I typically reserve my analysis, which I (admittedly, egotistically), consider a valuable tool. However, in the spirit of doing my small bit for Pro League, I'll break my usual policy and give my perspective on last week's game. Unfortunately, the stats and log from last week are incomplete, so I'll be speaking more in terms of generalities than specifics, due to lack of citable evidence. Still, I'm never wrong, so there's that. I believe the lineups were: Nacre Saiyan Maimer develop --> subbed by Sika inertia Devious 7th Ozn --> subbed by Antihuman The game started off clearly in favor of Assassins; in fact, it was on its' way to being a rather embarrassing destruction until Assassins made the substitution of develop for Sika. develop is something of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to 4v4. Good at everything, no real propensity for choking, generally intelligent in how he plays. That's really the kind of player you want in when there's a lot on the line. Sika is a bit of a different story. I've watched him reel-off half a dozen incredible individual performances, and right on the heels of that, do the same in reverse: choking away 4-5 games in a row, sometimes in jaw-dropping fashion. His style as a player is rather simplistic: use teammates as leverage to set up a gun-duel that looks promising, dive in guns blazing, and hope for the best. Naturally, there are more than a few problems with this, despite Sika's skill in actually executing the gun duels. Namely, too much can, and does, go wrong. From spec, the change when the dev-->Sika sub went through was obvious and immediate. Assassins teamwork was disrupted, and a 6-2 game almost immediately turned into a 7-5 game. On the other side of things, the Ozn-->Antihuman sub seemed to have little effect on CM, other than to limit their offense somewhat. Antihuman was last life and probably target, so his chances to engage were rather limited. The end result of all this is that the early lead that Assassins built turned out to be insurmountable, though CM deserves credit for halting what appeared to be a full-on sexual assault and turning it into an actual game. How did that lead get built? Just a simple edge in skill, a simple edge in teamwork. Assassins was slightly more in tune last Sunday, and thus your result. Talent-wise, both teams are pretty similar, though at the 4th slot, I'd rate Assassins slightly higher. In these situations, it comes down to patience, mental toughness, and outright precision. A bullet or two can shift the course of a match like this one if they're applied at the right time. So, games two and, if necessary, game three, get played tomorrow. I would not attach too much significance to the 1-0 lead that Assassins holds. Yes, it's an advantage, true. But the fact of matter is that they're still going to have to beat CM again in one of the two remaining games. If I had to pick which team would respond better to an initial loss, I'd probably have to say CM. Why? In a nutshell, I think they care more; I think they're hungrier. However friendly (or unfriendly; I truly have no idea) they may be with Assassins, they MUST be dying to show Big Brother that they don't need either Assassins' players nor their name to win their beloved title. It may be enough to offset the one game lead and slight edge in talent Assassins holds in that 4th slot (before any subs are made). It will be interesting to see whether Assassins continue to use Sika as their sub; that could certainly have an effect on the outcome of the series in either direction. Will he go 3-0 or 0-3? Impossible to say. Good luck to both teams. HG PS - Try to show up and watch, people. We used to have hundreds of specs for these things.
I'll play. HG