IntroductionLEGACY PLAYOFFS?! YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT LEGACY PLAYOFFS?! Since every other series got the playoffs treatment last week, this has become a Legacy-only post. All of the players and teams included here made the Legacy playoffs. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. If you would like to read more about how this is calculated, read the blog that Marty wrote explaining how it all works! Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Let’s finish our venture out into the Dark Beyond. legacy Time for the final PPR of the season! We’ll take a look at how our top 8 teams and their top players have shook out at the end of the Legacy regular season, as well as how our legacy playoff bracket and seeding compares to the PPR ranking. Finally, I’ll round it out with my predictions for our upcoming bracket - please don’t @EPICat when I mispredict your team!
Defias vs Do A Barrel Roll Defias is the definite favorite going into this playoff season. With their impressive 7-1 record, league high 142 points (17.75 PPW), place on top of the team power rankings, and three players in the top ten (grumpyninja leading the way at 7-1, with Nice Jewish Owl and Potwasher both at 6-2). Do A Barrel Roll is also a force to be reckoned with, however. LtCavalry sits in 2nd place of the player rankings with his 7-1 record, and the team has received the recent support of Maxiebon1234 dropping into the 2 seed while continuing his rampage of Pro and Wild where he didn’t drop a single match the whole season. As strong as Defias is, I think Do A Barrel Roll is the team to take them down. No matter the result, it will be a close and well-fought match, so I give Do A Barrel Roll a 15-13 victory. Anomaly Perplexed Me? vs Los Justin Hermanos I have no biases going into this match, and Anomaly Perplexed Me? will surely win 20-0! Seriously though, this will be a hard fought match between two similarly strong teams both coming off of extremely strong seasons. Los Justin Hermanos sit in the bronze position of the team rankings, led by Pokemon661’s 6-2 record. Anomaly Perplexed Me? have dropped into 5th place after a couple of no contest matches last week - they are partly carried by CalebEM’s 7-1 record (which somehow didn’t make the top 10). I’m excited to see how badly APM beats up the Justins :) 7 Mile Spanking Machine vs Anaconda’s Preferred Meal This is a really interesting match to predict. 7 Mile Spanking Machine has been one of the most consistent teams all season, ending up with a 6-2 record and in 4th place of the team rankings, while APM struggled the first half of the season before kicking into high gear the past few weeks. Aharmlessdog and SuperSenter’s 6-2 records (matching with the team!) are helping carry them, while LotusKnight’s 5-2 record for APM has helped secure their playoff spot. Part of APM’s strategy in their team composition is their double 550 players, leading to a stacked top end, while 7 Mile Spanking Machine has done the exact opposite with only a 167 PR difference between their 1 and 5 seeds. I think this will be another closely contested match (I sound like a broken record, I know), but I believe 7 Mile will edge out APM with a 16-11 score. DadLegend vs DaSTUBBS For our final matchup, we see our 2nd place team, DadLegend, take on the 2nd place team of the red conference, DaSTUBBS. Halohalo of DadLegend rounds out the podium for his team, while Ozmonaut of DaSTUBBS sits in 6th place with his 6-2 record. While both teams are strong, we have seen some outstanding performance from DadLegend this season, while we just saw DaSTUBBS stumble in their final week and almost lose their playoff spot to STD. Who did this final stumble come from? DadLegend themselves. I expect to see this result repeated, so I’ll give this match to DadLegend with a 18-9 score. Bonus matches APM? 13-12 Do A Barrel Roll Just running back our regular season score here, this class is sure to be close! DadLegend 15-12 7 Mile I think the Dads are on a roll right now, and will take 7 Mile in stride in their quest to win finals APM? 16-11 DadLegend These totally unbiased reviews from me have come to a head with the inevitable APM? Victory! In all seriousness, though, I think this is one of the closest and most stacked group of playoff teams I’ve seen in THL since I’ve been here. I expect to see many of these face-offs going down to the final match. Good luck to all legacy teams, and thanks for an incredible regular season! See you all in a few months for season 30!! -EPICat
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introductionPLAYOFFS?! YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS?! Outside of Legacy, all of our series will only be featuring players/teams that made the playoffs. This will be the final Power Rankings for this season with all of our series. We will still be releasing them for just Legacy until Legacy enters the playoffs. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. If you would like to read more about how this is calculated, read the blog that Marty wrote explaining how it all works! Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Let’s finish our venture out into the Dark Beyond. legacy Hello THL, it’s time for the penultimate (one of my favorite words) Legacy PPR! We’ll talk through the significant shakeups in our player and team rankings — the most lopsided so far — as well as my odds and predictions for our upcoming playoff finalists. Let’s start off with the Gold Conference! After going five for five in their cross-conference endeavors this past week, we see Gold teams make up a massive chunk of the top 10. Strictly Business shot into 8th place for their first top 10 appearance, as well as ET C’Thun remaining in 9th. Towards the top of our rankings, Do A Barrel Roll moved into 4th place with their victory and Anomaly Perplexed Me? found their way onto the podium for the first time. APM? is in a dominant position going into the final week, with an 18 point lead over 3rd place. Only needing 5 points to clinch a playoff birth, I give APM? A 99% chance of moving on (yes, these odds are completely arbitrary - there is no actual math going behind them). As for the second playoff spot, we see Do A Barrel Roll presently in 2nd place with an 11 point lead (and tiebreakers) over Strictly Business and a 14 point lead over ET C’Thun. While these numbers are technically possible to allow Strictly Business or ET C’Thun to move into 2nd, it’s difficult due to them needing an extremely strong week and for Do A Barrel Roll to flop. I give Do A Barrel Roll a 94% chance to advance, Strictly Business a 5% chance, and ET C’Thun a 2% chance. Let’s move on to the Silver Conference. Despite being the conference that suffered all 5 losses to the Gold teams, we still see three different Silver teams represented in the top 10, though they all dropped several spots. Los Justin Hermanos had the biggest shift, dropping from an impressive 2nd all the way down to 7th, while 7 Mile Spanking Machine and The Ceaseless Expanse Ate Our Team dropping 3 places each. This conference