[IKE]

Soooo, maybe MSC will not be more competitive than the divisions this year. I for one am extremely excited about this. One of the more interesting things we learned at MSC is that if you haev an alliance capable of putting up over 100 points, you stand a really good chance of taking your match.

Going by the data:

Galileo has the highest probability of the #1 alliance sweeping their way through (but there are 3 players wanting to be in that tango).

Newton will likely have the most "seasoned" alliance on Einstein. There will likely be at least 4 incredibly strong alliances in that division battling it out for the spot of Einstein. They are also the most likely to ahve a very strong 3rd (look in the 20-26 range).

Curie will also have extremely strong 3rd picks, but it softens a bit quicker than Newton, thus the winner of that division won't have the practice that Newton will.

Archimedes... the bad news is that according to the data... we are quite a bit softer than the rest. The good news? We are strong enough. Using my team and 67 as an example. I don't think you need OPRs in the 70s to make a winning alliance. 70+70+30 does not equal 170 pts in this game. If your alliance has the ability to get between 100-120 points, you have a decent chance of going all the way.

For the event as a whole:
The elims will be even better than MSC. The top 30 or so are so strong in all of the divisions (these are the teams likely to make up your 24 elim teams). this is extremely exciting. Qualifying will have a lot more variety. There are quite a few softer teams coming to the world Championship. Many of them may have a 2-3 lb "secret weapon" that they are bringing along, so expect quite a few teams to bubble up into that 30-40ish OPR range.

I do predict that 3/4 #1 Alliance captains will have double autonomous capability.