eGamer » Clan DotA

Ventus Gaming Plans To Bring The Pain — Literally

Dean — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:24:29 +0000

Oops. I was meant to do something on this last night, but while browsing the site I had to go for emergency eye surgery. Take a guess why. Here’s a hint: the site of it literally burnt.

Recently, we ran into a little bit of trouble with ZootFly — so I’ll try keep on track by being nice.

Ventus Gaming — a brand new MGO has arrived in South Africa. They apparently formed in October 2009, however we were totally oblivious to this. They officially blasted onto the gaming scene a few days ago, scarring retina’s nationwide.

Ventus means wind, in latin — but it also seems to match the surname of its leader Pieter Venter, who goes by the name Cyrus.

The new MGO has teams for DotA, HoN, Guitar Hero, Fifa 10, Quake Live and Counter Strike.

The DotA team is previously known as tankh, and they seemed to have jumped onto the sponsorship wagon, which is pretty nifty for a DotA team — seeing as all sponsors seem to hate DotA.

Cyrus has said that this is the first team to launch with sponsors, and they are pretty excited about it. He plans to make the team succeed by using his previous knowledge from XploIT, a previously failed MGO.

Check out their *cringe* site, for more.

The teams:

Guitar Hero

Mark ‘DarthPenguin’ Dennison

Fifa 10

Matthew ‘Cheezy’ Bosch

Quake Live

Henk ‘Adrenalin’ Boshoff
Micele ‘Szarko’ Aleksandrov
Robert ‘Draven’ Szlanina

Counter Strike

Connor ‘KING’ Laming
Dean ‘HackeM’ Seyfried
Jandrey ‘JiN’ Venter
Marco ‘Lost’ Fourie
Marchant ‘StripflOw’ Laauwen

DotA

Anthony ‘scant’ Hodgson
Mike ‘nakor’ Jones
Wessel ‘Freez’ Louwrens
Gerrit ‘Death’ Willigenburg
Liang ‘Kspr’ Cai

HoN – Previous known as Kai

Sakkie ‘RandomHero’ Basson (Captain)
Mark ‘iLLuSioN’ Woodland
Nicholas ‘Prodegy’ Bowler
Justin ‘smke ‘ Probyn
Riaan ‘azN_DoMz’ Visser

Similar to Bravado-Gaming, Ventus are planning to grow e-Sports in South Africa. They have already received a few sponsorships for their efforts and this includes:

Web Africa: 11x Unshaped accounts with 12GB each.
Cooler Master: 5x Cosmos Sport Chassis valued at R2200 each, 5x Hyper212plus fans, 5x 1100W
Samsung: 5x Samsung XL2370 HD 23″ TFT LCD Screens. (In association with Rectron)

On a side note: Looks like something from the ’90s.

A New Syncidy DotA Tournament For The April Month

Dean — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:14:02 +0000

The next Syncidy Cup is about to arrive, and with it comes a with a new sponsor. The cup will take place on the 3rd of April at 14:00, where it ends on the Sunday.

The new sponsor is IStorage and they will award the winning clans with branded t-shirts. Yup, that’s it folks.

From Twilight’s Forum:

Syncidy Cup – April 2010

When:
Saturday – 3 April 2010
14:00

Fight for 3rd and 1st place:
Sunday – 4 April 2010
14:00

Where:
Server – Twilight Gaming
Channel – Clan sNc

Entry Process:
Registrations open Saturday – 27 March 2010 @ www.syncidy.co.za

Entry is free, and open to all players within RSA
Only the first 8 entries will be accepted!

Sponsored Prize:
The winning team will recieve their very own clan-branded shirts!

Competition Structure:
Double Elimination
Map version: 6.67

Twilight League: Season 1 Registrations Now Open

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:04:25 +0000

Finally… Yeah this one has been in the works for a while now. There has been a lot of buzz around a league being setup by the “new” Twilight team and after much debate/procrastinating/stalling we’re ready to kick off season 1. And for those of you who have no clue what league we’re referring to, it’s a full on 5v5 clan based Dota league.

Details, you demand details! The basic format will be a round robin where a team plays every other team in their division. Division? Yeah that’s right. Depending on the amount of signups we get, the idea is to have divisions of 8 teams. This allows us to keep the groups managable as well as group teams together that are more or less on the same skill level. As it stands we’ve currently stands, we’ve had 8 teams sign up. Here are some the teams you can look forward to (Ed: Or dread) doing battle with:

TwG – Token White Guy
A fairly newly formed team from what I can gather with some big hitters. With Mint’s dota team disbanding Waz_Mac and AsSsMan (Ed: That’s MrAsSsMan to you) have joined up with Vsdgkk and doppl3R to form TwG. I recon they’re going to show some of the more established teams a thing or two.

S0NA – Spacefreaks 0N Acid
This has to be one of the most fun teams I’ve clannied against. Good spirit and not afraid to try something different. Expect a good game from these guys.

dedA – Dedicated Abuse
Or should I say, the new dedA. dedA along with TwG decided to snatch up a few miNt players and have now added sLoJ and Lemon-Grass to their line up. Definitely favourites for this season, no matter who signs up.

ExP – Extra Pulling
Exp should also be an interesting team to watch. While I’ve never seen them play before as a team, there are a few better than average players in their squad. With the likes of Fluro, Visrucis (Ed: Imba viper is imba), CuriousGeorge and Xylon who is incidently back after his cry thread about leaving cos he didn’t make gayHL2, ExP should make for a good competitive team.

DuC – DUCoRe
A fairly old team I remember seeing in the Agasa cup back in the day. Having played against them in the UCL and getting a solid ass kicking, I’d expect to see them fighting for a top 4 spot as they’ve been playing together for quite a while and have some great synergy.

Borg
Another team that has been around for some time, borg’s lineup has changed slightly however they’re still one of the stronger sides that have signed up. Expect some good games from these guys.

We haven’t done any sort of division placing yet as we’re expecting a few more registrations. However whether your team be n00b or pro you should find yourself in a fairly evenly matched league. Registrations close on the 26th February, so time is running out. For more information on the rules and format, check out the twilight forum.

FB Out!

One Week Leagues — A New Gaming Start Up For Competitive Online Play

Dean — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:15:02 +0000

The First Online Syncidy Cup For DotA — Play To Win!

Dean — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:58:26 +0000

You’ve heard right Cape Town, Syncidy LAN is back!

Following some tragic ‘irregularities’ from our venue’s side end-September last year, Syncidy was forced underground. Have no fear though, time spent wasted is never time wasted! We are back and better than ever.

Being as excited as we are to see everyone again, we have decided to kick the embers under the Dota community in anticipation of our relaunch:

In co-op mode with Twilight Gaming and eGamer, we are running a fast paced competition the first weekend of February. Entry will be free and open to everyone from the community, but act fast as we will only allow the first 8 entries to take part. The winning side will pocket themselves an ice cold R500-00 courtesy of Syncidy Gaming.

Syncidy Site Here

Syncidy Cup – February 2010

When:

Saturday – 6 February 2010
14:00
Fight for 3rd and 1st place:
Sunday – 7 February 2010
14:00

Where:

Server – Twilight Gaming
Channel – Clan sNc

Entry Process:

Registrations open Saturday – 30 January 2010 @ www.syncidy.co.za
Entry is free, and open to all players within RSA
Only the first 8 entries will be accepted

Sponsored Prize:

The winning team will receive R500-00!

Competition Structure:

Double Elimination
Map version: 6.66

DotA Replay of the Week: DIPS vs TeG

DaekinHO — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:25:14 +0000

From the GosuCup Tourney: the Swedish powerhouse, DIPS vs the Romanian Devils, TeG (The Elder Gods).

Introduction

An interesting tourney as all matches are to be played in -CD mode (Captain’s Draft).

For those of you who do not know what -CD mode is all about:

Captains Draft. 24 random heroes are selected. Then Blue and Pink take turns banning heroes, then picking heroes. Then the players on each team pick from their team’s heroes.

This brings about pro’s and con’s to the DotA game as teams have to adapt and the strategies and teamwork of each side will be tested thoroughly in their DotA knowledge.

Pro’s for me are that heroes that are forgotten or rarely used are brought into the frame as teams can only choose from the pool of 24.

Con’s are that sometimes the pool is a bit unlucky and bad so it will make for an unexciting game.

The Game

Download the replay here.

Game Length: 48:40

Map: DotA Allstars v6.66.w3x

The Bans/Picks

TEG BANS (1st)

DIPS BANS

Scourge: TEG

The Scourge

TeG-Ly0n^ (Top) [DP]
freezer1905- (Mid) [Panda]
TeG-S0ny4ce (Bot) [Jugger]
TeG-Coco (Bot) [WD]
TeG-RMP (Jungle) [CM]

Sentinel: DIPS

The Sentinel

DIPS|Sword_777 (Top) [Puck]
DIPS|Spear_666 (Mid) [Bane]
DIPS|BeNTZER (Bot) [Riki]
DIPS|Daegosaur (Bot) [Lich]
DIPS|pepp3 (Jungle) [Tiny]

The Squeeze

87 Kills overall, so this game brings a lot of high action and fast ganking and movement. Just over 2 kills per minute on average :D
DIPS and TeG are quite an evenly matched side in terms of skill so its quite a fairly even match.
Trilane vs Trilane interesting to see which 3 heroes win

What To Look or Look Out For

In the first few seconds of the game, take a look at bot lane and the warding position of TeG. This position is becoming very overused if not always used when tri-laning. So as you can see DIPS is countering by already not going to the lane but hanging in the bush together so they do not get caught out with their pants down.

Interesting to see at the 10min mark is what items the carry heroes are … carrying. Rikimaru has a stout shield for tank/survivability, boots of elevinskin and finally boots of speed. The reason for the elevinskin is to increase his damage for last hitting. Remember the more damage you can do the better your last hitting will be, and in the case of agility — it does increase his armour slightly (but maybe some would say insignificantly).

Juggernaut on the other hand has increased his last hitting and damage output dramatically. This was obtained by going phase boots, accompanied with slippers and branches (every little bit of stats increases your output). Stats are very important in the early game so you can farm/damage. Remember if you do very well early game, your late game could be made a lot easier in terms of items, so this is very important to get a good start by getting the right items.

Regen is almost important, but in these lanes sentinel are obviously the ones getting harassed more (with cm aura scourge are having a lot of fun) so that is why maybe Jugger could relax on the regen items. Later both heroes do buy poor man shield’s as well as healing salves.

Watch at the 8:30 min mark! pepp3 get away from S0ny4ce with 9HP!!!

And seconds later Sword_777 and Sony4ce are lucky to get away with their lives, freezer1905- wasn’t so lucky.

If you find yourself in an AOE-storm like this one, you better hope you have a way out!

Summary

This game is a must watch, such an exciting game that really reminds me of why I love and play DotA.

Thanks to DIPS and TeG for bringing us such an exciting game and to all of you.

OC LAN Sees An Eventful JJ vs dedA Game

DaekinHO — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:34:04 +0000

As SMM comes to a close and the Alienware 30-day Tourney taking over, another tournament fell over the month of November –

THE OC DOTA TOURNEY OF COURSE!

Garena was unfortunately down during this time period, but the following replay has been released!

