Season 10 Team Fortress 2 ESEA-IM Playoff Round 1 Predictions

After a two and a half month long season ESEA playoffs finally arrive.  For some teams, this means taking a break during the offseason and then back to doing nothing but badlands scrims until they hate the thought of the map, considering playing next or not, or the dreaded “should I make a looking post?”  This season’s playoffs picture has a lot of different teams, but a fair amount of familiar faces.  As usual, a few teams moved up, a few died, and there were a handful that almost gutted their entire roster.  The season was not as clear cut as some of the seasons in the past have been.  There was never a clear number one team, which was leaps and bounds ahead of the rest.  More teams have a better core this season, though most of the top teams obviously have their best player, there aren’t as many top teams that are carried by one particular player in frags.  I think the later rounds in the playoffs will really yield some very close matches.  The top four have a lot of experience and talent distributed between them, some of the teams have very good DM abilities, while other teams rely on playing smart and wining rounds off of the smallest advantages.  Overall this playoffs season should be a lot better for IM, with no teams off-classing, losing their best player, or not being able to field six….at least we all hope.

The map being granary. The teams just played it on week 8, so teams will have plenty of practice on it.

Now time for some predictions:

LASER BEAMS (1) vs. 90LG (8)

LASER BEAMS has had a very good season, and ends it with a division best 14-2 record.  Their only losses coming from Xensity on gravelpit and the dinosaurs (or pinball wizards) on gullywash.  Teams they beat on different maps during the season.  Possibly the most experienced team in IM, most of it’s members have been playing since season 1-3 and many of those seasons including invite.  Going up against this team you have to be prepared for every smart play, the mistakes you make are going to cost you big time, and it is going to be very hard to put up rounds unless you can counter their mistakes perfectly as they won’t make many.  Their combo is led by Lange, a very strong pocket who makes a lot of calls for the team.  He has a lot of experience and leads the team in frags and damage.  Though the rest of the combo, drdonutman on medic and ben on demo, aren’t as experienced, having Lange leading them is going to be a big plus.  As for LASER BEAMS scouts, well saying they have experience is a bit of an understatement.  Seanbud who has been a soldier for a good amount his career and then went to play medic, and pyyyour….well pyyyour has played everything (no, really, he has).  This is his first season of scout but he has experience with all the other classes on other teams.  Those two are one of the smartest scout combos in IM, and it really isn’t surprising considering their track record.  This team is very capable of just overwhelming their opponent with smart, concise play.

90lg, who just barely got into playoffs through the 4 way tie of Mobility, Mayhem, and Kawaii Kingz with enough rounds won, is really going to have a tough road ahead of them.  When compared with the grizzled ancients of LASER BEAMS, 90lg’s players seem brand new. Aside from REP- and DennisTheMenace, this is their first season in anything other than open, with a few of them having only limited playoff experience in the lower division. During the season I was very confused by 90lg.  They had a very good week on gravelpit beating teams that I didn’t think they were going to.  They also beat Mobility twice during the season, so obviously they belong in the playoffs.  However, they do have two losses against Kawaii Kingz, who aren’t in the playoffs.  Though their demo does put up a decent amount of frags, I feel as though they are really going to have to rely on rep- to be making smart plays for their combo as pocket, and hopefully DennisTheMenace can do some work on the flank and start to open things up.

Overall I just don’t see anything going wrong for LASER BEAMS, they’ve been playing this game a long time and they really know what they are doing.  They don’t have the best fraggers at every single class, but honestly they don’t need it and I don’t see 90lg out fragging them.  I would expect that the mid fights are very securely won by LASER BEAMS with their great communication and team work.  They are going to be able to do things that 90lg just hasn’t seen before, and they won’t be able to react to it.

