King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 2 – One or None
-The King of the Hill DotA Series is sponsored by Rectron and powered by eGamer and Twilight Gaming-
The Buildup
Drama, Drama, Drama! That was the theme of this week’s KotH series match. Mint as the reigning King, were scheduled to play the winner of the polls, the winner being Dedicated Abuse. You may remember them from our exhibition match against Tankh (http://egamer.co.za/2009/05/king-of-the-hill-dota-series-breakdown-of-the-warm-up/). Everything was ready for the scheduled 8:30pm start, that was until our good friends from Eskom decided this wasn’t going to be a fair match up, and introduced a handicap for Mint Gaming. Yeah you guessed it, a power outage! There was a power outage in Durban between 8:30pm and 10pm, leaving Mint 2 men down just before the start of the Match. Not something entirely thought of by the KotH organisers, a request was made for a ruling on the situation. A unanimous decision was made by the KotH on how to proceed.
Admin Log:
As per the rules section, each team needs to be ready to start by no later than 9:30pm on Tuesdays and may only use registered members from their existing squad. Therefore Mint need to either play with as many available players as possible, or forfeit. - (19/05/09, 20:45) – KotH admin team
A tough choice, left mint two players short through no fault of their own. And just to add insult to injury, only one of their two registered subs were available. This left Mint with four players, and the option to either defend their Hill a player down or hand over the crown and the keys to the fence around the hill over to Dedicated Abuse. Of course Mint with a never say die attitude, opted to take on Dedicate Abuse with their handicap, as there are no free lunches on their watch.
As always, if you’d rather see how things turned out yourself, you can watch the replay and sync it up with Hallow’s commentary.
Replay: http://www.dota-allstars.com/download/replay/125708 – 702kb
Commentary: http://www.savefile.com/files/2110712
The overview
The game between Mint and Deda started at 20:56, with Mint only having four players. These two teams have never met at full strength, but Mint weren’t going down without a fight. The game official was Fluke, with Dedicate Abuse representing the sentinel and being randomly selected to go first.
The Bans
For the third week running we see the same five bans with Enigma, Crystal Maiden, Zombie, Earth Shaker, and the Necrolyte all making the list. Zeus returns to the ban list for a second time, with Axe and puck making their first appearance.
Sentinel – Dedicated Abuse
Scourge – Mint Gaming
The Picks
Deda selected some strong disablers, opting for the Bane and Sand King combo again, along with some tanking and stun from the pirate and Lina Inverse’s Chest and Laguna Blade. Their last pick was Krobelus the pusher (ed: Lanes not drugs.). Mint picked a nice combination of heroes, and had this been a 5v5, their choice of heroes would have by far, been a superior line up. Nerub, Lion and Kitty could have produced plenty of action in the bushes, however as they could only play four heroes, Lion was left on the bench.
Sentinel – Dedicated Abuse
Scourge – Mint Gaming
The Assignments
| Sentinel – dedicated’abuse | Scourge – Mint |
| Azen – Kunkka – Admiral (Ahoy Matey!) | Sloj – Anub’arak – Nerubian Assassin |
| Phobos – Lina Inverse – Slayer | Swissroll – Mirana Nightshade – Priestess of the Moon |
| Clitsybananas – krobelus – Death Prophet | Valprax – Lanaya – Templar Assassin |
| Bonkers – Atropos – Bane Elemental | Mouth – Rhasta – Shadow Shaman |
| Dominator – Crixalis – Sand King | Unassigned – Lion – Demon Witch |
The Game and the Kills
With their strong laning heroes, Deda deployed a classic 2-1-2 lane strategy, with Lina and Sandking bottom, while the Pirate and Bane handled top, leaving Krobelus mid. Mint started out with a 2-1-1, but early on Nerub switched to a more free role, trying to make something and gang. First blood went to Deda 5 minutes in, with SloJ (Nerub) being caught out and going down to SK and Lina. Mint however had a strong start, and early on they had fairly good lane control. Moving between lanes, they started most of the fights and were unlucky to miss quite a few opportunities especially against Dominator who will forever be known as the running man for the amount of times he got away on really low HP.
Pictured: Valprax – quite a thirsty fellow.
Deda just sat back farming, taking advantage of the extra man, while Mint tried to push and gang as much as possible early on. 15 minutes in, the game was still wide open with Mint having taken two towers to Deda’s none, and although behind on kills 10-6, Mint were doing a better job at farming with a 16 creep lead (160-144) even being a man down.
However it wasn’t long before dedA started making the extra man count in every situation, with the Dominator the running man baiting, and Lina Inverse taking advantage. dedA also warded well, making sure not to give SloJ’s nerub the chance to cause too much hassle with Vendetta.
Pictured: Dominator – Being hunted by a pesky Nerub.
Pictured: Dominator – A man on the run.
15 minutes later at the 30 minute mark, the scales started tipping in deda’s favour with a strong 24/13 lead on kills and a 4/2 tower lead. The creep stats were close at 299-305 but with so many extra deaths, Mint really were not farmed enough to pull off the upset. dedA made some heavy assaults on the Mint base from here on and, at 36 minutes successfully disposed of the Mint mid rax. Mint admitted defeat and at 38:41 for dedA dethroned Mint as the new King of the Hill.
Pictured: Lion with lots of gold and nothing to do with it.
