The Titty Lords Rogue 21 Stats 11 Dream 12 Soul 1
Points: 3 Draft Rating: B+ Place: 3rd (Tie)
Draft Recap: Last to add a player to his team, his patience netted slightly overpriced Rogue and big bargain Stats at $11. Rogue is a paired ace on the Rifkin team, which could limit productivity. Spending for Dream forced him to take Soul, who is lovingly described as things like “practice partner” and “7k MMR” but not so often as “winner.” More to the point: you don’t beat many people you shouldn’t by playing predictable macro, but unfortunately you also aren’t great when you’re trying timing pushes for the first time after practicing nothing but 35 minute games for the better part of you career. He’s not a complete vortex of points outlook, but he’s favored against few enough that anything north of zero points earned is going to be a big win. Bottom line: Stats is going to outperform the spending, and Rogue likely will too. Dream is more of a question: he looks good, but he’s also been heavily dependent on decisive tank pushes. Rogue hasn’t played yet, Stats is off to a great start, Dream lost the game of the week, and Soul looked like he’s capable of losing games even after gaining a lead.
Rogue 0-0 Stats 3-1 Dream 1-1 Soul 0-3
B-Tier Heroes Reynor 21 Bunny 10 Neeb 8 Uthermal 9
Points: -1 Draft Rating: A+ Place: 8th (tie) Draft Recap: Buying a bona fide ace at $21 is an absolute steal, and there are no truly weak links on this team. No other team in the draft managed to get a set of four that looked this robust. A forgettable first week doesn’t matter too much here -- his best players haven’t gone yet, and the losses were from wily veterans who have the variety and skill to be lethal for anyone. Can Uthermal lose to SuperNova? Yes, but he didn’t. And he didn’t in spectacular fashion--it wasn’t the best game last week, but it may have been the most fun. He can also 3-0 Zest and make startling tournament runs on the back of risky play. That’s the sort of thing you want from your 4-slot. Bunny quietly thumped overdogs (sic & ™ ) in the GSL recently, and only terran’s abysmal War Chest run so far should have us shading this team a bit. After he wins the league I’ll be seeking compensation as an unlicensed but enthusiastic clairvoyant.
Reynor 0-0 Bunny 0-0 Neeb 0-2 Uthermal 1-1
Goon Micro Trap 23 Clem 12 Sortof 2 Dear 11
Points: 3 Draft Rating: F Place: 3rd (tie) Draft Recap: Intentionally spent more than $20 on a protoss player. Intentionally spent more than $20 on a protoss player *on a team with only protoss*. All these dorks favoring Trap are reading too much into the tea leaves from one match against an overconfident Reynor at DreamHack. Trap being the best protoss in the world is simultaneous with protoss getting sideways glances at the StarCraft family reunion potluck. You want value from protoss, not the lion’s share of your points. Silver lining: picked up SortOf on the cheap early and let you bid for the best player remaining in the draft. I know someone else who tried to do that. Unfortunately for you, a bunch of people with just a little more money than you left you with Dear or HeroMarine, and you picked Dear. Your commissioner thanks you for your generosity. Clem at $12 is ok, but with Rogue playing so well it’s hard to guess who will get those ace matches. Considering Rifkin has to make the pick into the blind, if he’s smart he’ll pick a balanced powerhouse Rogue so Clem doesn’t get a TvT. Which also sucks for you. But did I mention you spent MORE THAN TWENTY ON A PROTOSS WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Trap did earn three points the first week though. I guess. Whatever.
Trap 2-1 Clem 0-0 Sortof 1-2 Dear 0-0
S.O. Ace sOs 10 TY 17 Cure 17 Hurricane 2
Points: 1 Draft Rating: C Place: 7th Draft Recap: Was on board with the big brain strategy of taking a slumping sOs at an appropriate price early, then nabbing TY underpriced really put you in a great spot for the rest of the draft. But you spent $17 on Cure right after letting DRG go by for $10. Bidding can get hot, but there were several players left on the table, and if you were willing to go to $4 remaining (which you were) it meant that either Cure was on your must-have list or that you let your own bidding get out of hand and missed out on superior players like Stats and soO as a result. Either way, not the call I’d have made. I haven’t seen Hurricane play in months, and I watch a lot of Starcraft. He feels like the Korean version of Soul, with a higher ceiling and a scary low floor (is he even active?). sOs nabbing the ace match opportunities and looking fairly good gives you a bit of upside. If TY looks like 70% of offline TY instead of 100% online TY you’re in a good spot, but otherwise it’s going to get rough because you need to cover for the meager outlook for Hurricane. Paths to victory also include Maru continuing to have Korean Terran wrists and Little Bitch bedtime.