THE GAME

dedA vs JJ – Replay

Game Length: 57:08

The Sentinel – dedA (1st Pick)

The bans:

The picks & lanes:

DedA.( •)<*(Top) [POTM]
DedA.BurNing~(Top) [SVEN]
DedA~CryT_T.(Top) [VS]
DedA.YMT(Mid) [WL]
DedA.longdd(Bot) [QOP]

The Scourge – JJ

The bans:

The picks & lanes:

6iS(Top) [BM]
Freez(Mid) [LICH]
Aion(Bot) [CM]
PLEASE(Bot) [SF]
nrg(Jungle) [ENIGMA]

THE SQUEEZE:

The reasons to watch this replay are simple, this is an exciting game which is a lot of fun to watch but for those of you who want a more detailed explanation keep reading otherwise just download and DISCUSS?

Banning pipe (The captains of both teams before the match came to the decision to ban pipe) to make the game more exciting.
Scourge going for a level 1 roshan strategy with overpowering AOE, whilst dedA looking to dominate in lanes from the get go with trilane top and strong solo’s mid and bot.
AOE watch the ulti’s and spells go BOOM!
Roshan level 1, wanna see kills before the creeps are out? THEN THIS REPLAY IS FOR YOU!
Tri-lane top, watch 6is soak up the pressure of 3 heroes on 1.
8min mark, watch how Saidin literally raze his way out of a tight gank.
32min, wanna see a double triple kill? 2 heroes left? wtf?
Did I mention ULTI’S GO OFF = BOOM!
DISCUSS ALREADY

DOWNLOAD, WATCH & NOW DISCUSS

New BloodMoney Events — Win Cash For Playing Tournaments

Dean — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:56:49 +0000

Over the past few days we’ve been chatting to the guys from BloodMoney, a new online tournament with the big M involved.

The ‘big M’, you might ask? Money, money money.

That’s right, BloodMoney are hosting online gaming competitions where competitors can win cash back for their efforts in destroying faces.

The tournament will be team-based (for certain games), and then individually-based for other games.

To allow for prize money, the hosts are simply asking that each player enters by handing in a fee of only R10.

It’s a winner-take-all style tournament, and this essentially means that the winner will claim all of the cash. All of the cash being, entrance fees minus 10 percent (labour, hosting, bla bla).

At the moment sponsors are minimum, however Square Eyed Computers will host games and supply servers.

BloodMoney are expecting to host games throughout the entire day. It’s loads of fun for the holidays when you’re bored.

Prizing will not be limited to money, as gamers can win spot prizes for extraordinary achievements such as outrageous kill-to-death ratios.

The contact address for the main-man behind the name can be found here, while the web address can be find right over – here.

Questions are arising, I can see it already. We’ll try answer these to the best of our ability.

1. Skill levels

There will be various skill levels and various skill level servers. This means that good players will win, mediocre players will win and n00bs will win. BloodMoney will judge your skill level to ensure that no one good sneaks into bad-player games.

Prizing for the skill level games change as Elite players will win more of the cash then the n00bs – this is because they are Elite.

2. Cheating

Banned on spot, ’nuff said. Oh, and thanks for your cash, cheating douche.

3. Games played

CSS
DotA
CoD 4

These tournaments will be once a week, or so.

Check out the site for more.

MYM|MaNia- Interview

HamstaDawG — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:04:08 +0000

Hi MYM|MaNia-, Tell us a bit about yourself and how you started off with DotA.

Hey all, in Dota you know me as MaNia-, but in my private life my name is Brian and I am at the moment studying to be a multimediadesigner, which is pretty much making commercials or creating websites etc. I started playing dota about 4 years ago. It started out as just being an outlet after playing intense warcraft 3 matches. I used to play on a pretty high lvl of normal warcraft, but I started playing more and more dota, and in the end I didnt play anything else than dota. As you know it is a quite addictive game. :)

How do you view of the future of international DotA?

Things are looking really good in the competetive world of dota. More and more tournaments are appearing with bigger prizepools, which really makes it more worth traveling around the world to join these events. Theres not many organisations that are able to send dota teams to events around the world, so we are really blessing that our organisation is so generous.

Can you tell us about your team, the players, their roles etc?

Our main lineup is Kuroky, PusHer, Miggel, Angel and myself.

Me and Miggel normally play the hard gankers while kuroky plays the semicarry/ganker and angel normally plays our lategamer, but he also helps gang around the map. Pusher is mostly defined as being in the support category, but hes been really active in the ganks and has improved alot. I think with our current playstyle it allows all the members of the team to reach their potential.

How is the European gameplay different to that of the Asian gameplay?

I dont really see big differences between european and asian playstyle, its only few teams in each region that differs from the rest of the teams. Like cybertime is using alot of different heroes, and are trying to mix melee agility heroes in their lineups.

How much time does MYM spend practicing together?

Its not really scheduled but we just prac when all are online. Eventhough we have tried putting in more hours of training, since the arrival of Kuroky, since there is allways a transition period when a new member joins the team.

About SMM. Are you looking forward to it? How is MYM preparing for this event and what do you expect from other teams in terms of preparation and performance?

Im really looking forward to playing against all the asian teams, since we dont get the chance to play vs them normally. We havent done some speciel training up to the event, since people are very busy with their studies, but we have tried praccing as much as possible to be ready for the event, and we feel that we are in great shape atm. I heard that the asian teams are spending 12 hours a day preparing for smm, plus they also spend some days up the event analyzing the different opponents, so thats real dedication. I heard all asians are like that in every sport they play. I saw some program once with chinese gymnasts that were training like robots all days every day, which is how i picture the asian dota teams, when I think of them.

Have you ever watched a South African replay?

Unfortunately I haven’t had the pleasure of watching south african replays, I dont even know a place where I can download them. (edit: well now you do :D)

Lately we have seen some exciting picks from MYM and other international teams. Are there any unorthodox heroes you would like to try out in a game?

Theres many heroes I would like to try out, but I cant disclose this information up to the event

What would you like to see changed in 6.65?

I dont want much changes, mb add some new heroes to make it interesting. Would be cool with a hero that has an aim skill, since they are most fun to play.

Have you seen the Nightcrawler teaser? What’s your opinion on it?

Yea I have seen the teaser, the hero looks imba :)

Favourites:

Hero? Pudge tiny

Item? dagger

Spell? Techies suicide

Strategy? offensive

International Player? Darkarax4

Local Player? Flaskehals/41-eyes they are twins :)

Food? Chinese duck

Drink? Guld tuborg(danish type of beer)

Movie? The butterfly effect

Song? The temper trap – sweet disposition

Quote? What are you a gay fish?

Lastly, any shout outs you would like to send to fans?

I wanna make a shout out to two of my favorite fans: Clitsybananas and xeRa! Im really glad to hear that we have fans in South Africa, I hope I can learn more about the SA playstyle and culture. Keep supporting us, you make us stronger!

All photos taken from mymym.com and gosugamers.com. Captions for images are from the top of the page to the bottom:

Image 1: MaNia-

Image 2: Top left to bottom right: Maelk, Angel, Pusher, Mania-, Miggel

Image 3: Right: MaNia-

Image 4: Left MaNia-

500-Man FRAG Lan Hits Durban In December

Dean — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:19:53 +0000

In a few weeks time will see the ‘biggest’ gaming even in Durban. Frag LAN will be aiming at a full 500-man LAN with 90% of the network being Gigabit.

The organisers are requesting that you buy your ticket as soon as possible.

Bookings will only be accepted once the seat has been paid for, and there will be no reservation without payment.

The Details:

Date: 11-13 December 2009
Time: 10:00 (11th) – 10:00 (13th)
Place: Edgewood College Dininghall, UKZN, Pinetown
Cost: R200
Web page to book: http://www.frag.co.za/

There will be various tournaments played, and the games include:

Call of Duty 4: 5 vs 5 Search & Destroy (Promod Live – AGASA Maps & FRAG Ruleset)
DotA: 5 vs 5
Crysis Wars: Team Deathmatch 2 vs 2
Counter-Strike Source: 5 vs 5 KOTH (minimum of 8 teams needed to enter ; pay2play tournament)

Frag staff are trying their best to confirm the prizes. It was said that the prize pool will be around R30,000.

The event is hoping to award prizes to teams as far down as 5th place.

Other extra’s for the event includes:

A pool
Volleyball
Pool Table
Xbox setups
Give aways
Promotions

More details will be added once they have been confirmed.

Check out the Frag site to book your ticket, etc.

UCL Week 1: Replay of the Week

HamstaDawG — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:49:32 +0000

Written by Michael “Orange” Masson

Week one of the UCL got off to flyer last week with wins going to clans Star, PhD, dedA, DUC, 8or9 and Crap. One of the weeks highlight replays was the clash between CraP and NsF, captained by Magicman and Doppl3r respectively. NsF are a recently reformed clan, looking to get back into the competitive scene, sporting the likes of Doppl3r, Ryuu and Vsdgkk. The expectation was on them to win this one, with individual skill and experience exceeding that of Crap. However, a determined Crap kept cool, calm and collected throughout the game and with some well coordinated team play, managed to give NsF a lot more than they bargained for. NsF were downed by the good communication and synergy of Crap and out muscled late game by the TenQâ€™s in axe and necro.

The Draft

Bans

NsF:

Dark seer has, of late, become more often used â€“ and used well with his flexibility be it ganging, laning or even late game support, thus he was banned. Bane was also elimed, a powerful ganger and solo lane. Stratting for a Rasta solo mid, bane wouldâ€™ve been an obvious threat to the success of the rasta. We can also note at this pointÂ the tide ban, a mass AoE disabler, was benched with the stratting of a Chen, who thrives off less AoE to disable his creeps.

Crap:

Na and es, known trouble makers,Â were banned by Crap. Veng being the roaming problem child â€“ going 2 solos, CrapÂ were probably thinking whats best for someone trying to hold a lane/farm.Â Slardar was Craps more unorthodox ban, a hard to control super carry.

Picks,Â Assignments and Lanes:

NsF:

Chen [Doppl3r] â€“ Bush/Gang
Doom [BearGrills] â€“ Bot Solo
Rasta [Ryuu] â€“ Mid Solo
CM [_Pies4ng] â€“ Top
Panda [Vsdgkk] â€“ Top

Doppl3r went for strat based aroundÂ Panda and him getting his scepter as early as possible (with cm to babysit andÂ harass in his lane) and the silence doom to farm up as much as possible (noteÂ the early midas). Opting for a ganging chen that could help cm with the supportÂ role was a risky pick but allowed for some early kills to the favour of panda.Â The rasta played a more aggressive game than what we are used to seeing, takingÂ on the solo mid and controlling the pirate. Lucifer in the bottom lane had aÂ tough time controlling the conventionally feared axe/wl lane and eventuallyÂ farmed less than expected.

A cm laning top supporting panda, aÂ bushing chen ready to gang and a relatively frail necro laning top, sentinelÂ were planning on dominating an early lane (top) whilst Doom farmedÂ up bot andÂ Rasta defended mid. Things obviously didnâ€™t go as planned.

Crap:

Axe [Magicman] â€“ Bot
Admiral [Lighten] â€“Mid Solo
Warlock Â [h0nd] â€“ Bot
Necrolyte [-Eraser-] â€“ Top Solo
Enigma [Nowhere] â€“ Top Bush

Many new strats have emerged lately
and have been tried and tested. Last week, Crap kept to what they new optingÂ for a more conventional strat. A bushing enigma to assit a top solo, farm someÂ stats/wards/blink was not so surprising from Crap. Pirate is also a known solidÂ farmer when soloing â€“ of which can also make some kills with his disable. HeÂ also some decent late game AoE. Necro (who soloâ€™d top) can be a deadly forceÂ late and early game, and after Nsf picked semi tanks in Panda and Doom, havingÂ someone who could eliminate one the higher hp battle heros could greatlyÂ influence the outcome of battles! The idea of Necro versus a Panda in battle isÂ to focus his ulti on a lower hp panda before he can use Primal Spirit, the deadly,Â tanking three pandas from hell that can single handedly win battles.Â Necro had a hard time in his lane and hisÂ farming was halted by some constant deaths and harassing. Axe/WL is known toÂ pay dividends if executed correctly, and was a good lane bot (with themÂ assuming Chen would bush bot).