is much clearer as to who our playoff teams will be. Los Justin Hermanos needs only 2 points to clinch their spot, so I’ll give them a 99.9% chance, and 7 Mile Spanking Machine only needs 3, so I’ll also give them a 99.9% chance. Yes, this leaves The Ceaseless Expanse Ate Our Team with only a measly 0.2% chance, but honestly, that’s probably higher then their actual odds. Next, our penultimate (I’m gonna use the word whenever I want, nobody is stopping me heheh) conference - Red! We are back to the “average” (don’t @ me with the math please) number of top 10 teams from this conference in 2. Defias, in fact, is our number 1 team! With a 6-1 record (the best in the league) and an entire 125 points or 17.86 PPW (also the best in the league), Defias is a force to be reckoned with. While they didn’t have their playoff spot clinched at the start of the week, an early week win has brought them to 23 points over the third place team, Standard THL Degenerates, making them the first team to secure themselves into playoffs. Congratulations to Defias and their 100% odds to move on! As for the second spot, DaSTUBBS (who also jumped up 3 places in the Power Rankings) has a 13 point lead over STD without any tiebreaks, meaning that they need 11 points to move on. While it is once again possible for STD to break into second with a sweep and a loss from DaSTUBBS (they are facing the leader of Blue Conference and our 3rd place team, DadLegend), I still find it highly unlikely to happen. I give DaSTUBBS a 94% chance to continue and STD a 4% chance. Ok, just one more conference to go (and thank you for bearing with me so far!). Blue Conference is probably our closest playoff race yet, despite them only having 1 team in the top 10, the aforementioned DadLegend. Speaking of this powerful team, they have the easiest job to clinch playoffs yet (besides Defias who already made it). With only 1 point, DadLegend’s tiebreaker over 8 Handed Death Chop clinches their spot in playoffs, so I’ll give them a 99.9999% chance to make it. As for our 2nd spot, Anaconda’s Preferred Meal, sat 9 points above 8 Handed Death Chop at the beginning of the week. With APM’s tiebreaks, they only need 14 points to make it to playoffs. While this is our closest race in the league, it still isn’t very close, so I give APM a 92% chance to move on. 8 Handed Death Chop needs an incredible week against the current strongest team, Defias, so they get an 8.0001% chance to advance to playoffs. Finally, let’s take a quick look at our players. We see even more shifts around, with winning and losing players moving several spots each. We also see 3 new players in the top 10 - CalebEM (go APM?), Ozmonaut, and aharmlessdog. Only Do A Barrel Roll’s LtCavalry and Defias’ grumpyninja remain undefeated as we move into our final week. Grumpyninja has a significantly better game score, going 21-6 across the season (congrats!), while LtCavalry is 21-10. If grumpyninja pulls out a final win, they will be our future MVP, but a loss could leave it in LtCavalry’s hands. Thanks for making it all the way through this upcoming playoff rant. I’m looking forward to our final writeup next week, highlighting our 8 playoff teams and the top players featured on each. Good luck to all THL’ers in the final week of the Legacy regular season! -EPICat hero Playoffs are here and only 6 teams remain. First let's look at who made it out alive from each conference. In the Teal conference we have Defias and A Poulderfist Mountain. From the Purple Conference we have Defy Us along with F2L Black. Finally, from the Orange conference we have Wraiths of the Beyond and Just Three Adjourning Crewmates. A huge round of applause to the 6 teams that were able to make it this time around. May the best of them win the playoffs. I love a good underdog story and Defy Us had a good one this season. They did not get their first week win until the 4th week of the season. However, they kept their spirits up and were able to dominate weeks 4-6 with no issue. On the flip side, Defias was able to have a great season not losing a single week going into our playoffs. Another major congratulations to all the teams that made the playoffs this season. 3 of the top 10 players were able to have an undefeated run into the playoffs. Congrats to Classy, NotBamity, and Ozmanaut for not losing a single match this season. We will see if any of them can continue this streak all the way to the final round. Finally lets look a little bit into our matchups for week 1 of the playoffs. For matchups we have Defias and Wraiths of the Beyond with a bye, APM vs. F2L Black, and Defy us Vs. Just Three Adjourning Crewmates. Looks like some pretty interesting matchups for the week and we will see which teams remain on top with us in the next week. -amazingoo pro Congratulations to the Top 6 teams that made the cut. I'm going to give my "famous" Baseless Educated Wishes as the team reviews in a moment. So, let's jump into a review of the Dark Beyond Pro Series undefeated players: Maxiebon1234 (WashedUp) 7-0 End of list. Petition to have Blizzard change 'The Year of Pegasus' to 'Year of Maxiebon1234'. Maxie ended undefeated in Pro Series and Wild series and both teams are entering playoffs, and his Legacy team is still in the hunt for playoffs. Note for any Pro teams that will be matched against Washed Up this playoffs: Win with seeds 2 through 5, because your 1 seed needs help! Alright, enough Maxie-Stanning. Congratulations also to Pyrollama (Cheese Mongers United) 6-1 and rebobson (F2L) 5-2. Incredible seasons that would have been first place performances in many prior seasons. Now for the playoff matchups: F2L (4th Place) VERSUS Ada's Litter (5th Place) On paper, these two teams are nearly mirror images of one another. Player match wins are identical, player match losses are identical. Ada's Litter got beat up on by Washed Up last week, while F2L defeated last year's Pro champs in BrushyTuna. With the momentum going in F2L's favor, I give them a SLIGHT advantage this week. WHODACK'S BASELESS EDUCATED WISH: F2L 15, Ada's 13 Washed Up (3rd Place) VERSUS ET Yogg-Saron (6th Place) ET Yogg-Saron squeaked into the playoffs due to their solid play in the first half of the season. The last few weeks has been pretty tough. And, they're up against Washed Up led by my GOAT vote, Maxiebon1234. I expect Maxie to do Maxie things, can the rest of the team pull out the upset? I'm leaning no, but prove me wrong! WHODACK'S BASELESS EDUCATED WISH: Washed Up 17, ETYS 11 Good luck to all! -Whodack wild Welcome to playoffs! Anxious Puckin' Mess went nearly-undefeated, losing only to my own team, Wild THL Fanatics, and as such have earned their spot at the top of the power rankings. In second is another strong team returning from last season, the Staff of the Five Dubs. Hawk 2's 3-3 record may not seem elite but they've kept it up against the best teams and dominated everybody else, granting them the final spot on the podium. WTF rounds out our playoff teams off the podium but by no means out of contention. Any one of these four teams have the chance to go all the way.
