Two Pools 2 open discussion

[covaccino99]

Suomi har beasts. Very impressive! Heja Finland!

 

[Degaussed]

Tatoh is such a beast. Never lets his team down. Hope he has a good run in a tournament soon because he deserves it

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

@LidaKor
Since Semis are going to be played live, I suggest you order the team captains to make the drafting a day before they are going to compete. Should save a lot of time. Cheers

 

[Lightysword]

What a lovely day of Age today, the overall level was super high.
My favourite game was the Coast to Mountain game in the last series; followed by the Arabia Game of Tempo vs Heresy.
Both Forest Pond games from the AM and the GL/Suomi series were really good as well.
Really looking forward to the semis.

 

[arizonatears]

Oh to be a fly on the wall when Max and Villese won. Did they show emotion? A simple "You did well." and "Thanks you too."? Perhaps just a telepathic congratulations between the two.

 

[Zeev]

Really surprising thing about Suomi's win was that they completely outplayed Viper and Tatoh. Only loss came from an unlucky timing with walling and a sneak vil. Other than that, it never looked like Viper or Tatoh were even in the same game.

 

[ForearmFetishist]

Congratulations to the Suomi guys, they really deserved this series.
On the other hand, Viper was really looking off yesterday.
Maybe lack of motivation due to regularly being paid $1000 for completing stupid challanges on stream?

 

[Springoftheking]

Suomi winning isn't upset. The Max has been years on e of the best team players and Villese has risen his level in DE. Maybe the dominant 3-1 result was surprising though.

 

[Dagan]

I was quite surprised how Viper underperformed in this series, even in the game they won Villese was able to pressure him alone easily, I guess it wasn't his day.
Of course Suomi performed incredible and a totally deserved win, I am really looking forward for the semis!

 

[oakaoe]

Kinda crazy to think that there is 0/3 GL teams in the Semis, especially in a tournament like this that rewards preparation and strategies. I am quite disappointed by Viper especially, he seemed very first game of the day for quite a lot of games, maybe it is indeed a bit of tournament fatigue compared to streaming. Still crazy how you can never count them out in disadvantages that are a safe gg for other teams, but still a surprise imho. You guys tend to forget that Suomi hasn't looked all that great recently, especially Max has looked a bit worrying ever since his win against Lierrey in NAC3 (didn't qualify for HC4, early exit KotD3, early exit HC3..). Very happy that he is back on track in team games at least, love to see Suomi play!! Villese also looking like a beast which is super cool, was gutted for his narrow exit in HC3.

Some really nice matches coming up now, I think Suomi WWP has the potential to be quite a banger.

 

[Bikkemouse]

Suomi har beasts. Very impressive! Heja Finland!

Finlands sak är våran sak!

 

[Hunyadi_]

I was quite surprised how Viper underperformed in this series, even in the game they won Villese was able to pressure him alone easily, I guess it wasn't his day.
Of course Suomi performed incredible and a totally deserved win, I am really looking forward for the semis!

I wasn't. Even when Viper was completely dominant in 1v1 tournaments, he periodically underperformed in team games. I mean obviously still top 5 TG player back then but he wasn't as unbeatable as he was in 1v1's.

TheMax you could say is the opposite. Super solid 1v1 player but not necessarily his #1 strength. He's a TG player first and foremost.

 

[covaccino99]

Please help me with something. During the quite boring deciders Memb said the tournament doesn’t promote practice since its impossible to predict what the team lineup will be. Then tatoh writes on Twitter that he’s disappointed about the lack of practice GL did. I don’t play much, just watch. How does practicing make sense here?

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

Please help me with something. During the quite boring deciders Memb said the tournament doesn’t promote practice since its impossible to predict what the team lineup will be. Then tatoh writes on Twitter that he’s disappointed about the lack of practice GL did. I don’t play much, just watch. How does practicing make sense here?

You can perhaps practise the maps to see what kind of strategy would be decent there? For instance whether arch/knight would dominate in certain scenarios? That's how I see it but indeed the settings don't make it easy to practise.

 

[kalcium]

The surprise part of Suomi is the their recent form. Though they are renowned for their team plays, themax has been underperforming in 1v1 for quite a while. Even with the massive 1v1 improvement of Villese, in 2v2 worldcup both themax and Villese weren’t that sharp. In both the decider and GL series both Villese and themax played like an absolute champion. Almost flawless strategic choice, excellent army positioning, spectacular defence. Especially glad to see themax finally shows that he’s still the king of TG, though his performance in BoA2 was also damn solid.

