GKG's Professional Review of WTC vs TMNS

[Giant Killer General]

Okay obviously this was a huge upset and a very embarrassing performance for TMNS. Certainly the biggest upset that I can remember from the past several years, and possibly the biggest upset in MWC history ever. Many people are in shock wondering what happened. Allow me to explain for everyone how this big of an upset ended up happening.

Game 1: When The Trow Comes Around, CTF:
The first game sets the tone for the closeness of every game in the rest of the match. Both sides have pretty even exchanges most of the game, leaving the % pretty even going into the final few minutes of the game. It looks like it is going to be a tie game, until you see Gekko sneak flank 2 zerks and 1 myrk to the far NW and TMNS has no scout there. Zak is capping TMNS and seems to have 0 awareness, as he does not realize the 3 melee flank until it is about 5 seconds away from their home flag, and he has decided to run what few melee he had on flag D completely off the flag, past the enemy flank that he is unaware is running right past him. WTC ends up quickly killing the stoned TMNS trow that was their only flag defense, and wins the game.

Game 2: Shuffle Dark, FR
Tirri takes over capping for TMNS and gets a horrible trade with heavy ghols on a map with no pus, myrks, zerks, mauls, fetch, and locks. THOR gets a much better trade with only fetch and max melee. WTC does a decent job of executing a rush strategy until Gekko and Rawr lose patience and end up doing poor rushes instead of waiting until they got VI to pin them to their last flag. Slate does a good job killing TMNS' defended tower flag, and pushes to TMNS' last flag with WTC's VI advantage, but the rest of his team has suicided too much melee and he gets cleaned up by overwhelming TMNS forces. A fairly close game still, TMNS wins.

Game 3: Sleep Hollow Shadow, Terries
TMNS gets an archless, max melee with dorfs type trade, and WTC gets some archers. Normally TMNS' archless trade would be superior here, but they execute horribly. Instead of ignoring WTC's archers and the middle part of the map (only 1 flag there) and spreading out to pressure them in the gametype by getting the flag advantage, they instead do the direct opposite and the worst thing possible. Instead of trying force WTC to spread out, they decide to come to fight WTC to control the middle instead with their rush units. WTC does a good job of communicating, coordinating, and sticking tightly together as they should against the rush. TMNS does a premature and ill-advised rush and allows WTC's archers to get good damage off. Shai loses half his fg health to a pus an a dorf shot while pretty much doing nothing. In the final minute of the game, TMNS tunnel visions on trying to desperately cling to their rush to finish WTC off in their rush, leaving all the flags open. Kilgrath out-fg's Shai before WTC 9-flags TMNS, winning the game. To be fair though, had the game got drawn out, WTC still would have won.

Game 4: Midst of 4 herons, Lmoth
TMNS gets a decent trade here, some archers and some thrall, a very average trade, but good trade overall. WTC ends up getting the worst trade possible, nearly max archers and max warriors. Both teams do a full jugger to the east and line up to fight. Despite WTC's archer advantage, TMNS still out-archers them badly. This was the only game that was not close in the entire series (it was not a complete stomp though either despite THOR getting the worst possible trade). I don't think it mattered even if THOR got the best trade ever, this map has a unit set that suits TMNS' strengths and preferred style. Also it is lmoth, so there is no gametype for them to foolishly lose by which they seem to have had trouble with in the first 3 games. The game played out in the fashion that most people expected all 5 games to go down, with TMNS solidly out-BCing WTC to win the game.

Game 5: Poison Holiday Trow, FR
Zak takes over capping for TMNS again after Tirri capped the previous 3 games. Both teams get okay trades. WTC opts for a fetchless and heavy melee type trade, with only 2 morts and 3 souls for ranged units, a decent trade. TMNS gets max fetch and also heavy melee, also a decent trade. Different trades here with the arty, but similar in quality. It is going to come down to the execution. WTC ends up juggering the east flank with everything, and only guarding the flag right behind it. They have some success in their initial rush, by the end of it leaving them up 25% but with some hurt trow. For a solid 1-2 minutes Shai's trows are pretty much out of the fight as he flanks wide west and desperately falls back to catch up. WTC then fucks up some by suiciding a lot of their melee, and Kilg does a very shaky trowing job losing trow and trow health needlessly in a few exchanges. Now the % are pretty even. WTC has a bunch of mauls, 3 souls, and 2 morts guarding their last flag, but with VI advantage. TMNS decides to flank 3 fetch, some melee, and a trow. This easily would be enough to kill WTC's defense, given enough time, which with 4 minutes on the game clock and they are already at the flag, they definitely have enough time. TMNS used to have a very heavy flag D to give them all the time in the world, but somewhere along the line, Shai's 2 red trow decide to flank. TMNS' defense is still okay though, until Zak pulls his melee force off of flag defense too, apparently not realizing the sizeable melee force + trow that WTC has on offense to threaten their flag. WTC has a window of like 30 seconds to capture the flag while TMNS has a good chunk of its force completely out of the fight, and they take it. WTC rushes in on the flag defense, have a solid melee, and crush it soundly to win the game, and the entire match.

