You remembered my warning about spoilers didn't you?

Welcome to review number two in my series about the ETF2L Season 17 Premiership games in which we will meet a merry band of Englishmen looking to pull, witness Dotter show their true colours and receive some sound advice on how ubercharges and flatulence are related from everyone's favourite Latvian medic.

Not quite Agincourt

Week 1:	Ayogurl Sugadaddy Hood Pussy Creepers		3	-	3		La Berrichonne de Châteauroux
	Granary		3	-	2
	Gullywash		3	-	5

What we've seen from La Berrichonne de Châteauroux (henceforth referred to as LBC) from the first review has been mostly positive, putting up a strong showing against Mais La Moule ! but we haven't seen Ayogurl Sugadaddy Hood Pussy Creepers at all this season. However, we did see them play each other in the ZOWIE cup; LBC were the team to drop Ayogurl into the lower brackets where they were subsequently knocked out by The Last Resort whilst LBC were only out in the lower bracket final. After swapping out Permzilla for e-thug, Ayogurl seem to have picked up the pace, putting out a much closer game against LBC this time around.

Since scheduling is hard, we have a Week 1 game way up into the third week of the season, so it's back to good old Granary and Gullywash for this game. Ayogurl came out strong, taking the first round in under two minutes after wiping LBC on mid. It wasn't looking good as LBC lost the second middle in a similar fashion, but they held on as Bulle died early on mid and had uber to defend with and then with some nice aggression from their flank they carried a failed last push by Ayogurl all the way to mid, picking up a very late kill onto kingofsquirrels giving LBC a sizeable advantage to push into last with. The next middle went to LBC thanks to some nice timing from their soldiers, T-Mac and Tek, putting in the distractions and cleaning up. After a few failed pushes to last, they took their second and last round. After this, a rather more slow paced round (the longest in the map at seven minutes) took Ayogurl to the equalising point, then another much quicker round gave them the 3 - 2 final score. However, there was still another six minutes or so until the end of the map and it was all looking good for Ayogurl, they were in a four versus two situation on the enemy's last in their favour and still lost it. This let LBC take them all the way to Ayogurl's own last point but in the end it was all for naught as the map timer ended.

The even matching between these teams extends into the stats too, no players of either team stood head and shoulders above anyone else. Mike did account for two thirds of the damage difference between the two teams, dealing 2k more than his French counterpart, and dmoule outfragged everyone in the game, although in the end it shows that everyone on Ayogurl apart from Sideshow outdamaged everyone from LBC apart from dmoule. The weak link though appeared to be e-thug. Despite getting a respectable 22 kills, he managed to die 4 more times whilst also taking 2k less damage and dealing 800 less damage himself than hawku. Could this be an indication of being picked off too much?

On Gullywash, LBC started out with the upper hand, taking the first three mids and rounds without giving Ayogurl much of a chance at all, although the first round may not have gone so quickly had Flippy not worked his sniper wizardry to drop kingofsquirrels's uber, not the last he would drop this game either, nor the last Flippy would drop. Even on the longer third round, Ayogurl never managed to get much further than mid, and most of the round seemed to be spent on their last point. After this, Ayogurl quickly came back with a response, taking the score to 3-1 with twenty minutes remaining, a very feasible feat, but this win was probably related to dmoule dropping from the game with fl1p joining as a merc. However, as the fifth round dragged on for a whole ten minutes and on top of that, went in LBC's favour, it was going to be tough for Ayogurl to turn it around to take four rounds for the win within ten minutes. After the next round went to LBC again, leaving seven minutes for five rounds the writing was on the wall. This didn't stop Ayogurl giving it their all, pulling off two more rounds, one being a breakneck 55 seconds (not far behind the classic TCM 47 seconds bringing the final score to 5 - 3.

The logs have quite a tale to tell, with only Stark and kingofsquirrels having less than 20 deaths on Ayogurl, bringing to light the massive 30 frag difference (~25%) between the two teams. Not to mention Tek and Flippy going huge, with Tek on a massive 12k damage and 35 kills and Flippy with 27 kills, 7 of which were on sniper, in fact, ~10% of LCB's total kills were on sniper.