 

[dataidiot]

Please help me with something. During the quite boring deciders Memb said the tournament doesn’t promote practice since its impossible to predict what the team lineup will be. Then tatoh writes on Twitter that he’s disappointed about the lack of practice GL did. I don’t play much, just watch. How does practicing make sense here?

In my opinion the randomness factor of the bad pool asks for more preparation from players, not less. If a team has practiced enough to figure out the most viable strategies on each map, then they will have to improvise less and they will get more info on which bad civs are not that bad. That ultimately should bring more consistency, which was the impression I got from Suomi-GL series: the Finnish seemed more consistent. Was that because of better preparation? Maybe not, but it seems a reasonable explanation to me.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to watch the semi-finals and finals this weekend.

 

[damdres]

Winland is back!

 

[polyomavirus]

GL usually fields Viper+TaToH as their A team for 2v2s, but I've wondered for a while whether that was their best combination. From what I remember of the 2v2 tournaments in the last few years, it didn't seem as effective as it should be on paper (kinda like Norway A historically). They lost to AM (Liereyy+Nicov, I think?) on ECL Americas, lost to Aftermath D (Hera+MbL+Nicov) in the previous Two Pools, and lost early to Vietnam (BacT+ACCM+saymyname) in Doubles Age. They're formidable for sure - but I'm not sure their record is notably better than either of them+anyone else in GL (other than maybe Nili), or DauT+Slam (who won Doubles Age and looked decent here, too).

Maybe I'm forgetting some a tournament victory (or even a few), but given the above, Viper and TaToH definitely haven't been dominant as a pair even while Viper was definitively #1 and TaToH was already top 5. In that sense, Suomi's victory isn't too surprising, especially due to their consistent strength in TGs and Villese's sustained improvement towards the top tier.

 

[Mohni]

The surprise part of Suomi is the their recent form. Though they are renowned for their team plays, themax has been underperforming in 1v1 for quite a while. Even with the massive 1v1 improvement of Villese, in 2v2 worldcup both themax and Villese weren’t that sharp. In both the decider and GL series both Villese and themax played like an absolute champion. Almost flawless strategic choice, excellent army positioning, spectacular defence. Especially glad to see themax finally shows that he’s still the king of TG, though his performance in BoA2 was also damn solid.

I don't think their form is really that surprising. If you look beyond the results of the tournaments played lately you can see that Suomi and TheMax have been quite unlucky. So they may seem worse than they actually are. In HC3 both were bad. I'll admit that. In BoA 2 Suomi was clearly in the top 3 and almost made it to the finals. In KotD 3 TheMax went 1-1 in sets against Dogao who progressed to quarterfinals. So TheMax just happened to win the wrong set. In 2v2 WC Suomi was unlucky to face China in quarterfinals. Suomi played a lot better against them than Brazil who China faced in semifinals. So I would say that Suomi was actually top 4 team in that tournament. Also during the stream it was mentioned that teams were most afraid to face Suomi based on practice games. So they were in top shape back then. Then again in HC4 qualifiers TheMax was unlucky to face top shape Jordan in qualifiers. Jordan also mentioned in his stream that he thinks that TheMax is top 10 player. Also in Wololos TheMax has played like a top 10 player, except the last one where he was very underwhelming.

A bit of a long post from a minor detail but I just don't like when people only stare at numbers without analyzing the factors behind them

 

[dataidiot]

Yo is such a beast in Imperial Age. And I can't see anyone better than Lyx at what he does.

 

[Lightysword]

Sick performence by Winland! What a banger of a series!

 

[dataidiot]

Incredible set, could have either way. I still maintain my opinion on Yo being currently the best TG player, but certainly both TheMax and Villese could contest that spot(along with Hera and Liereyy imo).

 

[Tarsiz]

Yo is an utter beast and watching him play with Lyx is always a thing of beauty.

I feel like Suomi could take some inspiration from that, and have Max play the Lyx role to give Villese an untouched boom to carry the game (if the map and civ match up calls for it). I think they will need it for the final (assuming they'll face Tempo).

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

Villese is #4 player in the world overall

 

[Lightysword]

What is this performence by MBL?

EDIT: And then Bombard Towers happened ^^