If you're like me, the beginning of each new season brings with it excitement and a feeling of competitive ambition. A new season is a clean slate in which all players begin on equal starting ground -- it is a chance for new and upcoming players and veterans alike to prove to their competitors that they are worthy of recognition. Ultimately, a new season is an opportunity to reach towards the prestigious FML champion title.
Last season our players went through a grueling four-and-a-half month bloodbath from start to finish. This season we wanted to bring you a shorter, more classic format reminiscent of the earlier seasons of FML. With great pleasure, the FML team presents to you the format for Season 23 along with the Round 1 pairings.
Season 23 format:
Main season: consists of 4 rounds
Pairings: first round will be completely random. Rounds 2-4 will use swiss-style pairing (the top 4 ranks are paired, the next 4, and so on)
Scoring: each match will use the familiar 25-10-10-5 scoring, with +1 bonus point awarded for getting the top in-game score (if the player didn't win the match)
Eliminations: after the 3rd round, players with no chance of making it into the top 10 will be eliminated
Playoffs: at the end of the main season, the top 2 ranked players qualify for the final match. Players ranked 3-10 will play 2 semi-finals matches. The 2 winners qualify for the final match
Semi-final pairings: ranks (3, 5, 8, 10) form one match, and ranks (4, 6, 7, 9) form the other.
Championship: the winner of the final match is crowned the Season 23 champion
Please find your match in the listing below. Then proceed to schedule your game in the corresponding scheduling thread. Round 1 will end on Sunday 7/31
One final note - I want to remind everyone that we are a small community and that all of us are here to enjoy the game we love. While there is a strong competitive nature to the game, we should respect one another as people in a shared community. For those of you new to FML, or just need a refresher, please read through our detailed FML rulebook here: http://ffamasters.net/index.php?page=1.
The moment we've all been waiting for is finally here. Four players have made their way from qualifiers to this point -- an impressive task considering no player auto-qualified for the main season. Every game was hard won and these players definitely deserve their place in this seasons finals:
Eshan Magadansky j33. Tyrant66
We have 2 undeads, a night elf and a random player. The classically voted best races for FFA are not present. Interestingly, we have 2 former champs in j33. and Maga, and 2 former finalists in Tyrant and Eshan (at least I think Eshan was a finalist, if not he should have been!). Special congratulations to Tyrant for grinding it out in the semi-finals and coming out on top.
The match will take place Tuesday,March 10th, 18 CET/13 EDT, and the map will be the often used classic Twilight Ruins. The game will be streamed and casted so come by to check it out and see who's crowned the 20th champion!
We've finally made it to the beginning of the end of season 20 -- the playoffs! First and foremost, congratulations to the three players who have earned their guaranteed spot in the finals:
Eshan Magadansky j33.
Eshan, a veteran player who returned this season after a few year hiatus, was a dark horse coming into this league. Having earned his way from the qualifier round with just 1 win, he has shown us a perfect 3-0 record in the main rounds, placing him at the top with 76 points and the right to choose the map for the final match*. Magadansky also squeezed through the qualifier rounds with a single win in the 3rd match, following a series of near-misses. In the main season, he earned an 11-point second place and 2 wins, tying him with j33 at 62 points total. j33, with a very consistently solid performance since the start, got 2 wins in both the qualies and the main season, placing him comfortably into the finals as well.
Next, congratulations to the four players who will compete in this season's semifinals. You four have played very well up until this point, but you still have a rough road ahead of you to make it to the finals.
Tyrant66 zTsoso CallMeImba DkH.No1cansaveu
Tyrant66, with a solid 2 wins in the main season, was just 1 point away from tying for 2nd place overall with Maga and j33. His high-scoring performance will be rewarded with the right to choose the map for the semifinal*. zTsoso, coming in at 47 points, is a player that surprised many of us with a great show of skill since the start of the qualifiers and I'm sure most of us expected to see make it to the semis. While probably not a favorite to win up until this point, CallMeImba has shown us he is a consistent player who has what it takes to win his way through. DkH.No1cansaveu (Brainman), like Eshan, has returned this season from a long break. A sometimes hard-to-predict player, he shows us time and again that he can make very smart plays and always has great micro.
congratulations again to these players for making it to this point. It was a very close race, and in the end it often came down to whether a player got 4th place in a game or not, which is a tough way to go out. Upsets and comeback stories abound this season, and there's a lot of skilled players who's season run is now sadly over. However, thanks to everyone for making this season competitive and fun. Stick around because the best has yet to come!
