http://www.strawpoll.me/10440528

The glorious return to Us vs. Them is on the horizon. But instead of playing soccer with blue and orange cars, the two Giant Bomb offices will throw down in some Overwatch. Also as an edited post, it turns out that this Us vs. Them matchup will not end up being East vs. West but between GB and another website, most likely Gamespot, but we'll see. Anyone want to make any predictions as to who each dudes' top heroes will be for the stream and if they are gonna be any surprise contestants to join up each team. Also make predictions as to what shenanigans each team will deploy on each other and whether you think Giant Bomb will win or if the opponent will knock them off. Here are my predictions:

Giant Bomb Mains:

• Jeff: Lucio, Mei, Zarya
• Brad: Pharah, Soldier 76, D.Va
• Dan: Torbjorn, Roadhog, Junkrat
• Jason (if he plays): Pharah, Torbjorn, Zarya
• Drew (if he plays): Pharah and I don't know who else, maybe Tracer and D.Va
• Vinny: Mercy, I honestly don't know who Vinny plays with besides Mercy, so I'll just guess Widowmaker and Reinhardt cause why not?
• Alex: Soldier 76, Winston, Zenyatta
• Austin: Bastion, McCree, Pharah

Potential Opponents:

• Gamespot representatives, with the most likely opponents being Danny O'Dwyer, Mary Kish and Mike Mahardy (who reviewed Overwatch on Gamespot). I'm not too familiar with everyone else at Gamespot, so it could be anyone from there.
• Dream scenario, but a collaboration of frequent Giant Bomb Guests to take on Giant Bomb itself. The All Star team: Dave Lang, Patrick Klepek, John Drake, Samantha Kalman, Danny O'Dwyer anyways and Will Smith.

Shenanigans that will happen:

• Jeff and Alex will both pick Mei in 1 match and irritate everyone with ice walls while bantering at each other as to who makes better ice walls.
• Dan will eventually pick the hero he's best with from his top choices and stick with it for the entire stream, since he plays to win and only goes for one character in certain games anyways.
• Austin will constantly troll everyone by picking heroes that many people complain about (as I put above).
• It may get to a point where Jeff feels like this is becoming Mario Party and might start making Crow Sting sounds again.
• If Dave Lang is there, he'll call someone Da Watch Gawd and try to periscope the stream.

Winner: Giant Bomb

I think West has the better FPS players and possibly better strategy seeing how much Dan has been playing. If I had to bet something it would definitely be on West.

While West has the better FPS players individually, East has more communication and teamplay (judging by the earlier Us vs. Them videos). So I can't even guess who wins.

On a side note, will they fill the missing spots with bots, other players or will they play 3v3 (4v4)?

West I reckon. I think Jason, Dan and Brad played so much of it that they will win with experience alone

for whatever reason I thought this was gonna be a Giant Bomb vs Gamespot thing.

i hope they come up with a clever way to shoot this- FPS probably won't show as well as rocket league. but it's probably nothing that can't be enhanced by copious smack-talk.

Austin on D.va or riot!

West should have this with Jeff, Brad and Dan unless the East have some esports tactics.

@mellotronrules: I don't know why this game doesn't have some sort of spectate mode

The problem with West is that, despite Dan playing a ton of it, he looks like he's absolutely terrible. Like, he's usually decent at games, but we've seen he's not the hottest at FPS, and watching him play Overwatch during the stream/QL was kinda painful. Just a complete lack of awareness of anything happening. Jeff and Brad could carry him if they play Soldier and Pharah respectively, though.

As for East, Austin seems like the staff member that understands game systems the easiest across both offices, so I feel like they'll have an advantage when it comes to knowing all of the little tricks in the game (will we see some hot animation cancels, I wonder?). I also have faith in him to co-ordinate them. I need Vinny to play Reinhardt, that character was built for him. Big ass shield but can also go dumb when he wants to. I imagine he'll be playing some type of support, which will offset that he doesn't play a lot of shooters. Alex will be the Dan of East, but probably work with his team better.

It's a tough one to call. Also, do we have any idea what the setup for this will be? Will they not be having stuff sent to E3 by this point? I'm also thinking there will be some guests brought in as I don't think you can get away with bots (can you even play 3v3? Seems like it'd be awful). If there are guests, this will probably hinge on them quite heavily.

Huh, I was just thinking about the possibility of this a day or two ago. GOTTA BELIEVE!

I hope West has Danny as a surprise team member, I'd love to hear him smack-talking. I'm wondering about Alex, tho, isn't he still at SF to get ready to drive over to E3? Or did he travel back to NY already?

Third but not least, the chat will probably be flaming garbage full of people who think they are the best in the game, so you should probably just disable it before-hand. Or maybe it' won't, I can't remember how Rocket League went.

I think West (at least Jeff and Brad) have better individual FPS skills than East and Brad`s DOTA experience means he has experience with coordinating use of hero abilities. The question is if they can work together better than they did during the rocket league us vs them.

The East team has shown that they are good at working as a team and Austin seems to have a good understanding of the intricacies of the game mechanics. But I don`t know if that gives them enough of an edge to beat the West team.