Ayogurl Sugadaddy Hood Pussy Creeper's pocket Stark:

On Granary my team made a lot of space and I was able to sit back and clear up suiciders on kos. On Gullywash it was the other way around as Tek was able to play the role I had on the previous map. if we had played more aggressively on Gullywash we would have probably seen better results.

gg ez

Week 3:	Fenneks eSports by SimRai.com		0	-	6		Made In Germany
	Badlands		1	-	5
	Metalworks		0	-	4

Made In Germany continues their excellent start to the season by crushing another merry band of friends underneath their boot heel. Well OK, maybe that's an exaggeration; Fenneks eSports did take both maps to the 30 minute mark, narrowly avoiding the win difference shame, but that still doesn't change the outcome.

Apart from a few mis-steps pushing second and last, MIG were dominant for the first three rounds of Badlands, only allowing Fenneks a single cap point before pushing all the way back into last. All this came from MIG's control of the mid fights, wiping Fenneks on the first and barely even letting them out of valley on the second and third. Worth noting is ipz's play to cap the second round, hiding above the point for some sneaky cap time and damage during the MIG repush and a great double scout spire backcap by basH and TviQ, unfortunately denied at last by Fenneks players backspawning from resupply. Despite this, Fenneks managed to take the fourth round. Losing the midfight wasn't the best start, but it was brought back by Sheepy. MIG left a scout and a weak soldier to cap mid whilst everyone else moved to spire, Sheepy came in and killed both of them, blocking the mid cap for long enough to allow his team to set up on second. A nice wrap around through resupply gave Fenneks MIG's spire and they took their only round not long after. The 9 minute round was a smorgasbord of plays from players of both teams, but ultimately it went to MIG to win 5 - 1.

Alone, the stats have a different story to tell than the result; it's hard to point out a single player from Fenneks that underperformed. All the players in the game had respectable damage output and kills, with a similar number of deaths to the MIG players. The overall result however, shows that MIG dealt roughly 7% more damage and got 8% more kills over the game. This hints towards a lack of coordination between the Fenneks players compared to MIG, especially when you look at skeej's stats as medic, 18 deaths vs ThUn's 13 and the fact that he died 6 times within 20 seconds of the uber compared to ThUn's 2.

Metalworks started out similarly to Badlands; MIG dominated the midfight and took the round without much difficulty, spurred on by some nice kritzkrieg plays from kaidus. The differences started from the second round, the first of the three long rounds that MIG would have to drag themselves through to take the win on Metalworks. On the second mid, despite some heavy damage on the Fenneks players, none of them really died granting them their only mid of the game. Their ascendancy didn't last long however, as they were crushed on the second point. A nice 3k from gf18 defended last, but they couldn't withstand German aggression forever and despite nearly making it to MIG's last, they eventually had to concede (once again with some help from a kaidus kritzkrieg). The third round went much the same way, but with MIG taking the midfight and this time, the kritzkriegs came from Fenneks, sickless taking ThUn on mid, and Stark with a nice flank play to take ThUn again on last. The final round started off similarly, MIG taking mid as usual and like on Badlands, was a lengthy battle (in fact this one took half the map time on its own) with some nice play from both sides, but again it eventually ended in MIG's favour.

Again, the logs would suggest that the game was pretty close, with all players on a similar number of kills and deaths (interesting to see basH at the bottom of the kill list on 15, but his 12 assists gave him a higher KAD than TviQ) but MIG again came out with roughly 7% more damage and kills and again, the same number of ubercharges gave MIG twice as many points capture as Fenneks, despite ThUn dying 4 more times within 20 seconds of the uber compared to the previous game. Overall, another display of MIG's dominance.

Made In Germany's pocket soldier ipz gave me this insight to the game:

Even though Stark knew what he signed up for I felt sorry for him. I like skeej but that doesnt mean I have to like his teams or the way he makes them play. Nothing has changed about my earlier statements about Fenneks [in relation to his comments in the interview after the game]

Thy banner, the heroes carry high

Week 3:	Dotter		6	-	0		The Last Resort
	Metalworks		5	-	1
	Badlands		6	-	1

This is the first we've seen of The Last Resort, playing off against Dotter, who had a rather disappointing first week. However as the dust settled at the end of this game, Sweden emerged with a crushing victory over TLR, with BeaVerN leading the charge racking up 80 kills and 17 assists and dying just 33 times over the two maps.

