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[TheMagician]

Approximately 6 months ago, the Run Hot or Die North American Season 1 got started. It was then quickly interrupted by the switch to open-beta, and the need for teams to re-gain all their mechs and enjoy the Holidays. NA Season 1 saw approximately 40 teams compete in over 300 matches, across 12 weeks. The league fought through massive changes in the meta-game, the introduction of elo, and continuing game problems. Teams showed a lot of resolve to continue to play comp;etitively in a title that offered almost no assistance to do so.

Then, we entered the playoffs. The double elimination playoffs started about 3 months ago. Soon after the playoffs started, the game took a turn for the worse. With the continuation of old hud-bugs, the introduction of new ones, and regular game crashes and disconnects, teams struggled to get their matches completed. This compounded with playoff teams having different availability/schedules/interest led to the playoffs taking a long time to finish. Further, with various bugs continuing, questionable changes to game mechanics, and other factors, playoff teams saw a decrease in activity. One of the fall-outs of this, was that KaoS Legion, the #2 seeded team, and winner's bracket champion, pulled out of active competition.

The result is that the championship game will be played tonight between Paragon and Steel Jaguar, the loser's bracket finalists (the winner would have gone on to play KaoS). While both teams would prefer a final match as originally laid out, people should expect a well contested match, worthy of the finals.

Paragon and Steel Jaguar go back a logn ways. In closed-beta Steel Jaguar regularly scrimmed against Draagun, which then included many of the Paragon members. When Paragon split, Steel Jaguar and Paragon contniued their relationship, and scrimmed fairly often to prepare for their upcoming RHOD matches. Thus, these two teams know each other extremely well, but this is the first time that these two teams will compete against eacho ther in an actual RHOD match. The two teams bring a combimed 22-4 record into this match (Paragon is 10-3, SJR is 12-1).

Please tune-in at 9pm EST, to watch Paragon versus Steel Jaguar at www.twitch.tv/runhotordie

This match will be shoutcasted by GaussDragon. We are hoping to have two feeds, thus the shoutcast will be able to switch between showing the Paragon viewpoint and the Steel Jaguar viewpoint.

[Kriestov]

I'll be joining tonight's Shoutcast with GaussDragon for another iteration of 'Budgetcast'. Hopefully we'll have a solid back and forth series and we'll have a fair amount of time to chatter away.

[Ellen Ripley]

The first game just started