[img]http://i.imgur.com/a1zk5.png[/img]<br /><br />Certainly a match-up with nostalgic value as Nostar&#039;s (Rus_ technically but we know how really runs the show) Vikings visit the homefield of his one-time teammate turned rival, Ralphis and the Super Chargers. Both sides are built around obvious philosophies that are very apparent upon a simple glance of each team. SUC likes to win with offense, pure junk rush, flag pressure and forcing the other offense out of their play to create havoc for the other team&#039;s base. TKV does it with pure fragging power, defense and grind-it-out ctf&#039;n. I truly believe we laid out the blue-print to beat SUC last week but our obvious inability to score in bunches showed -- that&#039;s okay, we held one of the leagues most powerful offense to 14 flags in 5 rounds -- which roughly averages out to 3 flags per round; it&#039;s not great but it certainly gives you good shot to win knowing they&#039;re not going to score 5 flags (if you can prevent them from doing so). That being said, I&#039;m not sure TKV as an entire team will be able to duplicate that. Nostar is certainly a great defender but Noob/Rus will really have to step it up a ton if they&#039;re going to play a 2d format to keep pace with SUC&#039;s blitzkrieg style of offense. It will also be imperative for whoever runs to beat SUC&#039;s solo D. If they can manage to keep SUC to 2-3 flags per game, TKV has a great chance at defeating SUC. If they can&#039;t, I don&#039;t see them outscoring SUC at all. And while what we did was successful defensively, it put a huge burden on our solo runner to get the job done. If TKV goes this route, it will be no different on their runner. And it&#039;s pretty much SUC&#039;s blue-print of beating everybody else: we&#039;re not convinced your solo O can outscore us on his own. It&#039;s not a very smart strategy quite frankly but when you have the Ralphoholic, it works beautifully. I have a ton of faith in Nostar to play very well but I don&#039;t have the same faith in noob/rus. TKV does have more overall fragging power than what we did but they&#039;re also nowhere near as coordinated as we were. Coordination will be key, if they do it well and their runner gets them enough offense, they&#039;ll pull off the upset; if they don&#039;t, SUC will win easily in 2 rounds. It&#039;ll be tighter than what most people think but I don&#039;t think you&#039;ll be seeing any 5 rounders here. SUC will win in two closely contended games. <br /><br />[img]http://i.imgur.com/vBtlp.png[/img]<br /><br />A match-up of last season&#039;s two key-competents in BSK&#039;s masterbowl season takes place when Jen&#039;s defending champion Pack&#039; host Stallion&#039;s Cowboys (also a rematch of last years conference championship but BBC is literally an entirely different team). BSK has been one of the most efficient teams this season whereas BBC has showed some signs of weakness at time with communication and coordination. LB has been able to pull his Boy&#039;s through it but their entire team will need to be on the ball to beat the Pack. Map04 is a classic, historic ctf map. <br />And with two long-time DooM Veterans in RottKing and DevastatioN, this would seemingly give BSK an advantage. However, as I stated last week, we haven&#039;t seen anybody play the map this season up until BSK defeated SXP in 2 closely contested rounds. I haven&#039;t gotten a chance to watch that match yet but I believe it&#039;s in BBC&#039;s best interest to go 2 O and let Stall solo defend. I believe he&#039;s got the aim to do it but he&#039;ll have to be much quicker to react with Jenova coming at him all the time. Both teams really need to be careful though, map04 can become very chaotic and historically, it seems to yield more rebound flag scores than any other map. So needless to say, coordination and discipline will need to be there for both sides. Honestly, I&#039;m at a loss here. I can&#039;t really seem to determine who has the favorable match-up here as both teams have pretty much the same strengths. I suppose you can label this as the battle of MVP&#039;s: this years regular season MVP against last year&#039;s MasterBowl MVP. Whoever wins that bout will most likely be celebrating a trip to the MasterBowl. In the end though, I can&#039;t help but pick BBC here. I love Jenny and Dev is my boy but Stall is very accurate and doesn&#039;t die very much: a key component to being a successful map04 defender. And I think this may be one of those games where a player goes absolutely ape-shit and you just sit back and go &quot;wow, is this really happening right now?&quot; And yes, I am saying LB will be a monster. LB will once again deliver for his team in glorious fashion. I see BBC knocking out BSK in what could possibly be an extended game with what both teams present. I&#039;m not sure how long or how many rounds it will take, but I see BBC winning in a thriller. <br /><br />Which means...<br /><br />MasterBowl 9 will be the Brokeback Cowboys vs the Super Chargers!