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.  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