The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the LA compLexity or its parent companies.

CGS Training Camp: Week in Review

By: Jon “Portland” Higginbotham

Preseason Standings & Points
1. OPTX – 79 (3-0)
2. LA Complexity– 68 (2-1)
3. Dallas Venom– 68 (1-1-1)
4. NY 3D – 59 (1-1-1)
5. Chicago Chimera – 58 (0-2-1)
6. Carolina Core – 44 (0-2-1)

Thus ends another week of the CGS training camp and the franchises current standings are a bit surprising. The two best teams from last season are now sitting at the bottom of the barrel this preseason, a trend that will continue? I can’t say for certain, but it’s obvious they better pick their game up if they want to stay in the hunt. All in all, it’s been an exciting week; not only did we see some fist-to-face-action in Pan-Asian franchises but there were even more exciting matches here in the states.

Optx > Col 23-14

Scoreboard

Final

SF OPTX

LA compLexity

It’s been a tough week for compLexity. It seems the plague of lag has returned to haunt the LA team once again at possibly the worst time. First half of the CSS match was going swell for the Complexity team who, unlike San Francisco was playing with their starting 5. Optx on the other hand was without one of their star players; Mohamed “Moe” Assad, in his place was taxi player Griff which definitely could have put Optx at a disadvantage. A few minutes into the game and LA Complexity is 7 rounds up, with only a couple close rounds it seemed like Complexity could continue their streak throughout the match into the second half.

Second half was a different story entirely. It didn’t look like anything Complexity was doing worked against Optx. Optx shut down all of Complexity’s advances and tied up the game 7-7. At this point, Optx had the momentum but then as we watched compLexity taking the next round eerily slow did we realized they had all lagged out, except for Warden. After everything had been sorted out, the two franchises got back to playing and resumed at 7-7. From then on Optx resumed its dominance over compLexity and won the match 11-7.

In DOA, the once thought infallible promiscuous Carl, AKA PerfectLegend, was defeated by NinjaCW. It seems as though all you need to defeat the unbeatable PerfectLegend is his own character with a dash of lag. Yes, at the beginning of the match there was some reported lag on both ends. Did this affect the outcome? I think so, but I also believe since lag is so common in DOA online it’s really hard to judge these preseason matches.

Belle had yet another bad week. She went up against the best DOA female, Vanessa who is obviously no push over, especially for someone who finished last place in the previous season. I’ll agree, Belle had some good rounds but ultimately was shut out by Vanessa 5-0.

Chimera = Core 21-21

Scoreboard

Final

Core

Chimera

Without taking into account their DOA female, Chicago Chimera was very solid this week. Their CSS team effectively put a stop to the wavering Core team. Phamtastic has proved that he should not have been left out of the draft and I think the GM’s are definitely seeing that. He has been playing fantastically solid with the Chimera team, and I’m one of the many who wants to see this guy back on a franchise playing in the regular season.

BlackMamba has been showing signs of his former self this week with a slight victory over OffbeatNinja. Both players had yet to win any match this preseason and their match was an all out slugfest in a battle to see who could put up their first ‘W’. In the end BlackMamba inched out a win with a score of 5-4.

Chicago Chimera is sitting on a 0-1-1 record, and some can only ask, is this the same Chimera that won the CGS World Finals? Eight ball says, “My sources say no.” I think Flander is playing a risky game. By using taxis, it doesn’t give his regular team a chance to work together like what Jason Lake is doing. That’s probably why they are near last in the standings right now

Dallas = 3D 23-23

Scoreboard

Final

Dallas Venom

NY 3D

The Dallas team had a lot to prove. Alex had first pickings at the draft so everyone expected him to runaway with the best team this season. Unfortunately I don’t think we have seen the next region 1 champions yet, or perhaps Dallas just hasn’t shown us. 3D on the other hand has been doing decent. Last week they beat last year's world champions and it looked like blue was the new purple. Overall this entire match-up was my favorite this week and it was the closest out of any of the others.

Venom’s CSS team did well. They fought valiantly against the 3D team, and almost took it into over-time but 3D finally decided to end it. In the first half each team exchanged rounds in what seemed like a close match up. But eventually Dallas fell into a round deficit and the situation seemed dire. In what was the most exciting part of the match, the Dallas Venom put a stop to all of 3D’s T-side strats round after round and almost ties the score 9-9 but fell a round short with notable efforts from Brawrski and zid. Both had some movie material in their POV’s.

This has been bar far the most exciting week of the CGS Bootcamp hopefully there will be more like these to come. Overall the team’s standings are almost the same as last week. The only change being, LA moving down to 3rd and Dallas taking their place, but with only 1 point of difference it’s still too close to call. Until next week!