Mixed Tour 1 Preview

This weekend is the first major tournament of the 2013 season.

I'll be playing with Thundering Herd 1, and we go into the tournament seeded in 6th out of 52 teams.
We start in group D with the GB World Games triallist team A, Cambridge 1 and Shiny Happy Meeple.

Game 1: vs Shiny Happy Meeple

I don't really know too much about this team, though when I played against them at the only winter league I attended this year we finished the game with a win, with what was a triallist team. They look like they're a mixture of ex-flump players with others and I know a couple of players on their team but not what they're squad will look like. In a warmup game against them a couple of weeks ago, Herd 1 beat them again. Though I missed this game, all this combined with the fact that they are the lowest seed in our group means we should win this. But it could be an edgy and tentative start to the season. Hopefully we should be using this game to get ourselves organised for the rest of the season though.

Game 2: vs Cambridge 1

Again, don't know too much about this team. Cambridge have a strong core of both guys and girls though. They finished in the top 8 overall last season and had their highest finish of 5th at Tour 2, which was above Herd 1. We should be aiming to win this as we will have no break between this game and the final game in the group stage against the GB World Games team.

Game 3: vs GB World Games A

This will be the toughest game of the day for us. However, the world games team shouldn't be looked at as unbeatable. The world games rules state that only 13 players are on the final squad so I don't know how large the team sizes of the two GB world games will be, but there can't be too many triallists left.
In all actuality though, we probably won't beat the stacked GB world games team but hopefully based on our first two results we should be safely in second place in the group before this game begins.

If all goes as above, it means we will have set up a top 4 crossover for the end of the day. This will be against the top finisher in the group of Peeps, GB World Games B, Golden Ants and Scarecrew. Though Peeps start that group seeded highest I can see that group being won by the other World games team, which will be another tough game.


My prediction for the final:
I think it's probably going to be a GB vs GB world games final with Bear Cavalry and DED pushing them hard in the semi finals.

Underdog of the tournament:

Bristol ultimate 1 start the tournament down in 13th place, but at Mixed tour 1 last year almost knocked Bear Cavalry out of contention in the quarter finals. Over the three tours their final ranking was 8th and though they never finished higher than 8th over all three tours they have a good chance to do well this year. They probably have the strongest contingent of women of any of the Mixed tour teams with Bristol's womens team qualifying for the European championships last year for the first time. If their men have kept up then they could see a large jump in the rankings by the end of this weekend.