FFA Masters League

The long and hard-fought Season 22 is drawing to its conclusion and only 4 contestants for the title remain. For the first time, there are no representatives of North or South America as it is pure European final. In fact, it is pure domination of the North of Europe. The title will go to Sweden, Denmark, Finland or Russia.

Now let's look closely on who these players are:

junkerzam

A finalist for the second time in a row, junkerzam has secured his spot through the Winner semis after a season in which he was always hanging on the very edge of missing the top 12 but thanks to a gracious win in the final round, managed to enter the holy ground. After his disappointing performance in the last season's finals, be sure that he is seeking to prove himself worthy of being in the FML Hall of Fame. He possesses a clear advantage over his opponents in that by playing random, he can adjust his playstyle easily towards the races of his adversaries.

zTsoso

Soso had troubles during the regular season as he was in a similar position of that of junkerzam. He was obliged to win in his final game but even then he was not sure. The events however turned out just right. First, all his opponents failed to schedule resulting in free 25 points. Afterwards, DV dropped out from the semifinalists and Soso was right next in line.

He then used his chance, just like Denmark in the European cup in 1992 (coincidence??!), and won his semi decisively, becoming the first finalist. Again, just like junkerzam, it is his second final in a row. His first was also subpar to what we are expecting from the Dane. Therefore, he is going to put his best in writing down his name among the best FFAers.

HeavyWeight

Generally quiet player, both inside and outside the game. He lets the results speak for themselves. He won the last FML w3arena cup and now he is one of the 4 finalists, looking for a second trophy. He also plays all races, and does so amazingly well. His play is solid, his decision-making is flawless. His seasonal performance has been excellent and he was never in real danger of missing the semis and dropping to the losers bracket. Consider him a favorite to take this.

j33

There are no finals without a former champion. j33 is currently playing this role. His road to the finals was filled with ups and downs. From his extraordinary play during the season, to the deepest pits of the losers bracket, he secured the final spot in the final with patient, intelligent play - his trademark. The 103 points he gained from the first 6 rounds were not enough - he was defeated in the semis and had to win two games in the losers bracket. The cold winters in Finland though have strengthened this warrior and he did not gave up. Methodologically, he rolled over the opposition, consisting of many experienced players and is now looking to become the 4th player with more than 1 title in FML. We are sure he is motivated to do so.

Map for the final is going to be Twilight Ruins. Good luck to our finalists!

as in the winter war i will help against the russian bear..

i'm also open to conspire against denmark, they are no true northmen after all..

Good luck and have fun everyone! :)

lol

Here comes my predictions for the Grand Final.

junkerzam

As some of you might already know, during the past 4-5 months junkerzam has developed a genuine interest for the solo scene. He watches a lot of competitive solo games and plays plenty of solo ladder. This has led to him being a rather tough opponent in your first 1v1 in the FFA, since unlike me he is capable of handling t1 units in an a good way.

But, this is not solo, thank god. Since Twilight is a big map, nobody will want to be the early aggressor, so junker's newly recently achieved micro won't matter at this stage. This being said, if somebody, Soso in particular, spawns sandwiched, I am rather convinced he will go for a push with lvl 3 AM, defend footies and some mercs. If junker is next to him, I have a hard time believing he will survive, since soso is still at a level above junker when it comes to those kind of battles.

I don't root for junker, but if I would, then I would definitely hope that he would choose UD. His UD is great, super annoying to face and if he scouts GW or j33 close to him, he will most likely go for a quick garg build and hit them before they get their infrastructure and panda levels up and running. Also, a low level DR is super shitty on those kinds of situations. The only way I could see junker losing such an encounter, would be if he took a half bad fight in the elf main, while the elf is pumping continuously, since the elf will most definitely have more expos up and running, due to the imbalance of he night elf race.

If junker gets elf, he will also be in pretty good shape, since it is his 2nd best race. He will for sure go for the most boring hero combo there is tho, DH Panda KOTG. IMO the KOTG usually serves no purpose, since it is super easy to dispell his only good spell, or just pop an invi pot. In this particular matchup tho I must say the kotg could be a good choice, since his ultimate is great vs human and also if it comes down to a narrow base race, the imba cooldown on that skill could be a game changer, so could those shitty treants. The thing that annoys me monumentally with KOTG is how insanely bad his level scales. I mean, force of nature, getting 1 extra treant for each level? Or just getting an entangling root to be better? There are very few occasions where I have been like "damn, that entangle was really great since it was soooo long". Junker has become pretty good at using staffs/scrolls, after he got his warkeys, something he usually brings up and brags about IRL. But it is true, he is pretty good at it. However, it never helps him vs good orcs like me, since it is super easy to just purge the unit just when he is about to staff it. But luckily for junker, there is no skilled orc in this matchup.

If junker becomes orc, he will most likely lose. I don't like his BO and besides that he will probably go grunts which is a fundamental noob mistake at Twilight. Also, as orc junker has a tendency to use all of his gold too soon and just rely on great hero levels, a strategy that is viable on ladder, but not vs this shrewd cast. I think there is a chance that he will pick Alchy for this game, because that works very well with the mass bat strategy he tends to prefer. However, as I experienced in the loser bracket final, getting a lvl 6 alchy always will get you teamed, so just by summoning that weird jew from the tavern will put you on a certain path to doom.



I would hate to see junker as human. He is very good at the late game with human, but his early game is a catastrophe, which he openly admits. The reason behind this is that he doesn't know the BO, which to me sounds like a weird excuse. I mean, just have a look at a replay by soso or someone and then you remember it. Capisce?

