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TWL-B Week 4: Hot or Not

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  • TWL-B Week 4: Hot or Not

    TWL-B Week 4: HOT or NOT

    Disclaimer: I will update this each time that I finish a game and subsequent writeup. While this will not be my priority, I will do my best to finish them all by Friday. Also, I’m skipping through subjectively boring parts of games and therefore may miss big plays or important moments.

    Week 4 Preview: Pandora entered week 4 casually on top of the TWL-B season 23 ladder with a relatively surprising 5-1 record. Gun and Plade, both inconsistent in their own ways, were in 2nd and 3rd with 4-2 records. Rapid was off the map with 0-6. Fire and Spastic are up in the air with 3-3 and 2-4 records, both gunning for the final playoff spot. On paper, advantage seemed to go to Fire, as TWL-B playoffs without their core competing would be very atypical. However, both Fire and Spastic had difficult weeks ahead of them, Fire facing Gun and Plade, and Spastic facing Pandora and Gun. With nothing set in stone and only one week of regular season remaining, who will make playoffs? Literally anything can happen at this point.

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    Fire vs. Gun (15:00 - 11:20) | LINK

    Review: WillBy couldn’t show this week, so it was previous TWL-B shark champion cranium’s turn to start this week with hulk. Ra started this one over TPZ as Fire’s 5th spid. Otherwise, both teams fielded the same lineups that they had used in prior games.

    From the start of the game, Fire seemed to have control over flag, with Ro doing serious damage stacking over as 4th top spid. Every time Gun made a push for top control, Fire countered and won. Gun’s sharks seemed outmatched early this one. Unfortunately, cranium looked like he needed some more games to warmup and hulk was likely under too much pressure from Fire’s well-covered spids. Gun’s sharks had a lot of dropped reps early in the game.

    Despite Fire’s blatant advantage and complete flagroom control in the first flagroom battle, Pressure made a sick play over flag to TeK claushouse and give Gun the first cram of the game. Gun’s cram initially looked weak, but after Fire's first break, turban made a great play to force claushouse back out of flagroom, and Gun subsequently held a pretty strong cram. Even when their cram broke, the tides in flagroom seemed to have turned. Gun woke up and they appeared to establish control quickly leading to a coffin TeK around 5-1. Gun's sharks and spids started to look in sync, and their over flag presence started to look dominant. Pressure looked great in the beginning-middle of this game, flashing 29-1, 32-2, and 34-3 records when Heaven showed stats. cranium started to gel better with hulk. All started to look good for Gun to win this one, until about 9-6 with Gun in the lead, when they fell apart. Probably because Lockdown said he didn’t think Pressure would die 7 times on livestream (thanks for the jinx bro).

    Gun had some questionable deaths from Pressure late in this game, who despite the previously mentioned recs somehow ended the game 38-7. Gun also had some questionable team mines/bombs that emped Gun’s entire team on attack twice. Gun spids gave Fire too much time to set up and maintain their cram, losing a ton of free time in the process. In the flagroom, Gun’s over control started to get completely smashed in late game flagroom battles, as zidane and mcvicar started to push hulk and cranium around leaving no room for Pressure to position well or for Gun's spiders to get to advantageous/controlling positions. Fire’s cram was just too strong, and in any flagroom battle toward the end you can see how badly Gun’s under was bleeding, letting kado with/without Ro run rampant on their side of flagroom multiple times.

    Ultimately, Pressure blundered multiple times late in the game at crucial moments, for example where he mistimed precipitous cranium reps and died to spid bullets in cram entrance (25:35), or when he didn't recognize a dropped rep by hulk and died to spider bullets at 27:45-27:53 despite having a port to use. Since he choked an otherwise flawless beginning-middle of the game after overconfidently squadpm'ing Fire early in the game, Pressure is the NOT player of this game. This guy didn't even recognize the elite flag jupe he created with Fire at 14:54, and instead ragespecced. Once he realized what he had done, he !lagout'd and Gun almost entered and retook flag, but it was too late. If he didn't spec, they may have had another chance to control flag and win this game, but this was just an overall poor display of sportsmanship. Since Ro rekt this newbie 4 times and got the game winning TeK, Ro is this game’s HOT player of the week.

