RAGL Frontline Reports :: S08.2

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netnazgul
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RAGL Frontline Reports :: S08.2

Post by netnazgul »

After the first week of the season looked to be one of the busiest openings in RAGL history so far, the follow-up turned out rather quiet with a lot less games happened. Masters started to pick points and delays (surprisingly more of the former), Minions try to not get behind on both.

In Masters, FiveAces dropped two points and will now need to pick a better form or hope for others to slip up if he is to aim at Top4 finish. Orb, ZxGanon, Anjew, Bain and Punsho all yet undefeated, but don't have much games behind them, with Punsho maxing out on delays already. At the other side of the table, Admiral Mo had an unlucky start with a formidable performance in most of his fights, but not being able to convert that into points; latest matches he did bag some games in. Can't say this about Zaqzorn though as he's still in search of his form.
Minions Alfa didn't see any major changes before yesterday where Misery did a storming run and defeated both Barf and JackoDerp in the process; now only up to Blackened to stop him from getting the Champions fight spot.
Goat continues his undefeated streak in Minions Bravo, aiming up the likely Champions fight against Barf at the end of the season. He is still to fight Dualwarhead who's taken the first spot for the time being and is several points up, but lost a point to TiTo.

I've decided to include the link of yesterday's stream into this report though it should have gone into next one, but well that has quite a number of League-defining matches in it. Also wait for a hell of a cast from FiveAces this wednesday that covers another RAGL match. Now, we'll look at other plays that went behind the curtains.


Weekly highlights

:: Misery 2-0 SinJul
First match in the League played by Misery, a dark horse of Minions Bravo; you can see his potential in the recent FiveAces shoutcast where he played several games against AMHOL. Now let's see how that converts into competitive performance.
First game on Trapped has seen SinJul being faster on the middle oil, but Misery got around it and capped it later, having 3-2 advantage for a minute. Five Ranger follow-up by SinJul gave him a lot of infantry kills and forced Misery to build Heavy Tanks instead of expanding, so it was a late MCV for both players. Misery though had one Ore Truck more and generally a better economy, as well as not really losing that many assets early, so just kept a solid buildup and even a stray engineer capture attempt didn't at his expansion didn't throw him off. The backlines attack on SinJul's main followed by a big push at the expansion top-right caught SinJul completely by surprise, and the game turned from being even into being done in a couple of seconds. SinJul dealt with both attacks, but having no expansions and slacking economy he only prolonged the game for a minute before surrendering to the next attack.
Enhanced Snakes and Ladders was picked by Misery as a second map, and this time SinJul chose 1ref-wf before repeating the light vehicle buildup, swapping for more Light Tanks presence though. Misery played a standard double-ref but wasn't aggressive enough and only managed to get 2-2 on the oils and skip the hospital; SinJul then destroyed opposing oils and left dominating the map, though getting too deep on the attack and losing the most part of his early-game army. He had a faster expansion (again, both players expanded quite late), but the lack of infantry denied him the attempt at blocking Misery's expansion on the bottom. Still, SinJul managed to rotate his top-right MCV over to the bottom-left cliff and won the engagement; his tanks raided Misery's main with a decent success, trading 1 tank for 2 Ore Trucks. Misery responded with a dash through the middle and got both War Factory and Service Depot of his opponent, at the same time managing to drive the basepush off of his expansion. The next attack got him SinJul's main MCV, as well as halted SinJul's economy at the main as well; the only surviving MCV of SinJul, already at critical health, succumbed to a single Yak, which meant SinJul couldn't build his base anymore, though happened to get War Factory back up. Understandably it was only a matter of time at this point.


:: ZxGanon 2-0 Upps
Upps has got the "Masters' Slayer" feat right in the first season he got into Masters, and that was the match vs ZxGanon.
Still, in the first game on Snakes and Ladders, ZxGanon gambled into WF first, and this paid off nicely as Upps didn't scout it early enough and didn't go for any rush tactics, as well as lost an engineer split second before he captured the oil. Game went on in a more stable manner with ZxGanon obviously being first to expand and Upps taking map control with Mobile Flaks. Map got split, and then the army positioning didn't really favour Upps as ZxGanon just broke into expansion and stopped Upps from mining; he even managed to keep a couple of Tanks to follow the MCV into the corner. This again required Upps to move his army out of position, which ZxGanon used to attack the main. By this time, Upps has just suffered too many losses here and there to keep up with the tech and army.
Second game just fits into a single gif of Masters Slayer being slain:
Image


:: eskimo 2-0 Fahrrad
The return of [in]famous german bike as well as the cold brit who did the same skip as Barf last season.
Enhanced Snakes and Ladders: eskimo dives in with a pack of grens, getting a power plant while Fahrrad waits for something and doesn't deploy a flame tower when needed. Turns out he does the gren rush himself, but that goes largely ineffective as it is picked by rifles. Not having enough of that, Fahrrad packs a group of rifles into an APC and drives towards eskimo's main. It didn't really do much either, but maybe gave eskimo the idea to use an Ore Truck in the attack that followed.
The game on Marigold Town wasn't as easy for eskimo. For some reason, eskimo decided to skip the engineer and just wiped the oils on the map with a larger group of rifles. Quadruple refinery and Light Tank raid only strengthened his early game aggression, taking up an Ore Truck and then getting a Service Depot. He didn't spot the Flame Tower in Fahrrad's main base though and missed the following flamer drop that got SD and WF in flames. Fortunately for eskimo, he managed to get an MCV out. The mid-map engagement was probably better for eskimo as it gave him time to rebuild tech; even more tech came in from Fahrrad with V2 and Yak coming out. This eskimo countered with a wall of pillboxes, and Fahrrad required to circumvent the map, which gave eskimo yet more time for buildup as well as do a mighty tank raid onto Fahrrad's economy, leaving him with only 2 Ore Trucks against 10. The following attack sealed the deal.
Image


Streams of the week that had RAGL matches going on:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/491597644
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/491599199
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494661445
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494661902


Agenda
Coming hot into midseason, we've got Orb vs ZxGanon delayed, Bain vs FiveAces and Upps vs bug in Masters this week. Minions Alfa got spiced up after being more or less predictable, so we wait on more matches coming from Misery and Blackened as those two are the only ones to be able to surpass Barf at the top. Blackened is to play Barf this week, so keep your popcorn close. A lot to come from Minions Bravo with Tailix in need of some matches in and eskimo getting into group leader race with goat and Dualwarhead. Those are to play each other on weeks 5 and 6 though, so the hype will be on until the very end.


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