Jeff is not a team player but he might prove himself useful with Lucio. Other than that I think it's going to be Ryckert vs Austin and the ringers whoever they may be.

No prediction until I know the full line-up.

HYPE!!! I was hoping so hard for this to happen!

I'm betting on East for this one. It just seem like they're better team players than the other guys.

Brad will again complain on his team, while east has perfect team work

West has way more experience with first person shooters in general, but I feel like East can probably put together a more cohesive team that works better together. I guess it also depends on who they get to fill out each team and what heroes they play.

pls paypal me $15 to bombkings@fantasysports.com to join my fanatasy-giantbomb-fantasy-overwatch league.

One prediction: I will have the LCD Soundsystem song stuck in my head all day tomorrow.

It'll be a beautiful mess of mechanical skill clashing against actual teamwork. I think my money is on East for this one. West is historically completely devoid of co-ordination, where all of them generally play lone wolf. Their edge would be skill in shooting, but I think Alex is better at most games than he'll ever admit, Austin is legitimately good at a lot of stuff (haven't seen him play a shooter yet?) and as a team they are much more talkative and co-operative.

It sounds like this might be a case of Giant Bomb (both East and West) teaming up to take on some other team.

@turboman: the MSG version is white hot fire.

team west for sure. a wee bit too early to dogpile on brad, no? either way should be fun!

can't get enough of this game right now.

My Money is on the East. Sure, Brad has more experience with hero composition -games (and with Doom 2), but Austin is a good strategist. East just has to execute accordingly and it's in the bag.

Predictions (the little I know about Overwatch):

• Austin on a healer. Staying back and looking over the fight, and keeping the talk going
• Vinny is a slugger. Diving in, soaking damage, and finding game breaking bugs
• I can see Alex as a sneaky sniper or a sneaky defender builder. Anything sneaky.

I assume, because of the nature of the feature, they will all be on the same voice channel. Which might hinder East's ability to make longer plays.

This feels more like 6 of the guys against rando's or another site.

Alex is out in Cali right now and East would only have Vinny, Austin, and Jeff McCreekalar.

While I agree that West probably has the better FPS players, they also tend to do whatever (Dan), usually don't pay any attention (Dan&Brad) and never really want to step out of their comfort zone (everyone, except Drew/Jason), so I could easily see this going East's way too.

I said it above, but since it seems to have been ignored I'll just reiterate. I'm almost certain that this won't be East vs. West (Dan essentially has confirmed this). This will be Giant Bomb as a whole taking on someone - not sure if it'll be randos or if they have another team lined up.

I wish there was easy way we could place bets on this match. I'd put up a bit on East.

GBeast will win because Dan doesn't understand teamwork.

Love ya Dan :D

https://www.reddit.com/r/giantbomb/comments/4nbo86/us_vs_them_overwatch_who_you_got_gbwest_or_gbeast/

Dan Ryckert seems to have confirmed that "us" refers to the entire GB office.

So it's TNT-esque? Premades, time to get your stream snipe on!

I'm glad it's just all of GB together. West would probably be a lot better than east here..

cool who they facing? I would game gamespot? in that case who wins? the only person I know anything about is danny so I cant even guess at the skill lvl of gamespot.

It's not East vs West? I hope it it's GB vs Anyone I care about at least. Overwatch pub games sounds like every other channel on twitch right now.

when is this happening?

@gtoor14: Tomorrow at 3pm ET

If they play Gamespot they will get demolished.

Best part of this whole thing is that it is scheduled for high noon.

Whatever team Dan is on will lose because he is a lone wolf glory hog in every multiplayer game i've seen him play lol

I just wanna see a couple gimmick games like the all Winston or all D.Va sneak flank.

I would love to see Giant Bomb vs. Gamespot with Tay and Rob added to OP's mentions. I guess they'd still need one more.

In the mean time, WHAT IF SOMEONE FROM OP'S DREAM TEAM (E.G. DAVE LANG AND JOHN DRAKE) SPECTATED AND DID ESPORTS COMMENTARY DURING THE MATCH?!?!?!??!?

I know Dan specifically has mentioned playing a lot of Soldier 76 so I'd expect him on that. If Austin isn't rocking the Gundam skin Pharah, I will be disappoint.

Wait this is coming back?!?! I saw Jeff say they were playing overwatch tomorrow, but an Us vs. Them! Hell yeah!

Man that would be amazing. Maybe Johnny V. could be a commentator after showcasing his e sports talk on the 3/4/16 UPF?

Though in reality, they're probably saving everyone of those guests for the E3 talking segments.

It's cool this is Giant Bomb coming together to form a 6-man team. I think if Austin can coordinate then the lone wolf problem won't be as significant, wonder who they'll be facing. I know Danny is pretty good at the game, not sure about the rest of Gamespot if it's GB vs GS.

This better boil down to a 12 Torbjorn match in the end.

I was under the same impression: that it would be East vs West, not giant bomb vs the community. I'd rather see that.

@fredchuckdave: I would love the community to just roll with the most trolly lineups. Like 6 bastions or soldier 76s

Seeing as we now know they are playing the community, I am even more sure they won't win a game!