College Football Playoff Win Chances

Running through all the playoff predictions, the program is liking the national pundits thoughts on Alabama running away with things again this year.  Its giving them a 64% chance to advance against Washington, and and an overall chance of wining the title at 48%.  The divergence seems to be with Ohio State and Clemson.  The program has not loved the Tigers at all this year, but it gives them just a 25.8% chance to beat the Buckeyes, and basically no chance to get past Alabama or Washington in the title game.  The odds of them winning it all this year are at just 5%, by far the lowest shot of any of the other contenders.  I really don't believe that, since the Tigers have a pretty solid Havoc Rate of 21.3%, just barely trailing the Crimson Tide.  I also believe in Deshaun Watson moreso than JT Barrett, who has struggled mightily this year with accuracy issues. Id give Clemson closer to a 40% chance of winning just from other numbers and the ol' eye test.  As the

NFL Predictions Week 17

The final week of the NFL season has plenty of action to determine seeding in the AFC (despite us knowing all the teams) and in the NFC the Redskins and Buccaneers are both still hoping to get in.  The program currently puts in the Lions as NFC Nrth Champs and the Redskins get in past the Packers.

NBA Power Rankings December 29th

With the Holidays, I got a little off schedule for getting these power rankibgs out.  In part though, its also because I was finishing setting up the prediction engine so it will be starting to do some weekly predictions on games, or a simple text output for daily games.

Strategic: Worth the hype?

In the coming release of fighters, one of the most hyped new Keywords is Strategic.  This ability allows the squadron with Strategic to pick an objective token within range one, and move that token to another space still within range 1.  This ability to will effectively allow a player to move a token just shy of distance 3 on the map.  With Corellian Conflict adding so many new objectives, this ability could be exceedingly powerful.  There are currently 2 Yellow Objectives that use Objective Tokens, and 3 Blue that use them.  This number is going to expand by 1 red, 2 blue and 3 yellow objectives will use moveable tokens (I’m not counting Nav Hazards, since you remove those tokens at the end of the round anyways).  This ability to manipulate the battlefield for your own use could pay huge dividends, especially since the two ships that will have it also have the Relay keyword (Relay 2 for the Lambda Shuttle, Relay 1 for the VCX-100).  It could mean an ever extending Jamming Barrier to help protect a vulnerable flank , or keeping a targeting beacon at a good distance away from your capital ships. 

With so many potential uses, are we going to see ubiquitous use of these two transports?  It’s possible, but the point cost for each squad is set at the fairly steep 15.  Neither has any inherent defense tokens, and will likely be a prime target for enemy squads to take down early to prevent such shenanigans.  It can also be highly situational.  Depending on initial set up, all the Tokens might be either out of distance that you can get to, or are already placed to your maximum benefit.  I’m also quite fearful of an opponent seeing that I have a couple of strategic squads and deciding they’re better off taking another objective that has no tokens to play with.  This could be especially bad for the VCX since its Relay 1 is handy, but not super useful for getting squad activations and its 3 blue dice is pretty average at its price point.  The Lambda is in a  slightly better position with Relay 2 to be able to get a couple of escorts into the fight if need be, and its 2 black anti squad dice are a bit better really since these are not the squads you want going after uniques with  scatter. 

Overall I don’t think Strategic will be the huge game changer some folks are thinking it will be, simply because you can’t guarantee objectives that use it will get picked and even then you might be able to only swing a couple of tokens in a given game with a couple of the Strategic squads in your list.  It will however give a chance for some real fun, especially in a list designed to take advantage of a very fluid battlefield.

 

NFL Week 16 Predictions

It looks to be a good week for Home Teams in the NFL this weekend.  The Broncos need a win on the Road in KC to keep any playoff hopes alive, but luckily they also need the Dolphins to stumble on the road in Buffalo.  I'll be interested to see if the Texans can get Tom Savage to produce again, but I doubt it overall.

NBA Power Rankings Dec 20th

A collective sigh of relief this week from NBA fans as a new CBA has been set out to ensure play will continue and we won't end up with lockouts and missed games any time soon.  A lot of rules changed that will help parity in the league, and will likely mean the end of the "Super Teams" (Thank God!).

This week in the power rankings the top continues to remain unchurned, as the top 7 teams remain the same and only two teams moved out of the top 10.  The Grizzlies are the team that fell the furthest in the Top 10, dropping 5 spots to number 14 overall.  They went 1-3 over the week, with the last two losses stemming from some major shooting issues.  Against the Jazz they posted an embarrassingly low 31.2% eFG%, as Marc Gasol went 4-22 from the field.  Taking their spot, the Milwaukee Bucks have played some pretty stifling defense this season.  They've posted the third best Opponent eFG%, and held the Bulls to just 65 points last Friday.

2016 Bowl Projections

Bowl season is such a  fantastic time in college football.  The games are fun for the players, and they feature teams that normally don't get any chance to play one another.  It also leads to outcomes that are severely out of line with season numbers.  Teams lose coaches, players aren't up for games, and being in a very strange locale just messes with some teams.  Even so, there's always a baseline for teams, and its always fun to predict what'll happen.