Greetings to one and all. This update is coming to you a little late as I was on vacation through the holidays, but it should take nothing away from our final victors of the qualifier rounds. So congratulations to those players:
Qwest (king of subs) Magadanksy Tyrant66 Ludix zTsoso
This marks the final additions to the list of players who qualify for Season 20 (Qwest squeezing in with 31 points to replace i-never-smile). The full list of palyers can be seen in the rankings page. In this cast of players we have 4 previous FML champions and 5 previous FML finalists if my counting is right. Compare that to the 30+ players who did not qualify which includes 2 champs and 3 finalists, I would say the qualifier was an overall success. If nothing else, certainly one to be remembered for the crazy amount of sub-wins. Thanks again to all players for participating -- and if you're eliminated, stick around because we will always be needing subs. Also, stay tuned for more events that will be announced soon. Here's a brief recap of the games from last week.
Deathrose Games:
Q32: Elessar, Lightweight, Ludix, and Fetta_ook duked it out in this extremely lightning-paced game. The game opens with two fast 1v1 roll-overs, ending in a single culminating orc fight between Ludix and Lightweight in which Ludix claims victory convincingly, bladestorming all of Lightweights casters, showing again that he is one of the strongest players that snowballs quickly in his games.
Q39: This game with CallMeImba, Qwest, Noexxx, and Fail.Life starts off with chatoic 4-way fights in the middle over the red hydra camps. Then in one of the most frustrating sights, Fail falls to early teaming and leaves. Noexxx superbly utilizes mass-tp as he has done throughout the qualifier, but it is not enough as he is eliminated from teaming before he can find CMI's last tree. CMI is winning the fights up until the very end, but loses to Qwest blitzing in and destroying the last tree.
Twisted Meadows Games:
Q29: Audigy is out fast from quick wyvs from Prometeus. Maga pulls ahead with the best macro accruing 12k+. Bryan and prometeus duke it out in a bloodfest -- to the point of no return where Maga sweeps it up with much more gold than the others. The game apparently was not very enjoyable due to heavy lag, but according to the betting page many people should be happy with the result, seeing the 3-time champion qualify for the main season.
Q38: What happens when you put 3 undeads and an orc on a small island with little gold and let them do as they please? Well, it may not be certain, but in this case you get a fast elimination followed by a long, dangerous 3 way where the remaining players hide armies and must whittle each other down, each decision having high-impact on the game. Screpi fell early to Vova's rush (with pitlord). There was a lot of back-and-forth teaming with Tyrant showing great micro in the final battle to take down Ajikaiii.
Q34: The game starts with a cruel 3 man teaming exacted on Ajikaiii that is painful to watch following Tleilaxu taking down Aji's first expo quickly. Tlei is subsequently teamed to death and it comes down to a nice final 1v1 between zTsoso and letshavesomefun, with soso taking the upper hand and clinching yet another sub-win.
Hey all, hope you are having a good holiday season and looking forward to a great 2015. This week was the second week of Round 3 of the qualifiers, which continues one more week until January 4th due to the holiday schedule. Four games were played this week, with 3 new winners and 1 returning winner. Congratulations to these players:
Mog Pinballmap SweeT Brain.Man
Deathrose Games:
Q31: Game opens up with Brainman going very aggressive blade master harass on ins, followed up by a super fast wyvern rush and nonstop pressure from which ins eventually breaks and gg's. Early on, Alien and NoMercy fought it out, Alien losing his expo. After ins left, Alien tried to stop Brainman's income, but had a hard time with nomercy harassing both players and hoarding. They try to coordinate a teaming on Brain but by then Brain's blademaster had hit the gym and could not be stopped.
Q35: After Wreck dropping and rehosting, we ended up with 2 subs, of which Ludix rushed out the other sub Alien. Mog repeated his perfect creep route, getting both red camps. Ludix goes hard on Mog while Red7z7 hoards, then Ludix goes wild attacking all before he has to leave due to time. Red7z7 launches a few large attacks in attempt to stifle the larger heroes of Mog, but Mog holds strong in the end.
