Warzone Newsletter #12A recap of interesting stuff of 2st half of October 2023.
Clan Wars Season 38 ended – Myth Busters won, yet not without a fightThis was another season, when Optimum made a push to dethrone Myth Busters from their CW wining streak. And again, just as in the previous season, Optimum had a small yet stable lead for the first half of the season.
The odds turned in favor of Myth Busters on the 15th day of the season, when they had an impressive 31 wins in one day, against Optimum’s 19 wins. Since then, Myth Busters generally had the lead, which lasted till the very end of the season.
Congratulations Myth Busters! A deserved win. While Optimum showed that they can rival MB bot in participation and win rates, Myth Busters had a slight advantage both in total win rate (67% vs 65%) and the particular win rate against Optimum (52%).
Unfortunately, Optimum faced another (new for me) bug/feature in the Clan Wars. It turns out that if a clan gets all of its wins for a territory from 2v2 games (thus having an even amount of wins) and a territory requires an odd amount of wins (which it usually does), then 1 win is effectively lost. That win is added to the already won territory, instead of getting carried over to the next one. This was confirmed by Fizzer to be a bug, yet he refused to correct the count, when Optimum approached him. This bug didnt really affect the final rankings and due to little data, we don’t know for sure, how that would affect the rankings in case of various tie-breakers.
Another big surprise of the season, is that knyte club managed to get top-5, displacing {101st}. Congratulations! The CW team of KC seems to be ambitious about Clan Wars recently. Even for the very last slot of the season, when everything could have changed (there was just 2 win lead between clans) and I genuinely anticipated a standoff between two stacks of {101st} and knyte club, there was only the stack of knyte club. That really shows their dedication.
This is even more interesting, considering the history the clans: current {101st} gifted knyte club as an uncapped clan to Mothership, when transferring to {101st} in pursuit of leveraging the community and assets of Python/{101st}. And now they are beaten by the former Mothership. Are {101st} already switched from CW to Clan League mode? Will they retake their top-5 position in season 39?
Besides that, there was little change in the standings. Congratulations to the top-9 CW club!
Links:
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https://wz-cw.5smith.ru/season/38
Nation’s Cup – final round incoming, drama and big changes4-th round is over. 5th round is coming soon, which is going to be the final round for most of the teams. If after round 5 the best team is leading by only 0,5 points or fewer, the 6th round will happen, but only for teams still fighting for the championship. For everyone else, round 5 is the final one.
LND from The Last Alliance has volunteered to cover the competitive side of the Nation’s Cup. Thanks to him, we have the following coverage:
LND here to cover the competition side of Nations Cup!The competition is nearing its final stages, with Round 4 (1v1 Laketown) nearly complete and the match-ups for Round 5 (2v2 Volcano Island) due to be made in the stream very soon!
Going into Round 5, we have one team on the maximum 4 points, GB A! GB A has certainly been the strongest team this tournament, beating SUI (7-5), NL (10-2), US A (7-5) and ANZ A (9-2, 1 remaining) to grab their four points with a 70% game WR. This is no mean feat, considering the strength of their opponents!
Their opponent for Round 5 will most likely be GER A, who are currently on 3 confirmed points, but due to their match with HEL A being tied with two games left, they currently have 4 points for matchmaking purposes. GER A has been a bit shakier (59% game WR) with perhaps slightly easier opponents, NL (8-4), FR B (7-5), US B (7-5) and a yet undecided match against HEL A (5-5, 2 remaining); the latter two matchups were both come-from behind efforts from GER A. However, since HEL A are dropping out of the competition, it looks like GB A vs GER A could be our final, and with the controversial introduction of Beep Beep I’m a Jeep into the squad in place of Roi Joleil, GER A will definitely be in their strongest form so far this tournament!
There is, however, a chance that a third contender could challenge for the title.
FR A is currently on 3.5 points, after very convincingly defeating HEL B (12-0), CZE (11-1) and HIS (11-1). A Round 2 draw against US A (6-6) was the only setback in an otherwise dominant campaign that has them on top of the table by game WR at 83%.
There are two situations in which Nations Cup could end after Round 5. Firstly, if GER A loses to HEL A before the matchups are created, FR A would face GB A in Round 5, with the winner getting 1.5 points and becoming the undisputed champion of NC. Secondly, if the GB A and GER A match goes ahead as predicted, and FR A loses their match, then the winner of the GB A vs GER A match will take the title.
However, there are several options for a 6th round to become necessary – if FR A wins a match that is not against GB A this round, then they will be minimum 0.5 points behind GB A, and maximum 0.5 points ahead of GB A – this means a 6th round must be played to determine the champion.
Likewise, if the likely GB A vs GER A match is a draw, then we have Round 6.
Personally, I think a 6th round will be necessary – it seems unlikely GER A will lose or draw to HEL A before the matches are created, making the GB A vs GER A matchup most likely. In this case, FR A is most definitely the favourite to win any of their possible matches against either ANZ A, CAN, US B or EAS, which would require the French to play a final against the Germans or the British. This would certainly be an exciting outcome!
As far as individual performances go, currently there remain just 5 players who are undefeated in all 4 rounds. Phaeril (FR A), Mathematician (EAS), and Chackyjo (GER C) are sitting on 8-0, while Forsaken (HEL A) and ACL Tears (US B) are currently at 7-0 (one remaining game each). Should Phaeril keep up his form into the final round(s), I believe he would be a deserving Player of the Tournament winner, having showed his strength against tougher teams than his other undefeated peers!
Up to now, a clear difference can be seen between teams with some good players and some not-so-good players as opposed to the teams with all-round good players, due to the 1v1 nature of the games. However, it will be interesting to see if the 2v2 format obscures these differences a bit. Team games offer teams the possibility of having a very skilful player ‘puppet’, the not-so-skilful player. This could potentially have the effect of seemingly increasing the team’s overall skill level, and making it harder for teams with good depth to get easy wins against the weaker players on the opposition.
However, the teams of two will be randomly generated for each match – as such, teams with less skill depth will have to hope that their weak players are paired with their strong ones, while their opponents will hope for the opposite. To what extent this will affect the match results will be interesting to see!
Another interesting factor in Round 5 will be the fact that there will only be 6 games per match, not 12 as in the previous rounds. Each player will still play 2 games each, but because these are in teams there will be half the number of games. I believe this will make draws even more likely, and make separating evenly matched teams harder.
That’s all for now, make sure to join/watch the Round 5 matchmaking livestream on October, 6 at 7:30pm UTC,
https://www.twitch.tv/min34, or join the Nation’s Cup Discord server
https://discord.gg/kTS6auccz to stay up to date with live results!
Wow, this time the newsletter is so large, that it didn't fit into a single forum post. So I have to break it down in parts.
End of part 1....
Edited 11/6/2023 08:40:55
