Match Autopsy

The final assessment. Explain why one team won a complete match, using concepts from across the semester.

Due: 28 May 2027 · Weight: 35%

The brief#

Explain why one team won a complete match, using concepts from across the semester.

This is the course’s culminating assessment. You will be given a complete match to analyse. The task is not to describe what happened — it’s to explain why it happened, the way Week 12 asked you to trace a match you already knew.

What you submit#

Identify a limited number of pivotal transitions — moments where the game state genuinely changed, not every event in the match. For each one, state:

1. The game state beforehand — what was true before this moment.
2. The decision or event that changed it.
3. The advantage that resulted.
4. How that advantage was converted — or, if it wasn’t, why not.
5. What became available or unavailable afterward, for either team.
6. How this contributed to the eventual win.

Draw on evidence from across the semester — resources, wave states, information, tempo, objectives, composition and win conditions, teamfighting — wherever a transition actually calls for it. You do not need to name-drop every course concept; a transition that’s fully explained by two or three of them does not need the rest forced in.

A coherent causal argument is worth more than vocabulary density. An explanation that correctly uses fewer concepts, tied tightly to evidence, outperforms one that mentions everything from the semester without connecting the mentions into a chain.

What the criteria reward#

Identification of pivotal transitions rewards choosing moments that actually changed the game’s trajectory, over an exhaustive or arbitrary list of events.

Causal reasoning per transition is weighted heaviest: for each transition, does the explanation trace state → change → advantage → conversion → what it opened or closed, or does it stop at narrating what happened?

Evidence from the match rewards specific, checkable moments over general impressions of momentum.

Breadth across course concepts rewards drawing on multiple areas of the course where the match genuinely calls for them — not a checklist of every week’s vocabulary regardless of relevance.

Coherence of the overall argument rewards an explanation that reads as one connected causal chain from draft to Nexus, over a series of disconnected correct observations. This is the assessment where the distance travelled since Week 1 should be obvious.