Finchinator vs Oristeros- Oristeros felt a bit "out of touch" in his round 1 games. He seemed a bit lost vs Pearl early game, and some of the team compositions he brought were self-contradictory, to an extent. Neither of which are states of mind you want to bring to a match vs someone who's really fucking good at analyzing gamestates and win conditions in Finchinator. Still, he's beatable.
Posho vs SoulWind- Posho has a really "hard" style of BW, with the big walls and the Specs Dragons and what not. One can easily tell a Posho team from another, and any form of predictability isn't good versus a guy who is clearly one step ahead of everyone else in terms of team composition and has a subtle counterpick streak. I find it difficult to see Posho winning.
Pearl vs Luigi- So I actually didn't know Pearl played BW, and I decided to watch his Round 1 games, and I was left convinced. Pearl's BW is rock solid- a commanding early game vs Oristeros where he knew exactly how it should be played, and powerful teams vs Toxzn and Ace-11 that showed he knew what wins. Luigi is good at counterpicking, and I don't think it's fair to judge him by the STour finals choke vs SoulWind given that he is known to be a BW main, but there's not much to build against and he'll have to rely on his fundamentals which his opponent also has a lot of. Close game.
Conflict vs Heist- babidi has been playing BW since it's started, really he used to be one of its most innovative/ best builders where he'd break every rule he can to punish people who fell into patterns and played too conventionally, but right now he has a really facetious approach to it where he likes to bring stuff that either seems "broken" out of context or have glaring flaws. He lucked out vs Sand Castle, and the team he brought vs jacob looked like it's 6-0ed by Mew. Conflict has a similar approach with lots of off-classing, but it's much more well thought-out. EndSalac Chomp and that Sand Victini team were sexy as hell, and don't in fact look that much out of place. Should be a good one.