Celestial Tournament: Seventh Round Pairings Released

Late with these and my match is in... a few hours, if things work out right (Given how past rounds have worked out, I'm not terribly optimistic about things going off without a hitch.) but you can find the pairings (And the team standings. OoX is currently 126th out of 236 teams, which isn't too bad for how much and how well we've played.) on the official site. As for what happened with the phantom double-loss from last round it seems like since we contacted Mr. Gills because we hadn't heard at all from the other team and he'd told us, basically, it was a forfeit in our favor. And because of that we didn't bother to show up in our guild hall at the set fallback time and take pictures and everything else even though, if we had to, we easily could have. So, because we didn't follow the exact process we and Red Basilica both took a loss. Yeah, we got screwed. On the other hand it worked out pretty well for us because, honestly, we're not a 4-2 team and we actually got a decent match this round. Not some top 100 powerhouse that's going to roll us and not a "in it for the potions" cupcake. So, I'm not too upset about it, just concerned at the arbitrary decision. I'm not the one in charge of the correspondence because, you know, I'd be sending people book length e-mails to arrange our matches and all but the first I heard that we'd gotten a loss last round was when the latest pairing's were released. Since we'd contacted Mr. Gill and thought we had things scheduled it came out of the blue.

Anyhow, on to the matches.


Reign of Xen [OoX] 2-4, 6 points (Region: America) challenges I Vincere Aut Mori I 2-4, 6 points (Region: Europe)

Haven't heard anything from RoX about this match except that they've been practicing for it. It's another opponent well out of their weight class, however, so I'm not expecting much.


Xen of Onslaught [XoO] 3-3, 9 points (Region: America) challenges Offensive Guild Name Here [bAn] 3-3, 9 points (Region: America)

[bAn], however, is right in the Mothership's wheelhouse. It's important to note that although they're only 3-3 they've gone 3-1 in the matches they've actually played. They've had the opposite luck of OoX, it seems, and have been on the wrong side of two forfeits. [bAn] is a guild in the 500s on the ladder which is around where XoO is, and Main's beaten teams of that caliber already in the tournament so this could be a good one.

Speaking of which, here is the OoX match-up:


Onslaught of Xen [XoO] 3-3, 9 points (Region: America) challenges Signet of Ultimate Doom [Sig] 3-3, 9 points (Region: America)

First, American! Yay! We're scheduled to play tonight even though the fallback's tomorrow at 2AM GMT.

[SiG]'s currently ranked in the 500s on the ladder with 1045 points. While OoX has climbed back onto the official ladder with 1009 putting us in the 800s. We play, basicaly, .500 ball and although we have a lot of games, we tend to average as many wins as losses. The ladder, however, means absolutely nothing. The Signet's also ranked 137th out of the tournament teams actually putting them below OoX. But what's more important to note is that until about March 12th, they were a lot like OoX and barely over .500 themselves. Since then (Which is around the latest skill tweak which nerfed the Discord, Rit, and Sin spikes that had been clogging up the ladder into irrelevance.) they've been on a tear and have climbed well above .500. Now, maybe they stopped playing GvG and came back afterwards or maybe they discovered a new build, it's hard to say for sure as I haven't caught them on obs at all. But that also corresponds to an uptick in OoX's own play - we just haven't played enough games for our rank to stabilize any higher yet. Lately, OoX has been playing teams around the 500 rank level and playing them very close if not outright winning (Last night, for example, we split two games that went into VoD against 500~600 opponents while we were experimenting with a new build. That's not great but it's progress.). But, really, what we have is two mediocre teams who've been playing well of late. This could be a fun match and it's exactly the kind of thing I signed up for this tournament for.


Anyhow, time to crank up the angry music and test out some last minute build tweaks. Hopefully, I'll have some results for you later tonight.