By Raka
Needless to say, the season hasn’t officially begun yet and so there aren’t any games to analyze JUST yet but we can still look into our competitors and try and predict what surprises they have in the season to come!
Bad Rats: The Rats with the Attitude are coming back from last season! They had a middling season last time, winning slightly more games than they lost, but this time they have brought in Jamster to fill out their ranks! Jamster has been out of the game for a bit, but has historically played with Gillyshark (in the pre-bingo days) so definitely is no stranger to higher skilled competition!
Cats On My Keyboard: Unfortunately, the Bad Rats are going to have to deal with their natural counter, the cats themselves! Cats are rising up from the crucible of D-West where they won nearly three times as many games as they lost and then went on to overcome the Rainbow Shrooms 3-0 in the Div D-West divisional finals! This season they’re showing back up with an old player who hasn’t been seen since Season 12 – Nejoom!
Deny Defend Dehaka: The Nexus Cats are back but, to keep the Rats from feeling TOO intimidated, they’ve changed their names to remove feline references! They tore through Div D-East at the same time Cats on my Keyboard was ripping through the west coast and so now we’re ready to see a repeat of the Div D Grand Finals right here in Div C! They are largely the same cats, but have brought in some support in the form of Warwolf from Heavy Group Therapy and WholeFoods from S13’s Puns Upon a Time!
Ginormous Jaegers: Rats, Cats, Evolving Lizard things – enough animals lets get some mecha in here! The Ginormous Jaegers are a relatively new team, being made up of three players brand new to NGS and three players who haven’t been seen in nearly five years! They are Captained by Ogel, however, and that is definately a person with the past experience to be able to lead a team to victory! We will have to see if they can rinse the dust off and rise to this challenge, or if the meta has moved too far since they’ve been gone!
Heavy Group Therapy: HGT had a very rough season last year, but they really feel like they’re coming together as a team and are eager to give it another shot. Its easy to look at past results and make doom and gloom predictions, but in this analyst’s eyes, the team that has a losing record and is explicitly doesn’t want to move down but is instead eager to give it another shot is a team to watch out for! Heavy will be hitting Div C again and is looking for something to prove! Additionally, they’ve added in Teal and xYun to the roster (Hi Teal!)
HoTS Tuah: This team is a merger between the Tater Titans from Div D and Hot(s) Chads of Div C fame! The Chads had a similar season to the rats, but bring up the Titans of Taters and adding them to their ranks might be enough to start shaking things up. They have also added new comer and unknown variable Vol’jin to the fold, who doubtless has with something to prove since people forget he was a warchief too!
License to Kill: License to Kill had an extremely dominant showing in Div D-East last season, just barely being beaten out by Die for Cats in the final week of competition, and you’d better believe they remember the struggle and want to right history this time around. They haven’t changed their roster one bit heading into Season 19 and, while the Cats have changed their name to Deny Defend Dehaka, that isn’t enough to throw off their would-be assassins!
Maximum Thrust: Maximum Thrust did very well in Div-D West last season, with more than twice as many wins as they had losses. They ended up with a scramble for first that they narrowly lost out to Cats on my Keyboard and have followed their feline rivals up to Div C, eager to prove once and for all that Jets are stronger than hairballs! They will be helped in this quest by the addition of Trees and NOICE!
Pepegas on Ice: Pepegas are back for another romp in Div C! They had a middling season last time around with a roughly 50/50 record, but have reinforced their ranks with the addition of Muidar! Muidar most recently competed with Hot(s) Chads back in Season 17 so I imagine there are some hard looks going on between the Pepegas and HotS Tuah as we move into the first week of competition!
Witch Rhythm: Witch Rhythm is definately the Dark Horse of this division. They are coming up from Div D where they had a relatively rough season but really started pulling it together by the end of the season, but they also have traded out Vetlungs for Nedens. Nedens doesn’t have a huge amount of Storm League experience to examine, but with over 4,000 games uploaded and high level opponents, they are the X-factor that says to expect the unexpected!
Xul Gin Distillery: Xul Gin is back! Having a slightly favorable season last time, but not dominating by any stretch of the imagination, Xul Gin is here once again to brew brewskies and make enemies vamooskies! No changes to the team, but I hear they did get a new ladle for the Gin Vat! ^_^
Catch all the action that is currently scheduled!
Ginormous Jaegers vs Deny Defend Dehaka: Wednesday at 9:00 EST on https://twitch.tv/TheSound51
Witch Rhythm vs Hots Tuah: VALENTINES DAY at 9:00 EST on https://twitch.tv/Tokeybee