zweih gets dream match-up with Spirit - BLAST Bounty playoffs preview

The first LAN of the year is always a special one, and BLAST Bounty is such a fitting way to start it.

It’s an uber-cool format that provides interesting storylines, laughs and fun Counter-Strike - but now we’re getting to the bit where it starts to get serious.

There’s eight teams left - four high seeds who you fancy to win it, and four lower seeds ready to spoil the party. The lower seeds got to pick their opponent again, just like the opening stages, which always adds a spicy element to these games.

And there's some beauties.

The perennially disappointing Team Liquid have somehow come out of the roster season unchanged, much to the confusion and dismay of many fans - both of Team Liquid and Counter-Strike as a whole. We’d be a lot more excited about this team if we hadn’t already seen them be underwhelming for months. On paper, they’re still really good. In the server, they aren’t.

Fortunately for them, they're playing against a slightly less disappointing Team Falcons who happen to have a stand-in for kyousuke. Falcons are a little underwhelming given their talent level, but they're a genuine top four team and would normally have enough to beat Liquid, but the stand-in makes things pretty close.

This was an easy pick for Liquid given that situation, and their best shot at a semi-final in a while.

HEROIC picked into FURIA, which we were theorising in an earlier draft of this preview before the matches were set (oops) would be as good a match-up stylistically for HEROIC as possible. FURIA are so reliant on the AWPer molodoy, so HEROIC not having one means that if they can make it a scrappy, fast-paced game with forcebuys and chaos they can potentially run away with the game.

That's pretty wishful thinking, though - HEROIC have a stand-in, and FURIA are one of the best teams in the world. molodoy will probably drop 50, now.

Somehow, GL kept a hold of their core over the winter, and come into the new year largely unchanged, except for the coach/IGL combo. Snax’s return went under-the-radar, naturally, but he knows how to use these players and seems to have already awoken hypex just a little bit. GL are not a top team, but they can cause problems.Their lack of real overwhelming firepower will always stop them being top tier, though.

Team Vitality have no such issues, and it's hard to see past a pretty dominant win for them. GamerLegion have a bit of a lack of firepower, while Vitality have more than NATO.

Closing out the quarters is probably the pick of the bunch - PARIVISION vs Spirit.

Jame’s merry band of misfits got a big upgrade when Spirit decided to give up on the zweih experiment, and they were not going to miss that chance. zweih replaced AW, who was the CS equivalent to a HM slave in a Pokemon game, and has hit the ground running. He looks very much the player that Spirit thought they were getting, and PARIVISION have gone from banana skin to potential top 15 team overnight.

Of the lower seeds, they might be the most likely to break into the top four.

Spirit are a very, very good team with obvious issues that largely do not matter. They have the best player in the world and another top five player, so who cares. It does mean that this is a potentially great match-up - beyond the obvious zweih revenge angle, PARIVISION are a very structured team who will prepare extremely well and have plans to stop what Spirit want to do, and Spirit are predictable and rely on one or two players to create chaos. PARIVISION can limit that chaos with structure and ruin Spirit’s gameplan, if all goes well.

Games start tomorrow with the first two semi-finals, and then a further two on Friday