Early On

After some Rasta nets to attemptÂ solo kills, a few missed torrents by pirate, and doom not letting up versus hisÂ tough axe/wl lane, first blood predictably went to NsF top lane with theÂ cm/panda slows and chen rushing (frightening) poor necro into a dismal corner.

Enigma
had quite a tough job in the farms and was gunned down by the cm/panda/chenÂ combo as often as necro. He ganged effectively and attempted to help recoverÂ top lane but, even after making 2 kills, couldnâ€™t hold panda back from aÂ farming spree (note there were wards planted in his primary creep pulling campÂ early on).

Meanwhile,Â bottom lane,Â axe was farming it up with the help of wl. An almost untouched,Â unganged lane by NsF â€“ a criticalÂ mistake in my opinion. Their over-commitment

top blew Dooms farming expectations to smithereens, yet he did well for theÂ situation he found himself in, even earning a kill when chen madeÂ the trekÂ across the river! Axe was yet to be killed and sported a large wad of cash to
show for it. Doom was also hauling it in.Â Rasta andÂ Pirate were also farming it up a bit mid, with even creep scores for a whileÂ and 1 kill a piece (pirate had a death and an assist).

These areÂ the following aspects to note 10 mins into the game:

Score: 7/4

TowersÂ lost: 0

Creep
Scores:

1^st	48	MagicmanÂ (Axe)
2^nd	39	Vsdgkk (Panda)
3^rd	32	RyuuÂ (Rasta)
4^th	30	LightenÂ (Pirate)

Wards
Purchased (sets):Â 2(cm)/2(wl)

Midgame

Midgame,Â things seemed to go all NsF for a long while, with multiple lane pushes,Â takings of towers and well coordinated gangs. This went hand in hand with someÂ decent mid-game warding by chen. However, a big negative for NsF were the 3 lowÂ hp intel heros. As much as NsF seemed to dominate, Crap often snatched one orÂ two kills from a gang. This kept them well in touch score wise.

Axe wasÂ already well farmed and on his way towards super tanking (with blink). Many NsFÂ gangs, however, were ill coordinated and lead to nothing. This gave Crap theÂ break to farm up â€“ pirate with battle fury, enigma with blink, wl with necroÂ book. Crap started comboing up with axe blink call, enigma ulti, wl ulti. TheyÂ started winning 5v5â€™s and gaining the upper hand (with the odd battle victoryÂ going to NsF). NsF had the rasta pushes on their side and successfully tookÂ some towers, gaining gold all along and allowing them more space to farm.

NsF,Â although on the backfoot, also began to come back with some well timed aghanism-inducedÂ ultis from Vsdgkk (Panda) that won them many kills in various battles.

The game remained tight throughoutÂ the middle of the game with both teams trading kills every 5 or so minutes.

Mistakes were made by both teams, however it was evident at this stage thatÂ Crap were gelling well as a team, with some really well timed ulties andÂ farming management.

NsF were burdened by some lazy mapÂ awareness by cm at times, and over confidence in many pushes. With cm buyingÂ wards and chen planting them, NsF were showing doubt in their supportâ€™sÂ capabilities, never a good sign. Communication also brought them down at timesÂ with some people speaking over Teamspeak and others not.

Another big issue was the divisionÂ of farming in NsF. With only a panda to carry them through fights, piling himÂ with items seemed a plausible option. However, with doom farming his aga andÂ refresher, rasta soloing (for a long time) and raking in gold from towers andÂ creeps and cm carelessly pushing lanes every so often, he did not get enoughÂ chance to farm as much as he shouldâ€™ve. Late game turned out interestingÂ indeed.

Late Game

Some interesting stats (at 40 mins):

Score: 30/32

Creep Scores:

Necro	74Â (with a guinsoo, treads, stats)
Cm	84 (with blink, treads, stats)

Wards: 18 /16

Wl	16
Chen	8
Rasta	6
Cm	4

We began to see some late gameÂ pushes after NsF took a few vital kills. This severely dampened Crap defense andÂ NsF were able to take a (melee) rax at 52 mins.

NsF continued some power pushes withÂ pandaâ€™s ulti and rasta wards, taking another rax. 2 raxâ€™s down and the creepsÂ having pushed bottom scourge tower, scourge were on the backfoot, and if thisÂ pushing was to continue, they were sure to lose. It was time to act for Crap.Â After roshing (2^nd rosh â€“ 2^nd aegis to necro), theyÂ pushed a few times themselves, the first few to no avail. Finally, one lastÂ massive push, Crap cleaned most of NsF out, continuing to rax mid. SlippingÂ past defences, they raxed both bot and top, inducing super creeps. Nsfâ€™sÂ defence was weekend by consecutive deaths and no synergy. Pandas idea to saveÂ cash for a possible push of this sort, bought back 3 times trying to defend.Â Crap was already way too powerful and tanked up for vsdgkkâ€™s primal spirit.Â They took the tree. Very persistent play from both teams lead to a classic!

Very powerful 5v5 heroes from bothÂ Crap and NsF lead to some decent late game turtling, and it was nice to see aÂ tight replay for a change!

Well played Crap! Look forward toÂ seeing both these clans back in action this week =P.

End game screenshot:

DotA Parse
Date: 09/11/2009 21:17

Patch version: 1.24

Map: DotA Allstars 6.64

Game name: [12]nsf v crap

Game mode: Normal mode

Host name: Vsdgkk

Replay saver: Doppl3R

Game length: 1:25:32

Players: 5v5

Game score: 52/43

Observers: Sacred_Warrior, The_Protagonist

Sentinel:

Doppl3R, level 20, K/D: 14/11, CS: 208/4, build: 9353 gold, items: , APM: 94

BearGrills, level 21, K/D: 7/13, CS: 149/10, build: 16258 gold, items: , APM: 94

Ryuu, level 19, K/D: 21/5, CS: 302/10, build: 12487 gold, items: , APM: 67

_Pies4ng, level 20, K/D: 0/0, CS: 0/0, build: 13265 gold, items: , APM: 65

Vsdgkk, level 21, K/D: 5/14, CS: 37/0, build: 17530 gold, items: , APM: 86

Scourge:

Magicman, level 19, K/D: 3/13, CS: 157/6, build: 19149 gold, items: , APM: 109

(Pirate)Lighten, level 25, K/D: 8/15, CS: 95/4, build: 21733 gold, items: , APM: 99

h0nd, level 25, K/D: 8/14, CS: 147/4, build: 12871 gold, items: , APM: 101

-Eraser-, level 21, K/D: 5/10, CS: 95/13, build: 19214 gold, items: , APM: 74

Nowere, level 19, K/D: 0/0, CS: 0/0, build: 12459 gold, items: , APM: 64

Article Source: www.GoodDota.za.net

Let the battle begin! Twilight’s Unofficial DotA League

Dean — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:34:48 +0000

The Unofficial DotA League will start on the 2nd of November, 2009. The league will be a ‘warm-up’ for the official Twilight League which should kick off in a couple of months time.

The league will see 14 teams face off in a 14 week long race to become the champions. The 14 teams included differ in experience and reputation, and it will be interesting to see whether there are going to be any upsets or whether the big clans will easily triumph over the lesser known ones. Either way, this league promises a great deal of competitive gaming and all round fun for those taking part.

Teams will play one game per week, and will earn points for a win and bonus points are available should a team win or lose with specific conditions being met. After having completed all of their matches, the team with the most points wins the league. The weekly standings of the 14 teams will be updated as the replays of the games are uploaded and reviewed.

Check out the details of the league here
Check out the results and scoreboard here

To all the teams involved – all the best and letâ€™s try to put on some top notch performances!

eGamer KOTH crosses the finish line

Dean — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:40:01 +0000

My friends it is my pleasure to stand here at the back-end of a 25 week run from eGamer Koth. As head admin I had the wonderful job of blaming others for problems and delegating all my work elsewhere while I looked good.

Koth was formed from various suggestions, comments and tantrums; so as to satisfy the maximum amount of people and give us something to bring the community together a little once a week. Judging from the roaring support we received from everyone during this past half a year our community is most definitely growing into a slightly more engaging toddler, something that makes me smile deeply.

But of course Koth was not without problems, and so I have to add a special thank you to everyone for still coming back week after week as we all went through the learning process of running this type of community driven and sensational style competition. Sometimes the ink ran dry for a week or two, sometimes the players had the usual connection issues, but next week once more we would be joined by all of you for another go at the dream of Community Fun.

Koth was the first Dota competition in South Africa to run WaaghTV and commentaries throughout its duration, and has definitely set out some fresh and exciting possibilities for coming competitions, such as the Twilight League which will be launch registrations soon.

‘So who won already?’ Well if you are asking me that then you certainly have been missing for a few weeks, as the clear winner at the end of Koth is MiNt Gaming. MiNt settled onto the throne just over a month ago and didn’t budge since, beating back challenger after challenger. Infact MiNt did so well they technically won about 3 weeks ago already, when the last possibility slipped away for any opposing team to match their points on the scoreboard.

We throw a big well done in MiNt’s direction and happily crown them eGamer Kingz of the Hill!

MiNt showed off their skills with the following roster:

sLoJ
Waz_maC
MrasSsman
Lemon-grass
kspr

And so as the final note I simply cannot leave without saying thank you to the eGamer, Twilight Gaming and THE KOTH ADMIN TEAM ROAR ^^ . Slaving away week after week, formatting and reformatting, learning new skills in order to meet expectations, they really deserve a big round of drinks/applause. So, if you see any of the following people please do buy them a drink: Nitrate, Slobber, Hallow, FluKe, Mortal, Blade, Shoprite_Packet, DeMoNiK, Blink, Demraz

And so I wish you all the best for the rest of your exams, myself included.

gl hf ;)

Flipi ‘alcardu’

Full KOTH Stats:

Results

05 May 2009 – Exhibition Match -> tankh vs dedA -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
12 May 2009 – The Beginning -> tankh vs miNt -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
19 May 2009 – One or None -> miNt vs dedA-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
26 May 2009 – First Blood -> dedA vs mmk-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
02 June 2009 – Two To Tango -> dedA vs SF-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
09 June 2009 – New Kings on the Block -> dedA vs miNt-> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
16 June 2009 – Clash of the Titans -> miNt vs tankh-> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
23 June 2009 – New Blood has been Shed -> tankh vs Ks`za -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
30 June 2009 – Match 8 -> tankh vs JIMP -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
07 July 2009 – Match 9 -> tankh vs miNt -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
14 July 2009 – Match 10 -> miNt vs KsZa -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
21 July 2009 – Match 11 -> miNt vs dedA -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
28 July 2009 – Match 12 -> miNt vs Tankh -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
04 August 2009 – Week Break – Check out the Article here
11 August 2009 – Match 13 – miNt vs JJ.dota -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Commentary -> Post game article
18 August 2009 – Match 14 – miNt vs Tankh -> Winners -> Tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
25 August 2009 – Match 15 – JJ vs Tankh -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> Post game article
01 September 2009 – Match 16 – JJ vs dedA -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
08 September 2009 – Match 17 – JJ vs mmK -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> Post game article
15 September 2009 – Match 18 – JJ vs dedA -> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
22 September 2009 – Match 19 – miNt vs dedA -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
29 September 2009 – Match 20 – miNt vs JJ -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
06 October 2009 – Match 21 – miNt vs Tankh -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay
13 October 2009 – Match 22 – miNt vs dedA -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay
20 October 2009 – Match 23 – miNt vs JJ -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay
27 October 2009 – Match 24 – miNt vs dedA -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay

Week 25 – Koth Game 24 — The Last Game — Results and Voting!

