KLONDIKE, CPA Headquarters – This past weekend was host to the 2nd round of the Bracket Challenge: the Elite Eight, leading to more interesting trends that CP Army Headquarters was able to pick out. Read on to find out more!
The Outstanding Octet consisted of generally smaller armies, and therefore was very close. However, the Elite Eight introduced the currently top four armies in recent Top Tens: the Ice Warriors, Rebel Penguin Federation, Army of Club Penguin, and Help Force. These four armies almost always have a general 5 point difference between the lowest of the four and the 5th ranked army. Therefore, the odds for predicting a battle are the same, but predicting the winners was almost always easier because of the sizes. In both the Ice Warriors’ and Rebel Penguin Federations’ battles, the bigger army out sized the smaller one by 60+ at times. With that big of a size difference, there were simply less chances to mess up in this round. However, there was one battle that made people suffer more than the rest.
Before we dive into each battle, I interviewed Ferdthebird1 regarding his predictions, since he is at #1 in the Bracket Challenge:
CPAHQ: For those following the Bracket Challenge, could you please explain how you made your guesses so accurately the past two weeks?
Ferdthebird1, Templars Leader in Training: I am surprised myself literally my guesses are the worst. I knew the pattern being formed in tournaments since the cpah era, some armies always overpowered others. going by previous tournaments and average army sizes I made the predictions, I didn’t know it would actually turn into reality haha.
–
Army of Club Penguin vs Water Vikings
In the battle of ACP vs WV, there were many predictions for a Water Vikings’ victory, an ACP Victory with OT rooms, and a few other endgames that did not happen. Since there wasn’t an OT room however, the rule applying to the OT rooms was ignored, and the predictions with ACP as the winner got 1 point with the proper room score given 3 more points. The interesting trend about this battle is that nobody got both the room score or the winner correct, but nobody got both incorrect as well — this led to massive position changes in the Bracket Challenge rankings.
–
Help Force vs Silver Empire
This battle was pretty straightforward for most people, but there was one daring prediction for this battle that I wanted to call out. Most people decided that it would be an easy Help Force victory(either with an OT room or a 2-1 victory), since Help Force generally got at least 1 or 2 positions above the Silver Empire, but the one person that predicted a Silver 2-1 victory was Pumpkin, a Silver Empires member. I was able to interview Pumpkin for why they predicted a Silver Empire Victory:
CPAHQ: When predicting the Help Force vs Silver Empire battle, did you predict an SE victory because of your affiliation or your own personal thoughts about who would win?
Pumpkin, Silver Empire: I truly thought that SE stood a chance, we were getting higher maxes and i heard about help force not doing as well. And at the battle it was shown that we were much better with tactics and forms but lost due to the size difference which i could not predict. 😀 Or in sum, my personal thoughts.
–
The other two battles (Rebel Penguin Federation vs Red Ravagers and Ice Warriors vs SWAT) were perfect predictions for everyone that participated in the Bracket Challenge. Both battles were easy 3-0 victories with the bigger army having a 60+ size advantage at one point throughout their individual battles. This week, everyone gained at least 7 points, with everyone that gained 13 points either remaining at their position or gaining a huge advantage ranking-wise.
The Elite Eight round was definitely interesting, with a fierce ACP vs WV battle, and a brave prophet for Help Force vs Silver Empire. However, March Madness is far from over — this upcoming weekend is the Final Four, and the weekend after is the Championship. From here, most peoples’ opinions took a wide split, with everyone given a chance at being the winner in the Bracket Challenge. I wish good luck to everyone, and a reminder to check out your standing in the Google Sheet provided by DMT regarding the Bracket Challenge.
–
What do YOU think? Do you think that there were more interesting trends and predictions in this round of March Madness? Make sure to comment below!
Pranav
CPA Headquarters Reporter
