📝 OWCS Fantasy NA/EMEA playoffs

Welcome back to the OWTV Fantasy preview! Week 3 was definitely one for the ages. We had sick clips, a revitalized Team Liquid, plenty of spaghetti on the floor, and more Jetpack Cat play than Unter and CommanderX could stomach.

If you haven’t read our Week 1 preview, here’s a quick reminder of our goals: We try to offer thought-provoking options for your team, and help keep you up to date with any major developments that might affect OWCS Fantasy. We will do this by looking at the fixtures for the week, players we think offer notably good value, and any other clever ideas we cook up! We also play along with our own team, Fantasy Watchpoint, and share the rationale behind the team we put together each week.

Fixture review

If you’re looking to review the fixtures yourself, we’ve included a modified Fixture Difficulty Rating (FDR) to help you visualise how many matches we expect teams to play, and help make your own decisions. We’ve pre-colored them according to our own opinions:

• Green indicates a team to target
• Yellow indicates a team worthy of consideration
• Orange indicates the team we think goes out in 4th and will only get 2 series.

For this week, the fixtures will change significantly based on who wins each series, and rather than plot out all the combinations, we’re going to map out the number of matches each placing in the bracket will have, and some thoughts on who that might be in each region.

The team that exits the tournament in 4th Place will play two series.

The team that exits the tournament in 3rd Place will play three series.

The team advancing from the lower bracket to the Grand Finals will play four series.

The team entering the Grand Finals from the upper bracket will play three series.

As we stated back in our very first article, “More games equal more points,” and at risk of oversimplifying our analysis even further, targeting players from the team you think is likely to come second in each region will give you the most bang for your buck.

There shouldn’t be anything too shocking on the table, as for the most part everyone is in seeding order, though we do have a few things to note.In EMEA, there’s no question that Twisted Minds are in position to blitz straight to the Stage 1 Grand Finals, nor that Virtus.pro are likely to join them there.

The question is, can Virtus.pro make the two series they are likely to play against TM competitive enough to score well. Otherwise, it may be a repeat of their regular season matchup, where Virtus.pro as a whole netted negative fantasy points. If VP can’t get their own style working, your hard-earned budget might be better spent on players from Geekay Esports or even the big dogs on Twisted Minds, sacrificing that extra match for more fruitful matchups.

In NA, Dallas Fuel and Spacestation Gaming are *very* close together right now. In our estimation, they will play each other twice, and it seems very likely they could split maps 5-5 between the two series. Picking the one that goes to the lower bracket and plays an extra series could be the difference maker, and be on the lookout for a revitalized Team Liquid, who may have found their footing once again.

Fantasy metawatch

The only thing to announce in terms of the in-game meta is that Mauga is seeing a rise in play across both regions, most relevantly by Infekted and eisgnom, but ultimately, this doesn’t change much in terms of strategy. Mauga is both a great scoring tank in his own right and a very easy target for hitscan players to farm damage on.

Don’t forget that you get an additional free transfer going into playoffs as well as an extra four points in your budget, on top of whatever you might have accrued through your own timely trades.

Cost-effective players

For this week, instead of mentioning a cost-effective player for each role, we’ll select a single player from each team participating in the playoffs.

Twisted Minds, Quartz, DPS (Cost: 24) - Now that we’ve shed the shackles of budget consciousness, we can get straight to the point. Quartz is a machine, and priced accordingly. His team finishes games so quickly that no one would normally have time to score any points, but somehow Quartz does.

Virtus.pro, Kevster, DPS (Cost: 23) - Virtus.pro’s prolific hitscan is an easy suggestion for this list. He’s amongst the top five scoring DPS and will likely play four series this weekend (even if two of them are most likely against Quartz).

Geekay Esports, FiNN, Support (Cost: 21) - FiNN has assuaged a lot of the concerns around him coming off ZETA DIVISION and has been the most consistent scorer on Geekay so far. LBBD7 is also an honourable mention, with less consistency in his scoring but much more explosive peaks.

