A mere ten days separate us from the end of the regular part of Season 7. On Monday, we talked about the teams that we might end up seeing in the Cup ahead, but of course, that is but one of the end-of-season tournaments that Heroes Lounge has to offer. The Championship beckons, shiny and chrome, and we will soon witness exactly what the best of the best in Lounge has to offer. But who, you might wonder, will end up in there? We’ll only know the answer for sure once all the matches have been played, but we can at least look at who has a chance.
Points of order:
- Standings are as of earlier on the day this is posted, and all of this is done without looking too closely at individual skill matchups: this is primarily possibility, not probability.
- If you want to just know the general odds for a team, look for the paragraph the team is in per division: earlier paragraphs translate to a better position. This doesn’t mean that the first six/ten teams mentioned are going to qualify, though: it is still the start of Round 10, and the majority of Round 9 has not been played yet.
- I might also miss things, so if you think I did, poke me on Discord and I’ll have a look.
Recent results have made things extremely interesting here. The possibilities change every day, and I am certain I am missing half of them while I sit at my computer and deal with the permutations as they come in. However, right now, things are extremely interesting in this division. Not a single team is guaranteed qualification just yet, and there is a non-zero chance for an entire transporter aircraft worth of teams to end up tied on 7 matches and 14 wins, anywhere from places 3 to 7, or 7 to 11. Maps are of supreme importance.
Leading Division 2 at the moment, and also in the best position because of that, are OverPower. They are the only team present that can lose their last game and still guarantee themselves qualification if they take a single map. Until-recently-unbeaten BushBoysCollective and TryHard are one map behind, and also in a very solid position. While it is no guarantee that they do qualify with a 1-2 loss in the last round, their position is still fairly solid in that case.
The second tier is led by Suplex eSports, whose fearsome skills have led to more than a few walk-over wins as the opponents were too afraid to face them. With two matches to go to secure qualification, and both of those being against direct opponents, they have the power to fell their threats and to seize their destiny. Nexus Junkies are in a similar situation, just with a map less; and as mentioned, map wins are incredibly important. EnCore didn’t pick up any extra map wins in their losses, but the fact that they are already done with this score means they’ll have a chance right until the very end: a nice effort by the newcomers. Oil Rig and The Forever Alones have only one chance at making it, but having 14 map wins so far means that winning the match guarantees qualification: 7 matches and 16 maps won is the bare minimum in the division if my calculations are correct.
Firewall Gaming qualify with a double win, but are likely to fall short if they lose one; especially the first against the Nexus Junkies. Toxic Mushrooms and Gaming in the Rhythm are worse-off with a map less, while the Finnish team of Kurso stands one win away from reaching 7 matches and 14 maps, meaning that their potential is worse than some other teams in this paragraph, but their baseline is just better. They must win, however.
For all your outsider needs, we have Where no ability meets no effort and Boost Bus. The former can win twice, and doing so puts them in the 7-and-14 pile-up that is going to ensue at the end of the season, which is not by any stretch a guarantee, except, perhaps, for the infamous T-word. The latter’s chances are of the same kind as CoB Antimeta and FAT Liopleurodon in the Cup: lottery tickets might have a better return on investment if you were to bet on them.
The crème de la crème of the Lounge, it is here that we’ve always found the winner of the Championship, but it is also a fact that the teams towards the lower end of the ten-slot qualification zone are vulnerable to motivated Division 2 teams. Caution is advised for the ones who slide in at the end: there is no reason to feel superior just because you’ve got a better seed.
Four teams that are probably not as worried about that have already qualified. Memeldor’s Meme Machines shot through Division 1 like a hypersonic rocket plane that just now stalled in Round 9, forcing me to rewrite this paragraph. Open Division teams EPG Frozen and Project HIVE Gaming, formerly known as SFD-Gaming, aka the Season 6 winners, also dropped only a few maps here and there, easily finding qualification. Their only losses are against The Good Guys, whose matchup against MMM resulted in their only loss. Sadly, the first three in this division didn’t meet each other at all in the regular season, and it is not looking like they’ll meet any time soon either.
Not qualified yet, but in a very good position to be so, are the memeless memers of Don Our Fedoras. It’s not that it’s impossible for them to bounce out, but it’s a case of about a dozen very specific results and not taking a map in their last game, and then also potentially losing a tiebreaker. Epikk have one map less won, but they too should qualify without too much of an issue: winning against MMM was incredibly important for their qualification chances.
Ryzing Gaming’s position looks good, only needing a single match win to qualify, but when your opponents are of the already qualified kind, things get murky, though by no means impossible. Avada Kadablyat also won’t need to resort to throwing around Unforgivable Curses to guarantee qualification, but a single win is less likely to be enough in their case. Pocket Toads (#prayfortoads) just need the one win from one match as their great map score puts them in this paragraph, as opposed to a lower one. Battle Beasts Boys might mirror the Toads: one of their matches is against a team that has seemingly gone inactive. Digital Mousquetaires has slightly fewer maps won still, but again, a win should be enough for them.
The Magical Number Turtles is going to try to stop the musketeers from doing so in their Round 10 match, but 5 matches and 12 maps is certainly not looking like it’ll be enough, meaning they’ll need to probably win the next match as well. Griefers On Safari must at least book a trip through two of the enemy cores: a win is a must to have a chance. Lastly, your divisionly outsiders here are Greybeard Gangsters and FAT Kraken: win once/twice respectively, and pray for a veritable multitude of things to fall your way.
Both write-ups done. In twelve days time, Divisions 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 are done, and the Cup and Championship are go. I hope that you enjoyed the read, and that you’ll join in for one of the many casts in this final stretch of the season, starting tonight at 21:00 for this blog. (19:00 if you include the Cup blog.)
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