6th Alliance Tournament Finals: Saturday

Breakfast with the wife and awesome pew-pew. I love the weekend.

Again, my calls are here. The match grid is here.

1st match: I'm not surprised R.U.R. pulled it out. They had another awesome setup. No surprise.

2nd match: WE COME FOR OUR PEOPLE!!!

3rd match: I have a feeling Marauders are going to go the way of the Destroyer, once the difference between PvE and PvP begin to fade away. Good win for Unaffiliated.

4th match: Close match, and the first of what will be many wrong calls by me. Good win by Firmus Ixion and a good try by The Church.

5th match: Hump-my-monitor goodness! I'm so glad the Privateers didn't make it through. From what I could tell it came down to poor FCing, since the DT's Abaddons were not called targets at all, when taking them out early would have killed DT's DPS potential. Oddest Rokh setup ever. Roc would be happy to see a Firetail, though I'm not sure what it was doing other than flying around really really fast.

6th match: Ishtar Jesus fails again. I'm still not sure why we've seen people rely so much on this ship but it's not really working very well. Bad choices with drone use as well lead to a clean victory for G00DFELLAS.

7th match: I think the critical points here were the DPS of the Paladins and the overly spread-out damage from G4L. Cry Havoc are the popular favorites to take the whole tourney, and they showed why in this match. If the Paladins had gone down faster, G4L might have taken it. CH very wisely mixed crystals to expand their effective range while not losing too much DPS, which to me flies in the face of people who think any setups that mix ranges or active and passive are fail. By biggest regret here was the lack of double-entendres from the commentators, which were so fun last time G4L fought.

8th match: Wow. The Five's win here was extremely convincing. I'm not entirely sure why V3 lost so badly, but I'm guessing it's a combo of a lack of proper FCing and strong EW from The Five. If I were the V3 FC, I would have picked off the Caracals first thing, them being slightly fragile. The Rattlesnake was a little bit of a surprise, but it's funny that it started looting near the end of the match.

9th match: I'm really impressed how well the Fleet Stabbers and Vagabonds are doing in this tournament. Once the smaller ships were gone, the Apocs had no chance against foes with the kind of speed Fleet Stabbers can put out. Great show by HUZZAH.

10th match: Huge battleship slugfest. Smart FCing to take out those Griffins right away, since their EW could be a huge problem. Agony's FC deserves kudos for that match.

11th match: Evoke were last year's winners, and they just barely managed to pull through. Normally I'd vote for Fourth District, them being RPers, and they really had a strong showing, it being neck and neck for quite a while. One of the most entertaining matches I've ever seen, especially with that crazy Vigil. Both teams deserve to move on just for pure guts. Great work all around.

12th match: Two great RP alliances, and I'd be happy with either going through. The match started with 15 Fleet Stabbers, and almost every ship on the field was Minmatar. Because the setups were so similar, IMHO it all came down to FC skill. A lesson to learn from EM's loss is to be careful with smartbombs. Remember it's an AOE weapon and damages everything in range, including your friendlies. Kudos to Star Fraction for the win.

Someone PLEASE write a guide to "HERO TANKING"!

13th match: More awesome Fleet Stabbers! Now I want one. I find it odd that a team would choose a Claymore over a Sleipnir. In fact, if it were my call I'd bring 2 Sleipnirs and then fill out the rest with Fleet Stabbers. Regardless, great win for AAA. HUN was completely overwhelmed.

14th match: 15 Navy Caracals? They're OK, I would have chosen something else. That Huginn was more useful than I thought it would be. This is a good kind of grudge match. These teams want nothing more than to kick each others' asses, but there's no malice. It's called good gamesmanship, and there are a lot of EVE players who need to learn about it. Gratz to Cult of War for the win.

15th match: More Fleet Stabbers? SHOCKING! Actually I'm not impressed with either team, though the FC for the Wrong Alliance did the right thing in taking those Ishkurs out before focusing on the Apocs. I think a lot of people disregard Hurricanes, but they've done very well in this tourney. Good win for The Wrong Alliance.

16th match: Ospreys? Really? This smacks of an FC just trying to stand out in ways other than winning. I was relatively sure Pandemic Legion was going to beat them, but I don't think they expecting the setup-o-lulz.

My calls for tomorrow's first matches are:

- Ushra'Khan over R.U.R.
- Unaffiliated over Firmus Ixion
- G00DFELLAS over Dead Terrorists
- Cry Hovoc over The Five
- Agony over HUZZAH
- Star Fraction over Evoke
- Against All Authorities over Cult of War
- Pandemic Legion over The Wrong Alliance

I'll post after every round of matches tomorrow, and Monday I'll go over best moments and lessons learned.

Hope you enjoyed today's matches. EPIC thanks to all combatants, everyone at CCP, the EVE TV team, commentators and everyone at the 3 EVE radio stations.

o7