offseason open chatter - May 6

Lots of transactions so far, still more teams as of yet unable to finish their rosters.  Hopefully there are enough new teams to replace all the dead ones.

The Westbrook Effect scout (ugc plat highlander "winning" sniper Vlad) has been VAC banned for using LMAObox premium hacks.  I personally played against him twice & my team another time in 4s without me, I say he can eat shit.  Wilson was their best player & he left too.  I hope they die.

Dreamboat still desperately trying to rebuild Death By Paper Plates after their unfortunate collapse midseason s21.  Look, I love Dreamboat, he's the nicest guy in TF2 history, but he personally told me they are shooting for top of open and that is not likely to happen.  I don't want to sound too rude so I'll leave it at that.

Former invite player Br0nze has joined the core of mid open s20 team The Lolipoppers. I suspect it will be similar to the largely unsuccessful Blasty Blast of s21 though they have a good shot at a playoff seed if their schedule is decent.

Speaking of Blasty Blast, looks like Lysol and Polar are making a new team using the roster.  The new team includes scout Uber and demoman Fahrenheit so far, probably at least mid open.

Another new team with scouts bwelp and SpaceGhostCoffee, roamer faust, pocket demoman Neo and medic redi looks like they have high open potential if they can stay alive until the end of the season, which is debatable (how many different rosters was Neo on last season?).

It's unclear whether the Sne4ky/pixelize team will ever actually exist (it will suck even if it does)

Team Vanilla Love is afaik still together, and likely hungry after just barely missing playoffs last season.

If Hurricane Watch gets 6 they can do well, almost made playoffs in s21 when all players were new to open.  Currently only Queyh, Nessie and Averted are confirmed for next season.

Milters (formerly Bong and the Rippersons) will make playoffs if they just get their shit together and play with 6 players every game (and they would have in s21 too).

New team No Johns looks promising, with rather experienced players juicy, demoted, Huck, Simulate, and powergamer (and medic tiptoes).

Egg Salad Dressing has picked up Wolves (formerly of lf 2d gf) to replace Sandblast.  If he plays well with superstar fragger Keith it's a good pickup.  I think they are supposed be moved to IM, where they are likely to struggle due to roster weak spots on roamer and demo (sorry guys, I like you a lot but it's true).  They will easily make playoffs if they play open though, unless as mentioned by Tri they have to merge the 2 divisions (in which case all predictions are out the window).

We have what appears to be another hacker circlejerk team in malicious activity, notably featuring Bullet's alt xrod and part of 1-10 IM team Twilight Zone.

There are lots of names I recognize on other open teams that don't have a great shot at playoffs.  Half of them only have 2-4 players so far.  Three of them are standing out to me:

1.  CantBelieveItsNotBuddha, who have solid mid-open power classes in soldier duo Park and Paladin & demoman Ly, but with new scouts and medic they will have an uphill battle.

2. The OrbitCG rebuild, with Yuno (formerly of Polish Pizzeria) and Conky (BotDog) rounding out their roster gaps so far.

3.  Wari's new team Bearly Getting By, who have promise in players like demoman Arsie and scout Fen, and all their players have at least a partial season of open experience, but they are already having scrim scheduling conflicts.  From the horse's mouth:

"Our demo often gets home erratically, so any demo subs would prob get a scrim in most nights. Pinto also falls asleep sometimes. Oihguv just stops playing. Would just make scheduling less stressful to have some people to step in." 

Speaking of Polish Pizzeria, I believe there is also a team with Flick/Reflecto/Fabulous/Row in the works, sounds like mid open at least.

I don't see anybody else worth discussing at this point, but they'll show up by the deadline I'm sure.  I haven't heard much other than that mentioned above concerning s21 open teams, but based on LFT threads I think maybe around 1/4 of them are actually staying together.  There is supposed to be another newbiemix team drive this season, which will naturally bump up what would otherwise be low open teams to mid, and some mid teams to high.  Froyotech Black is presumably going to play invite; I haven't noticed any other sandbaggers yet unlike s21.

There are still tons of great free agents available, if I was making a team I know who I'd be jumping on.