    Fire needed and wanted this one more than Gun did, and they proved it.


    HOT: Ro (101-53, 4 TeK)
    NOT: Pressure (38-7, 1 TeK)
    Plays of the game: great port trick TeK by Pressure (5:30-5:42); turban maintains top control, rushes claushouse to force him to warp out of flagroom, then forces a shark rep and kills a few spids to hold cram (6:45-7:10); huge under push by Spartan, assisted by nowon, forcing claushouse to warp (12:10-12:28); turban and saiyan completely own flag and top bar, cornering claushouse and forcing him to warp (13:30-13:47); hellkite rushes top bar, puts shot on Pressure, forcing warp and TeK by claushouse (14:09-14:22); Ease, hellkite, and Ra rush and trap Pressure, who makes good escapes but had nowhere to go, especially once claushouse saw under open and covered himself, which all resulted in a crucial TeK on Pressure (23:35-24:20); huge rush by Ro at a critical moment leading to game winning TeK on Pressure (27:40-27:53)

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    Rapid vs. Spastic (3:43 - 15:00) | LINK

    Review: Although it may not seem so since Rapid is 0-6, this was an important game for Spastic, who needed every win they could get leading up to the playoffs. Creature started in terr for Rapid, with Dwopple and Morph sharking, and RUCCI, Steep, hypocrite, Ardour, and i.d. in spider. Really bizarre lineup. Spastic fielded Zizu in terr, JAMAL and porkjet in shark, and cripple, Stayon, wbm, JURASSIC, and Lupin in spider. Spastic looked like they had this one easily on paper.

    The game started with cripple going afk and Spastic giving up top control 25 seconds into the game, resulting in a TeK on a helpless and cornered Zizu. Rapid seemed unorganized with no one dropping back to cover an open under, but still maintained some control and overall looked decent considering their lineup. However, once Spastic woke up, cripple, Stayon, and wbm were too much for Rapid to handle over flag. JAMAL and porkjet looked really good here and held consistently long crams. Creature’s teamless suiciding made it look pretty easy for Spastic’s spiders. Stayon you looked nasty out there.

    I ran my mouse over the video's timeline and noticed that Rapid doesn't break cram for the third time until 11-1, so I skipped ahead. I notice a few changes were made, but to no real effect. Rapid almost got Zizu at 13:55, and ended up getting the TeK at 14:05. porkjet and JAMAL dismantled Rapid’s final cram, Spastic broke in, and a decent flagroom battle ensued. Morph threw Rapid in his backpack and actually kept them in the flagroom a few extra minutes toward the end, to no avail. Morph ended up dying to swarming Spastic spiders in the right ear and the game was over.

    Overall, Rapid made a decent effort a few times this game but their leadership did not know how to field a proper line. Who’s idea was it to put Creature in terr and waste everyone’s time? Spastic dominated as expected. Boring game.

    HOT: cripple (78-21, 0 TeK), JAMAL (23-73, 0 TK, 4 TeK)
    NOT: Creature (terrier: 1-4, 0 TeK, 10:25 play time)
    Plays of the game: No noteworthy plays were made during this match.

    __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _________________________

    Plade vs. Fire (15:00 - 3:17) | LINK

    Review: My steam and motivation to continue taking the time to write these are starting to run low, but I will keep trying. Fire’s line was identical to the one they used in their win versus Gun. Plade started CARDI B over Bacon this round after his impressive outing versus Pandora in the preceding game.