Q37: DV- goes a fast rush on Vyvanne and beats him out early with an infernal summon, making Vyvanne probably the best player to end with 15 points. DV- takes 4 expos but quickly Nline shuts that down. Significant teaming ensues with DV- and Pinballmap on Nline for quite some time. All players are broke and Nline is teamed to death, not able to pull through even with the mask of death and crown of kings on his Shadow Hunter! The game comes down to a final chess-match between Pinball and DV- and their last 40-50 food armies, both players needing this win to advance. After some stalling, and some great positioning and lightning orb procs on units, DV- is left to fight valiantly with his last 2 heroes against the orc army -- and Pinball prevails.
Twisted Meadows Games:
:Q28: This game featured the off-race Ludix and ostone on this small map. Ostone goes hard and fast on SweeT, while Duck and Ludix have a fiend and then garg mirror match. Duck wipes out Ludix's garg army and then takes the additional expo. SweeT is winning out over Ostone, especially when his DH goes superman. While Duck is finishing off Ludix, he unfortunately disconnects, leaving SweeT to finish off the 1v1 he was winning.
We're back again with another short week of games. This round has two of the smallest 4 player maps out there, Twisted Meadows and Deathrose -- but don't let that fool you into thinking the games are fast. With 3 games in a week, we already have about 6 hours of play. Congrats to this weeks winners:
zTsoso j33. GoodBeast
Deathrose Games
Q30: Qwest goes for a fast spider creep for summon items, but turns up one scroll of animate the dead. There are huge creepjacks at the hydras, with fetta nabbing a deathmask for his BM from Renaud. Renaud, not one to take creepjacking lightly, goes balls-out on fetta crossmap, while the undeads qwest and GoodBeast protect the orc by hitting Renaud. The undeads then hoard and it turns into a 4 way standoff with the undeads teaming Renaud and fetta sitting in his little 2nd base. The teaming rotates to qwest, followed by GoodBeast taking out renaud, at which point qwest and fetta have very little. GoodBeast moves quickly to take out qwest before they are able to coordinate a teaming against him. GoodBeast could have even ended the game with 1337 gold had he not spent it on that last wagon.
Q33: Deathrose is a great map for early game expansion confusion, as demonstrated by Seksi taking out j33's first clockwise expo. j33 tries to kill junkerzam's clockwise expo to no avail. Seksi then takes down Valefort's expo in a very early attack before the middle red creeps have been crept. j33 and Junker fight a bit with junker taking down j33s only mine at least once and j33 fighting it back. The teaming begins against Seksi, who quickly becomes broke. Then j33 is teamed. Junker bases seksi and j33 takes out junker with his last faerie dragon army. But who could have predicted any other outcome for this match, with the qualifier number being j33's namesake.
Twisted Meadows Games
Q36: Here Eshan, DV- (sub), zTsoso, and Steppin (playing his old main race) duked it out. This map has extremely low gold count, so after DV- took down Eshan's corner expo and took it for himself, Eshan was stuck at under 2k at the 30-minute mark. Soso and Steppin exchange some blows, but soon team rightfully against the much richer DV-. Soso and steppin decide to finish off the dire Eshan, then the cycle of teaming rotates. Soso loses his main. All players are broke. Soso does serious work on their undeads' bases before they return the favor by taking out his tanks. In a chaotic near hero-war situation, soso came out ahead, taking down the undeads' last heroes and sealing the victory.
A final public announcement: it's very important that any player or obs who streams an official match puts a 15 minute delay on their stream in accordance with our league's rules. If an obs is found streaming with no delay they will be kicked from the game by an admin, but of course we don't want to do that so please follow the rules!
Today marks the end of the second round of qualifiers, with a total of 12 games played this week alone. With so many games to cover, let's get started... Congrats to this week's winners -- we saw two 50-point winners, 5 new winners, and an impressive 5 wins by subs.
Q15 Game starts with a double surround with Mog and DV- forming the bread and Tyrant and Elessar forming the meat of the sandwhich. Mog opts for his signature tinker. A rotational attack happens with DV- on Elessar while Tyrant takes out DV-s main with chims. Elessar goes for the solo BM mass tower mass bats strategy. Tyrant and Mog exchange a few blows, but then Mog blasts DV- away after peaking at 30k gold. Mog and Tyrant continue to have huge battles, with Mog eventually wiping out Tyrant's main while Elessar bats out Mog's main. Tyrant gets based, and Mog is able to siege Elessar base with panda/tinker while successfully defending against the bats/BM.