Overall comments on the match at large:

Obviously to cause this big of an upset, there needs to be multiple factors that contribute to something this big. It isn't enough for just 1 team to play better or worse, both the favorite team needs to underperform, and the underdog team needs to have a surprising performance in or to create something this significant. And that is exactly what happened.

The loss for TMNS is mostly Zak's fault. He has horrible awareness, does not scout, and is completely oblivious of the flag defense needed to hold their last flags. And he is the captain for those games, that is basically his only job. Enemy melee forces basically run right past his melee units to their weak flag defenses in both game 1 and game 5, costing them those games.

Tirri stepped in to captain for TMNS for the middle 3 games, but those were also the easiest games for TMNS to win since light units, and anything that is non-trow in general is going to be their strength. He ends up doing a very mediocre job, and still losing a game on one of their stronger unit sets, when they needed to win all 3 of the non-trow maps.

Finally, Shai is given primary trowing / fg duty and also under-performs badly. This is not unusual though, Shai was never a strong trower / fg'er. So this one should be blamed on both Zak and Tirri again for giving Shai those units. Tirri also trowed to a lesser degree, and also did horrible, as usual. Trowing is not the strengths of either of those 2 players. Chron should have been their primary trower. Both Zak and Tirri obviously have no idea what they are doing as captains, which is no surprise really.

The responsibility of the loss of this match falls on their respective shoulders something like this: 60% Zak's fault. 30% Tirri's fault, and 10% Shai's fault.

Make no mistake though, this was not just about TMNS shooting itself in the foot. WTC played a good strong match as well. WTC did not get lucky in flags or something. They didn't get out-BC'd in the match by any means either. This match was no fluke. They played a good strong match, much better than anyone would have expected. They got more damage on game 1, they should have won game 2 had they played it a bit smarter and executed better. Game 4 was really the only game they got cleanly out-BC'd on.

Anyway I think I covered everything. If anyone else has any other questions on the match analysis, I would be more than happy to help.

[par73]

Nice! got this done before i even made the request.

[rawr]

I had a clutch performance at end in game 3 my 3 arks sniped down there 2 duffs for us to even take flag to flag them if Anyone wants to check that out 8). And in game 5 watch my break away from zaks Melee pack that he didn't even notice and go straight for there flag to help lk even get the flag. If my Melee didn't get there we wouldn't even been able to get the flag , gkg is right we had about a 30 second time frame to do this and I was there within that 30 sec frame and me andLk striked for the victory while our team was holding d solidly! Great games !

[rawr]

Other than that ! Great review gkg ! and thanks for calling out my ugly rush game 2 . It's all good I made up for it game 3 and 5...

[tirri]

The responsibility of the loss of this match falls on their respective shoulders something like this: 60% Zak's fault. 30% Tirri's fault, and 10% Shai's fault.

i had so bad delay that i couldnt take good units (big reason why wtc won the first game as i was shadowing kilgs 3 trows with my 2 with up to 900ms in-game ping), so i ended up capping games i hadnt planned on capping. notice how i say "i have no idea where everyone goes" during the pl time of sleepy hollow as i had made no plans for the map nor had i given any thought on what units to give which players. so while you can of course fault me from those things, i was just there mostly to trade for the units, not take a huge responsibility on utilizing everyone to their fullest potential as i hadnt prepared for it at all. i actually just asked who wants fg before the game and shai was the only one to say yes.

so in other words, i guess ill take some blame for the match loss with bad execution on a map i had given no thought at all, but all in all being unable to use good units and then capping to a 2-1 record hardly makes me the major culprit. im sure if adren had been there, i didnt have delay and we had a little better captain than zak (rab) in both of the matches we lsot, we would have been fighting for mwc title but sadly that didnt happen now

[Zak]

I'll defend myself just once, not posting in this thread again.

