In S12 ALONE:

My team, Wu-Tang Financial, started 2-5 - and finished at 9-7. We made it to a tiebreaker game for the playoffs after looking left for dead at the start.

Team Echelon started 3-4 - and finished at 10-6.

gank and the meisters were once 4-4 - coming off of a loss to wtf. - and rallied to finish 10-6. gank's team is in IM right now.

if you had fun you won were also pretty poor at the start of S12 - they're also in IM after winning a playoff game.

It isn't how you start - it's how you finish once teams begin to rise, stagnate, fall, or die. Don't take any stock into records until at least 10 matches have played.

Bumping. I'd like to trial 2 more options for a backup. We've seen two people so far, and we want to cast a wider net before we settle on a 7th.

Aggression and communication will be the deciding factors.

We are currently taking rounds from top open teams at the moment, and are playing the "high open" crowd very competitively. With that said, our first four matches are absolutely nothing short of a slaughterhouse - so do keep in mind that as a team we'll be clawing back into the playoff picture around the middle part of the season. I'd be surprised if we got out to a hot start with the teams on our schedule - but anything is possible.

I think we're all just blowing hot air, though. It's too late to change anything since the schedules for the first 3 maps have already been set up. We may just have to cope with it.

The Eastern division looks a little dangerous. I count about 9-10 "playoff worthy" teams from only 18 overall.

Good luck in Open this season.

Please remember that the most important goal of any new Open team is to stay alive past the first season. Surviving the first season is the key to success - and it is the model that the Disposable Heroes just used to win the Open title.

DHeroes went 9-7 in S11, and then tore Open apart in S12 and coasted into the postseason.

That's the good part of only having the top 16 from 60 (that's a mere 26%). Every playoff match has the potential for being an upset. Last season there were only 16 that made it, but all 16 of them (plus about 4-5 open teams that narrowly missed) were competitive.

8-8 should not get you into the postseason.

...also - having 16 playoff teams gives you a nice pool to promote into IM from. Should the #22 team in Open be promoted if they get lucky in the postseason? I don't think so if they got to that seeding with an 8-8 (or weak 9-7) mark.

If playoffs remain as the top 16 teams, then I'd expect the cutline for playoffs to reach as high as 11-5. That could make for a LOT of late season drama.

9-7 won't be good enough in S13 as it was in S12. This could get interesting...

This might be a bad idea, but expanding the field to 24 playoff teams could be possible now that we're on 60 teams in open this season. All you'd do is give the top 8 a first round bye.

The disadvantage would be that you're diluting the playoff field. The advantage would be that you'd have the cut-line back down to 9-7 (or a weak 10-6), and that means that more teams will stay together until the end as they'll have something to play for.

I'll play around with this tonight. I really LOVE the healing pie chart comparison.

I see a LOT of new faces in Open. I don't know if this season's Open division will be as competitive as last season's, but I do know that there will be close matches for all ability levels by the end of the season.

Last season's playoff race was really good - there were 12 or so teams in the running for like 5 spots heading into the final week. Looking at the field, I think that might be the case once again.

They're a decent open team that will cause problems for people late in the season when they are all synced up together. They're also respectable people, too.

He's a complete sweetheart to play with. He's going to do some Open team a world of good this season.

How is everyone doing today?

I'm just putting a feeler out there to see if any IM/Invite teams would be interested in playing a bunch of mid-fight simulations once a week against my Open team. I'm trying to find ways to elevate my teams play and give us the quality training necessary in order to secure promotion for next season.

Setting up a first-to-10 or first-to-15 format would give my team lots of tape to look at - and the other team wouldn't be spending more than 20-25 minutes tops doing it.

As for the "mentorship" part - all I'll ever ask of you will be about 2-3 questions regarding what you find are our weaknesses and what can be improved upon.

Thanks for reading. The only way we're going to see our real weaknesses is by playing against those MUCH better than us - and that's why I've sucked it up and posted this here.

What also could be happening is that you could have too many people focusing their attention on the enemy bombers instead of applying pressure at midfights. If one soldier is jumping you, then only one person should address it. Anything more, and you'll be giving them ground AND man advantage as the remaining 2-3 people will have to fight everyone else.

*Updated* We have six paid for this season. We need a trustworthy backup that can play demo or soldier at a mid/high open level. You will NOT be asked to pay unless we know that we need you. We don't need scouting/medicing ability since we won't play a match with a backup medic (recipe for failure, btw), and we have 4 different starters with competent scouting skill.

Thanks for the support so far, guys.

Texas A&M have a far better QB than Oregon. Mariota can't even polish the shoes of Johnny Manziel in terms of raw QB skill.