Al Qadsiah, Ade, DPS (Cost: 21) - I would love to put one of the Al Qadsiah’s support line here, because they’ve been lights out for their price all stage, but Ade is simply on a roll right now. He holds the second-highest PCM for the entire league going into the playoffs. The only risk is how many matches the team will play this week.

Dallas Fuel, Kellan, Tank (Cost: 23) - There is no shortage of good options on Dallas Fuel, but for this list, it can only be Kellan. #1 on the cumulative PCM rankings with a 13% improvement in efficiency over second-place, Ade, who himself has a 13% improvement over third-place, Hawk. Kellan could be the most picked player we’ve seen in fantasy this week.

Spacestation Gaming, Hawk, Tank (Cost: 23) - It feels silly to put Hawk here right after telling you about the chasm between Kellan and everyone else, but Hawk is still a very worthwhile pick, and maybe you want to fill your DPS and Support slots with Fuel players? If so, the SSG frontman will do just fine.

Team Liquid, Escanor, Support (Cost: 19) - Despite a rough Week 1 and a nearly ruinous Week 2, after seeing TL bounce back in Week 3… the emergency sub Escanor might just be good for it. Tr33 still holds the title for most cost-effective player on TL, but Escanor is second and comes in at a very attractive price.

LuneX Gaming, Zzz, Support (Cost: 19) - The Queen of the NA flex supports is back. LuneX aren’t the highest scoring team in the playoffs, but Zzz holds her own very well and offers a uniquely affordable price point that will help you fill out your roster.

OWTV Fantasy staff team

• Kellan - Tank (cost: 23)
• Ade - DPS (cost: 21)
• Quartz - DPS (cost: 24)
• Cjay - Support (cost: 21)
• Admiral - Support (ost: 21)

It’s about time we finally made use of the budget we built throughout the regular season, so heading into the playoffs, we’ve made some major changes to our roster.

First of all, keeping Kellan is a complete no-brainer. He’s simply the best tank in the game right now. Last week, he put up 75.5 points while playing from Korea on ping, and he currently holds the highest PCM in the entire game at 1.63. Even if Kellan were priced at 26, he would still be the highest-value tank available. It might sound like glaze, but it’s just the reality; Kellan is a must-have.

On DPS, we’ve decided to jump off the kevster ship. Virtus.pro’s scoring against Twisted Minds was underwhelming, and with the expectation that VP will likely face Twisted Minds in two of their four matches this weekend, it’s possible kevster only ends up scoring during two out of his four matches. Instead, we’ve brought in Quartz, the Emperor, as the Koreans call him. As we mentioned in the cost-effective section, even when his team wins fast, he still scores well, and this week he’s expected to play three games. Despite his price, he is second amongst DPS in PCM at 1.21, only after…

…Ade, who continues to be the best value DPS in the entire game. With a 1.45 PCM, he sits at the top of the DPS rankings, and his lower cost gives us the flexibility to afford Quartz while still maintaining a strong overall roster. Even if we expect Al Qadsiah to play fewer games than other teams, Ade’s efficiency is simply too good to ignore.

Support-wise, Grapes was always intended to be a short-term hold unless Extinction made playoffs, and since they didn’t, we’ve moved on. As a result, we've brought in Admiral instead. Ideally, we would have loved to fit in someone like Simple (1.08 PCM) or Ultraviolet (1.17 PCM), but we had to cut some corners to make the roster work. Even though Admiral sits at 0.97 PCM, we’re betting that the sheer volume of games Spacestation Gaming are expected to play will boost his overall output.

We’ve also made a small adjustment by swapping away from FiNN. While he remains the best value player on his team at 1.20 PCM, he is also currently the second-highest PCM support behind Cjay (1.24 PCM), so we decided to sidegrade. Dallas continues to be one of the best teams in (and out of) fantasy, and we decided to fully commit to them by grabbing the two highest value players on their roster.

As you may have noticed, we used four transfers, meaning we’re entering the playoffs with a -15 penalty. It’s a risk, but one we’re willing to take, especially after dropping for the second week in a row. We finished 277th in the weekly rankings, and slipped to 42nd overall, down from 34th.

The marathon is over, this is the final sprint. Let’s see how many of you can catch us and take the race home.