Despite the midfights being fairly even on Metalworks (both teams each won 3 midfights), pure win stats can be deceiving, TLR may have capped the first middle first, but it was a definite win for Dotter, allowing them to take the first round in quick time due to a poor attempt at a second point block by TLR in which despite picking up ryb and wltrs, they wiped giving Dotter an easy last point cap. Dotter took the second middle relatively easily, even picking up Mirelin very late into the fight when Dotter moved up onto second giving them the second point and a 100% uber advantage to push last with. This uber turned out to be a disaster, allowing TLR to push all the way to Dotter's last to take their only round of the map. After two rounds going to Dotter similarly to the first round, the longest round of the game started; a 12 minute slog back and forth across the map, saved in the early stages of the round by a crucial medic snipe by BeaVerN, who kept up the sniping through the whole round. In the end though, the round went to Dotter and a further average round took the game to the final 5 - 1 score to Dotter.

As previously mentioned, BeaVerN's KAD is very impressive, but that's not to forget the work of his scout partner wltrs who averaged an almost 3.6 KAD over the two maps. It may seem odd to see Zebbosai, Knutsson and ryb so far down the kill list, but there isn't much they can do with BeaVerN and wltrs taking all the glory. Despite this, they did put out the damage that let their scouts clean up. There isn't really anything worth noting about TLR's stats, other than that Gubbins dealt a very respectable amount of damage, matching ryb on both maps and Mirelin having twice as many deaths as 2nuts. One other statistic to note is that Dotter's average time before using their ubercharge was 9 seconds, compared to TLR's 26 seconds, showing a very pro-active style of play. Despite this, TLR did prove to be quite good at kiting the Dotter ubers, generally popping significantly later.

Despite TLR taking a lead on the first midfight of Badlands, the early spawns from the likes of Knutsson and wltrs allowed Dotter to take the first middle. Despite this, an excellent TLR back cap by the scouts gave them their first and only round of the map. Dotter started the next round very strongly, winning mid in the first few seconds with a nice pick by Knutsson onto Gubbins then a quick spire cap. After some trouble pushing last they ended up on mid, but eventually made it back to TLR's last to take a round. Perhaps embarrassed by this slow round, Dotter knocked it up a notch and took the next round in an eye-watering 56 seconds, with ryb nearing 1,000 damage per minute for that round. After another short round in Dotter's favour, the server reservation ran out requiring drastic action. A server was soon sorted out and the game progressed into the last three rounds of the game which went much the same way as the previous three, two somewhat slower rounds, then (in comparison to their 56 second round) a glacially slow 58 second round to take the 6 - 1 win difference.

Once again the Swedes come out heavily on top in the stats too, with the scouts on high kills and the soldiers and demoman on high damage. Despite Gubbins once again putting out respectable damage, he had 20 deaths over the 23 minute game; a worryingly high number. Similarly, Mirelin had 11 deaths compared to 2nuts' 6, a serious difference, as well as having 9 ubers against 13, not even including the 3 kritzkriegs that Dotter used. It's clear that Dotter were the dominant team over the two maps, finally coming into their own as a force to be reckoned with and that TLR are sorely missing the coordination and brains that HYS brought to their team.

The HYS of a cunning snake

Week 2:	Ayogurl Sugadaddy Hood Pussy Creepers		0	-	6		The Last Resort
	Badlands		2	-	3
	Gullywash		1	-	4

The Last Resort decided after the aforementioned game that they really could not do without the expertise and calls of HYS, and it really does show in their lack of coordination against Dotter. For this game they cut HYS's injury time short and brought him back ASAP. This is one of the games that's worth watching the cast for.