Q16 Another double surround with FML-founder Worpex and Nline on the outsides, and Junkerzam and LifeForRent on the insides. Junker tries to break out on Nline while LFR tries to break out on Worpex. Both players have a bit of difficulty with this, although Junker was able to get quite a bit of gold in the bank during his 1v1. The game teeter-totters in a 4-way for a bit while Nline tightens the vice on Junker, and Worp finishes LFR. Nline stood on top of the 3-way and neither opponent was able to take him down with his big orc heroes despite their final attacks.
Q21 In one of the longest games of the round, j33 started surrounded by Letshave, and Nooblex, with ostone alone. Nooblex and Ostone duke it out for a while, then peace, then duke it out again, with Ostone coming out on top. Letshave and j33 fight a long back-and-forth with j33 ahead in heroes and letshave slightly ahead in economy. In the 3 way, letshave mass TPs to take out ostone's main, but is left with just heroes. j33 and ostone are maxed out at 80 pop but soon join letshave's ranks with essentially just heroes remaining. It turns into a long 3 way with broke-ass players. Unfortunately, letshave had to leave the game unable to stay for the end. j33 and ostone have a final hero battle with ostone clinching the win.
Q23 This game Ugrilainen made a rare appearance, alongside Screpi, AJIKAIII, and Noexxx. Ugri did a fast fiend rush taking down Noexxx's expansion. However, Noexxx bounced right back with gryphons and went on Ugri's main, taking it down and quickly reaching level 6 on his archmage, similar to round 1. Screpi went a fast 80 push on Ajika who was not fully prepared for it. However, before Screpi could gain too much of an advantage from fighting with Ajika, Noexxx appears strong in the 3-way, alternately attacking both players with mass TP. Ajika leaves after his 2nd base is attacked, and Ugri is not able to rebuild fast enough while Noexxx takes down Screpi's buildings.
Monsoon Games
Q14 zTsoso was surrounded by Brainman and uRgent, with DV- on the other side. uRget went fast fiends on soso, but soso retaliated forcefully and uRgent couldn't handle it and left. DV- and Brain had intense fiend battles, with Brain showing strong DR-first play. Bloody battles happen left-and-right, with some teaming on Brain for a while. Soso holds on with minimal gold, even mining with mass TP at one point. Brainman pulled ahead in the end with a solid wyrm-heavy army.
Q17 Even spawns for CallMeImba, Seksi, Audigy, AJIKAIII in my personal pick for match of the week. Audigy and Ajika go head-to-head on the right while Seksi and CMI fight on the left. The game goes for a while with two long 1v1s. In a show of great micro and macro, Seksi is able to take out CMI over time and eventually severely damages his main. The game turns to a 3v1 vs. Seksi, but at that point he has more gold than all his opponents combined and a significant hero lead, so he is able to fight them off in sequence and take the game in a dominant performance.
Q18 Valefort spawns surrounded by DNIWE_VOVA and Fail.Life with Spielman on the opposite side, who opens up with a rare Beastmaster first. Soon, however, Life goes hard on Spielman with an early push, while Vova chooses to crossmap hit Life's main, forcing him to TP. This situation repeats itself in deja-vu fashion a few minutes later, although the second time Life is virtually defeated, having sustained damages from Valefort also hitting his main. The confusing attacks continued, with Vova taking out Valefort's main while Valefort hit Spiel. With Spielman hitting Valefort as well, it is was a straight-forward path for Vova to finish it off with his 10k+ gold.
Q19 This game we got Sparkle going his classic rifle build against SteppinRazor while qwest goes fast 100 on the fellow Kpect. Kpect is taken out quickly being unprepared for such a large attack, and Steppin also falls slowly to Sparkle, ultimately being finished off when qwest moves to that side of the map. An early and hearty 1v1 between Sparkle and qwest ensues, with qwest just one step quicker in taking out Sparkle's expansions. In the end, qwest's aboms + strong undead nuke secures the win.
