S20 - Week 1 Recap

[FML|red7z7]

Hey all! The first week of season 20 brought us many exciting matches (and at least one not so exciting one). With 6 games played, that brings us 6 players who are well on their way to qualifying for the main season (spoiler alert):

j33.
junkerzam
FML|Renaud
DNIWE_VOVA
zTsoso
Eshan

Let's take a look at what went down this week.

Deadlock Matches

Q13:
The first match of the week was played on Deadlock and featured Renaud, Elessar (a stand-in for no-show DNIWE-VOVA), Life, and AJIKAIII. This was a fast game, with a convincing rush from Renaud on Life (Life's risky hoard did not work out for him), while simultaneously a successful rush from Elessar on AJIKAIII. When it came down to the final 1v1, Renaud was far ahead of Elessar in economy and was able to secure victory.

Q6:
Another match on Deadlock, this one featured junkerzam, bRain.Man, Tyrant66, and Letshavesomefun. This match started off with two 1v1's, bRain.Man vs Tyrant started out with a long, bloody fiend battle over the corner expo, with eventually Tyrant pulling ahead in multiple mirror battles. On the other side of the map, junker was able to edge out the surrounded letshavesomefun with excellent micro and army composition. He also opted for a somewhat rare dreadlord-first reminiscent of the PencilWarrior style of years long past. In the middle phase of the game, Tyrant was heavily teamed to the point of no return, followed by a quick clash between bRain and junker which was won by the Swede convincingly following a critical middle expo.

Q1:
Another Deadlock match, this time with SteppinRazor, DNIWE_VOVA (replaced spielman who showed up late, and re-entered the league from the game he missed himself), i-never-smile, and red7z7. In one of the shortest FML matches of all time, i-never-smile rushed out Steppin from a surrounded position with a well-timed dryad force, while shortly thereafter red7z7 launched into i-never-smiles base in a very uninformed decision. Vova proceeded to clean the game up by toming first Steppin, then red7z7, and finally finishing i-never-smile in a 1-2-3 fashion. Well played by Vova capitalizing on his position and the mistakes of his opponents.

Twilight Ruins matches


Q4:
This marathon 2 hour match was played on the all-time most popular map, Twilight Ruins and featured Mr.Sparkle aka Kajetan, NoMercy, fetta_ook, and former champion j33. Things started out with j33. blasting fetta in the face with a solid chippo push. But Fetta was able to relocate from the surround to near NoMercy where a peace was formed for much of the game. Then NoMercy hoarded, fetta rebuilt and hoarded, and Sparkle clashed with j33 time and again, each time coming up short in the battles against the quiet elf behemoth and his early DR with charm, at one point reaching 110+ food with spirit breakers and orc casters. Eventually fetta came back and clashed with nomercy while sparkle on his back-legs harassed fetta and j33, causing quite a bit of animosity. In the end, fetta was teamed out, and Sparkle's mass-tp + NoMercy's hit and run was not enough to take down the patient former champ.

Q11:
I'll claim that this is the match of the week with Magadansky, Valefort, zTsoso, and Kpect -- certainly full of action from the start to the finish. Valefort did a powerful mercenary rush on Maga to break the surround, while Maga fought on for dear life, able to barely rebuild across the map. Meanwhile, zTsoso manages to choke Kpect into submission while securing much of the right side of the map. The rest of the game is a beautiful display of talent from zTsoso as he fights head to head with Valefort while continuously stopping Maga from fully rebuilding. A well deserved win and one for the books!

Q3:
This was an entertaining twilight Ruins match between fetta_ook (sub for Ponty), Eshan, Pinballmap, and Prometeus. Eshan was able to take down the fellow orc, fetta_ook on the right side of the map. Prometeus subsequently possessed a peon from fetta's remains and built up to orc casters with his undead army, but he didn't reveal them until after defeating pinball in a drawn-out battle over expos. The dual-race army proved to be very strong in the final 1v1 with Eshan, but a few crucial mistakes left him in second place up against the orc who was able to take the better half of each fight and secure the critical mines in the end.


That's it for week 1, but come by this week to check out 5 more games -- some of them being the most anticipated yet. If you haven't confirmed your game yet, go schedule! Also, if you haven't taken notice yet, we have opened FML bets again this season, and you can always check that out here: http://ffamasters.net/index.php?page=13&season=20

Cheers and play on!

[ins]

It's complete and utter bullshit when someone gets to do the write-up for the game they played in.

[Peregrine]

not that any of this really matters, but red thats not what happened in match 3. I was the one who killed the orc fetta while prometeus and pbm fought. then i came back from a 12k to 3k deficit so i dont know about better economic foundations lol...did you watch the game?

[SweeT]

i hope half of these situations don't happen in my game. I have a game plan and I will be equally annoyed if audigy decided to necro wagon me without scouting

[Pinballmap]

Actually i like that you made little writeup about every match happened. So i do not have to watch all replays to know what was going on.

