Bacillus' Div 1 Week 4 Preds!

The Gardeners - Saunamen

--- MATCH OF THE WEEK ---

Saunamen keep going steadily. They dispatched Quaxy for another 4-0 without any challenge. Only their lerk play was sloppy, but now that Nade is back on the roster it's no longer an issue. So far they've got a perfect run, but I feel the next few weeks are going to test their skills way better than the season so far.

The Gardeners settled for 2 - 2 alien tie against iPwn. They were a little disorganised on marines and for example never managed to push the 2nd hives effectively. iPwn's alien play was impressive, but I think everyone expects the Gardeners lineup to be able to power through at least on Veil marines. GibbZ did a great job especially on Orbital marines, but otherwise the Gardener marine play never shifted to the wtfpwn gears. On aliens they were solid, but iPwn was badly hindered by the lack of their primary commander. All in all, the Gardeners need to improve quite a bit if they're planning to threaten the Saunamen rule this season.

Tactics:

Both teams play relatively standard games. On marines Saunamen tend to go a little more capping oriented games, possibly even 2 man pressures with 3 cappers. Meanwhile the the Gardeners rely more on the usual 3 man pressure with 1 SG. Shotgunner will most likely be GibbZ/Enigmatic/Bergy for the Gardeners and Tane/Zharp for Sauna.

On aliens it's even more of a mirror on general level. Both like to go for relatively usual 2 extra nodes early and get the usual early lerk with chambers and so on. Both also use DCs here and there, but we haven't seen any SCs in early use yet. Saunamen is once again slightly more economy oriented as they use gorges quite a bit and eagerly cap any lost nodes. As for the lifeforms, Enigmatic and Nade will be lerking while Tane and GibbZ are expected to fade. All are very capable in their tasks, although Tane has had the habit of flashing his fade here and there.

The maps will be ns_metal and ns_veil. It's most likely going to be quite a bit of standard MCs, but on Veil someone might also try DCs if they get lucky with the cargo hive. Otherwise Veil is very much standard play. On Metal Peach gets to use his suberb res and macromanagement skill quite a bit as the lerk is going to be spore heavy on the obivious mineral pressure push. You'll want to pay some extra attention to some surprise pushes directed and Surface side alien nodes. Especially Sauna has been using them to devastating effect on previous seasons.

---

My prediction for this is 3-1 for Saunamen assuming that the Gardeners can recover from the last week's fails.

Biggest Impacts:

Saunamen: Tane (Marine/Fade), Peach (Commander/Tank!), Nade (lerk), Zharp (SG)
Gardeners: GibbZ (Marine/Fade), Handschuch (Sneaky Skulk), Enocnad (Secondary Fade)

Team Fantasy - TTS

Last week TTS failed to take any rounds from Squad-6. Their marine rounds still look a little unconventional and ineffective and their alien play relies quite heavily on baserushes nowadays. As long as the opponent counters their plans with a decent early game there's not much TTS can do. The gap in individual level of play just grows too big against most teams. However, once the enemy messes up the early game TTS is all over the place.

Team Fantasy ended up playing an alien tie against Team Russia. They had a decent early game on Veil marines, but fumbled it partitially because of a player crash right at the crucial midgame moments. The 2nd hive push got delayed a bit and the whole timing went wrong. To make up for the round messed up Fantasy pulled off a great comeback on Orbital aliens. Kuitmo skulked a critical 4-kill combo while defending the 2nd hive and effectively saved the whole round for Fantasy. All in all Fantasy's game wasn't all that bad, but a few mistakes cost them the 3-1 and almost turned it into a 1-3.

As usual, TTS fights as the underdog. I'd say this week is going to be a little difficult for them though. Zh's ability to lead should help Fantasy a lot when it comes to adapting to the TTS' plans. All in all, we've got a TTS match so almost everyone knows that it's not going to be predicted by any conventional reasoning.

I guess I'll call this 3-1 for Fantasy. By all means they should be able to 4-0 this on individual skill levels, but that wouldn't be all that interesting as a good dramatic 3-1 or 2-2.

Biggest Impacts:

Team Fantasy: Elynn (All around), NsN, Kuitmo, Aleksi
TTS: Whatever they end up doing.


Team Russia - Squad-6

Team Russia played a decent game against Fantasy. With a little more luck on orbital marines it could've been 3-1 for Ru, but on the other hand they were close to losing Veil aliens. Morvie's fading looked way better than last week, but MP's lerk wasn't a success on Veil. Msq seems to have improved his game quite a bit as the season progresses, so keep an eye on him too.

