Day9+Tastosis at NASL Grand Final

As fate would have it, the first day of playoffs is a bit of a family reunion. Zenio, Idra and Mana all came out of Division 5, the so-called group of death. Well now we have the bracket of death. And even if one of those three wins the bracket they have to play against another Division 5 player in the live-finals to advance. That's right Zenio, your prize for beating Idra is a rematch vs Sen.

Looking back at Division 5 history, we can see that Zenio beat Idra 2-1 and Mana 2-0, and that Idra beat Mana 2-0. From this small data pool, we think Zenio is the favorite in the bracket, but he could still be thrown for a loop by Dde who managed to beat the #4 seed Strelok 2-1 during divisional play.

Morrow was very close to taking the number 2 spot in his division and missed out by only a few points, while Socke was only a few points away from not even qualifying for next season. Morrow did however come from a slightly easier division. Now it will be Socke's chance to shine and show that he's only middle of the pack when surrounded by legends of the game.

The second half of this bracket is made up of the perennial favorite Nada, whose upset loss against Haypro knocked him out of the top two spot for his division. A 2-1 victory there would have assured him the spot ahead of Squirtle.

ACE will be facing Brat_OK in a rematch for the first game. Previously on NASL, Brat_OK had been underperforming in his division. But from this position of weakness he managed to take a 2-1 victory from ACE, condemning him to the playoffs while granting Select the golden ticket. If history repeats itself, the sole Russian in the league will have a good shot of making the finals. ACE's win rate vs Terran is only 50%, so it is fair to say that this game is a toss-up.

In the second match-up of the day, we have Fenix going up against HasuObs. Fenix has had a strong record vs Protoss this season, only losing a single game against Grubby and defeating Artosis and KiwiKaki 2-0.

HasuObs has had a very normal season. To put it simply, he beat everyone worse than him, and lost to everyone better than him. With perhaps the most predictable results of the season, he lost to ACE, MC, Select and Ret; all of whom are world-class players. He then beat Goody, Brat_OK, Catz, Machine and Stalife. 4 of those wins are against players who have not qualified for the playoffs while Brat_OK has managed to clinch the last spot available.

Naniwa faces Axslav for a second time this season. He took the match 2-0 in week seven of divisional play and has been pretty dominant in the final. Axslav, however, has only won a single game against Protoss over the entire season.

Sjow vs Darkforce is another rematch from earlier in the season. Even though Sjow was within one game of winning a top two spot to the Grand Finals, his loss against White-Ra cemented his fate. His rematch against Darkforce is interesting in that even though Sjow is ranked higher, Darkforce beat him 2-0 in week 8 of the NASL ending a four game win-streak.

This is certainly an interesting day. Both MC and Kiwikaki are among the strongest players from their respective nations. MC's PVP has been lackluster in the NASL, losing games to ACE who executed some clever cheese early in the season, while Cruncher has been been performing well but not outstandingly throughout the event, having beaten the code-S Ensnare and Darkforce in the regular season.

Kiwikaki faces off against Moman, who qualified to the playoffs under rather interesting circumstances, beating July 2-0 in games where July six-pooled twice. If he had lost that game 0-2 he would not have taken the place if TLO had not withdrawn due to carpal tunnel. Regardless, he has been granted this last chance to prove himself against his colonial brother.