@ins : whats so wrong about it? maybe a bit biased in your opinion? I dont think that summary  can be considered as bullshit.

[CallMeImba]

Actually these summaries were written to make other players watch the replays. Though i have seen each game i enjoyed reading your descriptions.

[zTsoso]

Thanks for the writeup Red.

I really like reading your in-game analysis. I think it is a good way to keep players and the community motivated! It certainly is nice to know that some people pay attention to the games from an analytical point of view. I like myself to spend a lot of time analyzing my games and other players as I think it is key to improve your skills, decision-making and ffa understanding.

Few people have so far commented on the qualifier matches on ffareplays from an analytical point of view that pays attention to decisive events, decision-making, key mistakes or constructive critique. That is why I think this post is good. The analytical analysis of the games should help increase our understanding of FML even if it only sticks to the main events.

Eshan is right about the Q3 match - it needs some editing on the main events :-). Personally I found the 1on1 between Eshan and Prometeus to be very exciting and intense until the last moment. I definitely think it is worth a watch if you haven't seen it - I personally think Q6, Q3 and Q11 were the most entertaining and best "quality" games this week. I have only watched 30 mins of the Q4 though, which bored me at a time when it was very late, the replay too long and I was tired :-). 

Once again thanks for posting Red, great job. 

[Ugrilainen]

Q6 is the best I saw so far.

ffareplays.com is a junk site you should forget about

[junkerzam]

nice job red! fun to read about the games.

50% of winners from scandinavia 

[FML|red7z7]

It's complete and utter bullshit when someone gets to do the write-up for the game they played in.

Sorry you feel upset about it. I volunteer to do these writeups to add content to the site and keep the community informed about the season in case they missed some games. My commentary is mostly surface-level and I don't attempt to analyze strategies in the games, and on top of that I try to not criticize any of the players. If you'd like to submit a write-up of your own for games in the future I'd encourage you to do so. It takes time and a lot of watching to do the writeups and if members of the comunity like yourself are willing to help I would appreciate that. Also, I think you're writing would be good, so please don't hesitate if you're interested.

not that any of this really matters, but red thats not what happened in match 3. I was the one who killed the orc fetta while prometeus and pbm fought. then i came back from a 12k to 3k deficit so i dont know about better economic foundations lol...did you watch the game?

My bad! This was the one game I watche via stream so I definitely missed some parts. Next time I'll make sure I do all writeups from replay. After I saw preometeus possess the peon I had assumed it was him who killed fetta. Also I just saw that you were hovering around 3-4k while Prometeus was around 1-2k with no secure mine. I'll modify the write-up.

[FML|Mage]

It's complete and utter bullshit when someone gets to do the write-up for the game they played in.

Out of curiosity what are you criticizing?  He said you pulled off a rush and then he made an uniformed decision.  I don't really see much bias there.

Nice job Red, very well done.  For those that don't realize, this takes several hours to do.  Not only do you have to watch all the replays, you then have to do the write up for the games which takes a while, and then you have to back and read it to make sure you don't hurt anyone's feelings since the FFA community as a whole is incredibly drama filled and will take offense to any minor slight they can find.

Just remember if you complain and Red stops doing these then you either don't get a write up, or you get me doing them again and I can guarantee you that I don't watch any of the matches while doing the writeups. 

[Ugrilainen]

red is being diplomatic like mage usually is.

with ugri it would go : ....ah well we do not want this back here

anyway, great write ups, keep doing those

[ins]

It's complete and utter bullshit when someone gets to do the write-up for the game they played in.

Out of curiosity what are you criticizing?  He said you pulled off a rush and then he made an uniformed decision.  I don't really see much bias there.

It's a conflict of interest.  There is always bias when someone writes about their own game.  He could have been spot on with his analysis, and it still wouldn't be right for him to write it in a big article about the week in the league.  I wouldn't write about my own game in something like this because objectivity is automatically thrown out the window, and it cheapens the rest of the recap.

Just remember if you complain and Red stops doing these then you either don't get a write up, or you get me doing them again and I can guarantee you that I don't watch any of the matches while doing the writeups. 

Then I'll do it myself, apart from my own games (for above reasons).  I watch all the games anyways, and I type 120 WPM.

[DV-]

Nice read, hope u continue to post such stuff.

[FML|Mage]

It's a conflict of interest.  There is always bias when someone writes about their own game.  He could have been spot on with his analysis, and it still wouldn't be right for him to write it in a big article about the week in the league.  I wouldn't write about my own game in something like this because objectivity is automatically thrown out the window, and it cheapens the rest of the recap.

Of course it is, however these aren't going into some history book or something.  There's no reward behind his writeups, and it's not like they'll be used for tiebreaking.  I get what you're saying, I just don't see how it matters in any impactful way. 

Also nothing's stopping you from doing some writeups, go for it!  The more content the better, and if they're good we'll push them onto the front page.