Skorpions sting Comets to take top spot in Round 3 of ANZPL

Game 1 saw South Sydney Skorpions going head to head with Cairns Comets on Mines. 1st match Skorpions had map control, confining the Comets into the corner with a 2 flag easily winning a last minute brawl in the center for a defensive victory. 2nd match and on the attack it was fast and furious which found the better focus fire Skorpions pick up the attacking win to go 2-0 half way through.

Cairns Comets picking Steppes for their home map this week, won their attacking round punishing some late resets from Skorpions and finishing off the last resistance. On the defensive round, Comets sat back, waited and played the better vision game but once Skorpions pushed onto base 2 the rotations from the comets broke them up too much allowing the Skorpions to push through to take the attacking win and end the round 3-1.

In the New Zealand derby round, Auckland Archers who were so dominant last week met their southern brothers in arms, the Christchurch Conquerors on Sand River. The game was played fairly slow with Archers mainly up in the mountains  as Conquerors pushed onto the 2 cap. A late push from Slayer in the Progetto 65 into the mountains was punished opening up the game for Archers to push through for the win.

Match 2 saw the attention from the Archers focusing the 1 cap, but an over commit from the Conquerors resulted in their medium tanks caught out in the open giving Archers the upper hand. With only 80 seconds left in the clock the game was going to be decided by the Archers 2 B-C 25ts and their reload time. But it was perfectly timed as Archers pushed in and cleaned up the brawl with 4 seconds to go.

Himmelsdorf turned out to be an attackers paradise where both teams found their attacking wins punishing mistakes, setting up cross fire lines and lack of focus fire. But Archers walked away with the round finishing up 3-1.

Game 3 was Adelaide Action X and Perth Panthers both searching to find some form in the competition in Round 3. Himmelsdorf again and the Panthers picked up their attacking round through a nice dogfight in the K1 corner of the map to see the third attacking win on this map tonight.

Moving into the Action X attack and it was the banana round and hill they chose to control, looking for vision and sniping shots but Panthers had superior positions set up and were ready to defend picking off Action X as their disjointed efforts pushed in. 2-0 for Panthers heading into the break.

Back on Mines was a return to defensive bias. While Panthers took early control of the 1-2 line with their CS-63s early game it the was Action X's efforts in the other side of the map that saw so much HP bleed off and an easy defense with the HP advantage.

Action X went in with aggression to the 8-9 line with their attacking round whilst also keeping hill control but the Maus/B-C 25t combo Panthers sent to hill was able to take control back while JimmyGroken's Super Conqueror game play was quite impressive holding off the advancing medium tanks with randomized in his T110E5 providing fire support from the red line. Panthers win 3-1.

Last round saw the Sydney Sentinels take on Brisbane Bulldogs in what seems to be the Bulldogs normal late game spot so far in the competition. Sentinels picked Prokhorovka as their home map and easily repelled a 1-2 line push from the Bulldogs to pick up an early defensive win in match 1.

Bulldogs employed a similar 1-2 line defense for their round but the patient gameplay and vision game coming out from the Sentinels picked up the isolated STB-1 which prompted the counterpush from Bulldogs but was punished as some miss-communication saw Ravvi destroyed by a 'one shot' Obj 277 that he had turned away from assuming team mates would finish off. End of the day it was a clean up job for the Sentinels walking away with 2-0 into the break.

Back onto Steppes for the last matches of the day and Bulldogs focused the 1 cap. Sentinels showed their hand early with Zanin trapped out early to spot but taking the gun out of the game. But a fake out from the Bulldogs made it look late game that the medium tanks were going to chase down the light tank before doubling back and pushing into the Sentinels to brawl out. But it ended up being a capture win on the 2 cap after Rowendy missing a crucial reset in his CS-63 in the dying seconds of the game.

In the last match it was a 2 cap attempt from Sentinels in the last 2 minutes of the game, although Ravvi got wrecked early in the fight, using the repair kit just before getting tracked again and focused. The rest of the Bulldogs however pushed through the Sentinels attackers apart from Rainbow who managed to escape in the T-100 LT, parking up in front of the HyperX sign to see out the timer and draw the series 2-2.

Round 3 brought some interesting shift into the defensive bias meta. Where only 4 attacking wins were recorded in each round 1 and 2, round 3 posted 7 attacking wins (44%), leaving only 9 defensive wins for the round (56). Overall defensive wins still remain dominant at 33 (69%) vs 15 total attacking wins (31%).

Map wise we saw the first matches for the ANZPL season played on Himmelsdorf having been picked by 2 teams as the home map for round 3 but reinforces a defense bias with results for 1 attcking win (25) vs 3 defensive wins (75%).

The top 3 maps in ANZPL remain Mines (12) with an attack/defense win ratio of 17%/83%, Steppes (10) with 40%/60% and Murovanka (8) with 25%/75%).

Tanks picks showed no signs of change or shift from the established meta seeing the top 5 picks remain stable as the B-C25t, Super Conqueror, Object 277, CS-63 and T-100 LT with only a few other niche picks being seen throughout the matches.

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Until next week, see you on the battlefield!