Dean — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:16:26 +0000

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

JJ is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

05 May 2009 – Exhibition Match -> tankh vs dedA -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
12 May 2009 – The Beginning -> tankh vs miNt -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
19 May 2009 – One or None -> miNt vs dedA-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
26 May 2009 – First Blood -> dedA vs mmk-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
02 June 2009 – Two To Tango -> dedA vs SF-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
09 June 2009 – New Kings on the Block -> dedA vs miNt-> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
16 June 2009 – Clash of the Titans -> miNt vs tankh-> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
23 June 2009 – New Blood has been Shed -> tankh vs Ks`za -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
30 June 2009 – Match 8 -> tankh vs JIMP -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
07 July 2009 – Match 9 -> tankh vs miNt -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
14 July 2009 – Match 10 -> miNt vs KsZa -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
21 July 2009 – Match 11 -> miNt vs dedA -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
28 July 2009 – Match 12 -> miNt vs Tankh -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
04 August 2009 – Week Break – Check out the Article here
11 August 2009 – Match 13 – miNt vs JJ.dota -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Commentary -> Post game article
18 August 2009 – Match 14 – miNt vs Tankh -> Winners -> Tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
25 August 2009 – Match 15 – JJ vs Tankh -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> Post game article
01 September 2009 – Match 16 – JJ vs dedA -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
08 September 2009 – Match 17 – JJ vs mmK -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> Post game article
15 September 2009 – Match 18 – JJ vs dedA -> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
22 September 2009 – Match 19 – miNt vs dedA -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
29 September 2009 – Match 20 – miNt vs JJ -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
06 October 2009 – Match 21 – miNt vs Tankh -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
13 October 2009 – Match 22 – miNt vs dedA -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
20 October 2009 – Match 23 – miNt vs JJ -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

Week 24 – Koth Game 23 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:55:14 +0000

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

dedA is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

05 May 2009 – Exhibition Match -> tankh vs dedA -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
12 May 2009 – The Beginning -> tankh vs miNt -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
19 May 2009 – One or None -> miNt vs dedA-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
26 May 2009 – First Blood -> dedA vs mmk-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
02 June 2009 – Two To Tango -> dedA vs SF-> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
09 June 2009 – New Kings on the Block -> dedA vs miNt-> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
16 June 2009 – Clash of the Titans -> miNt vs tankh-> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
23 June 2009 – New Blood has been Shed -> tankh vs Ks`za -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
30 June 2009 – Match 8 -> tankh vs JIMP -> Winners -> tankh -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
07 July 2009 – Match 9 -> tankh vs miNt -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
14 July 2009 – Match 10 -> miNt vs KsZa -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
21 July 2009 – Match 11 -> miNt vs dedA -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
28 July 2009 – Match 12 -> miNt vs Tankh -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
04 August 2009 – Week Break – Check out the Article here
11 August 2009 – Match 13 – miNt vs JJ.dota -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Commentary -> Post game article
18 August 2009 – Match 14 – miNt vs Tankh -> Winners -> Tankh -> Replay -> Post game article
25 August 2009 – Match 15 – JJ vs Tankh -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> Post game article
01 September 2009 – Match 16 – JJ vs dedA -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
08 September 2009 – Match 17 – JJ vs mmK -> Winners -> JJ -> Replay -> Post game article
15 September 2009 – Match 18 – JJ vs dedA -> Winners -> dedA -> Replay -> Post game article
22 September 2009 – Match 19 – miNt vs dedA -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> ~~Post game article~~
29 September 2009 – Match 20 – miNt vs JJ -> Winners -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
06 October 2009 – Match 21 – miNt vs Tankh -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article
13 October 2009 – Match 22 – miNt vs dedA -> Winner -> miNt -> Replay -> Post game article

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

Week 23 – Koth Game 22 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:47:16 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron, Powered by Twilight and Run by eGamer!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

tankh is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 21 â€“ Koth Game 20 — Mint V JJ

Dean — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:58:33 +0000

This tournament is sponsored by Rectron, powered by Twilight Gaming and run by eGamer

This has been written in the opinion of Lemon Grass.

This is a post-game article of the latest King of the Hill DotA game between Mint Gaming and JJ.Dota on the 29th of September 2009

Mint

The Draft

In the drafts we see jj eliming heroes that miNt uses particularly well in the past namely; chen bambi and clock followed by one â€œimba heroâ€ elim (tc). miNt is seen eliming two heroes that we simply hate playing against (tide and viper) followed by another two â€œimba heroâ€ bans. miNt dominated the picks having a very all rounded strat. Plenty gang, plenty AoE, plenty carry, and plenty push, enough support, not too many farming intensive heroes. miNtâ€™s lanes were extremely strong (ill get back to this later). The strat is an early-mid game one, but still can manage late game. JJ chose a VERY item intensive strat (aka rice aka turtle). Four out of the five heroes are all item dependant (this means that the heroes are reliant on getting expensive items â€“ required to farm a lot.) So their strat is considered a late game one. JJ relied on the Avernus and NA to ward (which really nerfed the NA). JJâ€™s lanes were not very strong, the only gang they had was NA and they lacked AoE with undying being their only push. Overall miNt won the draft and took great advantage of this from the word go.

I have the replay of the first part of the game, up to where jj..notouchthis dropped. I will include it here.

The Lanes

Top: POTM (LeMoN-GrAsS) vs Undying (sAidy)

Mid: Darkseer (MrAsSmAn) vs Sniper (freez) + NA (Machine)

Bot: Syllabear (Waz_maC) vs Morph (Blizzy) + Avernus (Sixis)

Roam: ES (kspr) + CM (sLoJ)

As you can see from the lanes, sentinel had stronger lanes overall. Top and middle had constant gangs from the two roamers which resulted in many kills and huge amount of pressure. Waz_maC soloâ€™s bottom without problem (one of the beauties of Syllabear is that it can solo against almost any lane). Although very little pressure was put on him (only one gang from the NA which did not result in a kill). The action of this game happens mid and top. Having two heroes dedicated to roaming creates a huge amount of pressure on the other team. Having to provide vision of more than just the river. miNt had a very aggressive strat but at the same time it allowed for the Syllabear, Potm and even the DS to farm. This is a perfect combination. miNt took advantage of jjâ€™s lack of early game dominance from the word go.

First Blood

First blood top is a perfect example of the two roamers making a huge impact on the game. The first gang top occurs when the undying attempts to claim a creep kill, before he knows it, he is blocked and frozen shortly after. One his last attempt to escape, he finds him self smacked in the face with a dangerous arrow of death. (lol). This early gang is one of the many that the es and cm controlled. This game can play as a great example for anyone who is keen to see how roam. They communicated very well, the skill of ksprâ€™s es and experience of sLoJ led to a deadly combination. These gangs were made possible with very good counter warding.

Throughout the game, the only hero on JJâ€™s side that was not being ganged and was managing to farm decently was Blizzyâ€™s Morph. He managed to pick up a large amount of kills, and farmed quite a lot. He would capitalize on the contrasting movement speeds of miNts heroes â€“ Syllabear and DS would chase very far and the CM and POTM would try to as well, only to be picked off by the Morphling. So with morph being miNts only fear, we pushed hard. The combination of Syllabear (with images) POTM and DS wall, towers dropped extremely fast. JJâ€™s lack of AoE prevented them from stopping our pushes. Before JJ knew it, we had raxed. The POTM farmed

Throughout this game there are large amounts of individual skill shown. This is a game to watch.

Week 22 – Koth Game 21 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:10:53 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron, Powered by Twilight and Run by eGamer!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

JJ is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

Week 21 – Koth Game 20 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:04:08 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron, Powered by Twilight and Run by eGamer!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

dedA is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 19 – Attack of the Clones

Flipi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:18:29 +0000

Koth, I want, to be with you all of the time!

Match 18 once again gave me a reason to live (: The reigning kings, Just Juking [Scourge], were taken on by the voted challengers, Dedicated`Abuse [Sentinel]. Last week Just Juking had pocketed their second Koth point, bringing them up to a total of 2 points and tying them in second place with Dedicated`Abuse and tankH.

Shockingly enough, this week by the time I was sitting down and pulling a glass closer, the game was hosted – the players were ready – and I was being told we wereÂ actuallyÂ ON TIME! Almost fell off my chair.. but we went at it and enjoyed itÂ thoroughly.

The replay for this week is available here:

Replay – HERE

The Bans help:

JJ: dirge tide rhasta NA

dedA: bat bane bambi TC

As you can see most of the trouble makers were eliminated. Tidehunter is not a standard ban at all though, and must have been JJ reading into dedA’s likely strat and trying to upset their plans. The only real surprise here is that Tide must have replaced ES as an elimination, which is strange because it is well known that dedA like their ES medium to rare.

The Picks, Assignments and Lanes:

JJ:

Lina [Notouchthis] – Bot
SF [sAidy] – Top Solo
SK [SixiS] – Bot
clock [Midas/Blizzy] – Mid
Veng [nrg/Machine] – Mid/roaming

JJ opted for a slightlyÂ unorthodoxÂ strategy, using the (now old school) SF and Veng in their draft. SF is by definition a solo hero, geared for farming and late game destruction, and we saw JJ employing him as such. Veng on the other hand is a slight all rounder. With her nice stun and useful-without-items ulti she garners favour as a roaming ganger and warder. Alternatively she functions very well as a supporting carry, should she acquire the necessary farming time. Her ulti also makes her quite dangerous to an untrained team as aÂ surpriseÂ initiator, swapping a vital hero out of allied reach and sacrificing herself for the kill a lot of the time.

ClockÂ of courseÂ would be a solo as well, and lastly the SK Lina lane (Still one of my all time favourites, with Drow Viper, Viper Huskar and Lina CM) bringing up the rear with its classic dual stun action.

dedA:

Potm [glitch] – Bot
Morph [ClitsybananaS] – Top Solo
Viper Â [WingSter] – Mid
Abba [BonKerS] – Mid
ES [CryT_T/Xera`] – Bot/Roaming

On dedA’s side things looked slightly lessÂ surprising, but still quite interesting. Morph would be sitting in a solo lane, but here again we have a second solo, this time Viper. This leaves ES Abbadon and Potm. ES and Potm can form quite a destructive lane, while Abbadon is one of the most irritating and surprising babysitters that Dota has to offer. With his Apothic shield and heal he can save team mates from near death experiences and at the same time his Ulti gives him the freedom to not worry about himself.

The Kick-off:

Straight out of the boxes JJ did what I like to call a KS.Int move and had 4 of their heroes running down into the Sentinel bush to try and score a pre-creep kill, with only SF going straight top to block his creeps upon them spawning. Unlucky for JJ, dedA was also moving in a direction, which was that of the top Rune spot. This meant that before the match started we had a lot of ground being covered, with 0 clashes.

The top rune spawned, and ES picked up Invisibilility. This resulted in the first gang (and fail) of the match, as Viper, Abbadon, ES and Veng tried to take out Clockwork mid. Unfortunately ES blocked Clockwork backwards and fumbled firstblood for his team.

Pictured: As usual, xeRa’s unsure about who’s side he’s on…

Interestingly enough both mid solo’s in the match had accompanying baby sitters: Clockwork had Veng running in and out of the area while Viper had Abbadon by his side. Thus mid was notÂ actuallyÂ solo.