As for the players, the story is once again the incredible depth and consistency of the Staff. From the 1 to the 5, every player is one to be feared. In fact, one-seed Copa is ranked "only" fifth after getting swept by maxie last week. He'll be looking for a bounce-back week against WTF 1 seed Devalion, commonly referred to as the "handsomest man in THL", whose greatness knows no bounds and whose skill is unmatched. Oh, sorry, you mean we have to talk about the players who've actually been winning? *Ahem*, anyways. Copa is joined by wild newcomer Filtrophobe and longtime performer NJO (Nice Jewish Owl) in the top five. The three of them form a combined effort that makes getting through the Staff a challenge each and every week. Of course, maxiebon1234, the Aussie sensation, grandmaster, and recent world championship competitor, has been tearing up the competition to the tune of 6-0. In fact, his thirteen match wins spread out across Wild and Pro are somehow more than his total of twelve GAME losses between the series. Any time he plays, you can pencil it in for an APM lead, and his dominance is the key reason why APM earned that one seed in the Dark Beyond. But I'd be remiss not to mention THL veteran OTZaixia, who took the dissolution of F2L in stride and has made a home for himself at the front of free agent team Hawk 2. With wins over players as good as SchmoopieDady and Sinferno, you can never count the combo king out of a match. I'm excited to see the OTZ vs Maxie match this week - it should be one of the best on the docket! Unfortunately, with playoffs starting this does mean this will be the last Wild power rankings until the next season. I hope you guys have enjoyed reading these as much as I've enjoyed writing them! See you in the playoffs and, as always, happy hunting lions. -Devalion introductionTHE ZERG ARE ENCROACHING FAST! As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. If you would like to read more about how this is calculated, read the blog that Marty wrote explaining how it all works! Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Let’s continue our venture out into the Dark Beyond. LEGACY There’s only two weeks left of the regular season, and the teams are getting more and more competitive! We had a couple big upsets this week, with both 7 Mile Spanking Machine and Defias losing their undefeated records. The only other large change comes from Anomaly Perplexed Me?’s sweeps over Golden Wisps, causing both teams to jump in the rankings. Most top 2 conference teams have a significant lead going into playoffs, with only Anaconda’s Preferred Meal being 3 points behind the Golden Wisps offering a tight playoff race. Will that change as we move into the final week or will the top teams continue to dominate? Looking at players instead, we’ve lost another 4 perfect records. Oxob3333, LtCavalry, and grumpyninja remain at the top with 2 more matches to go and an MVP title on the line. Looking at our plethora of 5-1 players that remain in the top 10, we see many familiar names from a variety of teams, as well as three new faces in Disagr33ment, pokemon661, CritEcal. I’m looking forward to seeing how these final few weeks shape up! -EPICat hero We are getting closer and closer to the end of the regular season and a lot of teams are going to be a close call on making the playoffs or not. Wraiths Of the Beyond has risen to be our top team this week. In fact all our top 3 teams of the week are the same, just shifted around a little bit. Just Three Adjourning Crewmates and A Paternal Milestone were also able to join us this week. On the players' side of things, the top 8 players remained on the leaderboard while SuperHero and YellowDart joined in 9th and 10th place. Our top 5 players remain undefeated as well. Pretty impressive this late into the season! It is looking to be a very competitive season as all the teams and players on the top are remaining in the top as the weeks go on. We will see if anyone is able to knock our undefeated players down this coming week. -Amazingoo pro It's getting tight at the top! Despite a decisive win from Identified Pet Tracking this week, Cheese Mongers United got tired of sitting in second place and leapfrogged Pet Tracking to claim the top spot. With a decisive-er win over F2L, the Cheese Mongers are now in the driver's seat going into the second half of the season. Can they maintain their hold on the Black Conference and the Pro League? We'll see if Three Seed University can weaken the Cheese Mongers Grasp in their match up this week. In the fight for third place, BrushyTuna got upended by the Staff of the Five Dubs and have fallen back into the 4th seed. Ada's Litter squaked out a win over Hearthstone Queens and find themselves in third place once again. But, right behind them are BrushyTuna in 4th, Washed Up in 5th, and F2L in 6th - so the playoff spots are still wide open! In our Player Power Rankings, Maxiebon1234 (Washed Up) extended his record to 6-0 while also beating me in our Wild matchup. (I'm not mad, you're mad.) Pyrollama (Cheese Mongers United) and Dagda (Interstellar Strategists) sit in 2nd and 3rd place each with one loss on the season. And, Wild9 is the only other player with 5 wins to remain undefeated. Great season so far, good luck to all! -Whodack wild As we enter the final week of the regular season, the Wild Power Rankings have mostly stabilized. The top three teams have been dominant this season, hoarding the podium spots to themselves since Power Rankings began 3 weeks ago. Likewise, the top 4 spots on the players side are the only players to make it to this point with 1 or fewer losses. If you want to keep up with the best here, you’ll have to bring your A game.