    The game started with a bad judgement call by claushouse to try to keep top bar control while his entire side of flagroom was open to retreat and regroup. Instead he got himself corned and subsequently warped onto a stray Mikkiz burst at 5:35 to give Plade the first cram. After that, Fire had no chance this one. claushouse was shaky, like taking 20 seconds to enter a broken cram at 7:35 or dying to bullets in ear with zidane repping in front of him just a minute later. zidane/mcvicar's reps were low-impact/useless essentially the entire game and they got easily pushed around by Commodo/Mythril. Beyond Fire terr/sharks, their spids couldn't control or kill anything.

    Mikkiz had it easy this one and aced Fire going 26-0 with 3 TeK. Even though claushouse's team looked like garbage, as mentioned above he was hesitant throughout the game and made multiple questionable calls, whether on cram break or in flagroom. Like, again taking that long to enter a broken cram at 18:00? Recognizing and acting on the following play (where claushouse went under to trap Plade from both sides) was not a terrible idea, if not for getting schooled by Mikkiz moments later. It seemed every time claushouse made a terr-versus-terr directed play, Mikkiz countered and won. I don’t think he lost a single 1-on-1 to claushouse this match? For the record, however, doing HoN and closely watching the games definitely brings to light just how abusive Mikkiz's lag really is and how much of an advantage it gives him. Most other terrs wouldn't survive some of the situations he is able to escape, and in these particular situations he does not survive because of skill, but purely because of lag.

    With CARDI B joining Trasher and dreamwin over flag, Plade simply looked like the better overall better team. kess/bram and Ro/kado was pretty even throughout the game. Even though all of their spiders were pretty bad, Ra seemed to be the weak link for Fire, unable to assist Ease and hellkite in matching Trasher, dreamwin, and CARDI B over flag. He was consistently wasting energy, dying when Fire needed to regroup, and losing positioning.

    There were moments in the later flagroom battle(s) where Fire looked like they were gaining control, but so many shark gaps and lapses in spider awareness of advantages or shark doa’s left claushouse designated to the chair, ear, and coffin most of the time. Overall, Fire got absolutely dismantled by Plade. Game was more boring than it should have been on paper.

    HOT: CARDI B (83-27, 0 TeK), Mikkiz (26-0, 3 TeK)
    NOT: Ra (56-52, 0 TeK), claushouse (25-6, 0 TeK)
    Plays of the game: Ease enters cram solo, kills both sharks, and takes flag control (8:55-9:05); Mikkiz reads and easily counters claushouse's top bar port trick, while mcvicar simultaneously gets outrepped by Mythril for the TeK (13:50-13:55); Mikkiz eats a ton of bullets and makes a ridiculous lag-assisted escape (18:15-18:25)

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    Spastic vs. Gun (6:12 - 15:00) | LINK

    Review: Spastic used the same line as they played in their other games. Gun substituted Spartan for Rough under. The game started with a careless death by Pressure to spider bullets after craniums third rep at 2:05. Gun easily broke cram, but again Pressure died behind the right chair to bullet streams shot from behind the opposing chair at 2:35. After these deaths, Pressure buckled down and aced the rest of the game.

    Spastic actually started out pretty good here thanks to Pressure’s initial 2 deaths . However, this free time amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of the game. turban set fire to Spastic this round, going 101-53 with 2 TeK in an 18 minute game where he consistently rushed. skatarius and saiyan cleaned up alongside turb. hulk absolutely worked Zizu and Spastic this game, getting 20 kills and 3 TeK with just 3 TK. cranium played fine, but had some obvious holes in his game due to rust. Rough dominated under, forcing JURASSIC to a negative record with just 55 kills and 0 TeKs, which left nowon free to intermittently help stack over flag.

