Maxx's Week 5 Preds!

This week the heavy burden that is predicting has been somewhat lifted off my shoulders thanks to the help of a man who has come to be known as lump. This means that I only have to do three games this week, and thats perfect because I'm lazy. To celebrate I'm keeping things short this time. Enjoy

Quaxy vs .ru

Impact players:

Quaxy: koira!!!1, Talis
.ru: Macpersil, Morvie

Once again things look grim for Quaxy as they face the might of Mother Russia. Depending on their lineup Quaxy may or may not put up a good fight during their alien rounds but ultimately, .ru are just too organised to drop any points here. Not much to say, Macpersil will bite, Morvie will shoot, Quaxy will lose.

.ru 4 : 0 Quaxy



ze .^.e vs [8888]

Impact players:

ze .^.e : Kadis, Orox
[8888] : Logan aka MAAAD, Blandex

[8888] losing streak continues and although I'm the type that roots for the underdog, I hope that they'll wait until next week before making any surprises. I expect this game to be fairly straight forward, ze Turtles have made a massive improvement since their loss to .ngte and should take all four rounds with relative ease. MAAADs fade may cause some trouble but it shouldn't be enough to pierce through the turtles shell.

ze .^.e 4 : 0 [8888]



Thats it form me this week, not very long but hopfully correct (though Quaxy and [8888] probably hope I'm terribly wrong, and rightfully so). See you next time!

Lump's Week 5 Preds!


Herro kiddiewinkles! That's right, I've got my way back into the main articles of the ENSL but don't worry, I'm only here to ridicule you instead of report the bad boys and rule changes this time around! I felt sympathetic and thought I'd help relieve some of the weight from Maxx's shoulders with the strenuous task of precognition and prophesying the fate of this glorious game! In keeping with my god awful shout-casting skills, I will try to keep these predictions as irrelevant as possible!



BM vs ^k


Oh my god, it's the .BM wannabes of Swedish pub-nubs versus Americas last stand of rejects trying to claim some respect from the mighty Europeans! I imagine this game to be like watching a 3 legged dog with tourettes syndrome fight against a a squirrel on steroids! The possibilities overwhelm me! As much as it pains me to admit it, this game could be very close, the yanky-doodles are definitely under-performing when you consider the amount of public heroes and experience they carry, especially with the random Frenchy thrown in for good measure! I can see these guys putting up a good fight if players like do0rkn00b manage to figure out which of those bizarre looking objects is the PC and which is the fish tank! I'd say expect sad and Noxolan to bring the worrying levels of activity and hopefully, a well rounded enough set of strategies to not make complete fools of themselves on these overplayed maps of metal and origin. On the other side of the planet we have the latest crew from svenska bringing plenty of 'who the shizzle is that guy?' pub nubs into the fold! If somehow stalk makes a mystery appearance and BerglunD can control his penis envy, these guys will always do damage to the other team. They've been well active and that klingen guy has certain played lerk before! Oh yeh and beefcake is there too to provide pretty amazing levels of under-performance! The sum up of this round will have to be.. my sympathies to Xythe, who for some unknown reason likes to put himself through these torturous line-ups.. such a do gooder, my hat goes off to you sir!



Impact players:
^k – Noxolan's mother in the cc, sad's suspicious aim and Gorton_C being the only one who will be able to see what's happening without a few hours of delay.

.BM – zaiko's skulk, webrazor on marine and wltrs.. oh shit... wait no that's the REAL .BM.. I guess we'll have to say JustMe's down to Earth commanding, Bergy's rage, klingen's lerk, Xythe's allround solid performance and BEEFCAKE'S DOOMED!



Score
.BM 2 - 2 ^k .
Yes that's right I'm sitting on the fence, so sue me! Both teams can easily 4-0 this from their level of experience and it completely depends who turns up on the day, I expect this may be a good game to watch and could be full of MANY surprises!



Nskrp vs .ngte



I'm not sure whether Nskrp will manage to forfeit in time to make this super smooth sailing for .ngte or whether the Koreans might actually provide a few players and strike a treaty with the russians where they join forces in proposed take over of Europe; destroying all the capitalist scum and claiming all our oil, women, economy and workers for their own game of life-size risk. Only time will tell!



Impact players:
.ngte – Osama bin Laden

Nskrp – I don't think any of their players actually exist irl?!



Score. Forfiet win to .ngte – Come on Nskrp, prove me wrong and show us what you're made of!

