CommunityFortress

The season is ¾ over and LAN hopes for many teams are diminishing. It’s insane how most of the teams this season are still in the battle for that last playoff spot, excluding Dynamic (although for some, they’ll need to play nearly perfectly for a shot at reaching the LAN). The main teams in question right now are  Loaded, MMM and Blight. Blight is definitely at the back of the pack, but they’ve made some roster changes that I believe will probably help them in the long run.

Up next is Yukon. It saddens me to see this map, as it breaks the AWESOME map streak, but it should be refreshing to see a map that hasn’t been out since competitive TF2's existence. The most interesting aspect of this map is the middle fight. The mid control point takes a long time to cap and puts teams iin an extremely vulnerable position. With that said, the longest mid fights take place on this map and can cause some really interesting results.

The usual format of doing predictions is getting kind of stale, so I decided to make a slight change for this week.

1. Complexity
Complexity just won the Alienware tournament, although not in too much of a convincing fashion. They didn’t get to play the top two teams Pandemic and EG, and therefore had to play a shaken Blight. Yukon definitely isn’t this team's strongest map, as they barely won this map last season in the playoffs against MoB, despite the fact that they out-skilled them. Complexity only has one Yukon match, and they probably aren’t too stressed about it. Even if MmM beats them (which they probably will), they know that they will make it to the LAN and don’t need to worry about the map.

2. EG
EG has a really tough schedule this week as they face-off against one of the strongest competitors. They might be down in morale after being disqualified from Alienware, and definitely won’t be at the top of their game. This map caters a lot to sniping, so it’ll be interesting to see if they do the “Reptile strat”, where Syckness goes sniper and Reptile hops on scout. I think this map is really unpredictable, as nobody knows the secret yet to winning mid. Whichever team (EG/Pandemic) comes up with the stronger mid strat should take the game.

3. Pandemic
This team had wow’d everyone with their performance until their recent loss to coL on two maps. Both games were closer than the score showed, but it definitely put a halt to their Cinderella Story. They’ve proven their worth over all the teams, except EG and coL, so it’ll be important for them to win their remaining games. They’re also almost guaranteed a playoff spot, but they’ll need to fix a few things if they want to win it all. This is easily the least active team in Invite, and it’s not like they don’t need the practice. The level of teamwork on this team is pitiful by any standards (high, mid, low) and they can’t try and out-dm teams forever. One strength of this team is they have no weakness. No player lags behind and no player is a star. They might be the only well-balanced team in Invite and they’ll need to use that to their advantage. With no scrim time, I’d be shocked to see this team beat EG AND Blight, but they’ve done well, especially considering their original #8 seed, so hopefully they can surprise me again.
Pandemic>EG

4. Muscle Milk
This team is really riding high after beating Blight last week. A good amount of trash talked happened in the end with comments like “2ez” and such. MmM is a solid team, although I think they think they’re better than they are. This team easily scrims twice as much as the next, and focuses on strategies far more than any other. Yet, if you look past the splendid teamwork and deep strats, you’ll notice that the infrastructure still isn’t too strong. This team still suffers from a weak skill level compared to the other invite teams. When Ducky performs well, the team wins, but if he doesn’t they’ll almost definitely lose. Ducky’s performance depends largely on his opponents failures. If the other team allows him to play his overaggressive playstyle (like he did on Freight vs. Loaded) or doesn’t take advantage of his passive one (Turbine vs. Pandemic), then Ducky will perform well, yet if it’s countered MmM will suffer. He still hasn’t found the right level of play, which is part of MmM’s issue. Everyone on the team suffers from inconsistency. The scouts can play amazing one day and bottom frag the next, and the same with the soldier pair. They’ll win their match this week, as coL won’t be prepared and MmM will practice 24/7, but don’t think they’ll be pulling a Cinderella Story this season.
MmM>coL
MmM>Loaded

5. Loaded
This team has come off some tough recent loses (one of which was to playoff contender MmM). Loaded will need to step their game up if they want to remain in that last playoff spot and keep MmM off their backs. Yet, it’ll be hard for them to maintain their record with the tough schedule they have remaining. They’ll need to perform well against MmM on Yukon, and that’ll be the most important game of the season for them. If they win, then they’ll be ranked slightly ahead of MmM, but if they lose, they probably won’t make playoffs. However, considering how they played on Freight vs. MmM, a win on Yukon seems doubtful. The recent loss of Superfly won't help matters much either.

6. Blight
This team just had a slight roster change-up as they moved Oplaid to backup and Hong to scout. Oplaid definitely hasn’t played his best this season, but it’ll be interesting to see if Hong performs better as scout. With Hong no longer fulfilling the soldier spot, Blackstar is going to step up as roaming soldier. Blackstar definitely has the smarts to play the game, but his accuracy can’t compete with that of some of the other invite soldiers. In the Alienware match, Grieve played medic. From what I could analyze, he did a better job on medic than TheNoid did in the match he played, so I expect to see more of him. Blight knows how important winning the upcoming games are, so I expect them to practice and practice a lot. They’ll need flawless victories if they want to make it to the LAN and Seagull will constantly remind them of that. They know that Dynamic is a better team than their record shows, so they won’t let that game go easy, and they’ll definitely need to play their A game if they want to beat Pandemic.
Blight>Dynamic
Blight>Pandemic

7. Dynamic
Dynamic started off the season weak, but had a great surge when they won two underdog matches back to back. Since then, they seemed to have leveled off, as teams are no longer half-assing against them and are bring their best game forward. All they can hope for is to continue pestering teams and taking teams out of the playoff race, and hopefully they do so to make a good showing. Their remaining matches are all against tough opponents and I don’t think any will be beatable outside of their match vs. Loaded this week on Yukon. Every match to them is like a scrim as it doesn’t retain much value, but they enjoy playing anyway, and sometimes that’s all that matters. The new players on the roster have performed well, but we definitely need to see Chupa perform better if they want to finish off the season strong.
Dynamic>Loaded