September Cup Round 1 Preview

The bracket for the inaugural AWBW Cup was put up today. Twelve brave warriors have entered the tournament, but only one can take the Cup championship. We'll be keeping track of the tournament's progress over the next few weeks, but for now I'll be offering a preview of our Round 1 matchups. Four players were seeded for the tournament and received byes, those players being Hellraider, Kamuscha, walkerboh01, and frostylight (in order of seed).

From the other 8 contenders there are four Round 1 games.

1) lolabunny vs. Der Pazifist
No one can envy either of these two players, who arguably received the short stick of the draw with a second round match versus Hellraider pending. However they'll have to make it there before they can start worrying about that. Both players are fairly new to the site, but lolabunny appears to have the edge on paper with 134 games under his belt as opposed to Der Pazifist's 6 games. Normally that means a blow out is in order. However, I wouldn't count Der Pazifist out right away, as his current games show that he isn't your average newbie! I'm predicting this one to be a pretty close match, with lolabunny eventually emerging as the victor.

2) ramdalucksta7 vs. forbs
This is another match featuring two newer players, although I suspect this will be a relatively high-skilled match. Forbs is the only player of the 8 that I have faced recently, and after playing a league match, I rate him as a very decent player. I've never played ramdalucksta, but judging from his league games, he appears to play with a disproportionately high skill level for someone with only 57 games. This will likely be one of the best matches of Round 1, but in the end forbs' greater experience pays off and he advances to a second round date with frostylight.

3) Cereal Killer vs. Janusmarine
In an unfortunate twist of fate, both of the most experienced non-seeded players find themselves in an early elimination match. Cereal Killer is a player who was once one of the higher mid-tier players around, but after a prolonged absence from AWBW, he has yet to regain his true form. Janusmarine has been around just as long if not longer than CK, and has collected impressive records in many of the old leagues. The advancing player gets no respite in the next round either, with Kamuscha laying in wait. I predict that Janusmarine takes this one though.

4) Azzaphox vs. marxistplot
At first glance, Azzaphox should have an easy time of this game, having played 140 more games than his relatively new opponent. But as I've pointed out already, game count is not necessarily indicative of a player's skill, and most of Azzaphox's games have come in FFA and team games. This leaves him with relatively little 1 vs 1 experience, giving marxistplot a fair shot at achieving the upset. I pick marxistplot to come away with the victory, to face walkerboh01 (that's me!) in the next round.

The Round 1 games will start tomorrow, and after that the tournament is officially underway. Good luck to all of the participants!

Until next time,
- Walker