Staff of the Five Dubs and Anxious Puckin’ Mess make up our marquee match this week. The two will face off to see who clinches first place and dodges Wild THL Fanatics in the first round of playoffs next week. Barring a monumental collapse, DoctorBOMD’s team have the 3 seed locked. If you only have time for one match, look out for Copa vs maxiebon1234. They’re the only players left undefeated this season, and whoever wins is sure to end up on the top of our final Wild Power Rankings. -MartyB introductionFIRST THL POWER RANKINGS OF 2025! As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. If you would like to read more about how this is calculated, read the blog that Marty wrote explaining how it all works! Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Let’s continue our venture out into the Dark Beyond. legacy Into Week 5 we go! There were a couple major shake-ups this week, including a new #1 team. DadLegend, with another resounding victory that brought them to a series high of 98 points, has bounded into the top spot of the Legacy team Power Rankings. This spot opened up due to the Golden Wisps taking a loss and jumping down into 5th place. The other major change we can see is The Ceaseless Expanse Ate Our Team jumping up into 7th place with a tie against fellow high ranking Silver Conference team, Los Justin Hermanos. Taking their previous spot is our only new team in the rankings, ET C’Thun. As we move into the final three weeks of the season, all teams are officially finished with in-conference play. This means that every race to make playoffs will not be decided by any final matches between the top teams of a conference, but instead solely on how a team can compete with teams across the entire series, and perhaps a bit of luck in the strength of opponents you end up facing. With half of the teams being in this top ten ranking, we should expect about 7 matches between the top teams in the next three weeks (ChatGPT did the math, don’t ask me how). Instead, a total of 9 matches will occur between the current top teams, with DadLegend and Da STUBBS clocking in one each week for some of the strongest final schedules. 7 Mile Spanking Machine, Defias, Los Justin Hermanos, and ET C’Thun each play only one match versus other top teams, giving them a theoretical advantage in racking up the points as we approach playoffs. I’m looking forward to seeing how all these matchups shake out as we get closer and closer to the end of the regular season and every team seeks to find their spot in playoffs! Moving to our top ten players, we see our undefeated players move from a whopping eleven down to only seven, who are now all included in our PAR listing. Grumpyninja continues to lead this ranking with a 5-0 match score and an incredible 15-4 game score. He is one of five players in Red Conference to make the top ten, including two of his teammates (Nice Jewish Owl and Potwasher, shout out to Defias for fielding three top players!) None of these players will face each other this week, but I’m looking forward to seeing who can keep their perfect record and who will end up falling as we approach the end of the season and the eventual crowning of our Legacy MVP! -EPICat hero Still lots of competition in the hero series this season. Defias remains on top this week with Wraiths of the Beyond in a close second. All the top teams from last week mostly stayed on the top of the leaderboard while shifting a few spots up or down. Two new teams also joined us this week in the 9th and 10th place spots. The teal conference contains our top 2 players so far in hero with EPICat in first and NotBamity in second. Meanwhile the brown conference occupies most of the middle spots. Will Defias remain the top team for three weeks in a row? We will just have to wait and see. -amazingoo pro Checking in on the Pros, the top two teams stayed in their positions - Unidentified Pet Tracking at #1, Cheese Mongers United at #2 - while a "newcomer" breaks into the three seed. "Newcomer" is only so fitting for a prolific team like BrushyTuna. But, they've overcome an early loss and found their way back onto the podium. Team Tuna is taking advantage of an Ada's Litter slip up against the Interstellar Strategists last week - but Ada's Litter is still sitting strong in the 4th seed and F2L reminded everyone they're still a THL force and jumped into the 5th seed. Our undefeated players list grows shorter. Still standing are: Maxiebon1234 of Washed Up, Dagda of Interstellar Strategists, eswaff of Unidentified Pet Tracking, and Wild9 of Cheese Mongers United. How long can this go on? Good luck wrapping up this extended holiday week! -Whodack wild Happy New Year and welcome to week six of the Wild Power Rankings! With Wild THL Fanatics picking up its first loss at the hands of the Staff of the Five Dubs, the race for first has heightened up. At press time, the Staff appears to have a slight edge over Anxious Puckin' Mess, but we can't count out WTF, who will be rested and ready for revenge exiting their bye week.
There are still three undefeated players remaining, and it's no surprise to see Maxie and Copa at the top, but in Filtrophobe's first wild season, the Aussie has been tearing apart the competition. He and Copa provide a one-two punch that makes the Staff a team to be feared in any week. Another rookie, UsernameABCD, was undefeated as well before a loss to Maxie last week, which at this point is a rite of passage for any wild newbie (don't ask me how I know, sadge). Rounding out our top five, in fourth place, is OTZaixia, who's been keeping Hawk 2 in playoff contention as they've navigated a rough first half. Man, it's great to be back. See y'all in week seven, and, as always, happy hunting lions -Devalion Hey everyone! Over the years, a common question asked about Power Rankings is how PAR (Points Above Replacement) is calculated. The formula itself is fairly straightforward, but relies heavily on opponent performance to calculate. It’s gone through a few different iterations over time with PAR scores varying slightly. The current formula is what I consider the “final” version, something I plan to stick with for the foreseeable future, so it’s finally time to share all of the details. Before we get into the formula, I want to establish what the current PAR system was made to do.