The Vital Stats
The Summary
Not quite as exciting as last week’s nail biter, and with Mint’s player handicap and dedA not being a n00b team the outcome was fairly predictable. Mint played their hearts out, and what an upset it would have been if SloJ wasn’t neutralized early on. It’s the second time in recent weeks that lady luck has spat on Mint, but with a strong side they’ll bounce right back. It’s encouraging to see this level of maturity from a ZA clan, accepting admin decisions and not just giving up or sulking. Well done to Mint for their professionalism, and GeeGee to both sides.
This week sees no points dished out in the KotH series, but a new King is seated a top of the hill waiting for next week’s challenge and the chance to earn some points. Well done to the new King of the Hill, Dedicated Abuse. The polls are open, so vote for next week’s challenger. Â Tankh are back on list, as well as two new teams, so get voting.
To cast your vote for next week’s challenger, check out http://egamer.co.za/2009/04/koth-rules-results-and-voting/
Gank you in the bushes – FatBob – Slobber@kothseries.co.za
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Location: Johannesburg
Position: Author
Change of Champs… Nice!
Surely with 1 game a week you can afford to be a bit more flexable with the scheduling? Especially under matters out of the control of players.
A 5v5 game would’ve been much more entertaining to watch too.
Anyway, hopefully mint will get voted in for next week.
Deda should have played with 4 men also – maybe they were scared
Why should they play with 4 if they had 5 ppl ready to play?Why be disadvantaged if it the other teams problem ?
Cause the other team was down to 4 through no fault of their own.
I know they didnt have to but imo they should have. They cant really claim this as a proper win, if it was 4v4 they could have. As it stands they won cause they other team got shafted by Eskom, not really something to brag about.
Either way well done to both teams
Janine you obviously don’t have a comedy side to you
It seems deda did a good job keeping Valprax down, he didn’t manage to farm his 3rd bottle :/
Pity South Africa sucks so hard, I bet online tourneys run in other countries don’t have to deal with their Eskoms and Telkoms.
OMG WHERES THE EDIT BUTTON? This keeps getting better!
@Rocka: It was agreed upfront that games should be played on a Tuesday night, to prevent scheduling conflicts where team A wants/needs to pospone, and team B doesn’t etc. Although it was not Mint’s fault that they could not field a team of 5, the fact remains that they could not. If KotH start making exceptions in one instance, then they have to make exceptions in all instances otherwise it’s going to be unfair.
As Mint lost last night, they won’t be in this weeks voting, but hopefully they bounce back in the following week.
@Janine: There is this little thing called good sportsmanship. Dont misunderstand me, I’m not taking away from dedA or saying playing 5v4 was wrong, but as Uber pointed out to make things fair they could have also fielded a team of four. In the spirit of being good sports.
I agree, I don’t think you can condemn dedA for not sacrificing a player to make it even, but it would have showed good sportsmanship.
Anyway, what’s done is done. Great writeup Bob
Nobody expected them to play 4v4 (it would be unreasonable to ask them to do so). Their only other options were to make it a default loss (at the cost of the spectators/commentators/streamers/host/players having wasted their time), play 4v5 (at the cost of the players having a bad game), or delayed (at the cost of all the spectators who patiently waited for tuesday having to wait a day to see the game live). They chose the options they saw most fit.
I think to call it unreasonable might be a bit of a stretch, but no one is saying they did anything wrong by playing 4v5. I mean they were even happy for mint to find a sub that was not on their roster (although might have not wanted Blizzy), but it would have been a nice gesture.
Tody, your pr0 writing inspires me.
You’ve come a long way, my Apprentice. lol kidding, thanks Bob 
Unless you’re being sarcastic, then I would destroy you.
On target:
I personally see a number of different ways to look at it. Firstly, no matter what, dedA are not wrong. In fact nobody is wrong – no one is accusing anyone here. I think that needs to be made clear. They, dedA, are not wrong for playing 5v4. As Bob says, they even tried to compensate by allowing Mint to find a sub. It would, however, have been a nice display of sportsmanship if they had dropped one of their players to balance it out.
HOWEVER, the other side is that while no one was in the wrong, it would have been unfair for dedA to sacrifice one of their players who was already prepared and ready to play because of Mint’s ‘problem’. And, as mentioned, matches are once a week so spectators needed to see some action. I don’t think a loss by default would have flown well.
In the end, it was nice to see the match carry on despite the issue. There is still plenty of time left as far as KotH is concerned, so I think Mint have more than enough time to get back into the game. It’s going good so far
Guys just hold out one more day and I will get the commentary uploaded tomorrow morning. There was a problem with the streaming last night and therefore the commentary is incomplete and we are not all that happy to upload commentary that doesn’t cover the whole game.
Make sure to check in tomorrow for the completed commentary.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the comments here (: they are pretty beefy as columned comments go, with some good opinions lifted.
As the first external situation we’ve had to deal with, we’re very appreciative of the support from all sides regarding our decisions ^^
It’s the sex i promise you!
I can’t wait to dish out the first prize btw
It’s gonna be hot
@Bob, I asked sLoj if I could sub. He said it would of been nice but not allowed.
Haha Blizzy, having you sub is not fair to any opposing team, unless you’re up against Nitrate.
~
ye its a bit unlucky it was 4v5, but i think KoH took the right option for the tournaments sake :>