Game 1: When The Trow Comes Around, CTF: It looks like it is going to be a tie game, until you see Gekko sneak flank 2 zerks and 1 myrk to the far NW and TMNS has no scout. Zak is capping TMNS and seems to have 0 awareness, as he does not realize of the 3 melee flank until it is about 5 seconds away from their home flag, and he has decided to run what few melee he had as flag D, completely off the flag and past the enemy flank that he is unaware is running right past him. WTC ends up quickly killing the stoned TMNS trow that was their only flag defense, and wins the game.

When gekko broke off from his base to flank for our flag, I wasn't watching their base because I was redistributing the units that I took from enc, and was calling him a piece of shit for his godawful play. Chron/Captain never bothered to mention the flanking 3 melee and by the time I went north to scout (thought enc would use one of his souls to scout north, never assume anything with enc) it was over.

Shuffle:
Tirri takes over capping for TMNS and gets a horrible trade with heavy ghols on a map with no pus, myrks, zerks, mauls, fetch, and locks. THOR gets a much better trade with only fetch and max melee. WTC does a decent job of executing a rush strategy until Gekko and Rawr lose patience and end up doing poor rushes instead of waiting until they got VI to pin them to their last flag. Slate does a good job killing TMNS' defended tower flag, and pushes to TMNS' last flag with WTC's VI advantage, but the rest of his team has suicided too much melee and he gets cleaned up by overwhelming TMNS forces. A fairly close game still, TMNS wins.

I saved our team this game by killing 2 fetch with a fireball. Those fetch would have taken our last flag.

Game 5: Poison Holiday Trow, FR
Zak takes over capping for TMNS again after Tirri capped the previous 3 games. Both teams get okay trades. WTC opts for a fetchless and max melee type trade, with 2 morts and 3 souls, a decent trade. TMNS gets max fetch and melee, also a decent trade. Different trades here with the arty, but similar in quality. It is going to come down to the execution. WTC ends up juggering the east flank with everything, and only guarding the flag right behind it. They have some success in their initial rush, by the end of it leaving them up 25% but with some hurt trow. For a solid 1-2 minutes Shai's trows are pretty much out of the fight as he flanks wide west and desperately falls back to catch up. WTC then fucks up some by suiciding a lot of their melee, and Kilg does a very shaky trowing job losing trow and trow health needlessly in a few exchanges. Now the % are pretty even. WTC has a bunch of mauls, 3 souls, and 2 morts guarding their last flag, but with VI advantage. TMNS decides to flank 3 fetch, some melee, and a trow. This easily would be enough to kill WTC's defense, given enough time, which with 4 minutes on the game clock and they are already at the flag, they definitely have enough time. TMNS used to have a very heavy flag D to give them all the time in the world, but somewhere along the line, Shai's 2 red trow decide to flank. TMNS' defense is still okay though, until Zak pulls his melee force off of flag defense too, apparently not realizing the sizeable melee force + trow that WTC has on offense to threaten their flag. WTC has a window of like 30 seconds to capture the flag while TMNS has a good chunk of its force completely out of the fight, and they take it. WTC rushes in on the flag defense, have a solid melee, and crush it soundly to win the game, and the entire match.

My team assured me they couldn't take the flag with the 3 fetch, so we knew we had to flank something. I assumed shaister was going to stay on kilgrath because a trow can easily pick apart a defense if there is nothing to counter it. Instead he said something like "not shadowing anymore" with no further explanation, at the exact same time that I broke off from D to send melee to their flag. If I had known that shaister was going on offense with his trow I would have kept my melee home and there wouldn't have been a repeat of the first game.

Overall comments on the match at large:

The loss for TMNS is mostly Zak's fault. He has horrible awareness, does not scout*, and is completely oblivious of the flag defense needed to hold their last flags. And he is the captain for those games, that is basically his only job. Enemy melee forces basically run right past his melee units to their weak flag defenses in both game 1 and game 5, costing them those games.