Prediction: 5-0 LASER BEAMS

The dinosaurs (2) vs Mayhem (7) by Sigma

At the start of S10, many people — myself included — saw the dinosaurs (then Pinball Wizards) as a team with the potential to dominate IM. The early season results spoke otherwise with some odd losses to Vector and Mobility, but they finished the season strong, taking only two more losses at the hands of top-ranked LASER BEAMS and the Ruwin era of Washed Up Gaming. Late in the season, the dinosaurs switched vhalin to pocket, which allows them to fully utilize his strong ability to capitalize on small advantages and bring timely aggression reminiscent of S8′s CheckSix. Add in sweater’s considerable damage output and experience, and you have yourself an extremely strong combo. Holding down the flank, the dinosaurs have squid, tang, and cannon, all of whom have played together for several seasons on the PW roster. I can’t say that their flank players jump out at me as the types to really carry the team to victory, but all that they need to do is listen to their combo, apply pressure at the right times, and their strong DM will take care of the rest. Cannon seems to have adapted fairly well to roaming after pocketing all season, which is one plus, and gives the additional benefit of a smooth transition back into the combo if vhalin goes down on a play. All in all, this is a solid team that has a shot at winning the playoffs, but will need to turn around their regular season results versus LASER BEAMS and Washed Up Gaming to do so.

On the other side of this match, there’s Mayhem, a team that’s been kicking around with the same core of gremaud, caidh, and defiance since S8. They managed to slip into the playoffs with an 8-8 record thanks to few key wins in the last weeks after a somewhat underwhelming season. The first thing you notice when watching or playing this team is the incredible damage output their combo generates by tanking gremaud. If their opponents aren’t careful, they’ll find themselves being ripped apart by stickies in positions that would be safe against other teams. Their flank, composed of defiance, masked jackal (on esea, abramelin), and boink, much like the dinosaurs, is overshadowed by their combo. They hold their own, but they’re best suited to cleaning up on the damage their combo puts out. The question for Mayhem is whether or not they can properly coordinate their team to capitalize on their advantages and mitigate their disadvantages — a hard task, considering they collectively have less experience than the dinosaurs.

Seeing these two teams go head-to-head on granary should be a decent match, but I’m afraid that the dinosaurs will be calling all of the shots here. Squid and tang are not an easy scout pair to approach on mid, so boink and mj will have to be careful to stay alive until the combo arrives, then hope that their heavy classes can make enough of a splash to clean things up. I think that most of mids will go to the dinosaurs, but if pet and gremaud can make it out, they might be able to turn a round around (yeeeah) with a good exchange in yard. Overall, though, I think that the dinosaurs won’t give many opportunities for Mayhem to take control, so we will probably see the higher seed move on here.

Prediction: 5-2 the dinosaurs

Washed Up Gaming (3) vs Beybladers (6)

Washed Up Gaming comes into playoffs with a 12-4 record and is sitting at the 3^rd seed.  This team’s record, though good, does not show how well they are playing right now.  This team was a clear top 8 when the season began, but it wasn’t very clear if they were going to be able to compete with the top 3 IM teams.  However, mid-way through the season, Washed Up Gaming made their best decision. “Ruwin joined Washed Up Gaming (Intermediate) 12/11/2011”. In their 6 matches since Ruwin has joined the team they have only dropped 2 rounds.  It isn’t Ruwin’s dm ability that helps Washed Up Gaming so much, so much as the fact that he is very smart and experienced.  He carries them with his comms and positioning.  But to say this team is only something because of Ruwin is a bit unfair, moving dchow to scout helped them add more dm to that position, and unf puts down very consistent damage on the enemy.  Mid-way roster changes almost never work out as teams would hope, but in this situation Washed Up Gaming really made the right decision.  Before it seemed like their combo never had a real idea of what they wanted to do.  Now it’s made a 180 and they are really going strong.