IntroductionWELCOME BACK TO THL POWER RANKINGS! Same crew, with the addition of the fabulous EPICat, same formulas, slick new visuals. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Let’s venture out into the Dark Beyond. legacy We’re halfway through the Legacy regular season, with some clear teams moving towards the top of our power rankings! Only two undefeated teams remain, 7 Mile Spanking Machine and Defias. An undefeated season for them would involve taking down fellow top ranked teams Do A Barrel Roll and DadLegend, respectively. Speaking of DadLegend, our current highest points holder across all series, they narrowly lost out on the coveted strongest team position to the Golden Wisps, a team they beat in week 1 and are fighting for the upper seed in the Legacy Blue Conference with. Blue Conference is putting on quite a competitive show, with an average of 59.4 points or 14.85 PPW across all teams within (that’s more than some of the teams on this top 10 list!). This high average is mostly due to the top ranked teams, Golden Wisps and DadLegend, taking 23 point weeks in their out-of-conference matches. Next week, I expect to see some serious shifts after the top 10 team matchups of Los Justin Hermanos vs The Ceaseless Expanse Ate Our Team, Do A Barrel Roll vs Anomaly Perplexed Me?, and DadLegend vs 8 Handed Death Chop ends up shaking out. Looking at our players, there’s a total of eleven people still with undefeated records 4 weeks in! (Honorable mentions to DragonRider, Potwasher, TwoStarMako, and ElectricSheepCity who were not viewed favorably enough by PAR to make the list but have played three or more matches and are also undefeated!) The list is headed by grumpyninja with an incredible 12-3 record so far, including two clean conquest sweeps. LtCavalry follows close behind with a 12-6 game score, followed by the top two seeds of DadLegend, KingViking23 and Halohalo. Extra shoutout to Jett for refusing to bring Shaman so far this season (all other top 10 players brought it every week) and breaking the meta a little! For next week, I’m looking forward to seeing how many of these undefeated players can retain their position on the list. oxob3333 and ElectricSheepCity’s faceoff will surely remove one of them, but winning every Legacy match in a season is a tall task — which player will have the persistence in prep, skill of navigating their way through a match, and most importantly, the luck of drawing the right cards at the right time? -EPICat hero The ever competitive Hero series is off to the races once again, featuring some very familiar faces at the top of the standings. The long-standing THL org, Defias, leads the charge with the only 4-0 record in Hero. They are followed closely by Just Three Adjoining Crewmates and A Poulderfist Mountain. Notably, Wraiths of the Beyond is sitting in 5th place with the only other undefeated record, albeit at 3-0. On the player side of the power rankings, we have a predominant amount of players from the Teal and Orange conferences with a only 2 players representing Purple. Defias tops the chart over here as well with NotBamity representing. This is a list that we could see shake up frequently from week to week given the competitive nature of the series. There are some interesting storylines to pay attention to this season in Hero. Most notably, we have 2 sets of teams with similar, yet opposite, names. Who will come out on top this season in the head-to-head: Defias vs. Defy Us or one of the APMs vs. MPA? Looking at this week, we have one key match to pay attention to and it is that aforementioned APM vs. MPA match-up. Will the Chewie-led APM come out on top or will they be thwarted by the copycats led by EPICat? -TwoStarMako pro The THL Dark Beyond season is off and running, welcome back THLers! The Pro series is starting to take shape, with some new teams finding themselves in the top spots! Unidentified Pet Tracking find themselves in the coveted #1 spot due to less than 1% point of GW over Cheese Mongers. Cheese Mongers in the #2 spot are undefeated (ties aren't losses!) so they are sniffing at the #1 spot and have an on-paper favorable match-up against Staff of the Five Dubs. Staff was one of the top seeds last season but find themselves off to a rough start. Is this a classic trap match for the Mongers this week? Rounding out the Top 3 we have Ada's Litter whose only loss is to the leaders, UPT. The Litter have a favorable matchup against the 0-4 Interstellar Strategists, we'll see if the Strategists can get some wins from their teammates not named Dagda this week. In 4th place we have Three Seed University. Boy, will they make my life easier if they can clinch the Three Seed next week. And Brushy Tuna is off to a slower start than last season, but still positioned to cruise upward. We have a good list of undefeated players in the Top Player Rankings: Aetherian of Ada's Litter, Dagda of Interstellar Strategists, maxiebon1234 of WashedUp, eswaff of Unidentified Pet Tracking, and Pyrollama of Cheese Mongers United. Good luck to them and to everyone going into Week 5! -Whodack Wild It's time for the THL Power Rankings for Wild! Atop the standings is veteran team WTF, followed closely behind by eye opening newcomers ET N'Zoth. Staff of the 5 Dubs, APM and Super Cereal Clowns round out the teams in the playoff hunt. Clowns are sporting 46 points (tied with APM in 4th) but sport an 0-4 record to date, speaking to many close weeks not quite breaking their way. Hawk 2 and Worgen Geasers round out the bottom, sporting some good players but not the results desired to keep pace.