* GKG DISCLAIMER: If the team loses because of an unscouted flank flagging your team, that is the captain's fault. However if that captain is GKG, fault reverts back to the other 6 players on his team.

The responsibility of the loss of this match falls on their respective shoulders something like this: 60% Zak's fault. 30% Tirri's fault, and 10% Shai's fault.

Uh yeah I do scout, and I only captained 2 of the 5 games yet 60% of this is my fault? I remember you clearly blaming your team for losing a match to ratking in that draft tournament, because none of your players scouted. I think it happened 3-4 times to you that tournament! Oh wait, just saw that disclaimer, sorry.

Like I said before, if someone told me that 3 melee broke off from the base in game 1, or that our trow were going on offense, we would have won those games.


For the record I was captaining because nobody else would, and rabican's computer broke that morning. I performed adequately (most damage on team for the 2 games we won), and any claims that I cursed this team are fallacious. Bad communication and an inability to execute any kind of coordinated attack with each other were the biggest downfalls of TMNS.

[dac]

I'll defend myself just once, not posting in this thread again.

LOL

he mad

[Giant Killer General]

I'll defend myself just once, not posting in this thread again.

Why are you upset? This isn't a troll post. You deserve a troll post, but this isn't one. It is just an expert and objective analysis of what happened.

I saved our team this game by killing 2 fetch with a fireball. Those fetch would have taken our last flag.

Wrong, I just watched it again to confirm. You and shaister had a 2v1 against rawr. Yea, its easy to get a blindsided lock shot off when you play smart 2v1. That is a normal thing that happens in a 2v1 situation, especially when the undermanned player is trying to push into the 2 players. You weren't really underforced either. Even if it did somehow come down closer, you and shai had a 2v1 so you could have easily outmicro'd rawr in the melee with contesting the flag until the reinforcements arrived like 5-10 seconds later, especially against his slower maul units. So this is inaccurate, you had that flag safely anyway.

I remember you clearly blaming your team for losing a match to ratking in that draft tournament, because none of your players scouted.

Ah, this somehow becomes about me now. Look, I am just trying to provide an honest review here for the community. Again, you seem to be showing how upset you are here.
Maybe this was the blame you were talking about though? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVwmYwOLjV8#t=9m28s

For the record I was captaining because nobody else would, and rabican's computer broke that morning. I performed adequately (most damage on team for the 2 games we won), and any claims that I cursed this team are fallacious. Bad communication and an inability to execute any kind of coordinated attack with each other were the biggest downfalls of TMNS.

aaaand your last play is to throw your team under the bus, nice. Some true colors showing right there. Stay classy Zak.



Tirri, you are taking it much more like a man than I expected you to, good job.

[Asmodian]

There really is not much to argue in this review. I'll just point out a few things

1. Zak you are a decent role player/bcer but your in game awareness is horrible and your captaining was the main reason TMNS lost this match
2. Shaister and Tirri are absolute monsters and prob 2 of the only 5 or so players that I am worried about (even when rusty) when I flank against them, however when either of those players get trow/fg I am very glad as a player on the opposing team because I know that is their weakest role, chron should have definitely been trowing with the players that were there.
3. Tirri/Shai let me captain you to a glorious mwc victory next year so you can go out on top <3

edit: Actually I change my mind about #3. Instead I can just captain you in the MOST PRESTIGIOUS EVER Money Matches and we can all retire retire rich and buy unlimited amounts of jaw breakers.

[Dantski]

I told MC to give Shai trow in last game since Tirri was lagging so badly all match (yes he did complain before any fighting happened game 1). I don't think Chron would've performed better, perhaps Shai would've been better with other stuff though.

Game 1 - Even game and Gekko smartly flanked at end, honestly scouting kinda goes out the window with a few minutes remaining so w/e.

Game 2 - I agree getting lots of ghols was horrible. Maybe Tirri got them forgetting it was FR and not captures. I think Slate was wayyyyy too slow and took a lot more damage than necessary taking NC's tower flag, he could've taken it with minimal losses. Funniest part of the game and series was just as WTC's N dies, Captain manages to lock Flat's entire force "accidentely".

Game 3 - Hooray I played and I got given a melee pus squad. If I wasn't completely terrible with those units we might've won the game. Also was kinda confusing when Tirri said rush west when he actually meant rush east.

