Masters Bangkok is about to start and Sen could repeat the last years' story with the tournament win this year. Tournament strength seems really similar maybe bit stronger at the top this year: 1 hyped up team from EMEA, 1 really good team from Americas, 1 structured and 1 scrappy team from APAC but better chinese teams. But is the new Sen as good as Sen last year?
I just rewatched the Madrid games from last year and wanted to compare the last years' peak Sen and this years' early Sen. Here are my overall thoughts
- Playstyle and early rounds:
Old team was really contacty, esp. 3 players took a lot of raw 1v1s at the beginning of the rounds: tenz, zekken and johnqt. New team is bit more execute heavy and play more in a pack rather than last years Sen where they would go for a lot of spread 1 3 1 defaults; this might be because of the new tejo meta and the role changes but only zekken is taking fights at early rounds and sometimes bang when he is anchoring and zellsis when he is lurking but that doesnt happen as much as last year. Johnqt was more aggressive lurker maybe due to cypher/viper he played a lot where he can do his own stuff and zellsis is playing vyse as more of initiator than lurker. We all know how tenz is more agressive than bang is
Overall, in theory this playstyle at early rounds should result in more consistency of a new team because if old Sen players had a bad game/map, Sen lost their best map 13-5. - Midrounds:
Older Sen was clearly better at 4v4, 3v3, 2v2 situations due to their insane chemistry built over a lot of matches in the offseason and main attacking trio of TenZ, Sacy and Zekken having already played 1 year together. This criteria is also only clear thing G2 is currently better than new Sen but hopefully it improves over time. - Flexibility and creativity:
New Sen is cleay more flexible than last years Sen, every player apart from bang can play any role. You saw the struggle of old Sen when they tried to be creative with the deadlock comp last year but that just didnt fit their defaulty playstyle and at the end they came back to default comps at champs. But with the new Sen they could play any comp with 1-2 practices, you could just see from how they changed up their Lotus against MIBR and Abyss against G2 and won on both maps when they lost on those maps before. - Map pool:
Old Sen had a top heavy map pool, they were really good at raze maps not because zekken's jett was bad but the whole team did not know how to midround on jett maps. New Sen have a wider map pool but we have yet to believe they would have unbeatable maps like last years Sen's Split and Lotus(at Madrid they were the best Lotus team at least). - Player form:
Zekken is at similar level where he was at champs last year, in some maps he is dropping 20+ and Sen is winning comfortably, in some maps he goes missing and Sen struggle to open up rounds. But his form should improve as he gets more comfortable with yoru and team dynamic as we literally saw his improvement on yoru from the game against 100T where a lot of people said "Put him back on raze" to "Wow maybe they need to nerf yoru" after his game against MIBR.
Zellsis and Johnqt: similar form I think. Johnqt's numbers look much better because he is taking a lot more fights and he is trading a lot whereas last year he was getting kills from anchoring or straight up duels.
N4rrate: his individual form is a lot worse than his form on KC, still his kill contribution is similar to sacy but hopefully we see his form on KC to show up where he was winning almost every aim duel. If N4rrate and Zekken become a duo like last years tenz&zekken where they would drop combined 50 every map, this Sen should be able at least make Grand finals
Bang: he might be the most inconsistent player right now on Sen but we know how good he can be. He is still getting a lot of impact kills on defense when he is anchoring but he can be much better player than his showing so far.
Overall, new Sen has much more potential than they are showing right now, I would say they are 2 maybe 3 tiers below their capabilities: they need to improve their midrounding chemistry like 3v3 situations, they can be much better at new comps and we havent seen bang and n4rrate's (you might even include zekken, he could just turn into the best player in the world at Bangkok) peak form yet. So you might say old Sen's peak is still 1 tier above new Sen, but this new Sen could improve 2-3 tiers I think, at least I hope so.
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