    Overall, Spastic didn't look so bad in this one. Zizu did look really, really bad, though. Not sure why, but Zizu legit threw this game as if it didn’t matter. If Spastic beat Gun this match, they’d have had a very real chance to make playoffs after week 5. Instead, Zizu died 11 times and many of them were pointless. I truly think if Zizu played better or if they had another top terr, Spastic could have made a true run to win this one. They were hopeless with the way Zizu handled this game, though. I mean, allowing 3 TeK by nowon, 2 TeK by Saiyan, and 1 TeK by turban, for a total of 6 TeK by 3 spiders, is just unacceptable in this important of a game this late in the season. Although your team can be partially blamed for your performance, this one was on you bud. The entire middle 50% of the game was a repeating sequence of Zizu dying a stupid death, Zizu bringing his team from spawn to midbase, Zizu giving his team 10 seconds to set up a cram break, then Zizu dying another stupid death and having to start all over again. Zizu could have kept his team in it and he didn’t, though I will say as the game went on he did go on to die to multiple un-aimed lucky shraps, but his positioning and general awareness could have been better and if he was more cautious he may not have died so many times to so many unlucky shrap.

    nowon was an animal, whether he was under or over flag, this guy’s aim, awareness, and in-game IQ was just incredible this match (is it ever not?). turban was simply relentless.

    Could have been a more interesting game, but it wasn't.

    HOT: turban (101-53, 2 TeK), nowon (85-36, 3 TeK), hulk (20-84, 3 TeK)
    NOT: Zizu (41-11, 0 TeK), JURASSIC (55-57, 0 TeK)
    Plays of the game: huge teamfer with the TeK by hulk despite 4 spiders who could have shot him (6:52-7:00); nowon sees shark doa and rushes under for an elite TeK (11:17-11:27); turban rushes Zizu from cram and gets the point blank TeK (12:00-12:10); turban rushes Zizu and forces a warp outside of flagroom (15:02-15:10); nowon controls under and rushes Zizu for the game-winning TeK (19:45-19:56)

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    Pandora vs. Plade (5:54 - 15:00) | video unavailable
    __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _________________________

    Rapid vs. Pandora (1:39 - 15:00) | video unavailable
    __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _________________________

    Week 4 Recap: What a tough week. Plade sweeps 2-0, Pandora, Fire, Gun, and Spastic go 1-1. Rapid goes 0-2. Rapid is out of the playoffs, and it seems Spastic is out as well. The playoffs seem to be set, with Pandora, Plade, Gun, and Fire as the top 4 basing teams. However, seeding is now the major concern. I don't think any team "wants" to play any other team, since pretty much every team beat every other team at least once. No one knows who is the "best" and with so many 1-1 2-game series during the regular season, there definitely isn't an obvious "favorite" to win this year. Who will come out on top this week? Who will play who in the semi-finals? Stay tuned tomorrow at 4:30pm EST for the final week of TWL-B season 23's regular season!

    HOTW: CARDI B (81-30, 0 TeK) (83-27, 0 TeK)
    NOTW: Zizu (22-2, 0 TeK) (41-11, 0 TeK)
    POTW: nowon sees shark doa and rushes under for an elite TeK (11:17-11:27)
    Last edited by Pressure; 06-01-2020, 07:11 AM.

  • #2
    Updated with: Fire vs. Gun (15:00 - 11:20).

    Does anyone have the Pandora games?

    Comment


    • #3
      Updated with: Rapid vs. Spastic (3:43 - 15:00)

      Still looking for Pandora games.

      Comment


      • #4
        good work, thanks for this.

        although you managing to mention your theoretical good recs at various points in the game you didn't finish 3x with and no mention of me going 37-4 even once vs. you made me chuckle.
        top 100 basers list

        Comment


        • #5
          guarantee ripidish 2-0 in lb this week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZYyXcGGSUA

          Comment


          • #6
            Updated with: Plade vs. Fire (15:00 - 3:17)

            Comment


            • #7
              Thanks for doing these
              TWLD Champion 2014
              TWDTB Champion 2013
              TWDTB Champion 2016
              TWDTB Champion 2017
              TWDTB Champion 2019.. my last one.
              -tj hazuki/hazuki :wub:

              Comment


              • #8
                Updated with: Spastic vs. Gun (6:12 - 15:00), Week 4 Recap, HOTW, NOTW, and POTW.

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