Game 4 - I archer people, they die. Also captains requests for dorf at the end were denied as I had to consider Flat's safety.

Game 5 - WTC juggers the hell out of East and NC plays 100% reactionary. This means WTC gets a firm % lead while NC trow and middle melee waste time trying to get to the fleeing east forces. While most teams try to avoid a flag race, if I was capping I'd have told Shai to go tag WTC's flags since he was so far away and rely on NC's eas force to slow WTC up a bit.

Anyway they were some fun games.

[Myrk]

Get those films uploaded, I wanna see this shit.

Also it's nice that the period of time where Zak was considered good is now over.

[THOR]

A Captain of a team is subject to error, there are several variables that are impossible to overcome. There are players solids that may be fine in a day and not on another day. I think Zak did Tirri and their role as captain, and played very well TMNS yes. However I think my team had also played best strats and more motivated.
NOW with all faults I have and my team, you guys have not noticed that already won all the good times that tournament, except for TMNT, TMNT play against however with 30% of our rooster.
It's good that you guys continue playing against WTC in subduing.

[East Wind tmnt]

Lool

[rawr]

does thor get a academy award winning for the best post!? lol!

[rawr]

he really did try

[Lizard King]

1) Major dakage
2) daked.
3) Tirri or shai would rape any of you trowing

[Giant Killer General]

3) Tirri or shai would rape any of you trowing

I've already raped tirri with trow badly this tourney, and shai is worse. neither have done anything spectacular with trow all tourney.

[Honkey]

What is missing from this thread is the fact that nobody acknowledged that dant didnt show for one game for his team as he "wasn't playing" but then subbed for Tmns. That hurts dant.

[tirri]

no one else really addressed this yet so ill just keep on hammering the point home

we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with the scheduling. we thought we would have to play bottom bracket finals on sunday if we won against wtc, so we scheduled for saturday knowing that adren couldnt show up. well as it turned out, i think agents wanted to reschedule anyway so we could have played on sunday anyway and have adren playing for us.

the whole week we kept pestering rab to captain and he said he would show up, only to announce on match day that his computer is broken and that he couldnt play.

so we ended up missing rabican (the captain), adren and i couldnt play the roles i usually play because of delay. and we didnt replace these pieces with anything except with dantski for games 3-5 and even though a good player, dantski really wasnt the piece we needed in the match. its not hard to understand what this means. the closest analogy when comparing to tmnt would be that gkg and arz wont show up and ew cant take powerhitter units because of lag. truthfully, that tmnt team would be complete crap and would not be favored at all vs wtc for example. so if a team like that would lose to wtc and people would then call the loss "the biggest upset in mwc history ever", i'd find it to be pretty ridiculous hyperbole to say the least

[Asmodian]

The closest analogy when comparing to tmnt would be that gkg and arz wont show up and ew cant take powerhitter units because of lag. truthfully, that tmnt team would be complete crap and would not be favored at all vs wtc for example. so if a team like that would lose to wtc and people would then call the loss "the biggest upset in mwc history ever", i'd find it to be pretty ridiculous hyperbole to say the least

I don't think anyone is saying it was the perfect conditions for your team, it was a upset nether the less and a very big one [I wouldn't say biggest upset ever]. I think most people realize you guys are one of the top 2 teams in the tournament regardless of your teams elimination.

For the quote above, ouch that hurts Tirri. It amazes me on myth 2 that no matter how good you are if you are labeled a "3 baller" once you are always a 3 baller or if you were labeled a "4 baller" once you are always a 4 baller despite that a player has gotten worse.

Tmnt be complete crap without Arz and GKG? oh really because I'm pretty sure I have subbed for several teams this tournament and been the top player on each team I have subed for [including WTC in their 2-3 win over zomg, when zomg won more games when I was sitting]...go watch the replay and look at the stats if you think I'm talking out of my ass. I would gladly play WTC post mwc finals without gkg and Arz and grab Dantski and some other random person as a sub. Hell I'm so confident that I will give 50$ away to you if we lose that series.


Not sure if you really want to do this to yourself WTC

[shadow]

wait a second bros

what about KILG and THOR ?

KILG WAS A DEATH TRAIN ON A THOR'S RAILROAD

true superstars of WTC behind biggest upsets in MWC 2013

[Pogue]

DAKE DAY IN GATA TOWN. GJ Bros.

