(ESEAnews) - It's going to take a while for the gravity of the situation to set in, but Classic Mixup and Leviathan Gaming just returned from their European adventure at the Insomnia LAN and we completed TF2's first international competition. Will jet lag ruin their plans to remain undefeated?! Well, their rematch is probably going to ruin those plans for at least one team. Will the massive letdown of online play compared to the biggest LAN in TF2's history cause some rough patches in week three?!?!?! Only one way to find that one out! On with the predictions! (and make sure you watch for my player spotlight on Powah on Thursday...ish~)
ESEA TF2 INVITE SEASON 12 - WEEK 3
Classic Mixup vs Dont Trip · cp_snakewater · Tue, Sep 18th at 1:40pm
mix > LG 5-3 by dearjohncarter
We got to witness a little bit of Snakewater action between these two at i46, with Mixup coming out on top by the score of 3-1 on the strength of some huge plays out of Harbleu and TLR. The more I watch of LG's online play versus LAN play, the less difference I can see. Tyrone hits a few more airshots at LAN but nothing else seems to really change. I think both teams will be struggling a bit to re-adapt to American living, mostly since they're flipping back to a normal time schedule and Mixup at least are working off their crazy ass hangovers. The flank play for Mixup proved way too strong for LG to handle at i46, with Harbleu and Ruwin constantly in on Shade making plays while Leviathan were trying to make transitions. TLR also made a return to x6-era form, with solo ubers that were probably pumping out about a thousand damage a pop. Mackey was astonishingly good on LAN and had the most effective off-class play in quite some time, but there still seems to be some uncertainty as to whether Mackey or Dave will be playing from here (feel free to correct me on that, LG guys that I was too lazy to message). Now that Mixup can't milk the clock with some expert heavy play out of Enigma, I expect it to go the distance with LG just struggling a little now that Tyreeze won't be wallshotting the enemy soldiers.
tri hards vs Mighty Ducks · cp_snakewater · Wed, Aug 29th at 1:30pm
Prediction: WANG > bud 5-2 by djc-
The more that I watch the new Ducks play, the more strongly I believe two things: 1) so much of their success derives from the play of Seanbud and Decimate, 2) the team really struggles with confidence problems. The first point was obvious; the second one, a little less so. Tons of the team's calls are of the sort that override each other, which makes it pretty difficult to work as a team, and it does not help that most of the team seems to shut down when they scrim anything less than an Invite team. With Decimate and Sean going up against a pretty good scout pair in Weeble and S, I worry about how much effect they can have over this match. It feels like kermit is going to have his choice of where and when to go on Snakewater, with Tri following him around like a lost puppy ready to clean up kermit's huge damage/pee on all of his shoes.
egyptian flamingos vs Pinball Wizards · cp_snakewater · Wed, Aug 29th at 1:30pm
Prediction: egypt > pw 5-3 by djc-
Word on the street is Pinball Wizards have massively improved over the past week, i.e. ever since they picked up Relic on roamer. Two seasons ago, we watched the dude chaos dunk all over Leviathan/Quantic en route to winning the title and now he's made his comeback with one of the middle-of-the-pack teams hoping to attend LAN. They now have a very formidable soldier pair, as Zbryan is improving quickly and is pulling out some successful high damage ubers. Combine that with the fact that John “The Rockalanche” Boulder is crushing on people to the tune of 50 frags in a game and you have a pretty good accompaniment to Shrugger's beastly scouting. No Need for Names got to style on people on Viaduct and it was embarrassing and gross to watch and I did not feel clean afterwards. Luckily for their opponents this week, Powah cannot run permanent sniper on Snake. Unfortunately for them, Dun is kind of nuts. It feels like unf has been the weak link of the team lately, but with how well Dun is playing, it might not matter since he seems to be doing more than enough damage for two people to share. The battle to watch is on the flank – whether or not Dante and Powah can overwhelm the combination of Shrugger and Squid. I think right now I give the edge to the Natural Selection superstar and his banana eating friend.
GOIN HEAVY vs Spacewhales · cp_snakewater · Mon, Sep 3rd at 1:00pm
Prediction: HWG < whale 2-5 by djc-
Spacewhales got to end their week with Boomer being gone for a match and having to play their backup, Alfa, against the best sniper in Invite on Viaduct. We can pretend it didn't happen, but the pain from that night may never fade. The Whales are the most bipolar team in Invite – in one scrim, they look like they're going to hang with Mixup and LG and easily take the third LAN spot. In the very next, they kind of gag and vomit on themselves while having an anxiety attack and get steamrolled by one of the mid or bottom Invite teams. Something has to change with their combo, be it protecting Soup better or maybe accepting that he is going to die and using his deaths as bait for the enemy team. They're one of the more talented teams in Invite, so I figure they have to pull it together at some point. And with what people and my eyes are telling me, GOIN HEAVY might be exactly what the Whales need to patch up their armor. Things seem to have stagnated for team oPlaiD, and from what I'm told, they have fallen well behind Pinball Wizards and are now consistently losing scrims to them – badly. Kbk's positioning seems to be suffering now that he's pocketing the young less-experienced Lansky rather than the superman caller and micromanager that was Platinum, and 2c's roaming has just not been good enough to get the team medic-for-medic trades on middle to keep it even. I was talking to season eight champion OOV tonight, and he said to me “oPlaiD never misses a LAN. Never doubt in the Slingles.” And so I won't... after this match, anyway.
