Halo’s Expectations: Budlight Dallas Homestand

The first of two team home events is here with the Dallas Fuel hosting their homestand weekend at the Allen Event Centre on Saturday and Sunday. With their being a sold out crowd of 4,500 expected for each day, it’s time to go through what I expect to happen over this weeks games

Cockerel’s On The Menu.

In the first ever Battle of Europe, the Paris Eternal defied the odd against and beat their rivals in the Spitfire. A lot has changed from those early weeks with Paris going from one of the better Goats teams in the league to struggling to find their play style identity.

London on the other hand have gone from a team who notoriously struggled with Goats, to looking like their almost back to their Championship winning best. It’s taken him a while, but Gesture seems to have finally found his groove in the meta and with the ever consistent Fury and Profit leading the Spitfire Squadron from the front. I personally don’t see a way that London lose. This should be a convincing win for the Spitfire.

OGE Ignites The Fuel To A 2-0 Week

When the Dallas homestand was first announced, Fuel fans must have thought that that this was going to be a tricky week of games to have at home. However, both the Outlaws and Valiant have struggled to build any momentum this season and are both in the bottom four of the overall standings.

While the Fuel have seen aKm return to form reminiscent of his days on Rogue and the addition of Closer from the Spitfire, has seen Dallas look much improved in team fighting situations compared to last year, OGE is the star of show when it comes to player performance.

After a tough week against Vancouver and Seoul, resulted in Dallas getting 4-0’d in both games was a bump back to earth. OGE has consistently looked like one of the best Main Tanks in the league this season and this has only been improved with the addition of Note as part of the RcK trade. With the heavy reliance on Tanks in the current meta, OGE has shown that he can lead from the front on both Reinhardt and Winston and I expect more of the same from a player who is rivalling Bumper and Super as the best Main Tanks in the game right now.

The Outlaws Don’t Up The Ante or Go Texas Hard

I’m going to save my personal opinions on the Houston Outlaws for another day, but for right now? The Outlaws look a shell of their former selves from the 2018 season and I don’t expect this to change in Dallas for them either.

While I didn’t expect much from them this season, I also didn’t expect them to be as bad as they have been, especially in the Goats meta which should have favoured them. While switching to the 3-3 against the Titans was the correct move a few weeks ago. I don’t expect them to be able to beat a Dynasty team who are finally putting down their foundation blocks behind Fits as the team we all expected them to be, nor to I see them upsetting the Fuel at their home event. 

There’s too many holes in this Outlaws roster right now and as much as I like Flame and Tairong, I feel they will have a lot of questions to answer leaving Dallas and prepping for the Charge next week.

The Fight Between The Four Kingdoms Intensifies

We all know what the outside perception of Chinese Overwatch looked like after Shanghai’s disastrous 2018 looked like and then how we were all reeled back in during China’s second place performance at the Overwatch World Cup felt like. 

China has been underestimated as an Overwatch nation and the Chinese teams have been out to prove a point this year. No team from China has been able to reach a stage playoffs yet, but that might change this stage. Shanghai have a bye week but the Gold Jacket Rebellion known as the Chengdu Hunters, have put everybody to rights so far this season and could go even further if they beat down the Spark and upset the Spitfire, to virtually lock in theirs and China’s first ever playoff spot.

Everything’s Bigger In Texas, Homestand Atlanta Will Need To Step Up

The Overwatch League is stepping out of Los Angeles for only the second time in its short existence and while the 4,500 fans attending each day is smaller than the almost 11,000 that were at the Barclays centre. I 100% expect the atmosphere to as or even more electric than last years finals were.

With both the Fuel and Outlaws boasting some of the loudest fan bases in the league so far, playing in their home state. I expect Atlanta will have a lot of hype to live up to when their homestand comes around.

(You can find more Overwatch League related content on Twitter @haloofthoughts)
(Picture Credit: Overwatch League, Dot Esport & Rob Paul)