You know you’re in turmoil when you get roster shuffle rumours before the playoffs have even started. You’re either a team, or you’re five guys waiting to split up. And right now, Goons feel a lot closer to the second one.

Meanwhile, Sedated already had their collapse. A resounding one at that. They started the season by completely imploding after Tanaka got caught cheating, after months of pure denial from all sides, followed by the classic five stages of grief, ending with the, “blame literally everyone else” phase.

For a bit, they looked like a team that wasn’t just ‘losing it’ mentally. They essentially had a foot out the door, of the CoD2 scene as a whole. Then, as far as we can tell, they fixed it. In true Sedated/X6 fashion, they drowned out the noise, made an ‘incredible’ acquisition in Caseman, put their head down, and started grinding.

Memes are nice, but at some point you have to admit the team just started making more sense. Finesse has withered the chaos and is getting comfortable in his dedicated spots, and suddenly, they’re beating teams like Awakening and giving Bricked a run for their money.

So now you’ve got one team that already went through the fire and came out structured, and another that looks like it’s just starting to fall apart. If Goons magically show up locked in, sure, maybe this gets scrappy. But if they look anything like a team already thinking about roster moves mid-match, this is not competitive. Granted, this might be a ‘one last ride’ type of scenario, where they block out all the noise and just enter the flow state.

Both these teams have a solid map pool and the bans should be pretty obvious. Sedated need to ban Matmata and Goons most likely take Toujane out of the pool, which means Breakout will assuringly be a part of the battleground these teams clash in. The Train/Railyard enigma will be an interesting one. Sedated have a dilemma on their hand with who will be taking control of the ban/pick phase, or if they so choose to take one of Train/Railyard out of the map pool. With Tipzy deep in Magnum‘s dms ever since the panzerfaust incident, lobbying against Vallente, Sedated loses one of their best sleeper maps in the pool, making it harder to edge out their advantage against a well-seasoned Goons team.

Goons have too much talent for it to be a one sided affair. EmoSam will need to step up to the plate and listen to some positive vibes playlist before the game, and Zexi and cruizer need to show up ready to eat and anchor down on german on every single map. Athn‘s unpredictability and 1200‘s predictability are like the Yin and Yang of the team, and both need to figure out their timings to string solid rounds together.

Expect a big match from Telly to solidify himself as the best ‘self proclaimed’ dedicated shotty on Burgundy.

Y’all Enjoy.

Prediction:

Burgundy: 13-9 – Goons

Breakout: 13-10 – Sedated

Dawnville: 13-8 – Sedated