The Meaty Midsection:

The match itself once again gave us a great show of the communication taking place in both teams. With many a TP scroll being bought and spent as the teams fought to gain the upper hand in kills across the map. Gangs, counter gangs, warding, juking and surgical assassinations were running rife through the game, as neither team wanted to give an inch and always came back that much harder uponÂ concedingÂ a kill.

Pictured: Saidy says put your hands up in the air!

SF farmed blink and BKB as his primary goal into mid game, while no other hero was doing nearly as well at the time. Morph had a tough time through the first part of the game – being ganged repeatedly and losing a lot of his farming time and already farmed gold in the process.

And so JJ was taking the lead into the first half of the game. Although the kills were close still, and only 1 tower separated the teams on the map, JJ were pushing theirÂ aggressiveÂ advantage with their farmed SF and dedA were looking to be in for a lot of trouble, with no real items yet to bolster theirÂ defense.

Equilibrium and over:

And so there came a time, when JJ was pushing into the second mid tower of dedA: SF was slaughtering wave upon wave, while the rest of his team hid in the bush by his side, hoping to take the opposition unawares.Â At this time the whole of dedA were forcing their way to the first top tower of JJ.

Top tower went down faster than mid, as it was already damaged, and so dedA’s mid tower was still in the red. Instantly we saw a blooming blue pattern form as one after the other the whole of dedA kicked TP scrolls into action (Morph used a replica he had sent mid earlier). What ensued was an incredibly intense battle with all 3 commentators trying to keep up, all over each other ^^

Pictured: Errrr beam us down Scotty.

As soon as the first TP completed, SF blinked, BKB’d and initiated his ulti, while the rest of his team came charging around the bottom corner of the trees. Potm was one of the first heroes on the ground, and upon seeing the situation, placed an incredibly useful ulti (I believe this is why dedA didn’t simply all die). Thus SF ulti went off, hit the whole of dedA, but they were all invis and JJ had no one to focus down. Meanwhile dedA were quickly reforming and getting into position. One second, another, a hit here, and suddenly Potm ulti was done and dedA popped back into sight, hurdling for JJ’s throat.

Pictured: Saidy: “MARCO!

This was the first fight that dedA came out victoriously of. With no dust or sentries, JJ had no way of hunting dedA down as they came down on the tower, and so were unable to take the battle.

After this battle we slowly saw dedA starting to push back JJ and take back some ground on the map.

Me, myself and my double:

So what made dedA win at the end of the day? Was it their determination, sheer force of will, big mouths and small w*****s? No, they had a million copies of themselves! Morph’s copies alone were able to push lanes and towers (Watch top as he does just that with the base tower). With manta upon manta dedA overwhelmed JJ in the end with numbers and survivability.

Pictured: It’s like playing dota after a few tequila’s but seeing tripple instead of double…

JJ’s SF and clock simply could not generate the amount of damage necessary to take on such odds and so were pushed back again and again (You see, SK Lina and Veng have no late game carry potential. And JJ’s mid-game focused strat did not succeed). Bot rax fell to the onslaught, top rax fell to the onslaught and mid rax soon followed. dedA were congratulated ‘good turtle wd’ and the match was over.

And so we now have a newÂ reigningÂ king team, our original point scorers are back, ladies and gentlemen – Dedicated`Abuse!

We hope all the watches andÂ listenersÂ had as good a time as we did bringing you another week of Koth’y goodness and we hope to see all of you again next week. Please stop by the poll for next week and cast your votes – mmK has unfortunately left us, but I am happy to announce that miNt is back! So drop by and vote for who you want to see taking on our new Kings next week.

I’m alcardu, and Checkers_Bag and Hallow owe me their virginity ;) Goodnight!

P.S. Thanks to the fattest guy I know for some of the pic’s, some captions and for posting.

Post Game Article For Match 17 â€“ JJ.DotA Vs mmK

Dean — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:35:24 +0000

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

Week 18 Match 17 â€“ JJ.Dota vs mmK

This week we saw reigning Koth champions JJ.Dota take on mmK, in what could only be described as an extremely fast paced and exciting match. mmK havenâ€™t featured in the King of the Hill Series since week 4, having been bested by dedA at that time.

ELIMS

JJ started the drafting, and the elims were nothing out of the ordinary: Viper being elimed by mmK thanks to his recent buff and both new heroes being removed as well. You will see that JJ was eliminating very quickly (Probably letting a single person do the drafting and maybe deciding ahead of the time on a few standard heroes to get out of the way.) while mmK was taking out the most popular trouble makers.

mmK

PICKS:

Some of you might wonder why Blood Seeker did not feature, however with a little reflection and some attention during the drafting phase you can come to a rough conclusion.

mmK opened the picks with Dirge, the fun loving tank with good farming and solo potential. JJ kicked off their own drafting with Clockwork and ES, thus making an Enigma pick a much weaker choice.

In total JJ seemed to try a slightly more fun approach to defending their title, using both CM and Sniper.

JJ.Dota

MmK

Overview:

I could tell you on a blow by blow basis what happened in the game. I could tell you about the warding, the battles, and the mistakes. I could give you some screenshots and substantiate my opinions. But I donâ€™t believe that this game is worth that. The article would be pages upon pages long if I ever got to finish it and the list would be countless.

This game is a textbook on mobility and ganging. Exceptional use of TP scrolls turned many a gang, and even counter gang, into a full on battles. This fast pace was kept up late game as well, with more than one Boots of Travel making an appearance in the inventories on both sides. Both teams played exceptionally well, the scores neck and neck, with JJ eventually coming out just on top, mainly because of item difference and teamwork.

The only thing I can say is you HAVE to watch this game. Every single minute, right to the end, is action packed and filled with amazing play. The warding is good, the teamwork is good, the (counter) ganging is good and the communication within both teams was definitely also of the highest quality!

ITS GOOD. WATCH IT!

DeMo~

Syncidy has Launched! The first event has come and gone

Flipi — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:19:26 +0000

Ahoi one and all! Well I’m back from the Syncidy LAN held this past weekend, and what fun it was (:

What you have before you is a review of the Syncidy: Dota Tournament run at the event, so dig in and enjoy!

…
We launched, we gamed, and now we have even more work than before! WHAT! Nway let me fill you in on how our dota competition went:

The Dota tournament was scheduled to kick off at 11am Saturday morning, however it was postponed till around lunch time to ensure the players who didnâ€™t spend the night Friday made it in time to compete. Happily the tournament kicked off with a total of 5 entries, with even the Syncidy admins jumping in to rumble with the attendees.

The teams who entered were:
Spar-letta
WEARECOOL
Syncidy
Gaming Logic
Babtism In Fire

With our focus on providing the maximum amount of fun in the tournament, the structure was adjusted to that of a Round Robin, thus ensuring all teams 4 full games minimum, with any tied prize-spots having their own play-offs afterwards.

The first matches kicked off around 2pm, with one team receiving a bye every round. The atmosphere was a mix of social trash talking, serious strategising, good fun and many an outburst. Having swapped some of the registration computers over to gaming stations, it was also possible to view a few of the admin players showing their (lack of) skill throughout their matches.

Around 7pm the dust settled around the battlefield and WEARECOOL [above] was standing victorious on top of the scoreboard. However second place was being contested by 3 teams and so a second bout of gaming ensued as these 3 teams started fighting over who gets the money and who gets the burger, coke and chips! Late into the night the battle was fought, with some of the best games of the tournament resulting from this.

Finally Babtism In Fire [above] was seen emerging from the dust clouds, victorious, leaving Gaming Logic [below] to place a final blow to the jaw of Syncidy [no picture] to secure third place.

Final Standings:
1st ] WeAreCool
2nd ] Babtism In Fire
3rd ] Gaming Logic

Congratulations to all 3 teams on their victories and we hope you enjoy(d) your Prizes! WEARECOOL received a total prize of R1500, with Babtism In Fire receiving a prize of R500 and Gaming Logic taking home (or devouring right there) the coveted Burger, Coke and Chips!

In total the tournament resulted in many a good memory and laugh (: From Syncidyâ€™s side, a huge thank you to all you guys and girls for competing! We really enjoyed laughing, screaming and gaming with you all, and we look forward to doing the same the first weekend on November at our next event!

As a final word, please note â€“ We received various questions regarding out prizes and how they might change depending on the turnout. As you can all see we did not alter the prizes at all. We pride ourselves on supplying the experience we advertise, and this policy includes our prizes.

Syncidy â€“ Gaurenteed! (:

For a behind the scenes look at the LAN, directly from mr Gareth ‘Cidic’ Kropman, just follow [this link]

The full player list:

WEARECOOL
BonKerS
ClitsybananaS
frenzy
HorrorCast
Radox

Babtism In Fire
DoNuTT
OptiMum
SheLookedLvl18
Shr00m
Xaro

Gaming Logic
ab0rt3d
bronny
M1cron
SlynCky
Zh3nK

Syncidy
Ajay
Arcanius
Flossie
syn
cidic
lokix/berserk/alcardu

Spar-letta
ci3la
Thai_fighter
Hyper10n
Zelphar
|337BuNNy

WaaaghTV comes bearing Gifts

Flipi — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:38:20 +0000

As those of you not living under the proverbial cobblestones of the Twilight community know, eGamer Koth uses the fantastic rough diamond WaaaghTV to broadcast our matches live each Tuesday.

Unfortunately, with more than a mouse click or a stick wave comes the inevitable need to idiot-proof a program, and so it is also our pleasure to inform you that WaaaghTV is now easier to use than ever! Thatâ€™s right, no more will you be required to download and explore a vast interface with 3 buttons! No more will admins be queried with lines containing the words â€˜cannotâ€™ and â€˜understandâ€™ within the same sentences!

We present to you the WaaaghTV Java Applet, an even easier alternative to using the full WaaaghTV program! Simply point your browser to the WaaaghTV website, look in the â€˜Gamesâ€™ section for the specific Koth match being streamed, click the green >> button next to it and youâ€™re off to a world of Koth adventure!

Of course, in our effort to accommodate everyone we are also providing a guide to using the Java Applet to watch your favourite local players in action.

And the good news just keeps on pouring in: On the second of this month WaaaghTV acquired a brand spanking new Master Server for themselves. And so we say goodbye to the majority of our technical streaming problems as well!

See you guyz Tuesday night ;)

The official WaaahTV comment can be viewed on their website
The WaaaghTV Games page
Our guide to using the Java Applet HERE
And as always our Weekly Koth Poll

Week 18 – Koth Game 17 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:07:29 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron, Powered by Twilight and Run by eGamer!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin — Inactive
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

dedA is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

Post Game Article For Match 15 – Make It or Break It [JJvTankh]

Tips — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:22:58 +0000

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

Build up

So last week we saw TankH and miNt battle it out in an awesome game that saw TankH dethrone the reigning Kings, miNt, who had won 4 weeks in a row up to then. Will this game be as good, or even better? I sure do hope so. After a few delays due to one or two members of the Koth Admin Team running late, the game kicked off at 21:10. Another unfortunate event was the inability of the brothers Horrorcast and Radox being able to play. Their connection gave considerable trouble, and so they were replaced by Phobos and JimmytheHand. [Admin Note: We adjusted the rules to allow the match to continue with these 2 subs as we felt this was in the best interest of all, rather a tweaked match than no match at all.]

