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The Playoff Picture
Silence and Terrorist
The Frontrunners
Heading into WEEK 6, we've started to get a clear picture of where the teams are likely going to finish in the Standings. Silence (13 wins) and Terrorist (12 wins) have been leading the pack all season, and proven to be the two most dominant teams in TWDT 2016. This isn't surprising, given that Commodo and Dreamwin are the only two TWLJ/TWLB quality captains in the draft, and had the #1 and #3 picks, taking Ease and Stayon, respectively.
More than that, however, they have championship pedigree, as both have already won TWDT as Captains, with Commodo being the 2015 TWDT-D and TWDT-J champion, and Dreamwin being the 2012 TWDT-J and TWDT-B winner.
Silence has finally started to pull away for the #1 seed, however, and I expect them to finish first, even with Ease missing Week 7. Commodo has put together the most balanced roster, and is a true contender across all three leagues.
Terrorist has strong ambitions for a 2012 repeat, with formidable lines in TWDT-J and TWDT-B, while their 7-Star TWDT-D has performed spectacularly, going 4-1 and likely helping them clinch a bye into the semis. A full 4 wins ahead of third place, they are practically impossible to catch.
Paddington and Baratheon
The Deal Brokers
Tiny made more trades this year than all 8 captains combined in 2015. He dumped his entire basing line to stack wbs and javs with ruthless efficiency, after recognizing he was out of his element and deciding to analyze his match-ups and streamline the process.
The result? Paddington (9 wins) has moved into clear 3rd, and now possesses the strongest and deepest TWDT-D and TWDT-J lines, with nary a baser in sight. Commodo decried the moves as anti-competitive and against the spirit of TWDT, but Tiny can't hear you over the cries of his 9-Star WBs incensed about being benched.
Look for Paddington to make serious runs in both warbird and javelin, and for several top-tier players to ragequit.
Baratheon (8 wins), on the other hand, went in the opposite direction after a heavily criticized base-heavy draft, and divested into both javelin and warbird, producing solid TWDT-D and TWDT-J lines that, while not top 3 contenders, should be highly competitive, while still maintaining a very strong basing roster as the 2013 TWDT-B champions look to repeat.
Stannis's squad will be trying to catch Tiny's for 3rd place, but odds are they will finish 4th short of a spectacular final two weeks.
Stark and Blooms
The Inept and the Unlucky
These are the final two squads I predict to make the playoffs.
Stark (7 wins) started off well, yet Mean Gene's complete ineptitude turned a 3rd place team into a 5th place team. Poor personality management, bad lineup selections, and worse trades have all contributed to their decline.
Yet, like Inspector Gadget, Mean Gene's team has managed to glide into the playoffs with a very strong TWDT-B roster, thanks to everyone but himself, as the entire league has repeatedly taken actions to prevent him from completely destroying his own team.
Maketso, meanwhile, has stayed the course, building a balanced three-league roster, despite everything going wrong for him, including a bad draft spot and his #1 pick Megaman89 showing 0 times, and his well-stocked TWDT-D line of Racka, Ricko and Okyo massively under-performing and managing only 1 win.
Yet, against all odds, Blooms (5 wins) finds itself in 6th place, thanks to a stellar 4-1 start to the season in TWDT-J, which has singlehandedly kept their season alive. They have a contender in jav, a pair of 10-Stars in wb, and some nice pieces in base, and I think they are very likely to grab the last playoff spot.
Everything broke right for Maketso last year, from the #1 pick to all his late-round gambles paying off, producing a solid Semi-Finals berth, and perhaps that success has helped in guiding a far unluckier team this far and keeping the ship afloat.
Fire and Kamikaze
The Thick and the Dead
Cres had every advantage. The #2 overall pick. The #1 FA pick. A solid draft. So, naturally, Cres ran the squad into the ground, and will likely be eliminated, as he has lost 11 of his first 15 games, and faces a tough schedule with an underperforming TWDT-D line and a lackluster TWDT-J one.
Fire (4 wins) has been a huge disappointment, and likely produced one of the worst trades of all-time, trading Turban/24/Wax/not in game/Jessup for Trasher/Cape/Milosh/Kim/Jatt. Cres dumped a 3-league star in Turban and one of the greatest TWDT players of all-time in 24 (and a 7-star superstar in warbird -- a league Fire cares about) for 4 basers, 2 of whom are Top 5 terrs in the zone, despite already owning Mikkiz.
You have to be incredibly thick in the head to own that many top-tier terrs and not trade any of them away. You have to be even dumber to make this move AFTER you've already lost easy base matches but BEFORE you face the murderer's row of Baratheon, Silence, and Terrorist, likely producing 0 wins in a league you know jackshit about.
Tiny at least had the humility to accept he didn't know anything about basing, and got out while he could. No such hubris exists in Cres. When Mcvicar predictably got into a fight with him and refused to show for the rest of the season, an apopleptic Cres refused to trade him, despite offers from multiple squads, and was content to simply let him rot on his roster out of spite.
Fire's mettle will be tested at 3pm EST on Sunday, where they face a must-win game in TWDT-D against Blooms, in a match that will produce a massive 2 win swing against the team that they're fighting with for the final playoff spot. All hope is not completely lost, as they do have two games remaining against a floundering Kamikaze, but their window is closing fast.
Kamikaze (2 wins), meanwhile, is completely dead in the water, and all but mathematically eliminated. Their TWDT-D line has failed to show all season, as has a good portion of their TWDT-B line, especially in the last few weeks. Skatarius has made no moves to restructure or salvage his season, and seems content to go off quietly into the night.
The Remaining Schedule
Here we see the remaining schedules for all eight teams, and the strength of each squad in their respective leagues, and well as predictions of how many wins each of them is likely to produce.
Even with Ease missing during the final week, Silence should have no problem securing the #1 seed and a bye into the Semi-Finals, while Terrorist takes the #2 seed and the final bye.
Paddington and Baratheon will fight over 3rd, although Baratheon would need a stellar finish to clinch it.
Stark can limp into the playoffs off two easy basing matches, while Blooms and Fire duke it out for the final TWDT 2016 playoff spot.
They have a huge TWDT-D match that could very well prove decisive in who earns a playoff berth. I am confident Blooms will get it, facing down the two worst squads in TWDT-B for free wins, an Ease-less Silence in TWDT-J, and winnable matches elsewhere in both wb and jav, where I expect a pair of wins. They likely only need to win 3 games to put themselves out of reach of Fire, and I'd be surprised if they didn't get them.
Good luck to all the teams!
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