Saturday at 10am EST vs SoulWind, looking forward to it
BW Predictions
Pearl (55) vs (45) Raiza - I am quite high on both of these players. Pearl has been using solid teams, but running into strong opponents. I am still convinced that he can finish positive despite the strength of this BW field. Raiza is in a similar boat; he is unfortunately off to a 1-2 start, but his loss to me was down to the wire and his loss to Caetano felt a bit fluky seeing as he faced a pretty cheesy Latios set and Caetano was up to his normal madman antics. With this said, both of these two are off to less than ideal starts record wise and they are determined to turn it around. I favor Pearl slightly because I think that Raiza's main advantage over some of the other inexperienced BW players is in the builder and Pearl has the support of both BKC and ABR, which has led to some strong teams thus far in my eyes. In the battle, I expect Pearl to have a slight advantage playing wise, but it is relatively close and even the slightest of advantages in either direction match-up or RNG wise can easily tilt the game in one direction or another given how well both capitalize on these things. I am interested to see how Raiza may respond to the sand teams Pearl has been using -- each of them is similar in terms of Pokemon used, all having Tyranitar + Landorus-T + Excadrill with a pretty normal supporting cast (i.e: 2/3 Latios, 2/3 Rotom-W, 2/3 Ferrothorn, etc.) for BW standards, but they all have different structures when you strip them down to the sets or what purposes the filler Pokemon serve that there are only so many things that can actually take advantage of this trend. Honestly, this is why BW Sand balance (and BO) is seen as such a strong, consistent archetype. Before I go off on a tangent about my beloved Sand teams, I will also say that there will likely be a week or two where Pearl deviates from these norms and perhaps that could put him in an advantageous position here if Raiza is caught red-handed, tunneling on Pearl bringing something specific due to what he has seen thus far. Games like this really intrigue me as a spectator and follower of BW because there are so many proven elements put to the test consistently, but it never truly gets boring or stale. Very excited for this match.
John W (55) vs (45) Caetano93 - John W used a really cool team against me last week, but between some unfortunate luck and some late-game, low-timer piloting errors, he fell short. I still believe he is a high ceiling player with the ability to beat anyone in this pool, which I think he will show again this week. I think Caetano is pretty good, but I feel like his performance hinges on a lot of things that are inconsistent. For example, last week he used the Fire Gem Latios set, which is honestly really hard to justify imo. It catches Ferrothorn in Sand, but so does Trick while not being so much weaker pre-Trick and in non-Ferrothorn match-ups. In addition to this, not having the raw strength of Specs makes a ton of other match-ups challenging and lacking Trick to cripple specific things makes some games straight-up unplayable barring luck/misplays from the opposition. These type of trade-offs are very high risk with middling reward relative to the reward of crippling Ferrothorn simply through using Trick or a couple Dracos to the face. It is not just some individual set selections that rub me the wrong way either. In his game against Raiza, he pretty much had it won from early on, but he decided to risk Breloom against Keldeo locked into HP Flying either because he thought it was HP Ice, which would show that he lacks a pretty important piece of metagame knowledge, or that he was willing to risk a won game for the sake of rushing through on a hunch when he was not in a position where he needed to risk anything at all. Yea, I get that these things worked out, but it just seems a lot less sustainable to win on the basis of these things than consistent teams and play, which is why I find myself struggling to favor him against most of the more proven players in this field. I think of Caetano straightens these things out, he has a great instinct for the game and can likely finish positive. However, until then I give John W the slight edge because I think his game is closer to fundamentally sound despite showing some signs of being mistake prone recently.
dice (60) vs (40) zf - Another match that I am very much looking forward to. dice has returned to strong form after a likely outlier showing week 1. zf, on the other hand, has not looked great since a strong showing week 1. I think dice is better normally, but I favor him especially here as his teambuilding has kept up nicely with the metagame and his gameplay has not shown any signs of slowing down. zf I think is just a step behind dice in every regard; while he is obviously solid, I think this match in particular will be a struggle for him. His builds are a bit shakier, perhaps having a few more holes while trying to maintain a certain level of surprise value and innovation that both identify with. His games are not played poorly, but sometimes he leaves a little to be desired or digs himself a hole earlier on in games that is hard to get out of despite aggressive attempts to claw back into games. I think I just need to see a little bit more from zf in the win department before I can be too confident in him against top players like dice. I do think this one will be a treat for the spectators, however.
jacob (60) vs (40) Steve Angello - Not as much to say on this one as we have only seen one game from both thus far. While Steve Angello won and jacob lost, I tend to favor jacob's greater experience in the tier and modernized approach over whatever the Tigers may have cooking in BW. This game could truly go either way and I am curious to see not only the teams, but also the execution. I think Steve Angello has always been a scrappy player, capable of winning any game in any tier against any opponent. The issue is that he is still lacking in the experience department and the metagame knowledge department; both of these areas are pretty important to cover in BW if you wish to achieve consistent results. Because of this, I will be hesitant to bold his name or any newer BW player against guys who are known entities. Hopefully for the Tigers he shows some more strong play and can prove me wrong here though.