[tirri]

I don't think anyone is saying it was the perfect conditions for your team, it was a upset nether the less and a very big one [I wouldn't say biggest upset ever]. I think most people realize you guys are one of the top 2 teams in the tournament regardless of your teams elimination.

For the quote above, ouch that hurts Tirri. It amazes me on myth 2 that no matter how good you are if you are labeled a "3 baller" once you are always a 3 baller or if you were labeled a "4 baller" once you are always a 4 baller despite that a player has gotten worse.

Tmnt be complete crap without Arz and GKG? Hell I'm so confident that I will give 50$ away to you if we lose that series.[/b]

i mostly ment crap compared to what tmnt could field, not compared to wtc, but lets play this game anyway

asmo, myrk, ratking, dac, ew (who cant take powerhitter units and has huge delay), dantski and any player of zak/enc caliber
vs
thor, kilg, gekko, slate, rawr, shadow and toxyn/funk

would you really call twc beating the above mentioned tmnt team 3-2 in a close match a very big upset? teams look pretty even to me and id like to see you put up 50$ for that match. plz do tell me which player vs which player gives tmnt the definite advantage there to make you confident enough to put money on the line

[Lizard King]

I remember the last time gkg put up 50 bucks, it was embarrassing for everyone. I'll bet adren remembers that too. (: Asmo you played two games vs zomg and most certainly weren't the reason we won.

[adrenaline]

It was $100

[Giant Killer General]

Just when I thought tirri stepped abnormally out of character to at least accept some part of the loss, he goes right back in-character and in excuse-mode. Tirri is trying to downplay the significance of the upset. I don't know if it was the biggest upset in history, I said it was possible. I am not sure what all the big upsets were, but someone should post a thread about that, complete with what the team rosters so we can see. I would say it HAS to be at least top 3 in history. And certainly the biggest one I can remember since probably 2008 at least.

Your analogy is crap tirri, you were not missing any of your top 3 players. Rabican is not your top 3 player, he is undoubtedly your best captain, but you didn't need your best captain against THOR. It's THOR for christ sakes...
Adren was missing, but well replaced by dantski. I would rather have dantski on my team over adren any day of the week, and he really played well for you guys all match, so that was really an upgrade in my eyes.

A better analogy would be if I was not allowed to cap / prep the team at all (but could still play), asmo was the normal captain and was missing (more similar to rabican than me), and we took dantski to replace ew or arz. Yea, I am pretty sure we would still win against WTC there. And who cares about whatever delay you supposedly had, because delay did not hardly contribute at all to the loss, it was about stupid decision-making and awareness, not stupid fighting.

You lost to a team that played Funky for christ sakes. He is like 2.5 balls and this is like his first MWC ever. Toxyn is another 2.5 baller. Gekko is the ONLY player to have ever won an MWC on their team, most of them have never even seen a bottom bracket or top bracket finals match. THOR capping, and let's not forget rawr...

Denial is a hell of a thing, I hope you can reach acceptance someday in your mind though.

[adrenaline]

You don't simply "replace" your top dmg/game and kills/game player. Not to mention that i am generally instumental in strat building, which was probably hardly done in preparation for wtc. Also, stylistically me and dant are very different players. He is more of an artillery squad type while i generally trow/squad. Losing a powerhitter completely changes the dynamic of a team and forces others to step in to fill a role they generally would not be in. Talk shit all you want about rather having dant on your team, but it is pretty obvious that you are considerably biased against me.

[tirri]

Yeah that was pretty ridiculous, lots of text not worth replying to

[East Wind tmnt]

I think the game would not have come down to flags if adren would have trowed.

[Giant Killer General]

adren, limp and other former-NC tell me that you typically were always given a holding mid squad in the past so you couldn't do something stupid. I know you very well and I have to agree with them!

i find it amusing that some people call adren a strategist, when the only time i tried to strat with him I pretty much had to kick him out of it because his contributions were so horrible.

I do agree though that adren would have trowed better than shai or tirri, but really chron would have done it just fine too.

[Honkey]

Synergy matters. Homer may not be the best player in the world, but I noticed a difference without him in the zomg lineup. If we lost a player like adren, the difference woulda been even bigger, regardless who replaced them. Ratking did a good job subbing for homer, but it was still a bit weird playing with him as your team typically learns who is good with what, and players get an understanding of how to play together.