Spoiler Warning: If you have not watched the game yet and want to watch it before you read this article then download the game <HERE>

The Bans

TankH started the bans by eliminating Enigma, which they have been seen doing in previous Koth games. The rest of TankH’s bans were Tide,Â Â Zombie and Bambi, all becoming rather standard in the current version.

Sentinel – TankH

Scourge – JJ

JJ banned Batrider and Tauren Chieftain, both new heroes in the current version which are quite strong. The other two bans were Nerubian Assasin, who is a huge pain in the ass, and Earth Shaker, who is a counter for the Broodmother and Chen which they planned on picking.

The Picks

TankH’s picks were as follows – Clockwork (Death), Puck (Remixdanny), Warlock (JimmyTheHand), Bloodseeker (Nakor) and Sven (Phobos).

Sentinel – TankH

Scourge – JJ

JJ’s picks were as follows – Rhasta (Nothouchthis), Chen (Nrg), Kitty (Midas), Sand King (Sixis) and Broodmother (Saidy).

The Lanes

Top - Sven/Puck V Rhasta

Mid - Clock V Kitty/Sand King

Bot - Warlock/Bloodseeker VÂ Broodmother

The Game

RemixdaNNy (scant) uses defensive wards to stop the creep spawn and pulling from scourges top lane, Chen (Machine), very intelligently counter wards it after he sees the neutral creep spawn has not spawned yet.

First-blood: as soon as Blood-Seeker (Nakor) hit level 6, Warlock got sentry wards from the hasted flying courier. After Warlock had placed the sentries and revealed the invis nesting Broodmother, Nakor let loose Rupture and Broodmother went down to Nakor for first blood.

Around 8 minutes Puck placed another defensive ward in the bush, which stopped the roaming SK and the bushing Chen from ganging top lane. Vision is crucial when you plan to turtle against a push strategy.

20 minutes we saw JJ’s push strategy coming into play with Chenâ€™s creeps, Rhastaâ€™s wards and Broodmotherâ€™s spawnlings combining powers. TankH were leading the kills by 1 while JJ lead with 3 towers to TankH ‘s one. Rhasta, POTM and Broodmother were farming considerably well for JJ with creep scores ranging from 59 to 6, while Nakor had 69 for TankH.

At 23:44 POTM sent an arrow speeding towards Warlock while the SK‘s stun kept Warlock at bay. JJ had aggressive wards and applied pressure to TankH by farming the Sentinel bush and taking down Roshan.

At the 34/35 minute mark, TankH are were feeling the pressure when SK and Rhasta both got blink daggers. TankH lost all outer towers and had the brunt of JJ pushing top lane while Broodmother was pushing bot solo with the help of his spawnlings.

Last straw: At the 40 minute mark, TankH lost their first base tower. Soon after Midas (Blizzy) showed off the results of his farming by taking both TankHâ€™s bottom and middle rax, with the help of his Manta and teammates, Brood (saidy) and Chen (Machine). And so the game was ended with TankH finding themselves rolling down the hill once more.

Week 17 – Koth Game 16 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:36:55 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron, Powered by Twilight and Run by eGamer!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin — Inactive
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

Tankh is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

Koth: Week 15 Review [TankH v MiNt]

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:05:53 +0000

Hello everyone, as you can see this week’s review is late. Unfortunately some late night emailing resulted in various attachments never making their way to the recipient. But here we are!

We hope you enjoy this review of another epic match! As always, should you simply want to view the match yourself, the replay is available HERE

Week 15 saw miNt still sitting comfortably on the throne they have defended since the start of July. Tankh came out of the voting as the favourite, and soon was faced with the considerably task of dethroning miNt.

The Bans:
Morph | Undying | Bloodseeker | Clockwork || Taurenchief | rhasta | kitty | Bambi

The Sentinel [TankH]:
Batrider | Narubian Assasin | Bane | Tidehunter | Viper

The Scourge[MiNt]:
Abbadon | Enigma | Puck | Earthshaker | Void

First blood was scored by Remixdanny (scant), captain of tankh. Himself and NA had sneakily changed course mid push and intercepted the roaming ES from the bushes, and killed him. There were a few seconds when they risked losing their courier, but luckily it survived.

A few seconds later ES bounced back with a TP gang top, using his fissure to block the lane against the trees and giving Void a nice kill. Viper survived this gang but had to retreat to base to heal.

Mint soloâ€™ng their Enigma middle was a fresh look at the hero, seeing as he features almost exclusively in the bush now days. Soloâ€™ng Bane is also not an easy task, but with some nice minion-denials and a helping hand from ES saw Enigma successfully drawing ahead of Bane. Baneâ€™s deadliness was proven as he was on the verge of killing Enigma at soon as he reached lvl 6, but ES foiled his ulti with a supporting stun.

10 minutes into the game Batrider was doing very well for his team with a 4-0 K/D ratio, 36 creep kills and a first blood to his name. MiNtâ€™s side saw Waz_mac, the turtle deity, doing well for himself against the opposing dual-slow lane, with some help from Abbadon.

13 minutes saw Viper baiting miNt extremely well mid. MiNt, not knowing Viper had support standing by, jumped at the seemingly easy kill, only to be met with a strong supportive counter by tankH. Viper got a double kill and soon the mid tower on the scourge side had fallen.

26 minutes into the game tankH was leading in both towers and kills, having taken down both external towers of scourgeâ€™s mid and top lane. Some aggressive warding by tankH in the scourge bush also saw them starting to box miNt in a bit behind. At this point it was obvious that tankH would be pressing miNt steadily and hard all game in the hopes that when Void hits proverbial puberty it would be to late.

28 minutes Batrider finds Puck and Enigma around the bot river area. Some quick blinking, sheeping and general teamwork paid off for tankH, walking away with a 1 for 4 killâ€™s advantage over miNt from the battle. As miNt started to look lost tankH was taking their 6th tower bot lane, followed it up with some more wards from the faithful NA and proceeded to completely control the map.

Around 28 minutes we saw tankH making their first real mistake. All miNtâ€™s outer towers were down and they were being pressed into their base. TankH decided to move into top bush and make a push for miNtâ€™s base tower and raxes. Unfortunately miNtâ€™s draft was at its strongest in such a defensive battle, being up a hill for tankH and much smaller in area, which compliments ES and Void and Enigmaâ€™s ultiâ€™s all incredibly. As predicted by the commentators, tankH was hard pressed to make a positive result out of this battle, and succumbed to the area of effect ultiâ€™s of miNt. After this battle Void was looking quite strong, and the suspicion began to creep in that miNt would once again make a legendary comeback, as they did lat week.

NA and Puck were having ward side battles, and Puck used this opportunity to counterward the scourge bush and free them of the NAâ€™s malicious eyes. Yet tankH was far from falling yet, Viper now had a heart to compliment his hood of defiance, and Bane had tankHâ€™s second Guinsoos, which gave tankH incredible disabling power over miNt, if they could utilise it effectively.

As with all histories, this game again repeated an age old situation: MiNt was busy chopping at Roshan around 40 minutes, but had to back off as tankH caught scent of this and advanced. What ensued as the usual to-and-fro as both teams tried to lure the other into slipping up. MiNt ended up the lesser this time, tankH pounced on a stray target, and soon the battle was decided in their favour. TankH rushed mid and took down the rax with ease. Soon after miNtâ€™s top rax also fell to a sneaky viper, which crept out of the battle and proceeded to finish the rax while Void was finishing his team behind him. After this battle it was evident that not only were miNt in some serious trouble, but Void was also unbelievably strong, with the exception of a BKB to combat all of tankHâ€™s disables.

The last bit of the puzzle fell (into place), along with Void, middle, when he found himself on the wrong end of a 1v4 gang by tankH. Guinsoos flashing and ultiâ€™s shaking the earth, tankH threw all they had at the Void and were rewarded by a Godlike Streak ended. Ignoring bot lane and rax, tankH stormed straight into miNtâ€™s base and clicked the ancient, which was already considerably damaged. MiNtâ€™s remaining heroes were unable to effectively hamper tankH and in a few more seconds GG was called by both sides.

And so miNtâ€™s tyranny has come to an end. Retreating to lick their wounds I doubt this is the last weâ€™ve seen of them though. In the mean time tankH is now sitting proudly on their throne as the new King of the Hill.

Stay tuned next week to see how they fare in defending their newly won kingdom..

Gg
mortLOL

Week 16 – Koth Game 15 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:35:32 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin — Inactive
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Audio Recorder & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel: #egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu.

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

miNt is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

The full scoreboard, updated weekly, can be found at KothSeries.

King of the Hill DotA Series: Week 14 – JJ.DotA V. miNt Gaming

Dean — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:25:28 +0000

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

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 11 â€“ miNt Gaming VS JJ.Dota. An EPIC Game. By far the best game this series.

Gather round children, tonight we have storytime with with Nicholas â€˜Lemon-grassâ€™. He tells of heroes, blood curling battles, risk, fear, reward and victory. So snuggle up and enjoy!

[You, fat kid in the back. If you donâ€™t want to listen then go watch the game yourself and listen to the commentary!]

Replay

Commentary

I am writing this article from my point of view, of course with as little bias as possible, but it being the first â€˜inside scoopâ€™ game review: prepare yourselves! I recommend you watching the replay if you donâ€™t like spoilers because, you can ask scant, the ending is not expected, and is what makes this an epic game. As GosuGamers puts it, â€œRRâ€. — Lemon-Grass

MiNt
Batrider â€“ ES â€“ Kiti â€“ Rhasta – CM

JJ
Puck â€“ Chen â€“ WL â€“ BS – Lion

The drafting went as follows:

There was nothing special in the elimination phase, things were pretty standard. We (miNt) laughed about the morph elimination, as sLoJ rates he was the reason for it ^_^ This was one of the few games where we didnâ€™t have Clock/Avernus/Morph, we were using a new lineup. We were confident picking ES, having a very good ES player (kspr). Our Batrider pick was influenced by Waz_maCâ€™s recent love with his high base damage (allowing easy farming).

The Lanes:

Top:
ES (kspr) + PotM (lemon-grasS) vs BloodSeeker (sAidy) + lion (Machine)
*note* Lots of action, probably the lane to watch. Gang mania for everyone.

Mid:
Bat (Waz_maC) vs Puck (sixis)

Bot:
Rhasta (sLoJ) vs WL (freez)

Bush (Scourge)
Chen (Wingster)

Roaming
CM (MraSsMan)

First blood
First blood results from a gang from the roaming CM on the lion. A good fissure followed by an arrow secures the blood of Machineâ€™s Lion.

Later another gang from the CM and another good ES stun results in BS dying. Waz_maC was out farming the Puck middle, with 19-15 CS while puck had 5-5.

Wingster played a very good Chen throughout the game; the most memorable part of it for me must have been the frustrating mana burn, it prevented us from engaging quite a few times.

8 Minutes: Bottom

Here we see some very clever play by sLoJ using his wards at the right time to scare the WL, clear the creeps (including the wagon) and make it in time to deny the tower. Interesting fact was how WL out pushed the Rhasta, but of course with creep pulls and WLâ€™s bas damage it can be explained.

*Note for those who are still young in DoyA using spells (even ultimates) for creeps or denies is very acceptable and often better than the melee attack of the hero, of course its all situational and experience is the key to success

sLoJ shows his experience and skill here, denying the scourge 1000 gold.

10 Minutes – The Creep Stats

1 — Waz_maC with 53-31
2 — freez with 42-11
3 — sLoJ with 30-7
4 –Â sAidy with 24-2

As seen Waz_maC farmed very hard and had his radiance in under 15 minutes. Although it was impressive, we unfortunately didnâ€™t utilize it to its full potential.

