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Part 2 of the ESEA-I Season Previews!  This half will cover eMg, Blight.Pandemic, Mindbomb/iQ, and coL.  Two new teams and two playoff teams from last year, what will this season have in store for the remaining lot of invite teams?


eMazing Gaming

The Introduction:
Projected Starting Lineup:
Scouts – raf, Yz50
Soldiers – mackey, enoryt
Demoman – b4nny
Medic – move

Fresh off of their championship season in ESEA-O, eMg is looking to take the next step up and start playing with the big boys.  This isn’t something they are unaccustomed to – eMg regularly scrimmed as many invite teams as they could find last season, and without a doubt it paid off for them.  Their roster has changed up a bit, mostly all of it concentrated in the Scout section.  Blaze and jnkx, the two starters from last season’s championship team, are both departed.  Replacing them are Yz50 and raf.

The Outlook:
One of the biggest questions for eMg coming into this season is how the chemistry in the Scout section will work out.  The team that everyone assumed was all lollipops and rainbows last season was mired by issues amongst their scouts, something which came to light in the past few weeks.  Yz50 is one of the calmest and coolest guys out there by all accounts, but raf has certainly developed a heady reputation of being hard to play with.  It got to the point last season with eMg that blaze and jnkx both refused to play with him.  Whether or not Yz50 and raf can get along will be a large factor in determining the success of this team.  Not unlike Area 51, the big strength of this team is their Demoman, b4nny.  An exceptionally talented player whose pipe spam on midpoints is so good it’s downright unfair, b4nny is asked to carry a large load of the damage dealing and fragging on this team and rarely disappoints.  Their Soldiers and Medic are all solid, if a bit unspectacular.  Enoryt has received more than his fair share of criticisms, usually revolving around “he always has 300 HP and anyone can frag like that.”  However, the same criticisms have been levied on players such as relic and Seagull, and last I checked those guys are pretty good at TF2.  Mackey will rarely put up killer frag totals, but he initiates almost every engagement for eMg and does a lot of the little things to help them be successful.  It’s unlikely that we will see any incredibly bold or ballsy play from their Medic, move, but that is no slight against him.  Playing safe and solid is probably the smarter idea for a team that will most likely be a bit overmatched in the DM areas most matches.

The Prediction:
Missing the playoffs, but proving that giving them a spot in the invite division to them wasn’t a mistake.  This season will be many of these players first steps into invite, which I have mentioned before simply isn’t an easy transition.  eMg will practice and scrim plenty, after all it’s rare to see a night go by when tyrone isn’t spamming “6v6” in the invite and scrim channels on IRC.  A season with a slightly below .500 record but with a couple of nice wins is likely in order.  However, don’t be too surprised if a few teams like Blight.own or TBA/Mindbomb falter due to roster or chemistry issues and eMg is suddenly within spitting distance of a playoff seed, even if they end up falling short anyways.

Blight.pandemic

The Introduction:
Projection Starting Lineup:
Scouts – justin, fanom/ruwin
Soldiers – TLR, ww-
Demoman – Orzo
Medic – TheFragile :3

Blight, formerly known as Pandemic, came into last season as a bit of an overlooked team.  While some familiar faces like justin and TheFragile headed up the team, it was filled with question marks.  ww- was notoriously known as “wondawol” for his tendency to go missing halfway through seasons, and fresh faces like Kermit and TLR had yet to prove what they could do at high levels of play.  They pulled together though and grabbed the #3 seed in the playoffs (something which I mistakenly credited to Area 51/MmM in my previous predictions, my apologies) after going 11-5 in the season itself.  This season they have replaced Kermit with Orzo after his performance, or lack thereof, at the playoff LAN.  There is also the fact that ruwin has joined the roster as well.  Blight.pandemic has been coy about his role on the team, though it appears to be as insurance for fanom and his warp-tacular internet.  Still, this would mark the third team in 2 seasons that ruwin was supposed to Scout for, yet for one reason or another we haven’t seen him do so yet. 

The Outlook:
Even with a successful 11-5 season last year, this new roster for blight seems to be capable of even more.  Orzo is an upgrade from Kermit on Demoman, and if ruwin plays he can only help them further.  TLR more than proved last season he was an invite-caliber player, and pairing him up with possibly the most experienced Medic in the game TheFragile makes up for quite the solid combo.  Having justin on their roster also provides an enormous wildcard on Sniper-heavy maps such as Viaduct, Gravelpit, and Yukon.  While sycknesS is probably still most consistent Sniper in the game, if justin is “on” or feeling it, there might not be anybody who can match what he does with the Sniper rifle.  This was evident at the LAN playoffs this past season, where flames could literally be seen shooting out of his viewmodel at several instances as he went on some ridiculous sprees.  It will be interesting as well to see if ruwin strictly plays backup or if he eventually replaces fanom in the starting roster.

The Prediction:
Blight.pandemic is giving me quite the difficult time.  While they went 11-5 last season and took the three seed, a glance at their record shows that they went 0-4 against the top two seeds coL and EG and  1-1 against Area 51.  Still, they did work and won the games they were supposed to against Blight.blight (goodness all of these blights are getting confusing), dynamic, and Loaded.  Plus, they still did split their matches with Area 51, even though that was before cbear was inserted into the starting roster.  Given that their roster looks stronger this year than last season, they should make the playoffs again this year.  Still, I’m giving the #3 seed to Area 51, because it would be boring to simply predict exactly what happened last year and I just like the look of 51 this season.  Blight.pandemic should be in contention for the four seed, and if they miss out on the playoffs it would be only just barely.