[drunken_deer]

I find it interesting that deer is better at dark maps than light ones. Last match only 2 games were dark maps and this match 4/5 had artillery at least. Find it more interesting that I reckon deer could still take down WTC but we lost to TMNS?

You can make a hypothesis and critique my opinion all you want, but I still think WTC woke up on the right side of the bed in this match and tmns celebrated way too early.

[adrenaline]

your flame bait is far too obvious, gkg. holding mid squad huh? riiiiight. holding mid squads don't end up with highest dmg and kill ratios for several tournaments running. but yes, keep saying shit that makes pretty much zero sense, and ya.. throw limp under the bus while you're at it.

[Myrk]

asmo, myrk, ratking, dac, ew (who cant take powerhitter units and has huge delay), dantski and any player of zak/enc caliber
vs
thor, kilg, gekko, slate, rawr, shadow and toxyn/funk

Tbh I don't think that would be a hard match for us at all if we went in with real strats and I did heavy hitter duty.

[THOR]

OMG,
GKG I really like you!! The more you are talking about so much nonsense in this topic. GGS is U. : (

[Asmodian]

plz do tell me which player vs which player gives tmnt the definite advantage there to make you confident enough to put money on the line

Besides Gekko every player on our roster gives us an advantage.

Myrk = Gekko
AsmoTrowBeltdian >Lizard King
Ratking >Rawr
Mark,Gamer (sub spot) = Bagrada
Dantski >Slate
Dac >Funky or Toxyn
Eastwind with 500 mb dropbox in the background captaining > Thor

[Giant Killer General]

holding mid squads don't end up with highest dmg and kill ratios for several tournaments running.

I think your obsession with your ratios, the fact that you keep bringing them up, just supports my argument even more really.

Obsessive ratio hunters do not win tournaments. They let their team hang out to dry while being overly obsessed with their ratios. This is why you are always trying to do your own thing, flank way too wide, over-extend, and tunnel on your own 1v1 matchup, often to the detriment of the rest of your team. It also explains your reluctance to push on a lot of games where you clearly should push. Go watch the poison holiday map in the QR of TMNS vs Tcox, and you sit there and stare at stormrider, who hasn't played myth in years pretty much, you stare at him for like 3 minutes before you finally realize you can push and crush him. just one example of many.

[adrenaline]

i am far from a ratio whore... i just happen to get good ratios because i kill a lot more than i lose, always. while i was "sitting there staring at stormrider" perhaps you should look at what my ghol is doing in their backfield. I did not need to push yet, and was tagging back flags. i was also flanking a lock behind him because i was in a shitty position fighting uphill. pretty horrible example really.

p.s. just asmo just claim to be a better player than kilgrath? LOL that is fucking priceless

[Giant Killer General]

ah yes, clearly dancing around with a ghol is more important than decimating 20% of the opposing army.

[adrenaline]

you are just talking shit... it really didn't take THAT long, and yes... tagging back flags is quite important.

[punkUser]

Eastwind with 500 mb dropbox in the background captaining > Thor

Why is EW still doing this? Didn't he pause/shut it off once he figured out what the issue was?

[Myrk]

He's not still doing that :O hope not anyway!

[East Wind tmnt]

Yo he was just saying that to prove a point

[par73]

Just wanted to mention that uhh

while TMNS was missing Adren, who is one of the more important players on that squad for sure;

the big error made was in team decision making. zak lost the first game, tirri went 2-1 over games 2-4.

So at Game 5, the swing and most important game besides game 3 maybe, you have one player who is 0-1 against the other team as a cap [3-3 if qrs are included?] and one player who is 2-1 against the other team as a cap. i'm not sure who made what decision, or what influenced it (although i would be somewhat interested in the afterthought) to bring zak back to cap. especially with tirri unable to micromanage with such terrible latency, it really makes no sense whatsoever that this happened logically besides some sort of override.


to say that shai/chron wouldn't be able to take the important roles with success that tirri would have had if he had good latency, is just plain stupid.
in my opinion, game5 ended before it even began.

Also, it would have been a bigger upset for wtc if tirri had capped game5, but still a good job done by WTC. WTC beat 3 big teams this tournament, excellent run really especially for a THOR-capped team (although there is really no other role THOR would be able to have on any team).

