite receiving a lot of heals phromelo was unable to exert much influence on pocket, although Snakewater tends to be more of a scout map.

Logjam was a more straightforward loss, phromelo was probably their best player in this map but he did spend half of it on sniper. coolclan slowly got back into things showing a bit more resistance on each round until they finally took one, but it took over 20 minutes and time had expired.

coolclan’s final fixture sees them face Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers over Viaduct and Badlands. Although I wouldn’t really expect Badlands to be closely contested Viaduct could be interesting, phromelo‘s current rating is roughly the same as Zebbosai on sniper, but with both teams boasting capable backups as well, getting the sniper decisions right could be key.

Archon: wltrs

 

Team of the week

Pocket Soldier: kaptain (also most improved)

Roaming Soldier: T-Mac (ShaDowBurn most improved)

Demoman: gdk (Smirre most improved)

Scouts: Zebbosai & wltrs (Herr_P and sid vicious most improved)

Medic: Izzy57 ( Knutsson most improved, still no Mirelin this week fanboys)