Hello again and welcome to the latest edition of the IM power rankings. Last week saw mostly predictable results but there were a few upsets, most notably Rent-a-Homies taking a win off of Sal-less Canal. This week we'll see teams jockeying for position to determine the final seeding, although the top of IM looks to be pretty solid at the moment in terms of who is going to be in the top 4. Good luck to all the teams this week!

• Deltafox
• Dun
• Mangachu
• Cosa
• Bman
• Schnell

Chill to Good played their matches with an expected 5-2 against Tonight's Entertainment and a 5-0 against an nja-less Dragonball Jav. While the mids seemed fairly even against Tonight's Entertainment, Chill to Good excelled in finding advantages and getting off successful pushes. Dun had a great game, constantly getting picks on the flank and did tons of damage with their ubers. Chill to Good had a much easier time versus the offclassing Dragonball Jav with their main roamer Sakura on scout and Jake Steel on roamer. schnell had a particularly good game, going 26-2 and dying as much as their demo. In their Gullywash match, they'll expect to have similar results with a Sal-less sal's canal and an inconsistent 6cuties. While these are matches that are in Chill to Good's favor, these are still matches that they can lose and they just need to keep staying on top of their game in order to not lose their predicted top seed. Gullywash is a very combo-oriented map, and this above anything else is where Chill to Good excel at.

• Grillz
• SureShot
• Paddie
• Chaaz
• rb
• Dennis

Grillz and his band of merry men had a good week on granary with a solid win over Tonights Entertainment and a nail biting affair against Sals Canal. With their record now, its almost impossible for Knights of Grillz to really lose their number two spot but they still have one opponent that can give them trouble. New Faith Church Gaming will be their first gullywash match followed by Down to Pound, and New Faith has been looking hot the last couple weeks. The Knights may have beaten tougher opponents earlier in the season, but lately it looks like they have been a little shaky during some of their recent matches. If there ever was a time, now would be the time for New Faith to try to come up with an upset, otherwise the Knights of Grillz can kick back and relax until playoffs roll around.

• WirelessFox
• Tone-Pot
• Sakura_
• Rex
• Jav
• Nja

Dragonball Jav's only real game (not counting their 0-5 loss to Chill to Good) was against Rent-a-Homies, and enemy roamer disconnected while the scores were tied. Even though it was a close game, I can't necessarily say it was an exciting one. It consisted mainly of both teams taking turns holding their last trying to get the sniper pick they need to push last in a somewhat overcommiting eager fashion. With that aside, I've been impressed by nja's performance. He plays the 185-buffed scout pretty well, getting aggressive when he needs to with his heals and picking off overextending members of the enemy flank. Against Tonight's Entertainment, he was able to shut off the enemy scouts and roamer pretty well, not giving them any room to move behind the combo. In their other Gullywash match, I do not expect Dragonball Jav to find too much trouble against New Faith, with the WirelessFox and Tone-Pot combo being one of the scariest combos right now in ESEA-IM. Although Dragonball Jav is unusually low in the amount of rounds they've earned with 5 of their wins being forfeit wins, we should see them securing their position even further in the upper end of seeds this week.

• mason
• Cprice
• Cbn
• shrt
• Kev
• Crypt

New Faith Church Gaming had looked pretty impressive in a 5-2 win against Down to Pound. kev looked like one of the most formidable scouts on the flank, winning a lot of key 1v1s against Decimate and watt and going 35-8. cozen is also rising as an upcoming medic showing good medic mechanics and again forming a solid combo with Cprice. However, the fate for New Faith Church Gaming remains unknown as they will be switching cozen with mason for the next two weeks as cozen goes on vacation. It is an unfortunate timing as many teams right now will be fighting for rounds and wins to breach the playoffs bubble (which if it includes the top 8 teams, the cutoff will probably be a record of 10-6). Mason seems to be much more of an aggressive medic than cozen's passive style which may hurt them. Currently they are 9-4 and have some challenging matches coming up including Fragophilia and Dragonball Jav. The medic changeup has made them seem like a different team in the past couple of days, with more overextensions and kev not having as much room to work off as he did before. Hopefully New Faith can tighten up their team play and retain a high seed for playoffs.