Classic Mixup vs tri hards · cp_snakewater · Thu, Aug 30th at 1:00pm
Prediction: mix > WANG 5-1 by djc-
Having watched i46, it feels like Mixup's soldiers are just too strong for most Invite teams to handle. Weeble seems fairly easy to catch out on the flank and his high++ DM ability is not going to come into play in fights where Harbleu bombs in on top of his head while Ruwin shoots him directly in the face and dick. I feel like Chess Club will have to get their rounds off of superior ubers and combo play... but how are they going to do that, you say, when they're facing off against the best active pocket soldier in TLR? God only knows. I think there is a bit of a demo advantage in CC's favor at this point; Platinum plays intelligently but it looks like his damage output is weaker than it was in his LAN winning season as demoman. If kermit has space to spam in CC's transition game, I think he can punish Mixup a bit. Still, expect the expected: an easy Mixup roll.
Spacewhales vs Pinball Wizards · cp_snakewater · Fri, Aug 31st at 2:10pm
Prediction: whale > pw 5-4 by djc-
Earlier in the season, I would have written down 5-1 next to this and said “jesus fuck how many more god damn rolls am I going to have to bullshit predictions about.” Now I get to bullshit about a really close game! The Whales's stock is sinking while Pinball's goes up and up and up. I still think the Whales come out on top obviously; I said this last week, but yo – Blaze is real good at Snakewater. He gave my team fits on it back in season ten and Snake was by far his best performance at the last LAN. Boulder versus Dummy on mids is going to be a pretty sick fight to watch with Boulder coming off of his best weeks ever and Dummy being in rare form in terms of damage output. I do expect the Whales to still triumph, but I think it comes with much more effort than they may have expected.
Dont Trip vs egyptian flamingos · cp_snakewater · Fri, Aug 31st at 1:30pm
Prediction: enoryt > egypt 5-3 by djc-
I think LG are going to have a few problems late in the week. They already missed out on two days that they would devote solely to playing Snakewater because of i46, they are going to be adjusting back to their respective time zones, and they will be playing against an entirely different style of Snakewater than what the Euro ruleset has them used to. Add in that the only time I've ever seen Tyrone get explicitly mad at the game of TF2 is when he goes up against powah and I think there's enough ingredients being thrown into the pot to make this one fairly close. It's still Snakewater, it's still b4nny's best map, it's still clockwork's best map, and nNn are still a team struggling to find an identity and establish their position in Invite so I expect LG to come away with the win, but don't be shocked if there's about thirty headshots and a handful of dropped ubers standing in the way of their win.
Mighty Ducks vs GOIN HEAVY · cp_snakewater · Fri, Aug 31st at 1:30pm
Prediction: bud < HWG 4-5 by djc-
I am true to my word, and I will be the official #2 GOIN HEAVY fanboy; obviously I can't displace miyari there because I'm not actually sleeping with the heavy in question. Not that I'm opposed to the idea or anything, oPlaiD's a handsome man; I'm just sayin', you know? With HEAVY struggling, the perfect opportunity has come for the Ducks to get win number one. I just do not think they have things together enough to get it. There are some clear struggles with the Mighty soldier pair at the moment, with Ghost often outfragging and outdamaging Xep. Some mention has come of moving Ghost to pocket and Xep to roamer, to give Ghost's DM a better chance to shine while hopefully getting some more comms out of their roamer but for now it looks like that idea has been squashed. I think that with the Ducks soldier pair in a bit of a kerfuffle, Lansky is going to find some big holes to work his way through and I think comes out of most uber exchanges with by far the higher damage total and better health/positioning, which will in turn let sweater gain ground for free and push the Ducks up against the wall.
INVITE POWER RANKINGS - WEEK 3
1. Classic Mixup -- (~)
2. Leviathan Gaming TF2 -- (~)
3. spacewhales -- (~)
4. The Chess Club -- (~)
5. No Need for Names Tf2 -- (~)
6. GOIN HEAVY --(~)
7. Pinball Wizards -- (UP 1)
8. Mighty Ducks -- (DOWN 1)
Pinball pulled off a convincing win versus the Ducks and have been looking pretty good in scrims; bump them up one. They did lose to GOIN HEAVY on Gullywash last week so they haven't quite done enough for me to bump them up to the sixth slot yet. Every team outside of the two has been pretty underwhelming and so the actual league standings are super close, with nobody but LG and Mixup having more than two wins. The rounds for and against are pretty even for Chess Club, Spacewhales, and nNn as well - it's pretty difficult to determine which of those three teams is the best and worst. So for now, the middle of the grid is static and I'm still waiting for any of those teams to come out looking spectacular and glorious.
Originally published on ESEA on 8/28/2012, 4:41 PM by djc-.
Archived from ESEA TF2 Invite S12 - Week 3 Predictions as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of ESEA's TF2 coverage. All rights remain with the original author and ESEA; reposted for historical reference.