Warding

This game is very ward intensive, with a war raging between MraSsMan and Machine. At almost any time in the replay, Machine has provided his team with very useful vision which is probably why many consider him being the best support in the country.

* Note Chen was buying a large amount of the wards as the hero is not item dependent

His ability to give his team vision really makes life difficult for any sort of gang. It also helps tremendously in every battle. Vision is key. This is seen top at 10:55 where CM and ES are engaged on by the Scourge, ES makes an escape but a large push is created by the scourge. Without the ward placement, Scourge might not have been so keen to engage. Messy fighting takes place after the push is defended and miNt clean up some chase kills, some miss communication from both teams as mini engages and withdrawals frequently occurred.

*Note Waz_maC was bottom farming/pushing the whole time (73-35 creeps) and soon takes the tower

Communication

9 out of 10 times when you cringe in a replay, itâ€™s because of a lack of communication or confusion with the communication. 13:32 is a perfect example; miNt has the opportunity to kill Chen or WL, but because of confusion neither WL nor Chen dies. These failed 4 man gangs really start to hurt the team because a huge amount of exp and gold is wasted while the other team is left to farm.

14 Minute Battle

This battle is easily won by scourge; once again the WL and Puck catch two of miNt heroes separated from the team and swiftly engage on them. The warlocks infernal allows a large amount of tanking to be done by the scourge and the nuke of puck makes mince of the cm. Good co-ordination from the scourge as spells were not stacked and no deaths occurred on their behalf.

Teleporting

When you see this, you get scared..

… Because at the other end of this is:

The other main reason to be scared is that when you have a chain TP it usually means its coordinated (not individual decision) which means that everyone has an idea of their plan in the battle (which often leads to a successful one). The last reason is that when playing against ES, you have to be ultra careful that you donâ€™t get â€œESâ€™Dâ€ which basically means that many of your team get caught by ES in his ulti with creeps around.

*Note how fast spells are cast, and how quickly the scourgeâ€™s hp dropped

The battle only resulted in the WL dying and the tower was not denied, however from this we can learn another big mistake miNt made in this game:

Chasing too far

After the death of the WL miNt choose to chase the Scourge heroes and after the PotM misses her arrow (if it was 1mm longer: P) they still continue to chase. Big mistake. The JJ takes advantage of the error and end up with a few picks leaving miNt with nothing but a bleak TS channel. From many errors that occurred like this, the blood seeker benefited and the scourge farmed up slowly. Later JJ can be seen as chasing too far (but probably more justified to be doing so â€“ having BS) but are out played by a brilliant piece of skill from Waz_maC. This good play (with the reactions of miNt result in BS and WL dying AND Waz_maC escaping.

20 Minute Battle

This battle seeâ€™s miNt being out played. JJ initiate well again. miNt make the mistake of separating (communication again) and end up very hurt after this battle. This is a turning point in the game â€“ after this battle JJ start to dominate completely with miNt making silly mistakes and JJ capitalizing on them. JJ farmed up while miNtâ€™s game play worsened. It is important to try remaining focus after losing such a big battle, because it can easily lose you the game, when it doesnâ€™t have to.

29 Minute Battle

miNt lose 2 and JJ lose 2. miNt gains tower. This battle teaches you how much rupture hurts while leaping. :)

31 Minute

This is called being baited. Another huge mistake made by miNt, engaging on a target very far away, with no vision of the surrounding area (while they have Chen). This turned out badly too and JJ dominated for a while after this farming freely.

By 45 minutes JJ were completely on top, pushing towers, dominating us in battlesâ€¦ Things were really looking grim and doom for miNt. JJ had basically out farmed us overall. Soon miNt was raxâ€™d too and it all looked like it was over. I mean even scant stopped watching. But there is one thing a few of the players in miNt are known for (mainly mrasssman and myself, but kspr is included in this) is our positive/happy attitudes. This combined with our controlled captain who manages to refocus us at dire times (such as this) led to an epic game. We knew the only chance of us winning from where we were was to turtle and play extremely well in our next few battlesâ€¦ We needed to engage at the best time on the right heroes and even then we would need JJ to make some mistakes for it to work out. And so we didâ€¦

The 52 minute push was held off by miNt and we managed to do decently in the battle with some survival. From this battle we felt that we still COULD win. The 55 minute battle was the ultimate turning point. We had turtled enough, a very intense battle began, we were lucky for the blood seeker to have missed his ulti, and engaged on the puck, our engagement led to a rough battle in which we were victorious. We managed to kill the blood seeker quite quickly without him being able to do a lot of DPS (thanks to bat riders ulti + arrow). Our position in this battle was very good, we had the hills and very well placed wards helped us win it. This victory led to us wanting to frantically push. Bottom was the only pushed lane, and our base was full of creeps. sLoJ made the decision for the CM to defend and for Rhasta, PoTM (manta) and bat (high base damage) to mission for the rax. With no one to defend (except chen) We managed to rax bottom and middle in one go. Now we had the momentum we needed to win.

We ended with one last push top where the final rax was destroyed.

This game truly was epic. A really good gameâ€¦ Itâ€™s a lesson to all teams out thereâ€¦ Do NOT give upâ€¦ Never â€“ff before the endâ€¦ Because you never know what can happen. I really recommend watching the replay. It was really awesome to play. A magnificent play from both sides, truly top tier teams!

â€œGood gameâ€

LemOn-GrasS

Week 15 – Koth Game 14 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:37:02 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin — Inactive
Contact him by email here

Demonik – Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Ingame Admin & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity
Contact him by email here

Admins are reachable in our IRC channel:
#egamer [shadowfire.org]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or have a complaint, contact Alcardu

Voting

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Exclusions:

JJ.dota is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results

Syncidy Gaming launches new LAN

Dean — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:21:01 +0000

The buzz around the water cooler seems extra intense this month; the MSSA debates are picking up once more, rAge 2009 is around the corner!!! and Syncidy Gaming will unveil its long awaited Competitive LAN in the Western Cape.

The first weekend of September (4th-6th) will see Syncidy ‘The Next Level’ launching at Proteaville, Bellville. They will be running both a Dota and COD4 tournament with prizes held for the winners of each.

When investigating the reasons behind this new lan, the ‘About Us’ page at www.syncidy.co.za had the following to say:

SynCidy was born in October 2007 when a group of gamers, tired of the lack of interest with regards to competitive game play in South Africa, banded together to make their dream of a competitive monthly LAN event a reality. Read further…

Looking at the table layout available [here] the LAN looks to be catering for 100-160 gamers, and with the monthly OC event rumored to not taking place during the month of September, seats are expected to fill up fast.

The official notice looks like this:

So don’t be left behind (like some of us were with rAge tickets), booking can be made online (discounted to R100) straight from their homepage, Syncidy Gaming!

Preview – KOTH 11 – miNt Gaming V. Dedicated Abuse – Round 3!

Dean — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:19:40 +0000

So we’re coming to a close of Series 1 of King of the Hill and week 11 sees the Mighty Mint Gaming defend their hill against Dedicated Abuse. Dedicated’Abuse haven’t played since week 5, but have come close to winning the vote for the last three weeks. With KingSurfZA out of the running this week, dedA’s only real rival for winning the vote this week was Tankh. The vote has been close most the last week, but all the dedA fans came out the woodwork to give dedA the a win by 8 votes.

The vote finished as follows:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

This will be the third time dedA face off against Mint in KotH, with each of the teams have won a game in the previous clashes. You’ll remember back in week 2, dedA beat a 4 player Mint quite convincingly while Mint came back and ended dedA’s 3 game winning streak in week 5.

So tonight should be quite a good game although the smart money is on Mint. With new recruit Blizzy for KotH and Waz_Mac who had a really good game last week, Mint aren’t going to be as easy as they were the first time round. Mint have been on form beating lately, beating Tankh in week 9 and demolishing KingSurfZa in week 10. If Mint do indeed win, this will take them up to two series points, tying them with both Tankh and dedA at the top of the points table.

Tonight’s game will start around with 8:30pm, with commentary and streaming coming online at about 8:45pm. If you want to watch the game and listen the commentary check out the links below.

WaaaghTV Tutorial here
Mumble Tutorial here

Good Luck to both teams and of course good luck to Xera’s connection. :P

Fatbob

P.s. Hi Demraz’ sister! :D~

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 10 – Kingsuft.ZA V. miNt Gaming

Dean — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:58:34 +0000

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

Match Article For – Ks^ Vs Mint

Warning
Iâ€™ve experimented with the use of more images to better describe some situations. If you donâ€™t like this new method just shout it out :D! Also for those that haven’t figured it out you need to click on the images to enlarge them :P

Donâ€™t like my fish? Get the replay for yourself by clicking here.

After the match we pulled James ‘SloJ’ aside for a quick word, hear what he had to say [2.3mb]

Picks & Bans

Sadly due to a reload I was unable to extract the ban/pick order, but the real question everyone should be asking is how Mint were able to get both CM and Necrolyte while Ks^ had nothing equally game breaking. Looking at the picks Ks^ had a noticeably lack of placement stuns (eg. Impale). I feel they relied too much on the Enigma ulti + Pirate boat combo, while the only thing Mint had to do was farm and charge in. A crude strat but very effective as portrayed by both Slardar and Necro during this match, they both charge forward madly and break up the backlines of Ks^.

Looking at the lanes Mint won mid and bot lane hands down. Mid lane saw Necro vs Zeus, this is where Necroâ€™s heal+Range and the use of magic stick easily won him the lane. Bot lane was basically a free farm for Slardar while Khunka had to back off or risk dying.

The Build up

Above you can see CM anticipating the bush warding done by Lina and Naix.

We see first blood going to Mint after a botched gang bot by Enigma. The reason the gang failed was because of Enigmaâ€™s reluctance to stun first, which forced Khunka to initiate with torrent, which Slardar easily dodged. A counter attack by Slardar and Lion resulted in Khunkaâ€™s demise.

Despite Lina carrying a ward Ks^ saw little warding early game and allowed CM and Lion to wreak havoc across the map. A note should be made of the good team work seen here, with Mintâ€™s players buying eachother TP scrolls to allow continuous ganging and mobility. Soon Mint leads the kills 5-2 following some good ganging while the Necro and Slardar are both farming strongly.

As night draws to a close we see Zark narrowly escape a gank by CM and Lion, only to madly dash back in with Enigma as backup even after spotting Necro running to engage. This results in the death of both Enigma and Zeus while bottom lane sees Slardar taking out Khunka with good use of 4 LvL Crush and Sprint.

16 Minute Bot battle

While Cm, Slardar and Lion chase Ks^ back to the presumed safety of the tower we see the Necro and Abba teleporting in. This battle turned out to be one of the major fights of the game with Mint walking away the victor of the 4v5 battle.

The Hunt

Not 10 seconds later we see Slardar tower diving the Zeus with Enigma and Lion closing in to join the fray. Slardarâ€™s ability to tank Enigmaâ€™s ulti+Zeus+tower and still live allow Necro andLion to clean up after him and increases Mintâ€™s lead by a further 2 kills. Sadly Lina who was armed with haste cancelled her TP top when Enigma was in the process of ultying. Should she have TPâ€™d things may have turned out differently here.

The Mopup

As the game further shifts in their favour we see Mint pushing bottom with Necro while Lion, Abba and CM hang back in the fog. Naix oversteps himself, going to close to the Necro and allowing Lion to rush in to initiate a gang. This forces Ks^ to TP in and leads to the situation you see below.

The Last straw

The final major battle happened mid with Ks^ engaging without Khunka and Mint lacking CM, clearly not a fair trade.