Looking forward, the storylines are set. WTF has always been a team good enough to beat anyone but also lose to anyone. Will they find consistency this season? Will ET N'Zoth still outperform expectations despite a lack of thl experience and variety of lineups? Will Staff lean on some deep THL experience and make a finals run? Will APM continue to underperform, despite having an MT Champion and THL hofers on the roster? Will Super Cereal Clowns find a late push that matches points with results? If I could watch one match this week, it would be maxiebon1234(apm) vs UsernameABCD(ET N'Zoth). Both players are undefeated combo-nerds, and the match might look more like a Wild West Quick Draw Duel than a Hearthstone game. -Schmoopiedady introductionPLAYOFFS? YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS? PLAYOFFS? YOU KIDDING ME? I JUST HOPE WE CAN WIN A GAME! We’re at the end here, folks. It’s playoffs time. This will be our final power rankings for the Perils in Paradise era. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. Feedback is welcome as we continue to iron out the kinks in the format and stylizing of this blog series. legacy
The end is nigh. The ever-competitive Legacy series is entering its final moments. Obviously, I have some bias here going into the playoffs. How could I not? McMarin’s is going to eat everyone else alive. From an objective standpoint, I think the most likely upset we could see in round 1 is McMarin’s over The Dog Ate Our Team Name. I only say this because I feel like the other matchups are going to go the way they’re seeded while with this matchup we have 2 teams that are very evenly match with only a slight numbers advantage on one side. Could we see FiddleFyre Festival taking out JUSTINx4? Sure. Do I think it will honestly happen? No. Do I want it to happen? Yes, but the Justins are just too strong I fear. This is going to be a very interesting playoff race to keep an eye on whether you’re in it or not. -Mako hero
Playoffs are here and only our top 4 teams remain! Alternative Pet Merchants easily made it with an impressive 15 point advantage over Defias. Mistah Lah Vistah, Baby had a close call, but clutched a 16-8 win in the final week before playoffs securing their spot. Player wise we gotta give credit to Fsorace1! Not only is he our top player of the week but they made playoffs in Legacy and Pro as well! Alternative Pet Merchants has almost their full team on our top player list this week. Playoffs are always an exciting time in the season and any team could go all the way. We will have to see which team comes out on top over the playoff weeks! -amazingoo pro
We have a playoff cut, let the real games begin! Congratulations to Cheese Mongers and F2L for clinching the top two spots and the bye that comes along with it. Enjoy the week off while the rest of us figure out if we still force Big Spell Mage or not. Onto the matchups: Staff of the Five Dubs vs The Terrible Tourists Kudos to the Tourists for grabbing a playoff spot in this field of top competition. They've played well throughout the season, winning big when it counted to finish with an even record. All that said, I don't see them topping the Staff this week. Staff had three players contending for the undefeated record most the season (Empol, Copa, Pace). And while each of them ended 5-1, I don't see multiple upsets happening for the Tourists. Whodack's Baseless Educated Wish: Staff 17 - Tourists 11 A Possible Miscalculation vs BrushyTuna I hope they stream some of this series. RonMexico v CalebEM? Fsorace1 v Dagda? Yes, please! This series has the makings of a THL classic. And, I see it coming down to the last match. I'm going to give BrushyTuna the edge on this one. RonMexico is still on an undefeated streak. And when McBanterFace is your 4 seed your team should be well positioned for a good playoff run. Whodack's Baseless Educated Wish: BrushyTuna 15 - APM 12 -Whodack wild
layoffs have been set in stone for a long time. The top two teams, Sunburnt Shakers and F2L: Viridian, have been terrorizing wild for a long time, but both went out in the semis last season. Does that signal a shift in the meta? I’m not sure, but both Staff of the Five Dubs and Wild THL Fanatics place multiple players in the top ten. When it comes to players, we finish the season with only one undefeated player - and to everybody’s surprise, it’s not Lorthos, who picked up a loss in the final week to push his record down to 5-1, but rather kvlt, a regular presence at top legend who showcased why he belongs in the running for THL Wild MVP this season. Well done to kvlt! (Checks my opponent this week…oh no). In second and third are two of the Shakers’ pillars, both sitting at 5-1 and proving why some want these overpowered teams broken up. OTZaixia and Tigereye habitually sit near or at the top of the leaderboards each and every season, and Season 13 is no exception. Well done! In fourth place, we see our first Dub in Nice Jewish Owl, whose opponents may disagree with the “nice” moniker, as he has stomped over the competition without much trouble. In fifth place is…Devalion! That’s me! I missed a week due to my trip to Poland but I’m still sitting comfortably in the x-1 bracket: I’ll take it! My teammate Superbase takes a solid 4-2 record into 7th place, where he will face 8th-place Itachi in what may well be the most even matchup (at least, as per power rankings formula) of the entire semifinals. Naturally, all who are on the side of light and goodness believe in Superbase. In ninth place is one of THL’s best fine-tuners, Sinferno, sitting comfortably at 4-2 and a lethal weapon in the 3 seed who could very well power the Staff into a shock upset. And, finally, we round out our power rankings with its only 3-win player, ForChrist, but look at the murderer’s row of opponents he’s had to face! After a week one victory vs CosmicGhost, it’s all been heavy hitters from there: a loss vs NeonHeron (who frankly I’m surprised didn’t make it on the list, he’s had a cracked season and his opponents should be…shaking…in their boots (ba dum tsh) in a tight 5 game series, successive defeats of Nice Jewish Owl and rebobson, and another 5-game loss vs the always-scary nhlnjfan. My predictions: Wild THL Fanatics beats F2L Viridian by 1 point (there can surely be no bias in there, no sirree), but the miracle run ends in the finals where the Sunburnt Shakers show the world why they’re the favorites each and every season as they roll to yet another championship, losing only one match each series. But rest assured, BOMD and the boys will do all we can to make sure those predictions don’t come to pass! DOWN WITH THE SHAKE-IARCHY! -Devalion duos No more meme predictions. This is the final week of the regular season for Duos. It’s time to lock in. TIHCWWPICWP IS GOING DOWN THIS WEEK! For real though, Duos has been very competitive in its first season. We’ve seen a consistent top 10 from week to week with barely any new duos entering. As a reminder for playoffs, the top 2 teams from each division will make playoffs. As of right now that is tihcwwpicwp, W9SH(ED), Bop, Death Hunters, Staring at Bros Vol. 1, purple, and bone block. With this final week, those teams could change but most of those teams are locks at this point. The most likely change would come in the 2 seed from the Turquoise Division, right now being held by W9SH(ED) by a very small margin.