He will most certainly go AM, panda, pally if he gets human, which is the worst combo I know, since it is horrible to face as orc. However, this combo only works in big battles and will get him wrecked in arena.

zTsoso

Soso is a top-tier player, probably one of the best humans we have in the scene today. However, as many of you probably have heard me say before, he has one big ass flaw: passiveness. However, in this game he will face a bunch of players that also love to be passive, maybe with the exception of GW. I really hope he proves us wrong and pulls off an amazing push on someone, since that will force the other 2 to also fight.

I think at the 1 h mark, we will have a 3-way where Soso will be in the leading position. However, since he lacks the ability to spot those few windows of opportunities that sometimes reveal themselves, and instead just remain passive, to afraid to use his gold. This is an ability that junker has developed and is pretty good at, which at this level of FFA is going to be what distinguishes the really good from the pretty good players. This is also what Dovekie seems to not understand in his rants on the forum...

I would say that Soso will win his first matchup no matter who he meets, unless he faces junker's undead, since ud is imba early game vs human. Another factor that could be decisive in a game like this is the scouting. Soso is probably the best player on the scene when it comes to scouting and his trademark is to constantly send copters around. The only game when he obviously didn't scout, was last year's final when he faced the mighty fetta_ook. In this game, Soso had a real tunnel vision and was too stubborn for his own best, which gave him 0% chance of winning. But hey, who can blame him? He faced fetta_ook and when one faces the best orc since Ludix, one has different things to focus on....


HeavyWeight
I really like Greatwall, he is a fun player that usually picks unorthodox hero combos, which sometimes can seem just as if he is trolling, but he obviously is smarter than the rest of us, since picking the pitlord was probably what gave him the win in the truly epic final of the previous FFA cup organized by Ugri and W3a.

I am afraid tho that GW will do what he almost always does, insta-goes 100 food. That will absolutely wreck his economy vs the other hoarders in this game, so even if he wins his solo, he will be at a huge disadvantage in the end.

I root for Greatwall and hopes he picks: tinker, panda, warden. That would be an epic late game which he would be invincible in the base races. The only thing that worries me is his tree-hiding skill. He needs to learn from gradient and fetta_ook, and move them around constantly....

j33

Jussi is one of the nicest players in this community, despite some blatant ladder suicides on me... He is always nice to have a chat with, act rationally and behaves well. He is focused on the game, only the game, like one should be, not using the FFA scene to bring up your inner fantasies or discuss politics. I mean come on guys, talk to your IRL friends. Don't do like tleilaxu and send hand drawn pictures of random monsters and critters and ask the rest of us for feedback. Don't do like letshave and bring up the troubles in your love life with bearded east german "women". Don't do like supercumulo and write novels about his boring ass life in Peru, sitting and counting votes together with 80 year old people.

j33 is a good w3 player and a good person. j33 does tell boring ass tales about his life. Be like j33.


This being said, j33 is the most predictable player. He will go DR, panda, kotg and be the first player to hit the 5k mark. However, he is rather limited when it comes to early aggression, but let him get his infra up and come at you with a 100 food army and you will regret yourself. He loves doing that on me when I'm orc, which is super hard to survive. The nasty thing with j33 is that it doesn't matter if you beat him or not, he will never die. He is like a cockroach and will always end up with a hidden army in an obscure part of the map. I assume that his summer holidays in the barren lands of northern Finland must have given this old school Finn the ability to make gold out of wood, since he always seems to have an endless amount of gold in his games. Unfortunately for j33, I think he stands no chance in this game.

I wish all of you good luck and I look forward to next season where I will switch to Undead, since as Orc you will never be allowed to win FML when Maga and Renaud are kings of the hill.

Let's see. Ztsoso, Greatwall, J33 and Junker.

After listening to the latest podcast where Junker said he said hu mirror was his weakest match-up., I wonder what race we will see from him here. I think Elf would probably be his best choice on this map, due to its many goldmines and potential aura items.
Given the most likely circumstance of two humans vs two elves, Junker will probably choose a standard DH, Panda, Kotg trio in order to deal with tanks with the broken chaos splash damage.

J33, the Finnish woodland elf, will probably not deviate from his established formula. DR, panda, Kotg,  passive hoarding while scouting with a hippo for any danger. This game will definitely not be easy on him though. People should already have noted his propensity for hiding armies and gold and trees, and they will be prepared to scout the corners of the map.

Together with Junker, J33 is one of the two lightweights on this map. They will have to be wary of pushes from Soso and Gw, who both seem to be slightly better mechanically, but most importantly they will also (most likely) be playing a race that is slightly more broken than Night Elf.

Ztsoso, the Danish hoarder, will probably go for AM, Panda and Pala given the match up, even though I think AM MK Pala is always the strongest choice.
He will be looking for weaknesses to punish, but at the same time if the opportunity presents itself, which is very likely, he will also hoard for a long time and sit in his base behind towers.
One of Soso's big opponents in this game might actually be himself, since we have seen him before fall victim to his own style of boring play, only to lose his mind and go rambo and die.
Time will tell what will happen.

Greatwall, the most unknown variable in this game, will most likely play human since, well, human is pretty much the best race in this game, although it is closely followed by Orc and Night Elf.
Greatwall has shown himself to be cunning and patient, which are two attributes that define a succesful FFA player. I'm not sure what heroes he will go for, but given the map I do think he might just go for a standard AM MK Pala to get that mass tp sweetness.
If he plays Elf, which is also very likely, the hero choices suddenly become more interesting. Junker suggested he might play a tinker, and I agree, since we have seen him play Tinker with great succes on this map (he won a playffa cup with Tinker first as UD).
Tinker and Panda will put him at a big advantage in any potential base races. I'm not sure what the third hero would be, probably Kotg or POTM.
I'm pretty sure he will end up surprising us though.

Looking forward to seeing these four players battle it out.