• Caspian
• Serv0
• fuuzi0n
• Nomadic
• John Milter
• goku

Rent-a-Homies regained some of their former stature as they beat sal's canal 5-3 and they had a very close 3-5 loss against Dragonball Jav. In fact, it was actually tied 3-3 until their roamer fuuzi0n met an untimely disconnect and caused them to play the rest of the game 5v6, losing 2 rounds quickly. Granary is a reasonable map for the homies to regain their composure since the “heal serv0 and let him kill everything” strategy seems to work on strong combo maps such as this. While serv0 isn't too much of a pocket soldier concerned with staying alive and protecting his medic, he does create openings for his team with his aggressive jumps and deals a huge amount of damage. It may be slightly too late for Rent-a-Homies to make their debut in playoffs. Instead of playing teams they could potentially knock out off playoffs, they were unfortunately matched up against a forfeit win and a roster that seems to change every week. However, anything could happen in the next two weeks and the slightest upset may tip playoffs in favor for Rent-a-Homies.

• slipz
• SS
• Sparrow
• Phrakture
• zZa
• Phaser

With Sal out of the picture until the 30th, Sals Canal is starting to bleed a bit. Losing both granary matches to Rent-a-Homies and Knights of Grillz, it was a little obvious that Phaser was having a hard time adjusting to the team. With that said, Knights of Grillz were also using a ringer and looked pretty sloppy throughout the match. This made the match a lot closer than it probably should have been, but it was still fun to watch. The season isn't over yet for these guys though, with a really difficult gullywash week in front of them against Chill to Good and Tonight's Entertainment. Even though earlier in the season it would have been easy to give Sals Canal a win over Tonight's Entertainment, Sal's absence might be the edge that Dflame and crew need in order to come out on top. While losing this match wouldn't be the end of the world, it definitely will make it harder for Sals Canal to ensure a place for playoffs while an 11-5 record at the end of the season would grant some peace of mind.

• Sakura
• R1cky
• Remedy
• Pharaoh
• Br0nze
• Snailboat

The only match that 6cuties played this week ended in tears with a loss to Fragophilia Gaming. This unfortunate loss for the Cuties will only be made harder as they step into gullywash week playing Chill to Good Ratio and Down to Pound. If they play like they did during the second half of their granary match, I fully expect them to give more than their share of damage against Chill to Good but most likely will not walk away with a win. However, their match against Down to Pound is a match they can win as that team has been looking less than stellar for the past few weeks. Ctrl+F Muffin will be the biggest threat on this map to 6cuties, but overall the teams just don't stack up in the other departments to really make that much of a difference. With their most recent loss, the future looks a little less certain as far as where 6cuties will be seeded or even seeded at all, but with one of Sakura's strongest maps coming up it wouldn't be fair to count them out yet.

• Kammy
• Madoff
• FanofAngels
• Joe
• HeepHop
• Okas

Granary week for Fragophilia Gaming had two back to back wins with very close scores. After dropping three rounds to She Spilled My Coffee, they turned around and stole a 5-4 win off of 6cuties. This match might have been more of the Cuties having a bad day with Remedy and R1cky both experiencing some routing issues to the server but nonetheless it is a very pivotal win for Joe and the boys as they are one of 4 teams that are close to making the cut off for playoffs. Their gullywash matches shouldn't be too much of a challenge going up against trans-autistic railroad and Rump City Bootyheads. With that said, Fragophilia has been anything but consistent this season and still have some room for error. Hopefully they're on top of their game this week and come away with some wins, because the final matches for the season will be against formidable opponents.

• mason
• Cprice
• Cbn
• shrt
• Kev
• Crypt

• Wirelessfox
• Tone-Pot
• Sakura_
• Rex
• Jav
• Nja

Gullywash is known for being friendly to demos and having a last point thats easy to defend and somewhat difficult to push. The demo comparison between the two teams is a little bit skewed, as I would give Rex the upperhand in damage and consistency over shrt, but shrt's sneaky traps and unorthodox positioning might be what slows down DBJ, or hinder his team. New Faith definitely has the capability to give DBJ a good match as shown previously against the better teams in IM, but with rumors of there being some tension in mumble and some uncharacteristically bad scrims might find them wanting. With Nja back this week, DBJ will be on their game to try to lock down the third seed and maybe even steal the number two spot. I'll be watching Jav for some big sniper plays if they are stalemated at last, and waiting to see if kev will be able to carry his flank to victory.