VFTD Update

I'm back. For a minute. On the road last week we were without internet access most of the time. (You'll hear about it in an upcoming post.) I'm back but only for a day and a half. Then it's off to HB.
Stuff is piling up and the simple truth is it's probably gonna take a while to catch up. With respect the recent Millennium event I will be inundating y'all with no doubt more knowledge than you'll likely want but that's okay--'cus it's my blog. But in consideration of you're attention deficit disorder I'ma break the reportage down into almost bite-sized chunks. I'm also going to divide the Euro coverage into three categories; TBD's experience, The Event & The State of the Millennium. That decision revolves around a couple of things; one, our experience isn't (wasn't) the sum of the event by any measure and two, there are a number of interesting things to talk about irrespective of the game play. (Hint: we had cameras on 4 of our guns that delivered some interesting footage.) (Hint: I also had an extended conversation with Laurent Hamet.) So expect Millennium stuff here & there for the next couple of weeks.
Regarding am division reports from Galveston there will be one D2 report. It looks like weather, circumstance and perhaps the difficulty of putting it all into words meant VFTD received only the one report. VFTD will continue to make space available and continue to encourage anyone who wishes to submit your views after any major league event you participate in to do so because I'd still like to see the divisional teams get more love. I will post the Galveston D2 report later this week.
In comments I was asked about the stats that came out post Galveston. I haven't had any opportunity to look at them in depth so I can't offer any review or analysis yet--but I will get to it. In general though I remain staunchly in favor of the idea. I'll have a much better idea after Phoenix when I can match stats against a reasonably large sample of matches played and the notes I keep. I can note that the sample posted at ProPaintball--our match versus Vicious is missing at least one bench penalty--which is the sort of thing that potentially skews how one might "read" some of the stat values for individual players, for example.
In looking at the Pro schedule for HB it looked a bit odd at a glance so I charted out the match-ups to see what it would look like across the board. Turns out it is, in fact, based on two brackets of 7 teams. And broken down further pairs from each bracket play the same teams numerically. For example Dynasty as the 1 seed plays the 3, 5, 6 & 7 teams in its bracket. Impact as the top seed in its bracket also plays the 3, 5, 6 & 7 teams. The same pattern follows but the results still seem a bit odd. Take the ranking of each team Dynasty plays and add them together then divide by the number of matches and the result is the average place of Dynasty's opponents. (In this case approx. 10) Given that Dynasty is the overall  top seed their's should be the easiest path to Sunday. Critical, as the new kids and seeded 14th face an average opponent placed 5.75 and everyone else should more or less fit in between those numbers. And they do. Sorta. Except the 5 & 6 pairing and the 9 & 10 pairing. For example, Uprising, ranked 6 has a schedule that matches Critical's at 5.75 while Avalanche ranked 7 is at 8.25 and Mutiny ranked 11 faces an opponents average of 8.
Perhaps of greater interest is exactly how these prelims will lead to Sunday and how many teams will make it through. A review of the new rule book was not helpful. Apparently we'll all find out when it happens.
Hopefully I will be able to post daily HB reports.
Finally big ups to Friends of VFTD Argentine team LOD on their CSP win last weekend. Way to go guys!