sOs 2-2 TY 0-0 Cure 0-1 Hurricane 0-0
Zest is Chest
Zest 15 Special 12 soO 18 Ptitdrogo 3
Points: 3 Draft Rating: B+ Place: 3rd (tie) Draft Recap Zest at $15 is a good value, and soO continues to defy me when I think he’ll drop off before military. soO is also drawing ace matches for his team, but consider the other likely aces: TY, Maru, Innovation, Reynor, Serral, Trap, Parting, Rogue. That’s a tough crowd even for someone as good as soO. Upside: soO is likely to win his map, and so is Stats, and Sortof and Soul almost never will, so he is pretty likely to get some looks. $12 is too much for Special, but if you were factoring in sex appeal I get it. And it seems like you were because you added Zest first, so ok. Literally the fuckwit who picked this team also texted me to say that Zest, Special, Soo and “that other guy” are going to totally own us all. Ok. Drogo is lethal in pvp and bad against this field in the other two matchups, so pray he gets those and you’ll get your money’s worth. And it’ll happen at least once against Feardragon. If he gets four PvPs, he’ll win three of them, and “that guy” will net you 3-5 which is good for +1 point in your 4-slot. The rest of your guys will be .500ish, with Soo and Zest having lots of upside.
Zest 0-0 Special 1-1 Soo 2-2 Ptitdrogo 0-0
The f Hole Maru 20 Showtime 9 DRG 10 Lambo 9
Points: 5 Draft Rating: B Place: 2nd Draft Recap Maru is a bit of a wildcard, and he showed it here. He reaallly almost lost the game to Stats on Deatherra and doing so would’ve underlined that his team made it to two ace matches and he didn’t play either of them, his arms hurt, and his online history is sparse. He’s also undefeated and you didn’t overpay. You did overpay for ShowTime, who regularly looks like he’s about as good as MaNa in tournaments even though on ladder he’s bigger faster stronger. Remember when he lost 2-3 against Serral at DreamHack? Remember when that was because he won when Serral played weird? ShowTime feels like he’s just ever so slightly worse than the top half of this field, but that he’s less likely than say a Ragnarok, Special, or Elazer to punch up. So it was looking bad, and then you got DRG for $10, the best deal in the entire draft. He was the player I wanted second most and I hate you for it. He’s absolute fire right now, and I think he’ll draw ace matches over TY given his GSL performance. You get a pass for paying $9 on Lambo because presumably you were going to spend that money on DRG, but then nobody pressed you to pay more, and by the time you got there it was Lambo or MaNa. You probably picked wrong, since MaNa has more insanity at his disposal. But Lambo is the beating heart of the Eurothinkerzerg scene, and it does give you less protoss per capita, which seems like it can only help.
Maru 2-0 Showtime 1-1 DRG 0-0 Lambo 0-0
Elazer, But Consent First Parting 19 Elazer 10 Armani 7 Ragnarok 12
Points: 2 Draft Rating: D Place: 7th
Is Parting an ace? I don’t know, but Armani is better than the nasty draw he got playing against Parting’s ludicrous stasis ward in a game that Armani should’ve won in that moment, and the other game was against Serral. If Donald Trump were tweeting about this, he’d say “Too Bad.” Elazer at 10 I can’t wrap my head around, and your best player is protoss. These are strikes that can’t be ignored.
Parting 1-1 Elazer 1-1 Armani 0-2 Ragnarok 1-0
Standing Novation Innovation 25 Solar 16 Time 3 Supernova 1
Points: -1 Draft Rating: C Place: 8th (Tie) Draft Recap: Innovation at $25 will pay off. He’s the only ace on his team, he’s the best terran in the world, and he’s a grinder in offline cups. He’s favored against everybody but Serral and Reynor, and he’s a toss-up against them. Solar at $16 was a mistake. Not in a vacuum, but because it left you with so little remaining so early on. Picking up Time was a blessing, but you got stuck with SuperNova because you couldn’t outbid *anything* at the end because you got down to low money before the rest of the participants, so they knew to leave more than what you had left in the bank to avoid the whammies.
Strea Cats Serral 32 Heromarine 4 MaNa 5 Astrea 5
Points: 14 Draft Rating: B Place: 1st Draft Recap: I bought Serral, and then got lucky as hell nobody took Gabe from me or my team would look a lot more like Serral + the bottom of the European ladder. Heading in to the draft my plan was to get an ace, DRG or Dream, and anybody Korean left whose handle isn’t related to weather. Instead I drafted Serral and went into immediate “anything but SuperNova” mode. I thought I was in trouble when I got outbid on Sortof, but luckily somebody wanted Lambo more than MaNa, and I ended up getting ⅔ of Uthermal Mana Astrea, whichever I didn’t get outbid on. I’d like to say that I worked for that, but really I was just clenching my ass hoping that the money would fall out that I could get three guys for $5 or less that I wasn’t completely hopeless about.
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