Gamearena

Focusing on the top 20 in the GA ladder, we don’t notice too many big movers for the week. The top 3 positions are still held by the top 3 teams (Style, 3m, xs), with the chances of someone moving up into the top 3 in the next few weeks unlikely.

The domination of Style over the season has been a much debated issue, with people taking some different views. But when you sit down and truly think about it, there are only a few things which separate them from the rest: 1. Teamwork, this is probably their most solid attribute, with penetrating their defense almost impossible at some times. They also can put the teamwork together on the offensive side too, with a powerful, well timed rush pretty much impossible to stop. 2. Grenades, they own with grenades. Their timing and placement is impeccable and a lot of the time the round is half over after their nade throwing session. 3. Pure uncut skill, you cant deny it, they have awesome aim and if they miss you the first time, you had better kill them, otherwise the second shot wont be as kind.

When we look at the results for the GA ladder over the last week, there are a few interesting results to be looked at.

3m Gaming > xs Gaming  [15:5] – This match was for second place and everyone knew it was going to be a close one. But as the score suggests it seemed to be a bit of a blowout. Is the fact that xs have had people leaving in the last few weeks taking its toll? I certainly wouldnt look past this, the balance in the team may be off for a while, but no doubt they’ll bounce back.

xs Team2 > Streamline [11:9] – Well a lot would have backed Streamline here, with the latest pickup of Travis (Garandhero). But it seems as if the xs2 guys brought their ‘A’ game to the table. Played on the relatively unplayed map of mp_leningrad, xs2 seemd to have the stronger defence and took the win comprehensively.

Style > Team TBA [11:9] – Tonight saw the biggest match of the week go down, with third ranked Team TBA challenging Style for the top spot on Burgundy. The match lived up to expectations, seeing some intense action and fantastic skills throughout. For the majority of the match it went round for round, with neither team able to get a break, until Style managed to put up a few crucial rounds in a row to get them over the line and hold onto the unbeaten record on GA. Beast led the way for Style, dropping 24, and really setting up a lot of the offensive pushes with some great sniping. Boon really kept Team TBA afloat in the first half, and PeZ held on in some clutch situations to get a few late rounds for TBA.

Other movers were gotfive?, who pushed up into 13^th spot with an 11-9 win over New Allegiance.  Team Zero Effects held off Revolution to maintain 11^th spot and are now challenging for a top 8 position.

The ladder seems to still be running smoothly, with finals action looming the teams will be looking to push for the top 8 in the next week or so. Look forward to some exciting matches as people try to hold a position and people try to take positions. Gamestah will be bringing you the Gamearena ladder action each week, so lookout for upcoming casts.

 3m-i Leauge

The first week of the 3m-i League has been played, with competitors going head to head on Dawnville. The league seems to be well accepted by all the players so far, with the advantages of the automation that the GameArena ladder offers, but in a league format. Props to Astreix and Trailblazer for getting it up and running.

The first week of play didn’t see any huge match ups, with all the big teams avoiding each other, and no upsets happening. The results are as follows:

Team Immunity > House of Renshou [16:0]
Excess Gaming(1) > mOo [16:9]
Excess Gaming(2) > New Allegiance [16:0]
3 Minute Men > Blacklisted [16:11]
Streamline > High Caliber  [16:4]
myN > Team Zero Effects [16:4]
Style > Renegades [16:0]

 Next week we sees teams lining up on Matmata.

 AusCOD Season 3 Announced

This week also saw the announcement of AusCOD s3. Season 3 will see some pretty drastic change ups from what we have gotten used to in competitive game play, with the removal of grenades and shotguns, which results in the smoke grenade now being given to the sniper. The season will be played between 10 teams, who will be split into two groups of five, resulting in a short and sweet season of around 5 weeks plus finals.

 It should be extremely interesting to see how the season plays out under these new conditions, with some players reporting mixed feelings after scriming under the new ruleset.

Upcoming Matches of Interest

 myN vs Streamline – 3m-i

This match will be a real test for the Streamline boys. myN (also known as Team TBA on the GameArena Ladder) are made up of old Klutch and rS boys, so they are full of skilful players. That being said, they are still only new to playing with each other, and will still need time to adapt and let there teamwork flourish. Streamline have been very consistent of late, pushing some of the big teams to there limits in recent matches. If a few of the Streamline guys can fire up, we could be in for a very very tight match. Watch out for garandhero and Jormumma from Streamline, and Circa and Murdz from myN.

Excess Gaming Team 1 vs TEAM immunity – 3m-i

There will be a lot of community interest in this match, to judge where both teams are at. Excess have recently lost two key players in Andy and Murdz, and it will be interesting to see how a few of there new players from there second division will perform up on the big stage. Immunity on the other hand have been battling with inactivity, and it will be interesting to see if they have got enough prac under there belt to compete with Excess. Look out for iNTER from iM, and Immo from Excess.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading, checkout Gamestah.com and AusCOD.com same time next week to see the second edition of the article. We welcome all feedback, so feel free to post up in the forums and let us know what you thought. As we mentioned earlier, we are considering turning this into a weekly talk show on Gamestah, so let us know if you would be interested in listening in

Thanks – Punk and Sacrifice.