/sci/ 2013 Winter Cup report.
v. 1.0

Due to coming second in the group in the 2012 Autumn Babby, we were promoted. After the tournament, each team got one friendly, which counted towards rankings. /sci/ were on the boundary between winter cup pots 2 and 3, and were going to lose quite a lot of points due to a lot of matches that we had won now being over 6 months ago. I decided on /3/ as our opponent. This was because they were high enough up in the rankings for a win to be enough to keep us in pot 2, and secondly because they didn't have a manager, so it should have been a fairly easy game. I was arrogant, and left testing too late, meaning the match was a draw, putting us in pot 3. This looked bad at the time, however, as so many teams were now managed, and lots of teams had new managers, rankings weren't very accurate going into the cup. The teams in pots 1 and 2 were still the best, but the tournament was close than ever.

/sci/ were drawn in a group with /int/, /fit/ and /vg/. /int/, historically one of the best teams and ranked 4th, looked weaker than they used to be, and had a new manager, this being his first tournament, so they looked beatable, and possibly one of the easiest teams from pot 1. However, the manager had to go into hospital shortly before the tournament began, meaning the old manager took charge again. /fit/ were a decent team, nothing special, but had a new manager, making them a bit of an unknown. They were probably an average team for pot 2. /vg/ scraped through their group in the Autumn Babby, but then proceded to come 4th overall. With the same manager as then, they looked dangerous, with a strong attack, making them one of the strongest in pot 4. Overall, the group was probably one of the easiest, however, there was no one shit team that everyone expected to beat.

I decided on a 4-3-1-2 formation, which perfomed well against all the other teams in the group in testing, though it was pretty. I also made quite a few other changes to things such as cards etc. I felt I learnt from my mistakes, for example I made sure I had plenty of back-up players in most positions. I also installed PESedit, which gave me the opportunity to choose a player's offensive/defensive mindset. However, due to panicking at the last minute, I got this the wrong way round, meaning my strikers were defensive and my defenders offensive. This problem was compounded by the fact that I only made one preset, meaning all formations I had to play were either with the wrong mindsets, or PES presets, which weren't terribly suited for my squad. The final problem with the team was that I forgot to update the main roster, only the mini-roster, meaning the team that would play was that from the 2012 Autumn Babby. However, GermanBro didn't alter his save correctly, meaning we were missing a bronze player and some skill cards, and the players were a wierd mix between the main and mini rosters.

This was revealed the day before the cup began, and GermanBro uploaded a save at about 00:00 GMT saturday, giving me 18 hours to figure something out. However, I couldn't get the save to work, so had to guess and livemanage based off predictions and previous testing. We played appalingly, doing nothing with the ball, and only getting a goal when /int/ scored for us, meaning it finished 2-1 to /int/. It could have gone a lot worse, but they didn't play terribly well either. After that, I managed to get the save working, but couldn't do as much testing as I would have liked before the next match. This was against /vg/, who had lost their first match. We played better, making some nice moves and passes, but there was little end product. /vg/ got a player sent off, which seemed to make them play better, but it wasn't enough, and we won 2-1. /fit/ lost to /vg/ as well, meaning that the the winner of our game would go through, potentially top if /int/ and goal difference was enough. A draw would send /fit/ through. However, our conditioning, excluding the defence, was shit, including purple Bill and blue Sagan. I made some pretty drastic slider changes to try and make up for this, but it backfired, causing us to concede two early goals from through balls. Everyone's passing just seemed to be off, and even though we seemed to win the midfield battle, as soon as someone got the ball, they gave it away. We managed to get a goal before half time, when I made some changes, which seemed to help, but we couldn't get through /fit/'s defence thanks to Bill and Sagan not turning up. /fit/ got another goal with 10 minutes to go, meaning we needed to score 3 in that time. I made some astute tactical changes, which resulted in a goal, after which /fit/ got scared and parked the bus, meaning the game ended 3-2 to /fit/. This put us out of the tournament with 3 points, so we're back in the babbies.

I think my crucial mistake was leaving updating the wiki till the last minute. I think there are advantages to keeping your tactics fairly secret until the deadline, but I obviously left it too late. Had I not done that, I would have probably noticed or been informed of the errors regarding dots and mini/main roster discrepancies. I'm not too disappointed with how we played, as for the first match I didn't do any testing with the squad that was used, and the third match we had pretty dire conditions. I would say we were probably better than /fit/, so should have qualified, but the RNG was obviously displeased. In future cups I guess I won't leave things last minute, will use presets more and I think that will be enough to take us pretty far.

And try again to not make us rely on Bill.

Atrox