Squad-6 took easy 5 points from TTS. They didn't have much trouble due to good early plays and Jaivol's good commanding. aA's fading still needs quite a bit of work, but otherwise their game seems to be going quite good now.

This might turn out to be a close one. I think it's going to be a 3-1 for Squad-6, taking both on Veil. However, if Ru can somehow shake off the mistakes from their marine rounds it could easily turn out to be a 2-2 or even 3-1 for Ru.

Biggest Impacts:

Team Russia: MP (Marine/lerk), Morvie (Fade), Snake (Comm)
Squad-6: aA (Marine), Jaivol (Comm), frG



Maxx's week 4 predictions!


So MAAADs officially bailed and now I'm stuck doing these till the end of the season, now needless to say, I didn't exactly break out a bottle of champagne and flood my keyboard with tears of joy when they asked me to do this. But, I got myself into this mess so I may as well see it through to the end. Now that my rant is done we can get on with some predictions.

Div 1

Quaxy vs iPwn

Impact players:
Quaxy: jiriki (comm)
iPwn: phil(flying tank), Danny(chrono trooper)

Not the hardest match to pick a winner, but guessing the score might be a little more tricky. iPwns recent upset draw with `.=. proves they are a team that shouldn't be taken lightly, and with Quaxy losing all their games so far, I think its safe to say iPwn will come out on top. The question is weather iPwns marine rounds can hold up on both maps. Quaxy might not have epic alien play but its solid enough to make trouble and the recent game of "commander tag you're it" in iPwn has left their marines rather disorganised. If iPwn can get things together by game time, I see them walking away with all 5 points, otherwise its at least one round for Quaxy.

iPwn 4:0 Quaxy

Div 2

.BM vs .ngte

impact players:
.BM: JustMe(med spam)
.ngte: Daggah(I'm sure he'll do something usefull)

.ngte has made a significant improvement since the start of the season and have grabbed their fair share of points only trailing by two behind the group leaders. Now they face their toughest opponent yet.Bacon Men, whose ranks have been boosted by ex Gardners (Shoppaholics, Babysitters or whatever it is they're calling themselves this week) member BerglunD. With an even stronger lineup than last week .BM should be even harder to beat. JustMe can med with the best of them and you can be sure to see jetpacks out very quickly whenever hes in the chair. If s4druid has managed to cure his wall fetish, I see .ngte cruising towards their first defeat this season, otherwise we're looking at another potential tie.

.BM 3:1 .ngte

250dp ' vs Nskrp

Impact players:
250dp ': Strife(fade)
Nskrp: DeadWind(Clan leader should always make an impact!)

After seeing 250dp play against BM last week I'm pretty confident in their ability to beat Nskrp who currently place last on the leaderboard. Unless Nskrp can surprise the 250s with some unusual tactics my awesome predictor instinct (which if you remember from last week may or may not be wrong but will ALWAYS remain awesome) tells me 250dp ' will eventually walk away as the victor of all four rounds, though I think Nskrp will put up a solid fight.

250dp' 4:0 Nskrp

[8888] vs -k^

Impact players:
[8888]: Blaxend
-k^: with 32 players on the roster and growing just guessing who will play is a prediction of its own. I'm gonna go with FatManMGS2 this week

Once again a match that probably won't surprise me too much, [8888] have been on a losing streak this season and I doubt thats going to change this week, Kingclub on the other hand is yet to win OR lose an official having drawn all three games so far. [8888]s lineup has seen the addition of two new members (kossikottka and hostile) but I don't think this will be enough to pull a victory just yet. Despite this being fairly clear cut in terms of the over all winner, I'm somewhat hesitant to give -k^ an outright win, since I do believe [8888] have the potential to snatch at least one round as they did against BM.
Despite this I'm going to have to go with:

-k^ 4:0 [8888]

DS.kor vs ze.^.e

Impact players:
DS.kor: effy(lerk, according to his profile)
ze.^.e: Vlad Dracul(lerk, shotgun), Saebel(ninja skulk)

This is my match of the week! Get it? My match because I play in turtles and...ahhh forget it. As much as Id love to say ze Turtles will clean house here, I'm afraid I cant. DS.kor is a tough opponent and currently shares the division leader position with .BM . Turtles are steadily improving but still suffer from the occasional "WTF are you lot doing" syndrome, something that can easily cost rounds when faced with a good opponent. Having seen very little of DS.kors play and being too lazy to watch any HLTV demos, I'm going by statistics in my assumption that they wont go down easy. Ping is always an issue in these games and once again its sure to make trouble, but hopefully we wont be seeing too much magic. Against all odds my prediction is:

ze.^.e 3:1 DS.kor

This wraps up week four, see you next week!