The first midfight on Badlands went TLR's way and with Mirelin dying early on mid and kingofsquirrels dying very late, chased down by kiler4fun meant that TLR had a full 50% kritzkrieg advantage to push last with. It turned sour though as Ayogurl called it and just kited it in spawn. However, Ayogurl's attempt at pushing out with their uber went awry and Rake managed to pick up a demoman and medic pick on spy. In the end though TLR took the first round after a bit of back and forth and despite losing the second mid-fight hard enough that Ayogurl had significant time on spire they quickly pushed back and took their second round with Rake just walking onto last uncontested. Ayogurl kept up their strong mids from the previous round to conclusively take the third midfight. After some questionable pushes, they eventually took a round of their own taking the score to 2 - 1 with 15 minutes remaining, a perfectly feasible proposition. TLR quickly decided to kill Ayogurl's dreams by taking the next round without much trouble. Another long back and forth round later saw Ayogurl taking their second round, leaving 64 seconds to draw the game, feasible but unlikely and in the end it wasn't meant to be, ending with the final score at 3 - 2 to TLR.

Perhaps the most noticeable number on the logs here is Mike on a towering 538 dpm, or just under 16k damage over the map. Despite this, TLR managed to pull off a whole 26% more kills than Ayogurl and it seems that the main reason for this is Stark and Sideshow bottom fragging on 12 and 13 kills respectively, but then also coming in as the players who died most often, on 23 and 22 deaths apiece, whilst not a single TLR player broke 20 deaths. Another thing to note is that while the teams dealt within 600 damage of each other, Mirelin had a good 10% more heals than kingofsquirrels. It shows in the more subtle stats too, TLR's average build time was 10 seconds faster and they used uber 10 seconds earlier on average showing their greater level of control over the game. HYS's control over his team also shows here, their coordination was on a whole new level compared to their game against Dotter. It's also worth mentioning that Rake played fantastically all game with a number of excellent plays to his name.

Gullywash saw a somewhat different turn of events; TLR really came into their own and had their way with this game, taking four of the five mids and condeding only one round. Ayogurl did take it to the full 30 minute timer, but it wasn't pretty. The longer rounds here seem to have been caused by TLR playing slower over Ayogurl putting up more of a fight. Ayogurl overall seemed much less coordinated as you can hear in the team comms in the cast, particularly noticeable when Rake, continuing his great game so far takes the first round to a back cap, and again on the second round although this time he had to get past e-thug and then HYS had his moment of glory to take their fourth round, popping out of water and stickying himself onto the point uncontested. TLR had their fair share of less than impressive moments, including a number of whiffed kritzkriegs and Ayogurl managed to exploit their mistakes, but overall they made more mistakes of their own.

The stat deficits we saw on Badlands continue and grow here on Gullywash, despite both HYS and Mike doing more damage than their previous games, the kill gap increases to 33% and now Mirelin put out an astounding 24% more heals than kingofsquirrels, despite now building slower and waiting longer before using the ubers. All this combines to give TLR 5 more ubercharges over the game than Ayogurl. On the other hand, Stark did pick up his game, sitting happy at the top with kalho, Mike and HYS all on 29 kills apiece, and it's clear that the TLR flank was much stronger than the Ayogurl flank here, kalho getting more kills than both Ayogurl scouts combined. In fact, the TLR flank had over twice as many kills as the Ayogurl flank, 78 compared to 38.

The Last Resort's medic Mirelin had this inspiring quote about the game:

There is no such thing as useless effort and for living creatures like TLR, Victory is life, and Defeat means Death. Winning is everything; winners are validated and losers are denied. We have kept working hard in order to win and we got better little by little, thus I will do my best as a supporting actor of my team.

Anyway, life is all about challenges and there is no point in living if there is no one strong to play with. And we definitely think that our opponents are strong, but we won't give up nor give them much respect on the battleground while remembering that there's no shame in falling down! True shame is to not stand up again! I wish best of luck to Ayogurl!

and then some sage wisdom for aspiring medics:

Dropping uber is like farting, you should understand where you can and can't do it

Wrapping up

The Premiership division has decided that they hate me by organising 10 games within 7 days so it will take a while to get through them all but I will prevail! As always, feedback is very much appreciated and thanks to Admirable and Huhy for making it pretty.

Scout image: http://simianapostle.deviantart.com/