Q20 This game featured Magadanksy, Brainman, fetta_ook, and Red7z7. I won't say too much about this game having played in it myself, but congratulations to fetta_ook for a solid comeback victory. Strong performances from both Maga and Brain as well, with Maga taking the 11 pts for top score.
Q24 Renaud surrounded by Tleilaxu, and KenoStrikesBack, with qwest alone on the left. Renaud went a quick 100 on Tlei, taking down his main base, with Keno attackin qwest taking down a couple expansions. Qwest soon decides to go against Renaud, while Renaud tries to finish Tlei. But Keno soon turns on Renaud as well, giving the surrounded player a tough 1v3. Qwest launches a full-fledged attack on Renaud, who's faerie dragons don't match up to the mass garg army. After Renaud falls, qwest sails to victory with his mass garg and hero advantage vs. his crippled opponents.
Q25 In this seemingly random-heroes game, Elessar goes TC, SH, DR with berzerkers, i-never-smile goes tinker, DH, potm with all sorts of ground units, Lightweight goes farseer, TC, SH and fetta_ook goes DL, DK, Lich. fetta expos across lightweight, then launches necrowagonwyrm on lightweight's expansion, but Lightweight counterattacks and defends with his great wall of towers. Lightweight revealed a very new strategy, the pause-for-manip. Lightweight then goes beast-mode on fetta, taking him out. Lightweight is teamed for a bit, and then just before i-never-smile hits lightweight's main, lightweight gives the 5-second countdown to cease-and-desist, but ins does not oblige and Lightweight leaves the game. The 1v1 that follows is an interesting back-and-forth match with i-never-smile coming out on top with his unheard of ballistas/glaive throwers.
Q27 Last and probably least, this match we had Brainman (sub), Ludix, SuperPrometeusX, and Alien- (sub). The game started with lots of early fighting over the top and bottom expos. SPX hits Ludix expo, while Alien goes on Brainman and beats him out. SPX loses a fight at Ludix's expo and Ludix has a quick retaliation at SPX's natural. Alien goes after Ludix, however SPX tries to keep Alien in check. Then, like a pit-bull, Ludix goes into "kill mode" on SPX, throwing his last 100 army at all of SPX's towers. When he loses 60% of his army he leaves the game, leaving SPX in shambles versus the 10k+ Alien who finishes off what was handed to him.
That's it for week 4 -- please check back soon for the round 3 matchup postings. With so many wins going to subs, there is still great opportunity for players to win a game and qualify for the main stage.
Hey guys! This has been a relatively quiet week for the league with only 2 matches played (that means we get to look forward to a full 12 games this coming week -- if you haven't scheduled your game yet, please do that soon). Congratulations to this week's game winners:
Tleilaxu AlienWareOwnZ
Both this weeks games took place on the FML version of Thunder Lake. Personally, for a while I didn't really like this map -- thinking it was too cramped, too hard to siege bases, and too hard to move across the map's long walking distances. But after playing it for the first time in an inhouse today, I think it's actually a pretty nice cozy map and the creeps are friendly to undead :)
Q26: The game opened up with Wreck fighting NoMercy2 over creeps. The sub for Dovekie, Tleilaxu goes for an early push on the surrounded Eshan, doing well in that fight, while Wreck wins out over NoMercy, finishing him off. The ensuing 3-way is broken by Tlei going on Wreck, but he finds out fast that Wreck is not easy to mess with. Tlei and Eshan team against Wreck, although both end up losing a lot in very scrambled fights. Eventually they are able to take Wreck’s main down while Wreck takes down most of Eshan’s main. Wreck relocates to a refugee camp, but struggles to stay on top versus the teaming while his opponents secure the final goldmines and Eshan rebuilds. Wreck and Eshan have a final crippling fight while the sneaky Tlei comes in and finishes it off.
Q22: This was a gruelling game with htrt started surrounded by qwest and vyvanne, while alien had the left side to himself. htrt made an early peace with qwest and built up a great economy and great base -- that proved to be rock-steady when qwest turned on him (after htrt tank-whiped qwest’s main) and vyvanne joined in the teaming. Lots of sieging happened on htrts main, but he was winning out in the 1v2, even venturing out to hit vyvanne’s last expo a few times. Alien threw a few attacks at vyvanne as well, but mostly laid low. After a heartbreaking disconnect by the man on top, htrt, the game dissembled into a stale 3 way until Vyv and alien teamed qwest to death, and alien felled vyvanne in a final clash.