-Mako introductionWELCOME TO THE FSORACE1 SHOW! As we continue our weekly tracking of the top players and teams in each series, we are starting to see the inklings of some patterns across the divisions. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Feedback is welcome as we continue to iron out the kinks in the format and stylizing of this blog series. legacy
You’re going to notice a theme across all of the power rankings this week if you just look at the number 1 player spot. There wasn’t a whole lot of excitement this week in terms of the shaking-upping of the rankings for Legacy. We saw some new teams enter the top 10 who have been there previously and everyone else stayed in the same spot, or close to it. We seem to be at that part of the season where things have mostly settled. I’m more interested in seeing how these player rankings shake out week-to-week. We are 6 weeks in and have an incredible number of players with 1 or fewer losses and 0 of them sharing a team. I can’t remember a time where we had multiple players finish a season undefeated and if it has happened, it is very rare. -TwoStarMako hero
Our top 2 teams really do not want to lose those spots! Defias was able to take a leap on the leaderboard thanks to their 15-8 win this week. Mistah La Vistah also sneaks into the list after a tie in their match. Player-wise our top 2 for the week have flip-flopped places. Molestar was able to jump up the highest this week after a 3-0 win. We also have quite a few new faces that were not in our top places last week. Overall, it looks like Alternative Pet Merchants have taken quite a lead with 89 points which will be hard to beat this late into the season. -amazingoo pro
Welcome to The Traveling Travel Agency! We need a mix-up to the meta, because the Pro Series Top Four teams did not budge or move around in the top four seats. All four teams only have one loss a piece, the data point separating F2L from the rest of the top teams being that they are taking their bye this week. The other three teams will need to win to each have a shot at stealing the top seed. If I've done my math right, any team finishing with 4 wins is getting a pass to the playoffs this year. This means that F2L, BrushyTuna, Five Dubs, Cheese Mongers, and A Possible Miscalculation have five of the six spots locked in. The last spot will be open to The Terrible Tourists if they finish with a win this week, or may be open to Washed Up if the Tourists slip to 3-3 and Washed wins and ends 3-2-1. OPP and Imp-posters have a long shot if both Tourists and Washed Up fall and either of them get to 3-3, but the tie breaker math is not in their favor. Best advice for all teams: Play it out to the end. All those teams locked into the playoffs can still go up and down in seeding, and all those trying to sneak into the playoff need to finish strong to have that small window of opportunity open up! Looking real quick at the individual players: Fsorace1 saddled up the top spot again with close 3-2 win over Empol, who gets knocked out of the undefeated standings. AgentPWE remains the only 6-0 player, with nVision at 5-0 and DragonRider and RonMexico having 4-0. Congratulations to all the players still standing, and good luck going into the last regular season week! -Whodack wild
Yet again, not much movement around the teams. The playoff field feels like it was set in stone since Week One, and the only drama remaining is if I AM A SHAPE! can pull off a ten-point upset over Staff of the Five Dubs to sneak into the last playoff spot. The top three teams are just resting and prepping their guns for semis. The players power rankings, on the other hand, still has some drama, and it’s worth noting that even the weaker teams are starting to get their top players into the top ten. Lorthos wins yet another week by a clean 3-0 to retain the first place. Maxiebon1234 rises up to second with an upset of NeonHeron, paving the way for Devalion (myself) to rise into the top three. kvlt, our second undefeated player (does anybody know how to get G**gl* drive not to constantly “correct” my formatting? grr), takes a massive jump into the top half of the top ten, leapfrogging over OTZaixia and Tigereye of the Shakers to jump into fourth. My good friend Nice Jewish Owl, who just scammed me out of a beautiful 12-win Marin the Manager arena deck yesterday, enters the leaderboards for the first time this season. He sits comfortably in seventh. Seventh is below third. Seems like a skill issue. Superbase, who as a fourth seed was the lowest-seeded player to be in the top ten, has been running through a murderer’s row of opponents - his sweep of Bonemasher clinched a playoff spot for Wild THL Fanatics last week. We wouldn’t be in playoffs without him so this eighth place is well deserved. MtgSquirrel may have only played three weeks, but he’s won each time, so he enters into the top ten. Finally, I’d be remiss not to harp a bit on Copa, who welcomed me in to THL with a spot on his fledgling Worldshakers (RIP Worldshakers, we were so close) team two years ago and took me under his wing, teaching me the ins and outs of THL and taking me from a nearly-winless season (thank you disqualifications!) to last season’s MVP. Along the way, he also took time to captain every other series multiple times, serve on the board, and generally make THL a more inviting and inclusive place. Copa, you’re the GOAT, and it’s so good to see you rising to the top this season. And you’d better keep winning, because if you fall down to that 2 seed come playoff time, you know who awaits - and he’s hungry… -Devalion duos Okay, maybe my one bold prediction was just an anomaly. Maybe just predicting the only undefeated team to lose is just a cop-out easy way for content. OR MAYBE NOT…PYLET PROGRAM OVER TIHCWWPICWP THIS WEEK BAYBEEEE
-TwoStarMako When it comes to playing Hearthstone, THL is an entirely different beast compared to ladder. There’s an added layer of preparation to matchups, giving THL more depth than what you’ll ever find on ladder. Consider lineup construction—there’s a lot to take into account. What classes/decks/archetypes does the opponent like? What does the ladder meta look like? What are the top performing decks? What decks have you played the most lately? There are so many questions and only four options to bring at the end of the day.