UPDATE:  TheFragile has mentioned in an ESEANews interview that fanom will not be cut.  This implies that ruwin is strictly a backup for the time being.

UPDATE OF AN UPDATE:  Members of Blight.pandemic have relayed to me that while fanom is not cut, he is not the starter.  Fanom's internet issues, which everyone who has every played against him knows about, will keep him from starting this season, while ruwin steps in as the fulltime starter.

TBA/Mindbomb/iQ/Blight #48

The Introduction:
Projected Starting Lineup:
Scouts – sycknesS, punisher
Soldiers – paladin, hong
Demoman – dummy
Medic – Luciious

A new team on the scene for this season, TBA/Mindbomb/maybe yet another blight team looks absolutely stacked from the talent standpoint.  The roster is filled with huge names that have been on top teams for a very long time and have proven themselves time and time again.  Even their backups are scary, with Boodah519 returning to the scene and European/#tf2.pug.na legend Fragga sitting on the bench.  They certainly have the potential to do huge things this season, but will it all come together?

The Outlook:
It is hard to imagine a new team assembling a better roster than this one with the players on available on the market.  sycknesS being cut from EG was a controversial move to say the least.  Even if his Scout has slipped some he is still one of the best in the game, and his Sniper is tops as well.  Flanking him will be punisher, perhaps the embodiment of what people think when an aggro-style play for Scouts is mentioned.  Paladin has proven that he is one of the top Scouts AND Soldiers in TF2, and hong is widely regarded as one of the best off Soldiers in the game for very good reasons.  Dummy showed up at the playoff LAN last season after taking the entire season off from TF2 and promptly started wrecking shop – it’s scary to think what might happen if he comes in fully prepared and practiced up.  Luciious is really the only player on this roster that hasn’t had big-time experience or production before, but he has always been consistent at the high-open level and is regarded as a solid player.  The biggest thing to watch for with this team is whether or not they manage to hold it together and develop any chemistry.  The talent level here is incredible, but there are several personalities on this team that might find an easy time clashing with one another.  Unfortunately, the initial reports are that iQ hasn’t exactly been lighting the world on fire with this recent scrim performances.  Can they pull it together and play up to their talent?  Many people have already pegged this assortment of players as the “Most likely to break up midseason,” and it will be up to them to prove everybody wrong.

The Prediction:
If blight.pandemic was giving me a hard time with predictions as mentioned above, TBA/Mindbomb is giving me nightmares.  If this team gels together, puts in enough time to get everybody on the same page, and holds together from a team and chemistry standpoint, I could see them taking the #2 seed, even a longshot at the #1 seed if coL just mails in the regular season.  One could also see this team being nothing more than a source of free FFWs for others halfway through the season as they’ve broken up.  Or it is possible to see yet another scenario, where they don’t break up but never quite find their stride as a unit and end up just missing the playoffs.  I’m not going to predict this team to break up – the last thing the TF2 Invite scene needs is that sort of negativity.  Currently though I’m going to predict them to be in a fight with blight.pandemic for the four seed, but really if there is one team that could do just about anything this season it is this one.


compLexity

The Introduction:
Projected Starting Lineup:
Scouts – carnage, enigma
Soldiers – relic, jaeger
Demoman – SoLID SnaKE
Medic - PYYYOUR
Fresh off of an ESEA-I title at the playoff LAN, coL enters Season 6 with more of the same.  The roster is unchanged from the regular season from a starter standpoint, and of course coL will be looking to repeat the success from Season 5.  The only major move they made was picking up Seagull, but the top-caliber Soldier has thus far insisted he will be a backup and only a backup.

The Outlook:
It’s starting to get pretty easy to figure out how coL works.  They will start out the season gangbusters and rolling over their opponents.  Then there will be a stretch of about a week or two, usually on a custom map (watch out for weeks 3 and 5 where relatively unknown customs coldfront and mainline are played) where coL will drop a few games to some lesser teams.  This will spark up a typical “What’s wrong with coL?” debate, but then they will get their act back together, really turn it on at the end of the season and the playoffs and once again be the favorite to win it all.  coL has proved at this point that the only people that can really beat them is themselves due to lack of preparation, but when the chips are on the table they bring their A game.  The only really interesting development to watch for coL this season is if Seagull sticks to his guns about being just a backup.  Arguably the best Soldier in TF2 and an extraordinary all around player, it could be interesting to see what happens if he decides he wants to step back up into a starter position.  Regardless though, coL has the most fearsome Scout duo in NA TF2 and possibly the world, possibly the best Demoman in the NA scene, and not shortage of skill at the Soldier or Medic positions either.  This team has been the best over the past while for a reason.

The Prediction:
ESEA Finals and the favorite to win it all.  It’s not exactly a hard or ballsy prediction to make, but who else can you confidently say is going to beat this group?  Even with animeman filling in for enigma last season in the playoffs they still were dominant.  Keep in mind that as close and entertaining as the finals match with Blight was, there was still an entirely separate BO3 that Blight would’ve had to win if they had pulled things out on that Badlands match.  compLexity also has one thing that simply no other team can boast right now:  A guaranteed win.  Put coL on Gravelpit and there simply is not a team that is going to beat them, and that is all there is to it.  Such utter dominance on a map makes the prospect of trying to beat them in a Bo3 absolutely horrifying.  Look for coL to win it all again.