A final word: If you not installed GProxy yet, it is highly recommended that you do so before your next official match. GProxy is a tool that will allow you to rejoin games in the case that you disconnect and it can be a real life-saver. You can find instructions on installing it here: http://ffamasters.net/index.php?topic=1021.0
This past week saw the wrap-up of the first round of qualifiers. There have been a lot of upsets so far this season, which means a few of you have been getting really great payout on your bets (ahem Persuade). Without further ado, congratulations to this past week's winners:
Ludix Tleilaxu AlienWareOwnZ SuperPrometeusX (no points gained as sub) CallMeImba Noexxx Malboy
Twilight Ruins Matches
Q2: Nooblex spawns in a surround between Qwest (lower left) and SuperPrometeusX (upper left), with Brainman alone on the right. SPX and Brain were subs for TorpedoBuster and Noexxx. Noexxx was not able to play due to scheduling conflict and ended up in Q8, while TorpedoBuster was dropped from the league for complete inactivity. Everyone takes their 3 expos, although Nooblex struggled to do so versus the bottom red camp, nearly losing his panda. Blex was the first to break 50 food, going hard on Qwest, while SPX and Brain form a short peace before Brain hits SPX's expo. Qwest rises up to 100 food gargs and is able to fight back Nooblex all the way to his base, where Nooblex surrenders and gg's. Brain and SPX continue to battle until Qwest gets involved, at which point Brain had over 2x the gold of his opponents and transitions to necrowagon. Despite SPX having the least gold, he is teamed until Brain and Qwest are satisfied and the teaming turns towards Brain. Brain lands a huge Death and Decay on SPX's main and towers, but they soon find Brain's necrowagons with their pants down in the middle of the map, marking the beginning of the end for Brain's main base. The power shifts again, this time with Brain and SPX teaming side-by-side against Qwest, where he loses his heroes and base. SPX then reveals he has gyros and begins a dual-assault on Brain with gyros and Qwest with heroes and tanks. Qwests last wyrms/gargs are not enough to stop him from being based. Then it all comes down to a final attack on Brain's last buildings/ high-level undead heroes. SPX's assault was enough to clinch victory.
Q7: We got Malboy and DV- surrounding LifeForRent on the left side, while Bryan has the best spawn alone on the right. LFR started the action with a rush on Malboy's expansion. Malboy was able to bounce back and take down LFR. Meanwhile Bryan and DV- creep the rest of the map, expo, and hoard nicely. The game moves quickly into a 3-way hoard. Bryan open's up fire on DV- which is followed by heavy teaming on Bryan with his big orc heroes. Bryan is able to take DV- down, and Malboy has a good head-start on the 1v1 with mass TP and up 7k to the 2k of Bryan. Bryan beat army after army from Malboy and established a couple mines for a short time. This close 1v1 carried on with both players broke. Malboy was able to take down the harassing BM while it was away from the rest of the army before the final fight. Then Malboy was able to finish it, and Bryan taking his 11 points for top score.
Q5: In this game, Audigy and Ludix had close spawn on the top of the map, while Wreck and SweeT had the right and left, respectively. Each player took his 3 expos soundly. Wreck opened up aggression on SweeT, which was soon discontinued as Wreck noticed Audigy building a proxy necropolis outside his base, and necrowagon incoming. Audigy goes balls-deep with 3 sappers to take down Wreck's expo. The 1v1 swapped for SweeT and he then had to go up against Ludix's orc army which was well-prepared for fighting against dryads. Audigy and Wreck trade units for a bit at first, with Wreck coming out ahead. Meanwhile Ludix took a massive lead against SweeT, reaching up to 20k gold. Wreck and Audigy made a soon-to-be-temporary peace while Wreck sought to balance the power of Ludix. Ludix fights Wreck at his base, TPs out, and then Audigy comes in to try to finish Wreck. Wreck ends up essentially finishing Audigy instead while Ludix finishes SweeT, although Audigy holds on with a few buildings and revives his heroes. Audigy harasses Wreck's buildings while Ludix cleans up the game.
