Spoilers galore! Read at your own peril.

Welcome to the first of what I intend to be a series of articles covering the ETF2L Premiership's season as it progresses. As you hopefully saw from the warning above, I won't be holding back on spoilers whatsoever along our journey through the season but I'll try to include VODs at the top of the post where they are available because I'm nice like that.

My aim for the series is to provide a weekly brief analysis of each Premiership game played during the previous week of the ETF2L season. If you have any feedback or suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. Now that the formalities are out of the way, let's get down to the meaty stuff.

On this day in 1940...

Week 1:	Mais La Moule !		0	-	6		Made In Germany
	Granary		1	-	6
	Gullywash		1	-	6

The strawpoll here put Made In Germany firmly in the winning position, with around 67% of the viewers predicting that Mais La Moule ! wouldn't even get a single point on the league table. Unfortunately for Mais La Moule, the viewers were right. The two games that these teams played against each other in the TFTV ZOWIE Invitational #2 both went in Made In Germanys favour, although they were much closer than these games.

After two quick rounds to MIG, it looked as if MLM could make a comeback, as they took the fourth round to five minutes before conceding their last point (shout out to Captainhax for some brilliant roamer play on MLM's second to make space for his team) then completely reversing their mid fight results and pulling off a wipe without losing a single player. The difference here seemed to be that Nadir one-upped kaidus on the rollout, and hit a crucial three stickies on kaidus before anyone else even arrived. This damage and positional advantage was swiftly acted upon by the rest of MLM resulting in a clean wipe. Too bad they couldn't pull off more of the same on the other five midfights. A further three quick rounds secured Made In Germany the 6 - 1 win in only sixteen minutes. The fifth middle could have gone either way, if not for the efforts of clockwork, pulling off a clutch streak to turn around what would have been a disastrous middle.

Picking out one player from Made In Germany's roster for this game would be an exercise in futility given that they all played exceptionally, however I think if you trace the stats back to their source, you find kaidus on a dizzying 472 damage per minute allowing his scouts and soldiers to clean up. To put it into perspective, MIG got 86 kills compared to MLM's 54, and they also got a whole 25% more damage, 24k versus 19k. Damn.

The second map, Gullywash, was almost a direct replay of the first map, with MIG taking a few quick rounds, MLM dragging one round out then taking the next quickly, then conceding the last rounds in quick succession (if you count a four and a half minute final round quick). Mais La Moule did take two mids this map compared to just one on the previous map, just before the nine minute round and then on the only round they won. Speaking of which, Captainhax went huge again, playing off Nadir's backcap attempt by going down riverside, obliterating clockwork in midair, then jumping right past GeaR to backcap last, securing them their only round this map.

And once again, the logs make for an interesting story. Compared to their Granary games, both KnOxXx and Nadir pulled ahead with 429 and 469 damage per minute respectively, although each suffered 21 deaths to put that much damage out. In fact, only Mitsy had fewer than 20 deaths on Mais La Moule. However, we again see kaidus ruling the roost on a ridiculous 613 damage per minute. To put it another way, he did 14k damage in 23 minutes, when doing 10k in a 30 minute game would be playing a decent game. Overall, MIG just seemed so much more coordinated over the two maps compared to MLM leading to perhaps a surprising result since going into this season, these two teams seemed definite contenders for the top of the tables, but after this game? Maybe not.

Made In Germany's kaidus had this to say about the game:

The whole team played really well. We learned from our mistakes in the ZOWIE cup and were able to keep the game at a high tempo, something I feel we are a lot more comfortable with than our opponents. I had a lot of questions about my damage on Gully. Was pretty surprised when I saw the stats as I just tried to do my job for the team, but with these kind of players around me I guess that comes easier than I'm used to. It didn't feel like I did that much at the time.

The people's choice

Week 1:	Dotter		4	-	2		LEGO
	Granary		1	-	2
	Gullywash		5	-	0

We have seen Dotter not performing as well as may be expected from such a roster in their scrims recently, but that isn't anything really to judge. However, losing both of their games in the ZOWIE cup isn't something to disregard, losing to both Mais La Moule and Fenneks eSports. On the other hand, LEGO performed very well making it to round three of the lower bracket.

The strawpoll at the start of the first map had LEGO down to win, although not by a large margin, a pretty good prediction of the Golden Cap win that LEGO pulled off to finish the map with a 2 - 1 win to them. Granary in general was quite a slow and long game, featuring the leapfrogging and holding ubers that we all know and love on Granary. LEGO did take the first round however after a rather nice kritzkrieg play on Dotter's second point, but Dotter responded by taking the next round in just 83 seconds. The final round could have been anyone's, with nice plays from both teams, in particular wltrs in the final seconds of the game, shutting down a kritzkrieg by headshotting F2, then air headshotting both LEGO soldiers on the re-push. In the end though, it wasn't meant to be, with the final score being 1 - 1 going into a Golden Cap.

