The outcome of this series was one of the most predictable and expected results. Sleeper Social Club, despite displaying a decent showing in the previous series of #EVE_NT Collides, are the only team in Collides tournament who had not achieved a top 16 place finish in the Alliance Tournament. They also had issues with their Team Captain leaving for Hard Knocks mid-way through last month. Warlords, on the other hand, are one of the most experienced teams in the tournament scene, having won multiple SCLs, Alliance Tournaments, the 2nd New Eden Open, and having some of the 'Worlds Collides' (The Live event Fanfest 2015 Tranquillity vs Serenity) players on it's roster.
Saying that though, we had seen Tournament Juggernaut 'Pandemic Legion', suffering at the hands of 'The Tuskers' just 2 weeks ago, although the delta between the PL and Tuskers Tournament "Space Resumes" was not as large as that between SCL and Warlords.
The Setups & Bans: http://www.eve-nt.uk/team-profiles/
The Warlords team choose to ban a Rapid Light Missile Spam Team (Orthrus x2, Cerberus, Caracal, Flycatcher) and the only armour based team that SSC Submitted (Typhoon, Guardian, Confessor x2, Cruor). In the post match interview, Leokokim, The Warlords Captain, explained how he valued and thought that Armor T2 Logistics were incredibly strong in the Collides format. The Rapid Light Spam team was likely banned because of the prevalence of crucial Frigates in all the warlords team, they had interestingly, submitted 3 different set-ups which used Interceptors as the last 3 point slot. Many other teams in Collides had instead spent this on either Stealth Bombers or Tech I Electronic Warfare Frigates.
The Sleeper Social Club team choose to ban the Warlords two 2x Battleship Comps that they had (Typhoon FI x2, Hyena, Navitas x2) (Scorpion NI x2, Vigil, Malediction x2), SSC had several rapid missile or ECM based teams, most of which rely on killing a target with burst damage before reloading rapid launchers, or killing a ship during the time you have logistic ships jammed with your limited DPS, both these Navy Faction Battleship core comps would cause problems for SSC using these strategies, with their high HP buffers, so it was logical that they elected to ban them.
This left Warlords with a Typical tried and test Rush Team 2), An Armour Brawl team with fast Tackle 3), an Anti-Rush team featuring long range Cruor webs and the First unbanned Vindicator we've seen in the entire collides season and pre-season 4), A core shield control/kite team with a Curse/Gila, and a missile based team with damps and ECM featuring a Widow. 7).
Sleeper Social Club were left with their rush team, almost identical to the Warlords submitted team except subbing out the Stiletto with a Hound 1). A Heavy ECM team which featured a Widow, ECM Tengu, Blackbird, and funnily enough a Venture featured in the 1 point slot, which is an interesting replacement for the 1 point exploration frigate options which would have likely been better in almost any way 2). a Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher team that featured 2 Barghest, with a Vigil and bantams 3), another ECM team, featuring a Nighthawk for providing info links, a rook and 2 Kitsunes with a daredevil 6). and finally, a high damage projection team with high resists. 7)
The Matches:
Match one opened with Warlords Featuring their Anti-Rush based team of Vindicator, Guardian, Kitsune, and 2x Cruor. SSC Fielded their Rush Team of Sleipnir, Scimitar, 2x Svipul, Hound. It seems like this was probably the most balanced and possibly the strongest team that SSC had to offer, and it was probably the safest opener that SSC had, unfortunately, it opened into an Anti-Rush team comp that Warlords had fielded, it's likely that Warlords read into this and choose to field this team for that reason.
SSC choose to kite away at the beginning, having to avoid the Vindicator at almost any cost, as any ship which is caught in the grasp of it's 90% web and easily achieveable 1.5K DPS is going to be providing an insurance payout to its owner in short order, even linked Svipuls which can be incredibly hard to track for battleship grade weapons. At first Warlords took a small amount of punishment from the damage projection of the Hound, interestingly enough they choose to shoo tthe Cruors which would not take much DPS from torps instead of the Vindicator which would take full damage, although it's likely a single hound had no chance of bypassing Guardian remote reps. The Guardian with it's low Signature and Exceptional Explosive resistance from being a T2 Amarr ship was a bad sign for SSC.
