King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 6 – Clash of the Titans

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

 

The Build up

Another week, another KotH round. This week’s KotH was contested between two old rivals Mint and Tankh. If you’re a little confused as to why Kings of Surf didn’t play, check out http://egamer.co.za/2009/06/king-of-the-hill-week-6-preview/
This was the second meeting between Tankh and Mint, the first time being in the very first KotH match. Mint prevailed the first time round, beating Tankh 34/27 in 46 minutes.

Admin Log:
Due to KingsOfSurf being notifying us the Friday before the game that they will not be able to field a team, Tankh in second place will play in tonights KotH. – KotH Admin team

This week saw some commentary stability issues as we weren’t quite expecting over 25 folk on teamspeak. It’s great to see KotH getting such great support and we will be looking at something to accommodate the demand for next week. It’s not all bad news however, as we do have a commentary that you can download and sync up with replay. This week’s commentary is courtesy of of Alcardu and Hallow (Ed: No ladies, it’s not Brad Pitt’s voice it really is Hallow).

Links

Commentary: http://www.savefile.com/files/2131693 - 5.5mb
Replay: http://www.dota-allstars.com/download/replay/133955

The Overview

This week the good guys (the sentinel) were represented by Tankh with Mint representing the bad guys (the scourge). The game did start slightly later than usual and kicked off at 8:49pm. Tankh were randomly selected to go first and as always, your match official was fluKe (See Jesus I got it right.)

The Bans

So who are the three heroes you’ll never see in KotH game? It’s the Zombie, the Tauren and the Necrolyte as they were banned for the 6th consecutive week. Not really much to say about the bans as it contained the usual suspects.

Sentinel – Tankh
Scourge - Mint

 

The Picks

 
Well looking at the last couple of weeks, the first pick game as no surprise, as Rhasta seems to be the number one pick of late for his pushing ability. Tankh took two strong strength tanks (cos that’s what Tankh does) as well as Zeus for spam and Chen who at the time I was a little surprised to see picked, but more on that later. Mint on the other hand decided to focus a little more on the stun and initiating Heroes with Sandking/Pirate/Puck.

Sentinel – Tankh
Scourge – Mint

 

The Assignments

 

The Game and the Kills

 
Having played each other quite a few times in the past, this fixture always produces some fireworks. And the fireworks started early this time, with first blood coming in just 36 seconds. SloJ was caught poking around in the sentinel bushes by Radox/Scant and punished for it.

Pictured: SloJ – likes it 3 on 1.

The lane setups were also slightly different to what we’re used to seeing. Mint went for the classic 2-1-2 with Was_Mac/MrAsssMan top, new recruit Blizzy Middle slowing with Morph and SloJ/Lemon-Grass bottom. Tankh decided on a triple solo strat with HorrorCast (Zeus) solo top, Angel (Clockwork) soloing mid, Nakor(Chen) in the bush and Scant(Rhasta) bottom with Radox (Naix). I was quite surprised that Tankh would try something like this against Mint, as Mint aren’t the sort of team that leave a jungle hero alone to… well errr jungle. After 5 minutes the score was 2/1 in Tankh’s favour, with SloJ having been involved in all 3 kills, twice on the receiving end. The farming was still very close at this stage 54/49 with Tankh just a few creep kills ahead. Early game saw Blizzy’s usual farmathon being hampered by the Clockwork, as Blizzy only had 5 creep kills after 10 waves of creeps.

Pictured: Angel fishing for pirates

Blizzy wasn’t the only one having trouble with Angel’s Clockwork, as SloJ, Waz_Mac and Lemon-Grass were all ganked early game with the assistance of Angel. 15 minutes in and the score was now 9/6 to Tankh who were also 1 tower up. Tankh’s focus was on early gangs and it still seemed 50/50 as to whether this would pay off or not. In their previous meeting with Mint, this had been their downfall. Both teams were still farming away, with Mint having the slight edge now 150/164. Still pretty close. And for the Blizzy fans out there, he was 49/10 at this stage.

The battle stayed fierce and things were pretty close. The team fights were really getting going now with each team trying to break the deadlock. The break came just after 19 minutes, when Angel with his annoying Clockwork took down 3 Minty fellows. This took the score to 14/11 and from here the floodgates seemed to open. In the next 6 minutes, Tankh racked up another 7 kills to Mint’s 1 and also took both the level 1 and 2 bottom towers and the level 2 tower top as well as the level 1 tower middle.

At the 25 minute Mark it was now 21/12 to Tankh and the towers were 5/1 to Tankh as well. Mint’s minor lead in CS wasn’t going to make much of a difference 286/269 wasn’t going to make a difference (Blizzy 96/14). Mint did put up a fight right until the end, but Tankh had stronghold over the map were never going to give an inch.

The End Game Screen

End game

The Summary

And that’s all she wrote folks. Week 6 (Ed: Isn’t it Week 7 already?) sees Tankh back at the top after dispatching of SloJ’s Blizzy enhanced Mint. It was a tight game, but Mint never really had the upper hand and in retrospect didn’t have the best pick to combat Tankh’s hero lineup.  My advice? Blizzy get those lazy folk from Bvd back in action and show these chuckleheads how it’s done. GGWP to both Mint and Tankh this week and good luck to all the teams for the vote.

Gank you in the bushes – FatBob

 P.S. Don’t blame egamer/twilight/Fatbob for the article being late this week, blame the fantastic pr0n on a certain NZB site.