The golden cap started with LEGO wiping on middle with only 2nuts going down for Dotter to a nice play by crizzl to save what would otherwise have been a disastrous middle, akin to the second round. Despite this, they gained an immediate advantage being on LEGO's last straight away. LEGO valiantly held on for two pushes before bringing the pain, wiping Dotter on LEGO's second (partly due to an unfortunately timed disconnect by Zebbosai) to take middle. Dotter pushed and retook mid, but 2nuts died whilst F2 survived, allowing LEGO to take their advantage all the way to last, which crizzl nicely capped whilst Dotter's back was turned.

Despite the loss, it seems to me that Dotter played the stronger game, most of it was spent on LEGO's side of mid and they just fell foul of a rather slow paced war of attrition from LEGO, especially considering that Zebbosai and ryb collectively dealt four thousand more damage than their LEGO counterparts.

However, judging by stats alone it seems that F2 had a better game than 2nuts with fewer deaths, less damage taken and more ubers, without even counting the three kritzkriegs he used. In pretty much all stats he had a better game, could this have been the difference?

The second map turned out to be a bit of an upset, both the caster's and poll's predictions turned out to be very wrong, with Dotter taking it 5-0 in only fifteen minutes, three of the rounds being shorter than ninety seconds with their only real stumbling point being fluffing a last push once or twice. In the third round, LEGO came close after winning their only midfight of the game, but ultimately lost the round after nearly seven minutes. Once again, some nice sniper players from wltrs in the second round gave the little push needed to start the Dotter pendulum swinging, eventually allowing Knutsson to take a very close backcap.

I reached out to LEGO's PR guy Natural:

Going into the game, we knew it was going to be tough. Dotter is a team primarily comprised of seasoned premiership veterans who have been around the top end of the competitive scene for quite some time. In comparison, we played in division 1 last season, so we are undoubtedly coming into the top division as underdogs. As such, we are happy to have beaten Dotter on Granary and secured two points, which we believe is a good start to our season.

Additionally, we are certain that we can learn from some of the mistakes we made on Gullywash, which should help us improve the way we play together as a team. All in all, we are looking forward to the rest of the season, and we hope to achieve some good results.

A French revolution

Week 2:	Mais La Moule !		0	-	6		Evokate Gaming
	Gullywash		2	-	7
	Badlands		3	-	5

After a disappointing game versus Made In Germany, Mais La Moule moved on to face their fellow Frenchies Evokate Gaming in another rather disappointing game.

Given the 7 - 2 score it comes as no surprise that Evokate won eight of the nine midfights, in fact at least four of their seven round wins were an almost immediate result of them dominating the midfight and taking a full uber advantage into last. Some of the midfights were theirs to lose, but they managed to turn it around as MLM didn't play around the heals as effectively. In addition, some of their initial pushes weren't as effective as they maybe could have been, for example in the second round some excellent pyro work by fl1p negated most of their uber, the only player to get past was Tek who was promptly denied by droso on heavy, but they quickly turned it around by pushing through water and catching MLM by surprise whilst the Evokate flank distracted from shutter.

However, when it came to the longer rounds, the two teams seem more evenly matched in terms of stats, they had similar frags, damage and ubercharges and one of MLM's round wins was the first six minute round which could mean that their midfights are lacking.

Badlands told a different tale. Whereas on Gullywash MLM fared better on the longer rounds, the three rounds they won here were the three shortest, all under two minutes. That's not to say that Evokate played a slow game however; the rounds were longer because MLM were putting up a much stronger fight than on Gullywash. There were slow moments though; in the first round Evokate capped mid, waited a minute before having T-Mac execute a nice bomb to drop Mitsy, but even after Mitsy died, it still took them another 45 seconds to cap spire with full uber versus no heals. A lot of these slower plays were to allow their sniper to get a pick, collectively they spent 8 minutes on sniper for only 5 kills and 3 headshots. In the end though, Evokate won taking another six points out of the grasp of Mais La Moule.

MLM seem to be in an odd position at the moment, their stats are seemingly fine; damage, frags and heals are all there and on Badlands, they got more kills and more damage than Evokate. It seems they're lacking the co-ordination and team play we expect from the top teams, which is understandable given that it's an almost entirely new roster and they've had to play two of the most promising looking teams in their first two games of the season. Hopefully we will see them pick up the pace as their team play improves and they play teams that aren't on paper as good as they are.

One odd thing to note here is that KnOxXx and Captainhax switched roles for these two maps, Captainhax with up to nearly seven thousand more heals over the game than KnOxXx. This was reportedly due to er, difficulties lets say, in their warmup so KnOxXx said that Captainhax would be pocketing and calling. However, the medics were fairly evenly matched, despite Bulle putting out roughly 10% more heals on Badlands in comparison despite the same number of deaths. As for scouts, on Gullywash Flippy and dmoule simply outplayed fl1p and droso with 50% more kills each than either of MLM's scouts, with fewer deaths to boot. However it was a much different story on Badlands, with fl1p pulling off some impressive numbers and droso picking up his game. All in all, an impressive show from Evokate to start their season.