Deadlock Matches
Q10: htrt and Duck start with close spawn on the top left, with Seksi and Tleilaxu taking the right-side corners. Duck picks up a panda for his 3rd hero with ghouls/aboms and clashes with htrt who goes pala, BM, MK rifles. Tleilaxu and Seksi hoard for a bit before Seksi goes on Tlei's expo, having DR first as orc. A great abom/wyrm fight happens at htrt's base and htrt is able to fight it off, gaining the upper hand against Duck. After htrt takes down a couple of Duck's expos, Duck then launches his final army at Seksi, loses all and gg's. The middle phase of the game consists of a lot of Seksi running away from htrt's army, while charming many units, and htrt picking units off with banish and stormbolt. Seksi has about 2x the gold of either opponent. Then teaming on htrt for a bit before htrt launches a massive assault on Seksi's base, in which he is forced to TP. However, Tlei siezes the opportunity to finish off Seksi's main right after the battle, with Seksi still at 10k gold. Seksi and htrt looked to be moving toward Tlei together, but then end up fighting one another instead. Tlei bases htrt, and seksi does not have enough to fight Tlei in the end. A well-played patient game by Tleilaxu who was able to strike like a cobra at just the right moment.
Q9: My personal vote for match of the week! It was a pleasure to watch this game live not knowing who would win till the very end. The match started off with all players uncharacteristically going random. Mog spawned lower left, Seksi spawned bottom right, with AlienWareOwnZ and fow sandwiched in a double surround between them. Alien started aggression on seksis right-hand expo, while fow expands across map and throws a small harass at Mog. Neither surrounded player is able to break out, and Alien falls back on his base and seksi levels up his DR/panda. Meanwhile, Mog levels up against fow in the other 1v1, but turns-down for WHAT? To keep toming of course while saving massive bank. Teaming then happens against Seksi in the middle phase of the game, as seksi nearly goes extinct -- but he hangs on by a thread, building enough scattered buildings to revive his heroes and scrape together a chim army in the corner. During this, teaming then happens against Mog, while fow and Alien are able to hoard. It comes down to a base race on Seksi while Mog's high level orc heroes continue to be a threat. Ultimately seksi is based out, Mog only has a BM to cast bladestorm alongside fow's last stand, and Alien is able to clean up the match with mass TP.
Q8: Noexxx and Vyvanne start with close spawn in the top left, with Ostone bottom mid and Lightweight mid-right. There was a steady start by all players taking their expos with no rushes. Noexxx and Vyvanne choose panda and begin by clashing over Vyvanne's natural expo. Noexxx was hungry for battle from not being able to play his original match due to scheduling conflict, and subbing KenoStrikesBack in this game. He then takes the upper hand against Vyvanne. On the other end of the map, Ostone clashes with Lightweight in back-and-forth trades. After finishing Vyvanne, Noexxx doesn't hesitate to go onto Ostone and take out his main. Lightweight goes 100 to stop Noexxx, but mass TP is a great advantage on the side of Noexxx. Ostone BM harasses while he can but is based. The hero and gold deficit for Lightweight could not be overcome and Noexxx takes it home.
Q12: We got another double surround with WarchiefRich on the top right outside, Hudkraem and CallMeImba on the inside on the right, and Screpi on the bottom outside. WCR is the first two get up 2 expos, with CallMeImba soon to follow, however -- his mid expo falls to WCR harass. Hudkraem takes the safe cross-map expo and builds the htrt hero combo. WCR then aggros on screpi next. Early teaming against WCRs non-stop aggression ensues, with an unfortunate disconnect by Screpi. WCR continues to attack all his opponents by going on Hudkraem next, while CMI simultaneously takes down WCR's expos. WCR is worn thin on gold, loses a big battle to CMI and says gg. Hudkraem hanging on in tatters from WCRs attacks, does not have enough hero levels or production buildings to make an army to match CMI, and it's a straightforward cleanup for CMI.
Thanks for checking in this week, and if you haven't taken notice yet -- Mage has posted the round 2 matches, so go schedule your games and best of luck in week 3!
Show Posts
ztsoso
b100death
ObserveAndLearn
j33.
Steppinrazor
Round 1: Silverpine Forest 
Round 2: Emerald Shores FML 
Round 3: Sanctuary 
Round 4: Harvest of Sorrow 
Semi Final: Twilight Ruins 
Final: Deadlock