[tirri]

i hadnt given any thought for poison holiday and didnt want to cap without having any idea on what to do. zak had made strategy posts on ncs private forum and for example the strat and split for sleepy hollow was so clear that i just had the forum post open on my other monitor and followed the strat exactly. same for whirlwind herons. zak's poison post wasnt so clear and i didnt want to just swing it.

in retrospective i should have capped anyway, especially since we wanted zak to alter the strat anyway so he probably didnt have good splits readily thought out either

[adrenaline]

Game 1: When The Trow Comes Around, CTF:
Zak is capping TMNS and seems to have 0 awareness, as he does not realize the 3 melee flank until it is about 5 seconds away from their home flag, and he has decided to run what few melee he had on flag D completely off the flag, past the enemy flank that he is unaware is running right past him.

Yep... as captain, he should have just given his mort away and kept a zerk for scout (ppl had free-hands...) and just stuck to watching the map. To be fair, I don't think anyone on offence noticed Gekko sneak the mellee away... and if they did, they should have said something. Regardless, leaving an open flank unscouted can't be blamed on anyone but the captain. With an artillery advantage, TMNS really could/should have won this game. Big mistake not scouting, and they paid heavily for it.

Game 3: Sleep Hollow Shadow, Terries
To be fair though, had the game got drawn out, WTC still would have won.

Only watched the film once, but I kind of disagree... a huge chunk of WTC's % was tied-up that low-health FG... TMNS was 1-2 seconds from tagging a couple more flags. They definitely had the #s and I think would have pulled out the win on flags if they could have managed to get a tag in before getting flagged. I think the big deciding factor here was that TMNS had atrocious pussing... so much was wasted, which is pretty detrimental to the strat they used. I think Dantski and Shai had some decent pusses, but too little too late I think.

Game 4: Midst of 4 herons, Lmoth
Despite WTC's archer advantage, TMNS still out-archers them badly.... this map has a unit set that suits TMNS' strengths and preferred style. Also it is lmoth, so there is no gametype for them to foolishly lose by which they seem to have had trouble with in the first 3 games. The game played out in the fashion that most people expected all 5 games to go down, with TMNS solidly out-BCing WTC to win the game.

Thor splitting bows 3 ways instead of 4 was a big mistake... and not getting myrms? That's just dumb. But yes, this game played to TMNS' strengths and ended fairly predictably. Tirri provided some great distraction from behind with myrms and Shadow's inexperience really showed by allowing his attention to be drawn away from the enemy bowmen...

Game 5: Poison Holiday Trow, FR
TMNS' defense is still okay though, until Zak pulls his melee force off of flag defense too, apparently not realizing the sizeable melee force + trow that WTC has on offense to threaten their flag. WTC has a window of like 30 seconds to capture the flag while TMNS has a good chunk of its force completely out of the fight, and they take it.

Dunno why TMNS' strat had the trow flanking... I think that was mistake #1. Trow really should start mid and react from there, imo. But good job to Shai for seeing it quickly enough to get back before WTC completely rolled over that flank... 5 seconds later and it would have been over. At the point when both armies were dancing around TMNS' south flag, ZAK should have redistributed the units a bit... the fetch in particular. One should have stayed defence with some more mellee and 2 sent immediately on offence. Shai going on O with the 2 low health trow was fine... TMNS had plenty of mellee to defend. HAD being the operative word. Again... Zak shouldn't even have had units at this point... he should have given his mellee to Flatline or whoever was on D and stuck to calling shots and watching the map. Why he felt the need to stray from D with that much mellee is beyond my comprehension... that decision cost TMNS the game and the match.

The loss for TMNS is mostly Zak's fault. He has horrible awareness, does not scout, and is completely oblivious of the flag defense needed to hold their last flags. And he is the captain for those games, that is basically his only job. Enemy melee forces basically run right past his melee units to their weak flag defenses in both game 1 and game 5, costing them those games.

I watched these games for the first time last night during a co-cast with NewMutator... pretty spot-on review, GKG...

Zak actually did a pretty decent job leading up to the match as captain... he is super enthusiastic and definitely takes it seriously enough, but his lack of experience really shone through here... a few critical errors definitely cost TMNS the match.