Beybladers has a master mind of their own, Sigma.  He has been playing medic at a high level for a long time and really takes an analytical look to the game and how it’s played.  However, this team isn’t just Sigma, it is Sigma and sephy; possibly the best medic/pocket combo in IM.  Sephy is an extremely good pocket and his stats really show it (1^st in frags, 4^th in damage and damage per minute for Intermediate).  Another part of their success is Mike’s (or healbot/deselect) smart play at demo.  He doesn’t have the best damage in IM, but it is respectable when compared to other demos.  He really uses his positioning to his advantage and knows when he needs to be aggressive; he’s improved a lot compared to the start of the season.  The problem that this team usually has is on their flank.  Their scouts, now Seymour and kraka, have decent dm, but don’t have a lot of experience and sometimes it shows in matches.  However, if they can do their job, go huge, and make plays, it can really open things up for the rest of the team.  Tyranny was on scout, but is now on roamer, a change that will probably help them overall.  He isn’t new to the position and hopefully he can help secure the flank a little better than he could on scout.  This team has a chance against some of the teams in IM, and with Sigma and sephy there can always be some magic.

Washed Up Gaming is really strong right now, and don’t look to be slowing down.  If Beybladers plays at their very best, they could put up some decent rounds.  They are going to have to make very few mistakes against Washed Up to have a chance, though.  The mistakes that they do make are going to cost them a lot more rounds than it would against other IM teams.  So they are really going to have to play as a unit, but I just don’t see it happening unfortunately.  These teams already played each other on granary and it was a 5-0 for Washed Up Gaming, I think this game is going to be very similar to that.

Prediction: 5-1 Washed Up Gaming

Xensity (4) vs Leviathan Gaming (5)

This is going to be my match of the week.  These two teams both lost their week 8 matches on granary, and both lost to the same two teams (LASER BEAMS and the dinosaurs).  In the beginning of the season these teams met on gravel pit and Xensity won 2-0, however they met later on in the season on gullywash and Xensity came back from a 1-3 to win the game 5-4 (something they’ve done before D: ).  Both these teams have experience, but Xensity has more all across the board.  The strong play from Xensity really comes out of their heavy class play.  Hero and TicTac are maybe the best roamer/pocket pair in Intermediate.  They make a lot of smart plays and have very solid dm to back it.  They also have the man the myth the legend, SolidSnake on demoman.  His play style is not what most people expect from a demo and sometimes it leads him to get picked when his team needs him up.  Be that as it may, he still puts down a lot of damage and frags for his team.  Something that I feel is missing from this team is coordinated scout play, but they picked up Arizona after Arc’s wife cut him from the roster and I think that will help them secure their flank a bit more.  This team comes up with some interesting plays on pushes that play into Solid’s off the combo play style on demoman.  I think some of those pushes are going to secure them rounds, but it might give LG the chance to push back.

Leviathan Gaming recently made a big roster change by moving chaaz, or boogie the music man himself, back to demoman.  Though they will have better consistency on demoman, their soldier pair might be more weak because of it.  Now Namlay, the old invite scout for spacewhales, is playing pocket for them.  What I’ve seen of him hasn’t been that amazing, but hopefully his past in invite will help him know what to do in each situation.  It is going to be very interesting to see how he compares to the soldier pair of hero and TicTac of Xensity, but I think it is going to be a weak spot for LG during the match.  Luckily he will have a very experienced medic behind him in grillz, which hopefully can help Namlay be in the right spots at the right time.  One of their strongest points is going to be their scout play from zclipse.  He has very strong DM on scout, and can put himself into spots where he can just go huge.  The test for him will be if he can pick the right times to go in for a play, and not get himself picked trying to be over aggressive.  There is no doubt, though, that he will be making plays for his team and helping them win rounds.  I think the flank of LG is going to be able to play a strong role in what success they have against Xensity.

Though there is a big difference between the top 4 teams of IM and the bottom 4, the middle is pretty close.  LG is going to have a chance to do work on mid, and I would be surprised if they didn’t win at least half the mids.  Zclipse is going to have a chance to get some picks early on mid against their scouts.  I think he is going to have to be careful when going aggressive against Solidsnake on mid because the man still hits crazy pipes.  However, if Xensity’s scouts and demo can put pressure on LG at the start of the mid fight it is really going to open things up for hero and TicTac to get picks on mid.  I think as the game goes on Xensity will have better ubers and will be able to outplay the heavies of LG.

Prediction: 5-3 Xensity