‘Chiu on This’ is a short and regular opinion blast

Tomorrow ENCE will play BIG in the playoffs of StarLadder i-League Season 6. This is an interesting matchup as they have differing strengths and weaknesses across the board. I think ENCE have the more skilled players with a fundamental structure that they can play off of. BIG on the other hand seem to have more flaky firepower, but make up for it with their structured teamplay, especially on their CT-sides.

So in a given bo3, I think it’s more likely that the stars of ENCE will show up against the stars of BIG, especially as BIG should feel more pressure to win this one as they are a more established team. Another reason I favor ENCE is because of the potential map veto. I believe this is how it will likely go down:

ENCE Ban Cache

BIG Ban Mirage

ENCE pick Inferno

BIG pick Dust2

ENCE remove Overpass

BIG remove Nuke

Last Map Train

I think ENCE have the edge on inferno, have good chances to win both Dust2 and Train. While Dust2 could be considered a specialty map for BIG, it relies a lot on their CT-side economy and given the recent meta shifts with what North and Astralis have done on the map, I don’t think they will be able to put up a wall like they did at Cologne. Another thing to note is map veto philosophy. I think ENCE have generally been able to identify their strengths and weaknesses in the map pool so I think they always have as good of a draw as they can get whenever they play bo3s. BIG on the other hand sometimes overestimate how good they are on particular maps in their map veto. I could see a world where BIG could make a mistake in the map veto which would give ENCE an even better chance of closing it out. So while I don’t think it will be easy, I do think ENCE win 2-1 against BIG tomorrow.

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