Hey everyone!

So as you may have noticed, I’m trying something different and writing for The Game Haus. By now, all of the regular season games (barring any tiebreakers) have been played, and we have a fairly solid view of how the playoffs will be playing out. I would first like to give my congratulations to all of the teams that made playoffs, and wish Team Everest the best of luck in their relegation matches!

As there are only 6 teams left for me to rank, I am just going to be doing them in a straight 1 to 6 order. Obviously, these are just my own opinions and are based mostly off competition games, and slightly off scrim results that I’ve seen. As always, if I’ve made a mistake somewhere please send me a message or drop a comment, and feel free to comment your own predictions or whether you agree or disagree with a prediction I’ve made.

Rankings

Syndicate – This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody who has been a regular viewer of this season of HouseParty5v5. Syndicate are an incredibly strong team on an individual basis, and have a fantastic coaching staff to back it up. They hold the strongest regular season record, dropping only 3 games out of 18. With a new top laner coming in, the question for this team is whether or not that is going to disrupt their team synergy. White Lightning – Now, it may just look like I am copying the standings, but I genuinely believe that they are a very accurate reflection of the strength of each team. White Lightning has shown across this season a fairly consistent standard of play, focusing on getting early gold leads or staying even, and then using their superior map play to pressure opponents out of the game. I would elaborate more on this (my) team, but I feel that would be giving away too much information. Spooky Midnight – Spooky Midnight’s strength has not come off the back of outstanding individual play (although their individual skill has improves a lot over the course of the season), but rather from their macro-scale play, and how infrequently they make incorrect calls in the mid to late game. Never Clucky – I’m not exactly sure where Never Clucky has pulled their recent form from, but if they can continue it throughout playoffs they will be a force to be reckoned with. They have shown very strong individual play and early shot-calling, and then have fairly safely translated that into a number of dominating wins over traditionally strong teams. Industrious Gaming – If Industrious Gaming had actually shown up to all of their games this season, there is a solid chance they would have been in that 2nd place spot at the end of the regular season. Much like their league attendance, IG’s gameplay has been rather inconsistent, alternating between dominating lanes and winning off the back of that, or getting crushed in lanes and losing the game rapidly. This trend hints at a lack of macro-level ability, as they tend to rely on winning lanes to win games. Space Age Wizards – Space Age Wizards have never been a particularly flashy team, instead winning games through a solid early game and then choking out their opponents in the middle and later stages of a game. If last season is any indicator, they have also shown fairly strong adaptability in a series, which going into playoffs could make a big difference.

As always, thanks for reading everyone, and good luck to all the teams in the coming weeks!