CWL Seattle Saturday Preview
With the Winners side of the Open Bracket concluding this Saturday we have 4 talented NA squads joining pools. Let’s look at where they slot in.
Slotting into Pool A will be the 3/4 Canadian roster of Lightning Pandas (Goonjar, Royalty, Xotic, Enable). Widely recognized as one of the best teams not in the GPL, LP is playing with Enable after losing Censor to a league team. At CWL Atlanta, after being blessed by a Pool Play spot, the team snuck their way into 2nd place despite a 2–2 record. They flopped in the Championship Bracket however, dropping 6 maps in a row. The team secured 12th place despite only winning two series. At Birmingham, LP fell in open to Team Heretics but rebounded to make it out of open losers beating CompLexity in a controversial game five. With the magic of Doug Censor Martin, LP rattled off 4 straight series wins, including a game 5 upset of Faze Clan, before finally losing in game 5 to Envyus, placing top 8. LP continues to look sharp with Enable. They’re expected to defeat Tainted Minds, and hope to make some noise in a very talented pool A.
Ghost Gaming has made noise in the last two CWL events. With a roster of Maux, Lacefield, GodRx, and Pandur, Ghost Gaming made it to Pool Play at CWL Atlanta. They defeated Vitality 3–0 to finish 4th in the pool, then defeated GGEA Orange in Losers. Falling 3–1 to Red Reserve, they placed a modest top 16. At CWL Bham, Ghost suffered an ugly loss in open, but rallied to win 5 series in a row to break out of open losers. They blasted the likes of Heretics, Mindfreak, and Unilad in losers, dropping only 2 maps over the 3 series. They finally ran out of gas and placed Top 12 after being swept by Echo Fox. Since then, Ghost Gaming made an interesting swap at main AR, dropping Maux for Parasite. This leaves Lacefield as the only holdover from a team that made GPL in IW. With the new roster of Lacefield, Parasite, Pandur, and GodRx, Ghost had a great open bracket run and may have been blessed by the easiest pool. Although wins over Optic or Envy would be monumental upsets, Ghost should go toe to toe with Unilad and Epsilon. Wins over both of those squads would keep an impressive trend of 3 straight T16 placings at CWL events.
An exciting Enigma6 roster of General, aBeZy, Diabolic, and Sender hope to shake up whats been a crazy Pool C. After narrowly missing a league spot, General rebuilt the E6 team around him. CWL Atlanta was a disaster for this team, placing Top 48 after losing in open to two mediocre teams (WaR and Prismatic). Despite this, a top 4 placing in the US National Circuit 4 weeks earlier was enough encouragement for this roster to stick together. At CWL Bham, E6 fired on all cylinders to make pool play. After frying the open bracket, E6 swept Vitality in pools and lost a tough game 5 to both UniLad and Faze. In losers, E6 was sluggish but clutched a game 5 over Epsilon, then snagged a surprising 3–1 over losers bracket warriors Red Reserve. They pushed Envy to a game 5 as well before placing T12. They firmly deserved a T12 at Birmingham and may have even been T8 caliber. This E6 roster continued to roll, winning the US National Circuit Stage Two. Now that they’ve once again rolled through open, Enigma6 is a scary matchup for every team in Pool C. With Pool C being the only unconventional pool layout after Friday, E6 would love to shake things up and steal a top 2 spot. If this E6 team gets some lucky breaks and clutches some maps, winning 2 or 3 series in this pool is the expectation.
Lastly, we have the most under hyped of the 4 squads. Joining Pool D is the scrappy roster of EZG Esports. It is this roster’s first time playing together. LlamaGod has not won a series outside of open in WW2. Parzelion is regarded as one of the best up and coming AMs but his best placing was a T24 at NOLA. The duo of NauX and Evasion did place T28 at Atlanta, and made it to Pool Play at CWL Bham. However at BHAM, they had a 1–15 map count with 5 straight losses en route to T24. The fact remains that nobody on this team has placed T20 this season. They shocked CoD fans by winning the NA Relegation OQ. As one of two NA AM teams at Relegation, EZG flopped and didnt put up a fight in either series. With teams like Ghost, LP, and E6 all wishing they had an opportunity to qualify for Stage Two, EZG earned a lot resentment for being “online warriors” that embarassed themselves on LAN. With that chip on their shoulder, EZG proved some doubters wrong and made it to pools. They remain the weakest of the 4 open squads, having what most believed the easiest route to pools. Slotting into Pool D is a nightmare for EZG. All the teams in their pool have looked T8 caliber at times. Stealing a game 5 win from either European team, who have both been in poor form, is the most likely way EZG can avoid 0–4. If they do finish at the bottom of Pool D, their Losers bracket matchup will be for the first T20 placing of anyone on this roster.
At CWL NOLA, the open bracket squads won 5 series in Pool Play. This was bolstered by a 3–1 performance from Evil Geniuses, who were certainly an exceptional open bracket team. At CWL Atlanta, the open bracket squads only won 2 series, but deserved to win at least 3 with a 1–4 game 5 record. At CWL Bham the open squads had 3 series wins. This leads us to expect anywhere from 2–4 combined series wins between the 4 teams discussed above. E6 makes the strongest candidate to go 2–2. LP and Ghost both could win 2 series and are expected to win one. EZG is the leading candidate to go 0–4 (somebody has to!) and even winning one series would be a surprise. Thats the report on the open squads at CWL Seattle. Take that 2–4 series wins formula and make your own predictions for which teams will shake up their pools.
