Starting this week, I am doing a weekly feature on Trolls.gg where I will play “Mad Money” with the current goings-on in HGC. These will be fun articles where I tell you whether or not I think a team is on the rise, a team is falling, or something else in HGC is going well or needs a little work. Please remember, these are tongue-in-cheek articles, no one is really buying or selling anything, and this is just to start debate and discussion about how the pro scene is going for NA and EU.

The first two weeks have been crazy in NA, and after a crazy off-season, what else could we expect?

Well, me being wrong for one:

So, @Tempo_Storm is the best team in NA. That said, @TeamTwelveGG is right there with them and could have won.

That will be the last team to get close to #TSHotS this split. They will not drop a set until the Western Clash. #HGC @HeroesEsports

— Anne Elise Morrigan (@anne_elise) January 27, 2018

Yeah, and before the weekend was out, Team Freedom went and took the match of the week off of Tempo Storm, so -

I can only promise to do better going forward.

Week 2 showed us one thing for certain, and that is that Team Freedom, Tempo Storm, and Team Twelve are the top of NA. I don’t think anyone has a clear idea on who the fourth team will be that will go to the Western Clash, but everyone is pretty sold on the top three.

I love watching Tempo Storm play, but against both Team Twelve and Team Freedom, we saw them lose in situations where they could have won if they had only retreated. That’s not all; Tempo dropped a game to HeroesHearth because they took two team fights they should have let go. Speaking of which…

They won’t be very competitive in part one of phase one, but if they can figure out their identity in NA HGC, both of these teams are threats to have it together for both the Mid-Season Brawl and Blizzcon in Phase 2. LFM taking out GFE and HHE stomping my boys from SpaceStation Gaming (still love you guys!) showed that these teams are for real. And this leads to…

This meme needs to go away. Last year, on my blog, I wrote about the “Oh Somebody Kill Me Please” division of the bottom three of NA. I also wrote about how much watching NA hurt after watching EU matches. This is no longer the case. NA matches were mostly competitive and fun to watch. People who are in Twitch chat with their NA LULs need to stop. So do the people saying “dead gaem.”

Picks for Week 3

I’ve got the following:

Team Freedom 3-1 over LFM

SpaceStation 3-2 over GFE

Team Twelve 3-1 over GFE

Tempo Storm 3-1 over Simplicity

Tempo Storm 3-0 over SpaceStation

Team Twelve 3-1 over HeroesHearth  

Match of the Week

That would be my boys in SpaceStation Gaming taking on GFE. GFE has had it rough. SpaceStation has to prove to themselves that they can take it to the next level, and they need the win against a mid-level team like GFE because they are facing Tempo Storm on Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday, you should skip the Super Bowl and watch Team Twelve versus HeroesHearth. I have a lot of questions about how good HHE is. This match will tell us a lot about where NA is going, not so much for Phase 1, but decidedly for Phase 2.