Evokate Gaming's pocket Tek commented on the game:

easy

Foxy daughers throw down

Week 2:	Dotter		2	-	4		Fenneks eSports by SimRai.com
	Badlands		5	-	7
	Gullywash		2	-	1

Predictions put what turned out to be the most exciting game so far this season firmly in Dotter's favour. Perhaps it's surprising then that Fenneks went home with 4 points versus Dotter's 2? Or maybe not, considering that Fenneks was the thorn in Dotter's side preventing them from progressing any further than the first round of the lower brackets in the ZOWIE cup.

As you might expect, being a twelve round game the rounds were quick and varied, in fact, no round lasted more than four minutes and only three even touched three minutes, with Dotter taking the fastest round in a blistering 69 seconds. Badlands was a rollercoaster ride of action and plays, well worth a watch of your own. One of particular note is an excellent flank by KLar and skeej with the kritz to drop 2nuts to get a 5k, coming soon to a YouTube channel near you no doubt.

Sickless and ryb were very evenly matched this game, within 11 damage of each other and both putting 411 damage per minute. Sickless was arguably helped out by the five kritzkriegs that skeej used but it's clear that he made good use of them, lording over all others with 39 frags compared to ryb's 28. The soldiers of each team tell an interesting tale, both KLar and Zebbosai got 33 kills, but Zebbosai hit a whole 3k more damage. On the roaming side however, both roamers were around a relatively measly 15 kills apiece, although KillAri made up for KLar's damage deficit by putting out 3k more over Knutsson. All evenly matched so far, but the difference seems to lie in the scouts and medics. Despite both medics healing around 30k, Skeej not only popped the same number of ubers (nine) as 2nuts, but he also got off a further five kritzkriegs to let sickless work his magic. Sickless's sick skills (not to forget KLar) could explain 2nut's uber deficit, he dropped one uber and died on 95-99% three times, whilst skeej had no drops or similar deaths. A similar tale with the scouts, with BeaVerN and wltrs collectively getting 43 frags and 57 deaths compared to Fenneks' scouts' 48 frags and 37 deaths.

The second map was worlds away from the first, twelve rounds became two rounds, one fourteen and one eight minute round (ignoring the seven minutes before the match timer ended) compared to an average of roughly 2 minutes or so for the previous map. Despite Dotter winning every midfight, neither team was really dominant on this map, with each team's damage being within about 5% of each other and only a 6 kill difference. 2nut's previous uber deficit is no more and it has even swung in his favour with 18 ubers to skeej's 11 ubers and 7 kritzkriegs. In terms of damage, KLar rolled up his sleeves to match Zebbosai this time and there is a similar story with Knutsson matching and actually beating KillAri's damage this map. However, despite the seven kritzkriegs, sickless fell one thousand damage behind ryb. Dotter's scouts also seemed to have a much better game on Gullywash compared to Badlands, especially BeaVerN, going from a 30:34 KAD in the first map to 39:17 in Gullywash.

In the Golden Cap, Fenneks came so close to winning, Dotter's last point mere pixels from a Fenneks victory, but it was not to be. Dotter quickly turned this last push around

It seems that letting the flank pick up their game really helped Dotter, not to mention ryb's dominance of Gullywash as usual, but to go 5 - 7, 2 - 1 to Fenneks eSports doesn't feel representative of the Dotter we were promised (no offence to Fenneks).

Fenneks eSports medic skeej gave his opinion on the game:

We are happy with our result, considering we realised this match could go either way, although we were disappointed that after the first map win we didn't manage to take the majority of points on Gullywash... I think in general we had a more consistent performance on that map, but because of losing the mids it was harder to get to an actual round win. Then as soon as we won the golden cap mid we rushed into things, fully committed on our last push, resulting in an easy push back from Dotter and yeah, about our team and its players, everyone played great, nobody really stood out, and that's how it should be IMO, just everyone performing together as a team.

Yet we're still kinda finding our form, the way that KLar likes to play relatively aggro for a pocket, the fact that Sheepy has to get used to our playing style, the fact that sickless plays aggressively but therefore also has to watch out to overextend.

In particular about the tragic push onto Dotter's last in the Golden Cap he had this to say:

I remember telling KLar to bomb in from the sniperdeck and sickless to follow up with me there but sickless went riverside for some reason while KLar bombed in so 1: the timing was off, KLar had no direct damage to back him up and 2: I couldn't pocket-heal sickless so he survived for a shorter time than he could.

Summing up

That wraps up the first two weeks of ETF2L with only four games because scheduling is hard. Remember, any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. Big thanks to Admirable for his hard work on the formatting too. Also thanks to ExMachina for the picture of the soldier used in the magazine cover on the front page, we forgot to mention that part, sorry ExMachina!