Celestial Tournament: Round Three Pairings Released

They're up at TGH again. And at the official site.

This time around looks like we've lost a few guilds along the way. We're down to 257 by my count which doesn't affect the number of rounds required just yet – a few more, though, and we drop below 2^8+ teams. What it does mean, though, is that RoX gets a bye this round. So, they don't have to play anyone. I haven't exactly heard from them but, you know, I'd actually be disappointed if that happened to my team. We joined this tournament for the experience and not playing doesn't help that at all. Interestingly, some teams have also tied as there are a few 4 and 1 point teams in the pairings. How you tie in a best of three match-up is beyond me but I suppose that's from scheduling forfeits or something else.

Anyhow, on to the remaining match-ups:

Society of the Dragon [?] 1-1, 3 points (Region: America) challenges Xen Of Onslaught [XoO] 1-1, 3 points (Region: America)

Fallback: 3GMT on March 2nd.

The Mothership's fallen on some hard times in ladder play lately and they've fallen off the official site's ladder. They're rank 1200 or so with 999 rating last I heard. I haven't heard of the Society of the Dragon (Although, a little known dictate here: The lamer your guild name, the worse you play. Corollary: Guild names that refer to the game's lore unselfconsciously are, by definition, really lame. Hence, you get a guild called the King's Defenders of the Realm and you know they're going to be scrubs. You get a guild called Rurik's Champions of Tyria and you're talking Echo Mending level strat.) beyond that they beat Shadow Thief in the first round and, apparently, lost in the last one. However, the higher ranked team tends to challenge the lower ranked one, so it's not like they're a rank 5k team or anything.

XoO had some issues with scheduling last round (Who didn't?) so it's good to see they're up against another American region team.

On the other hand, OoX gets a euro-guild. Given that most of our members are on late night west coast schedules I'm sure this is going to be a headache.

Kids Without Fear [kids] 1-1, 3 points (Region: Europe) challenges Onslaught of Xen [XoO] 1-1, 3 points (Region: America)

Fallback: 3GMT on March 2nd.

Some wins in GvG after the tournament loss puts OoX at 1014 rating and one game over .500 in 153 games. The Kids, on the other hand, look to be a pretty good team with 1049 rating in only 104 games. They're 29 games over the mediocre mark but also means they don't tend to GvG a lot. They just, you know, win when they do. They also lost last round to the Illuminati – a guild with a similar record - while handling an unranked in the first. Honestly, I was hoping for easier prey but we don't get to make the schedule.