Red Alert Global League: Season 17 - Weekly Highlights

[TTTPPP]

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Weekly Highlights

Welcome to the weekly highlights post where I'll try to write up a summary of each week's action in such a way that it doesn't give away the contents of the matches.

Week 1

Master's Match of the Week

Kicking us off this week we have the Season 16 champion Fazzz against one of the newly promoted players from Minions, milkman. The RAGL ladder puts these two about 600 rating points apart from each other, but despite this it was a very competitive series.

Fazzz vs milkman (Masters)
POV Cast from milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8U5B1f0Bj4
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/735e43aa89e410e ... 72cbc36ead
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/b41204ddd5ffef9 ... 9712280d35

Best of the Rest

The next two matches on my list are both from Minions and both feature Tailix. This is Tailix's 12th season in RAGL, which is the joint third most after anjew (17) and Upps (13). In this match he's up against fellow veteran spetsnaz who's into his 10th season. This is the fifth time they've played in RAGL, with Tailix currently 5-3 up before the match.

spetsnaz84 vs Tailix Killa Mentor (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/1ccabe6c0eae853 ... aa89007092
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/03859f2a7a0f269 ... ce93bf1da7

The second Tailix match is against newcomer Ashley, who is probably better known for writing the OpenRA map generator.

ashleynewson vs Tailix Killa Mentor (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/1bc56b2b806cd40 ... 383f9290a3
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/5eeead51758e43b ... 4792a0c4e0

Honourable Mentions

There have been a number of new players joining Masters from the top of the ladder this season. In particular sir (4th), Gargamel (5th) and gg (6th). FiveAces has been running an incredibly long shoutcast series of some of their ladder games, but if you can't get enough of the pairing your should check out this match.

gg vs sir123 (Masters)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/2a654dc2ef2ba1f ... 47e0ff3268
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/255ac377c491c8d ... 5657924e93

Duke Bones and bete are another two RAGL regulars and both were in Masters last season. This season they're two of the favourites for Minions champion.

bete vs Duke Bones (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/8bfe35cfd408c11 ... 3d687fc0c6
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/45779b6bac91672 ... 3293bd215b

Other Casts

Last season milkman managed to cast every game, and he's made a start on casting this season too (see his Twitch channel). Here I'll maintain a growing list of any other games which have been cast from this week:

Gargamel vs Mo (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUUsPe2s9HE
Cast by FiveAces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkicVYnrhCg

Fazzz vs Mo (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzMoDLEVUt0

Gargamel vs TTTPPP (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiY0wLrdLpM&t=1134s

Sir vs TTTPPP (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiY0wLrdLpM&t=2518s

gg vs TTTPPP (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiY0wLrdLpM&t=3437s

gg vs Sir (Masters):
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiY0wLrdLpM&t=4387s

[TTTPPP]

Week 2

Master's Match of the Week

Based on the pre-season rankings this match features two of the favourites to win Season 17. Since September last year, Garg has finished in the top two of the OpenRA Ladder every season. The only player to finish above him has been Fazzz.

There was also an extra game between these two which was extremely entertaining, but unfortunately cut short by a phone call.

Fazzz vs Gargamel (Masters)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/abb47ec974f7495 ... 27ab5136b2
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/5e92c36b0b6b5c1 ... 036ba98d46

Best of the Rest

Last week's highlights had two Tailix matches, and this week we have another great match. Both of these games were entertaining throughout, potentially due to two very evenly matched players.

fiwo vs Tailix Killa Mentor (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/922d4f71e9d77d7 ... 01fc005b7f
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/1b140ec17b0a4e6 ... 0f75dd84c7

Sigil has been up and down between Minions and Masters multiple times - having played four previous seasons in each. He came joint second in Minions last season, so this season he's back in Masters again. Here he's up against one of the tournament favourites - sir.

Sigil vs sir123 (Masters)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/2533fd7a234275d ... ecf73facdf
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/e554a7447e9811c ... 0d512ce90d

Honourable Mentions

We saw spetsnaz84 last week against Tailix, but this week he played against jawsh. jawsh isn't exactly a newcomer, having joined RAGL in Season 12, but that season he only played a couple of games before forfeiting. This season he picked up one strike in the first week, but now seems to be on top of scheduling matches.

jawsh vs spetsnaz84 (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/1cc57e14c25f45d ... 2a54c371f8
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/6e360cc9d604b49 ... 55c7e30d1d

We've covered most of the favourites for Masters, but we haven't done the same for Minions. Last week we saw bete and Duke Bones, who were ranked 3rd and 4th in Minions in the RAGL preseason Ladder rankings. The top two were Kalion and Jur, and they faced off this week.

Jur vs Kalion (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/f92adab69b990ae ... 5392511fc9
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/78e408eba566eb8 ... 688ee77009

There were a lot of matches this week, and I didn't get time to watch all of them, so please do post your own highlights below.

Other Casts

milkman vs Upps (Masters)
PoV Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiY0wLrdLpM

Fazzz vs TTTPPP (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQd1RBsCZ0&t=15s

anjew vs Upps (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQd1RBsCZ0&t=825s

gg vs milkman (Masters)
PoV Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQd1RBsCZ0&t=2393s

milkman vs sir123 (Masters)
PoV Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQd1RBsCZ0&t=3560s

Gargamel vs Upps (Masters)
Cast by milkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsINHucfoAc

[TTTPPP]

Week 3

Master's Match of the Week

Other than three-time champion goat, then the top two players starting with a G are Gargamel and gg (also excluding two-time champion Ganon who starts with a "Zx"). They've played each other sixteen times on Ladder, where it's 9-7 to Gargamel, but this is the first time in RAGL for both of them. gg has been racing through the group stage and now only has one match left against Radical Centralist.

gg vs Gargamel (Masters)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/49fbf986a509c8b ... f79f83a3e6
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/3a36aeecc42d58f ... c8376a3f4b

Best of the Rest

Newcomer ashley played one of the favourites, Jur, this week. The match was actually scheduled for Week 6, but they decided to bring it forward.

ashleynewson vs Jur (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/0443c9093031890 ... 1f9f97e4a1
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/2f71b230dc6a24f ... e8c6e0908b

In Masters then a couple of players have fallen a fair way behind the schedule. Radical Centralist is away until Week 5, and so the officials agreed to reschedule all his matches for the last three weeks of the group stage. inno is the other, who made a start to his season this week with a great match against Mo, before playing this game against milkman and then season forfeiting.

inno vs Mo (Masters)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/89c4c21ec88cf16 ... fe061f7cde
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/11b7e92f1603ea1 ... 4e2cf467ff

Honourable Mentions

Both of these players were joint second in Minions last season, along with milkman, and due to the list of registrations then all three made it into Masters. TTTPPP is playing his first season in Masters having turned down the promotion last season. Sigil on the other hand is playing his fifth season in Masters.

Sigil vs TTTPPP (Masters)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/89b01924039157c ... a7ec5d13e7
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/2d3611700456d10 ... cdf0ebcfac

These highlight posts have featured Tailix for both the Week 1 and Week 2 highlights, so here is the Week 3 edition with his match against Ruckus. Ruckus last played in RAGL in Season 14, back in 2023.

Rossie vs Tailix Killa Mentor (Minions)
Game 1: https://ragl.org/replay/217b382594f7628 ... fe33dfff5d
Game 2: https://ragl.org/replay/7cf991c5c4f70af ... d1a5c923f4