King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 1 – The Beginning

-The King of the Hill DotA Series is sponsored by Rectron and powered by eGamer and Twilight Gaming-

 The buildup

All hail the new King of the Hill! That’s right, last night marked the first KotH (King of the Hill) match, to determine just who would sitting at the top looking down at the rest of us peons. This epic battle was contested between two of the top SA Dota teams, Tankh and Mint. For the first King of the Hill, egamer readers had the chance to vote for the two teams that they would like to see battle it out for Kingship.

Originally the two top teams were Pantheon with 29% (18 votes) and Tankh with 25% (16 votes). Unfortunately, Pantheon pulled out at the last minute handing third placed Mint with 24% (15 votes) a chance to battle for the top spot. I’ve included an extract from the admin log for clarity on the situation.

Admin Log:

Due to unforeseen circumstances pG had to pull out this afternoon, and so with that; they have been banned from participating in the KotH Tournaments for the duration of the next two weeks (19/05/09, 26/05/09). – Blink
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Now before I go ahead and ruin the outcome of the game for you, like any great sporting event you can download the replay and watch it. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also included some commentary from the newest member of the KotH team, hallow. So if the Dota SFX are getting a little old, be sure to grab both files and sync them up.

 

Replay: http://www.dota-allstars.com/download/replay/123556 – 884kb
Commentary: http://www.savefile.com/files/2101135 – 5.27mb

 

The Overview

Tonight’s game between Tankh and Mint kicked off just before 9pm, as Mint were running a little late (ed: Thanks for that Waz_Mac). These teams have met numerous times in the past, with Mint generally having the upper hand. Both teams are also scheduled for battle in the final of May’s DC Cup. The official for this game was Fluke. Tankh were randomly selected to go first.

 

The Bans

Tankh opened the bans for a second week in a row, again choosing to eliminate enigma. No suprises really, with Mint leaning toward banning some of the nastier AOE heroes and Tankh keeping Zombie out of the game. 

 Sentinel -  Tankh Scourge – Mint Gaming

The Picks

 Both teams seemed to pick fairly quickly, with the exception of Mint’s last pick. Tankh went with a different strategy from the previous week’s warm up, opting to pick big nukers (Juggers/Lion/Nerub) with no primary meat shield. Zeus and Mirana completed their line up, making a very effective group for team fights and ganking. Mint picked some two great pushing heroes (Rhasta/Krobelus), two strong tanks (Axe/Alchemist) and a Puck of all trades. 

Sentinel -  TankhScourge – Mint Gaming

 

The Assignments

 

 The Game and the Kills

Both teams kept a safe 2-1-2 lane strategy (2 top, 1 mid, 2 bot), but things didn’t stay safe for very long. Tankh struck first, with Scant offering the Waz_Mac’s Alchemist a slightly closer shave than he would have liked.

 Pictured: Scant offering to trim more than just a little off of the top from Waz_Mac.

Each team picked up another kill just before 5 minutes in as the game started to settle and both teams got farming. Mint seemed to dominate lane control slightly, most notably in the middle with Sloj’s Krobelus making Angel’s life with Zeus quite difficult. Just after 10 minutes, Sloj had racked up 30 creep kills and two hero kills. The score was tied at three a piece, but it seemed Tankh and particularly Scant were having none of this, kicking things up a gear and starting to pick off Scourge Heroes at every opportunities. Tankh took a 10/6 lead (with an EPIC triple kill from Scant @ 13:36). Mint however just kept up the farming, with a 129/99 lead over Tankh at this stage. Tankh kept up the pressure and after just over 20 minutes of game play, things we looking a little one sided with Tankh leading 21/11, the Juggernaut racking up kills in particular.

Pictured: Mouth finding out the hard way that four heroes > eight wards

However Mint never started to close this gap, all the while keeping up the farming effort and using their Rhasta’s and Krobelus’ ultimates to the max on the pushing front. 15 minutes later at the 35 minute mark you could see the game starting to slip away from Tankh. Mint had racked up all but one perimeter tower and were grouping to do some further damage. The kills gap had decreased to a 25/22 lead for Tankh, and Mint had almost 100 creep kills more. 37 minutes in, the fat lady started warming up her voice, as Mint pushed the last perimeter tower (bot) going on to take the level 3 tower at the Rax and take the lead on kills. A quick regroup and Mint moved their focus to mid, taking the raxes down around 43 minutes. The game lasted another three minutes, with Mint winning in the end 34/27 after 46 minutes.

 

The Vital Stats

 

The Summary

This was definitely an exciting match to watch, especially with final twist that you don’t see coming in the first 30 minutes. Both teams had good game plans and good combinations in the team fights. With Tankh’s current form, my money was on them to take the win, however Mint seemed to be Tankh’s bogey team as we’ve seen previously. Hopefully we see these two teams meet again. Gee Gee to both sides.

So ladies and geeks, the very first King of the Hill is Mint, and they’ll be defending their newly claimed hill next week Tuesday against the winner of the KotH voting. Tankh will be ineligible for next week’s round as they lost this week, but there are still plenty of other teams to choose from.

To cast your vote for next weeks challenger, check out http://egamer.co.za/2009/04/koth-rules-results-and-voting/

 

Gank you in the bushes – FatBob – Slobber@kothseries.co.za