Not too much action happened in the first minute of the match, as both teams try to out-position each other and catch either one out when they make a positioning mistake or are forced to put themselves in a bad position by utilising the arena geometry of the arena edge. This is often referred to as a "dance" that happens before either team commits. Unfortunately for SSC, Warlords slowly advanced on them pushing them up against the edge, and warlords did not seem to over commit or make any positioning mistakes, the Cruors with their 26km overheated webs were able to pin down targets and force SSC to take the brawl, it looked dangerous for some of the Cruors on the Warlords team, dropping into low armour at some points, but SSC was not able to break the Guardian reps and their ships were systematically dismantled, making Warlords 1-0 ahead.
Match two, Warlords this time elected to bring in their armour brawl comp of Damnation, Oneiros, 2x Confessor, Ares. Facing them would be SSC's Rapid Heavy Missile comp of 2x Barghest, Vigil, 2x Bantam. The match opened with SSC choosing to primary the Oneiros with their Rapid Heavies, with the Vigil they elected to bring they would likely be hitting for full damage, even to the low signature radius that the Oneiros offers, the Oneiros however, with dual reps and an Afterburner, was able to survive in low armour through the first reload of the Bargests Rapid Heavy Assault, the Oneiros was repping most of it's armour with it's medium ancillary armor repairer, making it very strong against RHML as it could reload paste during the almost the interval that the Barghests were reloading to be back up almost whenever it would be needed (35s + Travel time vs the 60s reload on the Medium Ancillary). In the mean-time, the Warlords Ares Pilot had made a trip around the outside of the arena to the SSC's back-line, avoiding the heavy neut range of the Barghests, and was able to place a tackle on the crucial Vigil ship far away from the Barghests, which would be unable to help it escape tackle with their neuts or ECM drones, the Warlords Beam Confessors had forced the back-line to not be able to sit with their Barghests during their advance, and now got to see the fruit of their labours, with the Vigil tackled, it died to the Confessors fire through Bantam reps, although one of the Bantams had burned far away so was likely unable to provide much effective repping with the new falloff mechanics, the 2nd bantam got caught, again, far away from it's brother, allowing it to die in short order, from then on, it was just clean-up for warlords, without their vigil TPs they could no longer apply full DPS and threaten the AB sig tanking Oneiros, Warlords were now 2-0.
Match three was... Interesting to say the least. Warlords brought their Minmatar Rush team of Sleipnir, Scimitar, 2x Svipul, Stiletto. SSC had brought their ECM team with Widow, Tengu, Blackbird, Vexor and Venture. Nothing seemed to happen in the match for the first minute or so, and then the Warlords Svipul Pilot, BrainStraw, boundary violated, forfeiting the match for his team. Some of the Commentators theorized that Warlords 'White Flagged' the match by boundarying because the ECM team may have been a hard counter match-up which was unwinnable for them, others, just assume that BrainStraw was bad, or maybe the Battle Venture was just too badass and scary to handle! Never-the-less SSC had taken one game and were now 1-2 to warlords.
Match four. Warlords choose to bring back the Rush Setup, SSC decided to bring back the Barghest comp. SSC choose to primary the logistic once again, and had problems breaking it again, the X-Large Ancillary shield Booster fit Scimitar was able to live into a reload. Some nail biting positioning was happening between the support ships, with the SSC vigil going 122km from the Arena, and then a Warlords Stiletto tackling him and stopping at 124km, 1km away from his death, SSC then slowly lost their support wing, and were unable to finish off the Scimitar again with the 2nd reload, although they did get most of his Armour HP this time. Realising that they probably had lost the match and were no longer able to kill the Scimitar as one of their Barghests dropped, the sole surviving Barghest was able to take down a warlords Svipul with him, since the Scimitar was forced so far away, a small victory for them, the only ship that died by their hands in the series. With this, Warlords won the match and the series 3-1.
SSC put up a great showing despite being out of their depth, and they will be taking home 10 EVE_NT Collides tournament skins with them to show for their effort. Warlords will move on to play in March VS the Winner of the Triumvirate vs Afterlife. game on the 10th of January at 20:00 UCT. You can find out more information on this match by visiting the collides section of this site.