Sky Tower Lindworms (5) vs (5) Lanakila Nagas
OU: beatiful vs Regnite: cheatwin being banned may have been a blessing in disguise for the lindworms, as beautiful has been a remedy to an otherwise weak on paper OU core (outside of eo, who is broken for SOME reason). lately beautiful has shown he has a pretty high ceiling as a player. still, his overall just solid record and a very weak OLT semis performance shows he still has some room to become more consistent at playing to his potential. regnite is the perfect opponent to prove this against. regnite is really solid, but he hasn't really had a breakout moment in this tournament. i don't think he will be a piece of cake for beautiful by any means, but if bea wants to show he can hang with the top dogs, beating solid players like this convincingly is a must.
OU: Garay oak vs ima: garay has looked fine, but not particularly great. granted, he had some pretty tough MUs for a lower tier mainer's first shot at OU, and ima is just another opponent in this trend for garay. in almost every ima predict, i've said something along the lines of his highs being really high but his lows being pretty low: this snake we are seeing ima at one of his highest peaks for sure. dominant and extremely confident play with some strong team choices has brought him a long way. strongly favoring ima on this one.
OU: Jytcampbell vs Sacri': jyt, like garay, has looked mostly fine this tour, but far from spectacular. unlike garay, however, jyt has not faced as many tough opponents. he did already face sacri, actually, and he lost. while the revenge factor is an interesting one for sure, i can't see a player like jyt pulling it off against a player like sacri. despite bringing literally the same shit since he stepped onto the OU scene in SM, sacri just wins games. he brings these boring ass teams that are just him mixing and matching from a pool of 15 or so pokemon, but he plays them perfectly and wins most of the time. there is definitely some room for jyt to beat sacri in the builder here, but even then, i don't think it would be enough to beat the sac.
OU: Eo Ut Mortus vs robjr: i cannot get a read on robjr for the life of me this tour. i think he's great, but for some reason i predict like all his games wrong. now it'd be cool as hell for him to prove me wrong here, but against an 8-1 eo... idk. eo isn't only sporting a good record, he's sporting a good record against a crazy lineup of opponents... definitely one of the hardest schedules anyone got in snake. not only that though, but he has looked extremely good in virtually all of those games. his aggressive play and distinct team choices should be enough to beat robjr.
DOU: umbry vs Tenzai
UU: Poek vs SoulWind: really hype one despite being an extinct lower tier metagame.
RU: Pepeduce vs atomicllamas
NU: Realistic Waters vs Ren-chon
PU: TJ vs Kink
LC: dcae vs Ninjadog: sort of an upset predict i suppose. while i'm not particularly knowledgeable on LC, the people i know that are have me convinced that ninjadog has gotten lucked like every other week... this one might be closer than the records show.
well i have this one going to tiebreaker... i'm not really sure what choices the teams would make. the lindworms having poek and the nagas having soulwind really complicates things. these are two top notch players, soulwind more than poek nowadays, but still. i guess the nagas could force a second OU slot since soulwind is certainly more familiar with the tier than poek, and i doubt the lindworms put any of their other 3 players into that TB except maybe beautiful if poek isn't feeling it. from there i guess the lindworms pick NU since it's either RW vs elodin or RW vs an OU main. this one would probably end up coming down to the default OU game, which i would assume is between eo and ima, and i am really 50/50 on which i would pick.
Rumble Hall Rattlers (4) vs (6) Celadon City Cobras
OU: Samqian vs FMG: the monkey gamer is back. despite a poor showing this tour, FMG is a better player than samqian by a pretty significant margin. when we get into playoffs territory where the pressure is really on, i think this type of consistency is important. i don't think FMG is a particularly killer player or anything, but he's pretty good. even though he has picked up a few wins this tour, samqian has not looked convincing in the bulk of them. i don't think he's a bad player; there's some potential there, but idk. despite FMG being historically better, you do need to factor in his poor performance this tour at least a little bit, and that definitely makes this game closer than one would think. i still think it favors FMG, but samqian could definitely win this one to gain some momentum for himself... just not too likely to me given his performances thus far.
OU: lax vs HANTSUKI: hantsuki is 2-0 in OU vs two fairly solid players, but lax is a clear step (or two) above regnite and jyt. as i predicted, lax brought it back last week when things were on the line. while i might not be as high on lax as most, it's undeniable that he is really clutch. i'm calling it now: if rattlers make poffs, whoever lax's opponent is, i'm predicting him to win. he just seems to do really well in these high pressure scenarios. hantsuki definitely has a wildcard factor to him, and he's no slouch on top of that, but lax is not the type of player to be thrown off by a question mark player.
OU: talah vs mncmt: mnc has more or less lived up to his round 1 billing this tournament. a nice record that is the result of some well fought games vs a pretty good lineup of opponents. he's been making a case for himself as one of the next big OU guys for sure. talah has looked really good this tour (other than that game vs tace, but his team had just clinched so i don't really care about it). in his game vs BK, he played solid, but the matchup monkey was definitely what got him there, but in his game vs vaboh, he really just outplayed. the thing is: vaboh and mncmt are two totally different leagues of player. talah's pretty good, but i don't think he's gonna be outplaying mncmt like that anytime soon. what he does have a good chance of doing though is beating mncmt in the builder. talah's builds have gotten the rattlers some consistently good matchups that have been met with consistently poor play from their OU core. i think there's a reasonable chance talah gets a strong matchup here, and i think he's been playing well enough to have a shot at winning if he pulls such a matchup. still, mncmt has bested better builders and better players lately, so it will be very hard.
OU: Kebab mlml vs 1 True Lycan: i think kebab has looked consistently out of his element this tour, and the recent wins don't convince me otherwise. while the baron hasn't looked as killer as he did in SPL, he has looked pretty good for the most part. this is the type of matchup i think he's good at winning... kebab's a really solid player overall but not some type of monster.
DOU: Ezrael vs Qwello Lee
UU: CBU vs Lilburr
RU: Ajna vs snaga
NU: bugzinator vs Sjneider
PU: Vulpix03 vs Xiri
LC: Serene Grace vs Shrug
both these teams have similar structures to me: well rounded with mostly strong lower tiers and mostly weak OU. as such, i think a lot of these games are actually really close, especially all the lower tiers except RU and LC. i do think the cobras have a bit better of an OU core and PU, so the difference more or less evens out. it really comes down to the UU, NU, and DOU games for me, all three of which are pretty tough to call. it's kinda crazy predicting against ezrael in semifinals of a tournament, but it's also kinda crazy that sjneider vs bugzinator wouldn't be heavily in neider's favor. lots of weird stuff here! as for a potential tiebreak... i'm not even gonna act like i got a clue LOL.