DS vs 250dp

Ok, it's like battle of the continents here, neither teams have anything to do with Europe and neither teams have a ping below 200ms.. I suggest we enforce a rule to make them play on a Euro server just to shake up the drama before hand! It's like a race for reliable channel overflow! I have no idea about 250dp, all I can tell is that Strife knows how to move as a fade and that normally translates to being a decent marine as well! So maybe we should all stack the pressure on this guy and blame him for any loss! Snail is the socially active guy and for this, he gets the front of any abuse from our beloved community! OMG it's those pesky Koreans again, they definitely seem to be growing in confidence and hopefully they'll realise how completely noob the rest of this league is! We've got Alice Taylor leading the way with some slightly homosexual commanding, super defensive at times and frequently taking a second hive right up the bum-hole; but going straight for JP which is where these guys seem to flourish! They seem to me to have a good grasp of the game and you barely ever catch one of these guys less than 2 seconds from another! Mixed with effy whoring all of the delay for himself, you got to be worried that this guy hardly ever dies as a lerk! It's two fairly large maps this week which throws any concept of weekly balance out of the window and will give the better teams a very good chance to show themselves. Both teams should be looking to make a mark as both have 16 points going into battle! Who will shine? Who knows! Oh the suspense is killing me!

Impact players:
250dp – Strife (fade), LaseR (a name that means business!)
DS – Alice Taylor (comm), nec0 (fade), effy (SUPER WARP)



Score: 2 - 2 draw but I'm begging for one of these teams to prove me wrong! I'll be interesting to see where the servers are located and may play a large part in the final outcome!



Bacillus' Week 5 Preds!

So far only 2 games of the week 4 have been played, but both had some very interesting rounds. You should see at least the Sauna - Gardeners match as a whole and TTS - Team Fantasy 1st Veil round.

As for the next week there are quite a few interesing matches.

Team Fantasy - iPwn

This one should be interesting. Both the teams have been playing good and relatively standard NS all season long so it should boil down to some teamwork and individual skill performances.

Fantasy took all the rounds from TTS last week, even though unfortunate crash was very close of losing them one. ZH came up with his smart skulk play at the crucial moment and took down most of TTS' base while Fantasy was pinned to a semi-spawncamp situation on Pipeline. The Fantasy marine rounds simply overpowered TTS, so they seem to be working well against the underdog opponents at least.

iPwn was impressive a few weeks back against The Gardeners. Their alien teamwork was good, but marine rounds still left a lot to improve. This week we'll see if they've managed to keep their level or even improved it after getting a stable comm section.

Not much specific to say since Fantasy played a team of a lower skill and iPwn has played at all (Quaxyfail!). Fantasy needs their best lineup to match players of Phil's level. iPwn on the other hand needs to get their marine game to a winning shape. All in all this should be the most even match this week.

My prediction is 2 - 2. Hopefully we'll see some marine victories at least on Origin.

Biggest Impacts:
Team Fantasy: Elynn, Kuitmo, Aleksi, Scale (Back from the army?)
iPwn: Phil, Marine play


Saunamen - Squad 6

Surprising as it is, Saunamen lost against Gardeners last week. Part of that was because Gardeners played extremely well, but of course Sauna is expected to cope with any resistance. Some unlucky timings and dead lerks caused them to slip 2 rounds into a bad disadvantage, but the champions should be able to overcome some unlucky moments. On a quick look their marine aim was a little off and alien play lacked some res pressure.

Squad 6 forfeited against Russia, so I'm I'll repeat my conclusion on their play. Their marines have been a good overall, nothing shiny, but still above average in the div. Jaivol's decisionmaking has been solid and aA has had his aim spot on. On aliens they've had some disorganisation and aA's fading hasn't been that effective or consistent.

Saunamen have the upper hand, but Squad 6 isn't ngoing to give any free rounds. The biggest question is whether S-6 has had the activity to improve their alien play.

This is a little difficult to predict after the forfeit, but I guess 3 - 1 for Saunamen creates interesting setups both for the match at hand and also for the rest of the season.

Biggest Impacts:
Saunamen: Tane (Stop dying as a Fade!, alien comm), Peach (Marine Mastermind), Nade (Marine/lerk), Zharp(SG)
Squad-6: aA (Marine), Jaivol (Comm), The organised alien play


The Gardeners - TTS

The Gardeners played great last week. Their marine work was solid overall. Especially GibbZ and Enigmatic scored some nice frags. Still, I was most impressed by their Veil alien play. Perfectly timed and executed baserush game them nice advantage and excellent use of fades and skulks allowed them to take the critical round advantage on Veil.

TTS didn't take any rounds from Fantasy. They got quite lucky on Veil marines as Kuitmo's fade crashed at a very crucial moment. With a little different play they could've taken the round within the next few minutes, but Zh's base biting skulk managed to save the day. All in all their marine game was quite good, although the Veil round was practically already won by them before they fumbled it. On alies they failed to put up any resistance, which was a bit surprising.

The Gardeners are on a roll and I don't think there's much TTS can do to stop them. Except some great play from GibbZ if not anything else.

4 - 0 for Gardeners.

Biggest Impacts:
The Gardeners: GibbZ (Marine/Fade), Handschuch(Skulk), Enigmatic (SG)
TTS: The TTS stuff.