The Meta Analysis Team wanted to look into how THL constructs its lineups given these questions, so we queried some of the league’s players across the community to learn about their approaches to lineup strategies. Here are some of the methods they told us: introductionAs we continue our weekly tracking of the top players and teams in each series, we are starting to see the inklings of some patterns across the divisions. As a reminder, we use internal data calculated into a formula called PAR to create these rankings. PAR calculates data such as win/loss, game win rates, and strength of schedule. Each week we will be updating you on how these players and teams shift throughout their respective series, as well as highlighting individuals and their journeys. Feedback is welcome as we continue to iron out the kinks in the format and stylizing of this blog series. legacy
Legacy this week saw a small shake-up as I’m not your Bouldering Buddy, Friend saw their first loss, leaving us with only one undefeated team. We could see our final undefeated team fall this week as JUSTINx4 faces a fairly tough matchup against Fiddlefyre Festival. One other biased note regards the continuous climb of McMarin’s up the power rankings. Over on the player side of things, only one of the previous group of five undefeated players fell last week. Inside of the top 10, we see a small pattern developing. If you’re in the top 10, unless you’re undefeated, there’s a good chance you’re in the Gold conference. Red ez mode?? -Mako hero
This week in Hero we saw our top 3 teams stay right where they were last week! Seems like they are all fighting hard to keep that place. We also saw team Defias make their way into the top 5 thanks to their close win against Mistah Lah Vistah, Baby. Every team was fighting hard during this week as the biggest point difference was only 4. Nobody wants a blowout this late in the season it seems. Player wise, our top 4 were able to keep their spots and we were able to see some new faces on the bottom half of our top 10. Starlax, Molestar, and Copa were able to get themselves right on the list as all of these players won their matches this week! As the weeks go on, everyone is continuing to fight their hardest for a top spot and we will see if the top teams and players can remain on top. -amazingoo pro
Tons of movement this week in the top 10 of the Pro Teams Power Rankings. F2L dispatches Terrible Tourists, knocking Tourists out of the Top 5 and reclaiming the number one overall for F2L. Staff of the Five Dubs finished another 4-1 week, keeping the Imp-osters out of Top Five consideration another week. At the other end of the Top 10, Opportunistic Pro Players sneak into the 10 spot sliding in off of a bye, and a group of 2 win teams including Washed Up and ET Yogg-Saron are all lingering to try to sneak into the top six for a playoff spot. Looking at the top players, I have respect that needs to be put on a few names. I said we had six undefeated players but left two players off of that list: Copa (Staff of the Five Dubs) was on the Top 10 in the 9th spot, and Empol (also Staff) was undefeated but not in the Top 10. Both players had decisive 3-1 wins for their team, skyrocketing Copa to the #1 spot and Empol up to #9. The other undefeated players still looking at a potential perfect season are: AgentPWE (F2L), Dragonrider (Hearthstone Queens), Fsorace1 (BrushyTuna), nVision (Opportunistic Pro Players), and RonMexico (BrushyTuna). -Whodack wild
In Week 5’s most anticipated matchup, Wild THL Fanatics defeated Staff of the Five Dubs by a score of 16-8 to leapfrog (pun absolutely intended) them and F2L: Viridian to move into second place behind the Sunburnt Shakers, who took a week off after their dominant first half of the season. This week, stay tuned to F2L vs the Staff, as the two jockey for a high playoff spot. We see a few changes to the player’s power rankings as the wheat begins to separate from the chaff. Master’s Tour winner Maxie, representing I AM A SHAPE! rises to third place. Despite his first loss of the season, SiNF3RN0 of the Staff hangs on to ninth place due to a gangbusters start to the season. F2L’s kvlt took a sub, so his slip to eighth place is merely due to the other good players picking up wins. The other seven players on our list all belong to the Shakers or WTF. WTF, indeed! In tenth place we see WTF’s Superbase, who took a four-game match over the Staff’s four seed to become just the second four seed with three wins and a winning record. Seth, probably better known as ForChrist, the aforementioned “other cracked four seed” rises to seventh on his week off with the Shakers. In sixth place is TigerEye, who defeated me earlier this season (not mindful, not demure). He’s very good. In fifth place is yet another 3-1 Shaker, this time OTZaixia. In fourth place is Wild’s reigning MVP - me! (Devalion). I started the season poorly with a loss to TigerEye in week two but since then I haven’t lost another match! Let’s go WTF woooooo!! Wait, you mean I’m supposed to be unbiased here? Um…*coughs*...anyway, in SECOND place is WTF’s actual one-seed, NeonHeron. He beat the previously-undefeated SiNF3RN0 in four games to move to a 4-1 record on the strength of two new decks. With wins over Wild all-stars such as SiNF3RN0 and Seth, in most seasons he’d be well on his way to an MVP. Of course, most seasons don’t have Lorthos. What can be said about Lorthos that hasn’t already? In a relatively short time, he has quickly become the undisputed GOAT of Wild THL. Perhaps the only player who can instantly take a team from irrelevancy to the playoffs all by himself, putting him on the Shakers is just overkill. I’ll simply state without comment a statistic I found while researching this week’s power rankings. In five-and-a-half seasons, including playoffs, Lorthos has five, count em five, match losses. He has twenty-eight match wins. His record is 4-0/12-3 this season btw. While the playoff race is heating up, with WTF, the Staff, and I AM A SHAPE! all duking it out to avoid elimination (despite a slight deficit in the standings, I AM A SHAPE! has matches against both its competitors and as such could still sneak into the playoffs), and there is intrigue at the top of the pack of player standings, season 13’s MVP is all-but-decided. Lorthos merely has to avoid two losses in a row (which to the best of my knowledge has never happened to him before) and his second MVP will be his to claim! But as a card-carrying WTF member myself, I’d be remiss if I didn’t glaze up NeonHeron, who is the only player with a realistic chance to catch him. Here’s for an EPIC final two weeks of the season! -Devalion duos Oh boy does it feel great to say, “I told you so.” Just last week I predicted the defeat of the once-undefeated Death Hunters. Should this become a running gag? Do I have the touch of death? Let’s find out. “Mako’s Prediction of Peril” for this week is the defeat of the brotherly love duo of tihcwwpicwp to fellow top 10ers, The Burnouts. Everything else in Duos is unimportant right now. All that matters is that I continue to be right. We will return to your regularly scheduled coverage next week if I am incorrect.
-Mako |
AuthorThe THL blog is curated and edited by THL's Content Managers. All THL members are welcomed and encouraged to pitch ideas for articles they would like to see on the site. If you have an idea, please reach out to LotusKnight on Discord or via the THL Help email address: [email protected] Archives
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