Little assessment I have made for Scarz and Crest this match:
Scarz have rebuilt their team after a disastrous performance in Split2 and after also failing to qualify for Split3 Challengers, it consist of: LOB, Yoshiii, Anthem, Medusa and Zepher.
Their new lineup has pretty decent firepower and has in my honest opinion, two tier1 ready players in Yoshiii and LOB, who consistently were one of the best players in the Japanese circuit for several years now.
Medusa and Anthem are coming freshly from the 2024 DFM roster and had pretty bad individual performances, despite that Anthem's igling last year was actually one of the few bright spots the old DFM team had and if he is igling could benefit Scarz a lot with his added tier1 experience.
Medusa relies heavily on taking solo duels and timings as a Sentinel player, he likes to lurk and possesses great mechanics. But he showed a lot of flaws in his game last year, when he couldn't handle playing against mechanically superior players in tier1 who punished him for often badly timed lurks and his tendency to take solo duels.
Zepher is probably the most confusing member chosen for this Scarz iteration, who replaced a young 16year old duelist talent in Satwoshi fairly recently. He struggled a ton last year and most of the time got outaimed by the opposite duelist players. His rating and ACS was terrible for a duelist player and he ended up as one of the worst players in the last Challenger splits, his entrying showed a lot of flaws in his pathing as a duelist and is in need of improvement. I myself am not sure why he got picked up for Scarz but to give him the benefit of the doubt he performed well in the qualifiers for this split and already has existing synergy with his teammates.
This match is probably the first real challenge for this new Scarz roster, they just stomped qualifiers without any difficulties. It will be interesting to see if Medusa and Zepher can keep up their individual performances the further Scarz get into this bracket. They will in all likelihood face Riddle in the Upper Semis who are the current best team in VCJ.
Crest on the other hand struggled to qualify to this stage and performed very badly in split 3 last year, despite having a superb off-season showing.
They seem incredibly inconsistent and are too reliant on Ken's individual performance to close out their matches.
They play weird comps and have often non-meta reads on a lot of maps that might confuse badly prepped teams, but this also could explain their inconsistent performances in the past. Their roster has potential but lacks more firepower and should set more clear roles for their players.
Bazz is their 2nd best player but also their igl, so he can't always step up when Ken has a bad series. He is very fun to watch and likes to take a lot of risk compared to other smokes players.
Kapi doesn't have that much experience but has potential just looking at his pure mechanical ability, he still needs more time to develope as a talent.
Brofeld always had been the glue in past iterations for this roster and is a very solid Sentinel player, despite having good mechanics he seems often timid and is too passive when he plays. Sakurai has been by far their most inconsistent player and is juggling tons of roles, don't let him play smokes! his util can lose you games! He sometimes was their worst players on previous rosters but can also abruptly have great periods where he was their 2nd best player on the team.
Crest as a team have a lot of issues to fix and will probably lose this upcoming matchup against Scarz. Depending on what goals Crest Gaming has set this year they might need to make roster changes and get better coaching to have a chance for making Ascension. They should thrive to be part of every split this year but are unlikely to become contenders with their current roster when they face hard competition such as Riddle, Fennel, Scarz, Sengoku and Reject as major opponents in this league.
TDLR: Scarz should win 2-0 because of their roster and coaching
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