The last battle results in Ks^ -ffâ€™ing and Mint earning their first well deserved point in the Koth Series.

End Game screenshot

All comments and suggestions are welcome, either here on the site or via PM on IRC at #egamer.

-Convergence

PS: All team captains should please check their inboxâ€™s and we want to give a congratulations to the following winners of HoN user keys, courtesy of eGamer. Thanks for listening in on Mumble!

Insert
Da_Legend
visrucis
baKteria
KaMoS
sugar
ViLiS
Xenomath
golden_biizzard
-blizzard-
-satyr-
c0nfu3
Nsanity
HamstaDawg
whiskey
Divinitus

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 9 – Tankh V. miNt Gaming – Take Three!

Dean — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:44:20 +0000

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

miNt Gaming V. Tankh

Donâ€™t want a foreign opinion? Get the replay at Week 9: miNt v tankh

Picks & Bans

Mint was randomly chosen to start the drafting, going through some standards like ES, Necro, DP, Rhasta. Some might have raised their eyebrows at the Broodmother elimination. What I read into this elimination was that following the Bane, Axe and ES elims brood had far less counters left, plus recently Scant has loved his Broodmother again.

The first pick by Mint was Undying, definitely a first as Undying is one of the default elims since his appearance. Tankh responded to undying with CM Puck, both strong picks. Mintâ€™s Enigma + Clockwork picks gave them a strong bush, a second solo as well as taking out the default counter to Enigma by picking him themselves. What followed was the Lion + Pirate pick, another support hero and a strong carry. The picks resolved with Mint selecting Niax + Lina to finish their lanes and Tankh making a nice pick, Slardar.
I feel Tankh got outpicked as their initiating power is fairly counterable by a good Enigma player while Clockwork can easily initiate one of Tankhâ€™s weaker support heroes.Undying is also one of those heroes that can run straight into the fight like a madman, drop tombstone and start tanking. A note on Enigma for our less experienced readers: A common mistake is initiating with Enigmaâ€™s ulti, it is far more powerful as a follow-up once the battle has already started and the enemy is starting to focus their damage and bunch. Also after the first clash the majority of disables are in cooldown, thus making a channelling ulti easier to pull off.

Final Assignments
MintÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â TankH
Waz_Mac â€“ Undying (Solo Bot)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Nakor-Lion(Top)
MrAsssMan-Engima(Bush)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â HorrorCast-Khunka(Top)
Blizzy-Naix(Top)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Angel-Puck(Solo Mid)
Sloj-Lina(Top)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Radox-Slardar(Bot)
Lemon-Grass-Clockwork(Solo Mid)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Scant-CrystalMaiden(Floating)

First Blood
At the start Tankh immediately rush with CM+Khunka+Lion top lane to get first blood. They camp the area around their neutrals, waiting for the inevitable attempt by lina to ward their bush. However when lina finally arrives Scant loses his cool and rushes her. This leads to the situation described in the picture below and a botched first blood. First blood is then gotten top lane on Horrorcast by Lina/Naix when Nakor is absent from lane and pulling creeps.

Bottom Lane sees Radox warding up Enigmas bushes to hamper his bushing. However MrAsSsman anticipated the wards and bought sentry wards at start allowing him to easily counter ward and bush without problems.

The next big event is Angel killing Mintâ€™s courier mid lane and starting to outlevel the opposing Clockwork solo. Unfortunately this advantage soon slips away as 2 attempted gangs top by Angel fail, setting him back quite a bit. At this point in time Tankh have much better map control and use it to their full potential with Cm/Puckâ€™s gangs slowly chipping at Mintâ€™s game.

The Art of Stacking Stuns

At 8 minutes we see a gang bot-lane on Undying. Sadly whether due to bad communication or luck TankH end up stacking their stuns on the Undying. At one point as you can see in the picture Undying is stunned by all 3 of them. Thanks to Undyingâ€™s ability to bounce back with Soulrip and Enigmaâ€™s speedy reflexes the 3v1 situation turns into a 3v2 situation, resolved in Mintâ€™s favour with both Puck and Slardar falling.

The fight For Top Tower

Before Mint launched their push on TankHâ€™s top tower they warded the surrounding area, always a good idea. Note how well the single ward behind the tower serves to warn of Tankhâ€™s advancing defence.

At 23 minutes we see Mint taking top tower, with Undying baiting and Engima + Clokwork hanging back waiting to spring the trap. Tankh ignores top though and instead gangs the Lina mid, as Puck has already used his oh-so-important ulti.
After Lina falls we see Mint moving into top and catching Pirate, Tankh tpâ€™s to try and salvage the fight but Lion unfortunately has to walk all the way, lacking a TP scroll, and serves no purpose in the fight. Pirate falls to Niax as the Tankh players arrive, and chaos ensues. The lacking counter for engimaâ€™s ulti at this point becoming fatal.

26 Minute Battle

With Mint gunning for towers they start bushing bottom lane hoping to take TankHâ€™s bottom tower. TankH is there to meet them minus a lion whoâ€™s healing at base but ready to TP in.

Undying immediately takes the advantage and initiates the fight at Tankhâ€™s tower, dropping his tombstone, rushing forward and drawing focus fire from the Khunka, Slardar and CM. Slardar gets separated slightly and goes down. Lion has tpâ€™d in, but finds himself in the middle of the advancing Mint line and goes down rather fast. Puck and Khunka finally go in with Ship/Coil combo on Undying + Enigma but itâ€™s too little to late as theyâ€™re fighting a 3v5 battle now.

End Game

After the previous battle Mint had opened a gap wide enough to allow some breathing space, Niax farmed off Tankhâ€™s weaker support heroes using blink and rage well. Tankh got steadily pushed back until 48 minutes at which point the game was called.

This was definitely a good game to watch, with several standard drafting and strategic decision being challenged. Mint Gaming claimed a convincing victory and now leads the miNt v tankH games 2:1.

Final Score

Iâ€™m Convergence, thanx for reading. C

KotH 9 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:55:49 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules:

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host & Resident Journalist
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

fluKe â€“ Ingame Admin & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity
Contact him by email here

MumbleÂ tutorial for commentary available here.
WaaaghTV tutorial for live streaming of games available here.

This poll will decide who faces off against tankh for our seventh game in the KotH DotA series.

Oh yeah! You need to be logged in to vote… So sign up! Noob! Register to vote here!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Exclusions:

JIMP is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results:

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

KotH 8 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:56:29 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules:

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host & Resident Journalist
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

Fluke â€“ Ingame Admin & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity
Contact him by email here

MumbleÂ tutorial for commentary available here.
WaaaghTV tutorial for live streaming of games available here.

This poll will decide who faces off against tankh for our seventh game in the KotH DotA series.

Oh yeah! You need to be logged in to vote… So sign up! Noob! Register to vote here!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Exclusions:

KingSurfZA is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results:

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

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

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:30:32 +0000

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/2131693Â - 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 -Â Mint

The Picks

Â
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

Sentinel – Tankh	Scourge – dedA
Scant – Rhasta – Shadow Shaman	SloJ – Puck – Faerie Dragon
Radox – Naix – Lifestealer	Blizzy – Morphling – Morphling
Angel – Rattletrap – Clockwerk Goblin	Waz_Mac – Coco – Admiral (Aka The pirate)
Nakor – Chen – Holy Knight	MrAsssMan – Lion – Demon Witch
HorrorCast – Zeus – Lord of Olympia	Lemon-Grass – Crixalis – Sand King

The Game and the Kills

Â
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.Â 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

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

eGamer Interviews KingsurfZA

Nitro — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:08:43 +0000

Watsup peepZ im back again with another interview \:D/ and this time I get the low-down from Werner ‘Zark’ Strauss , Ruan ‘Grecko’ Grobbelaar , Riaan ‘Dominater’ Visser and Wei-Ting ‘ Totoro’ Lin who are members of the newly formed KS^(KingsurfZA). Now with all the latest drama unfolding in the KOTH tourny some would insinuate that entering now with a newly formed team would be suicide . But not these guys if you already havent heard of them KingsurfZA consisting of Zark , Totoro , YingYangPanda , Dominater and Grecko have been making waves in the local dota scene. Since their formation they havent lost a single match with their full team and the opponents they’ve defeated so far are some of the heavy weights like dedA , Mint, tankh and pX.

Q:Â What made you and your friends start KS^ ?

Erm we got along rly well b4 we made the clan we liked playing together plus afrikaaners rule in dota aweh ;D

Well we thought we could bring together a good talented clan to twilight to make things intresting.

it all started with zark , so then decided to play together for fun , and
it seems that we work out pretty well.

Q: Are there any aspects that you noticed that might need fine tuning in your teams gameplay?

our ganging is very goodÂ id say we could improve on warding .

yeah, we can improve on our counter warding and so forth. We ward intensly, but we do not counter ward Â to often, only if the game gets very srsbsns. Which could be a problem against better teams international teams etc.

yes, we working on our ganging especially which is already goodÂ and stillÂ improving day by day also warding / counter warding.

Q: Where do you see KS^ in the future of SA Dota ?

Well, if there is more opportunity to go further, i reckon we will grow into a very impressiveÂ team. Can with time become the nr.1 in SA i reckon.

yes i do for a fact i see us becoming the best .

Â I see us becoming the best up at the top.

Hopefully on top.

Q : Which team do you feel poses the biggest threat to KingsurfZA in the koth tourny ?

i’d say tankh now. Seeing as Mint’s teamÂ changed a bit and they will take time to get used toÂ each other’s gameplay.

Well tankh and mint are strong teams , but we actually dnt feel threatened by them at all.

I’d say mint and tankh.

Q : Who is your favorite dota player ?

Internationally and in s.aÂ “Not just because he is in my clan, but i would say Dominater. He controls a team very well, and forces you to accustom to his style of play.”which is infact very good ^_^

“who do think…hmmm….wait for it… DOMINATERÂ ;D?

Merlini

os|one.Stalcat

Q :Â Is there anything you would like to leaveÂ to your fellow S.A dota playersÂ and to the rest of the teams in theÂ tourney?

Â Dota is all about the element of surprise ^_^Â gang when they don’t expect it etc. PERMA TP IS THE WAY >>>>>>>>>>>>..

a asswhipping ;D

Less trialees in IHL :DÂ I think they being very leniant with the trialees, bringing down the
quality of IHL

Well there you have it. KingsurfZA seem to be a very confident and dominant team who bring more than just their ‘A’ gameÂ if they get the votes we could very well see a Tankh vs KS^ match up next week. Egamer wishes KS^ the best of luck in the tourny and hopes too see them progress further even after KOTH is done.

Dominater

Zark

Grecko

Totoro

Remember to watch this space for more Interviews / Coverage on the KOTH tournament.

Nitro out.

KotH 7 – Results and Voting!

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:16:50 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules:

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

KOTH Admin Team:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head & Commentator
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

Slobber â€“ Dedicated Host & Resident Journalist
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Helpline
Contact him by email here

Fluke â€“ Ingame Admin & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – TeamSpeak & Bot Host
Contact him by email here

Hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity
Contact him by email here

TeamSpeak tutorial for commentary available here.
WaaaghTV tutorial for live streaming of games available here.

This poll will decide who faces off against tankh for ourÂ seventh game in the KotH DotA series.

Oh yeah! You need to be logged in to vote… So sign up! Noob! Register to vote here!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Exclusions:

miNt gaming is excluded this week as they lost their last game.

Results:

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

King of the Hill Week 6 – Preview

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:34:50 +0000

So who is going to be challenging Mint this week? The poll this week was pretty close, with three teams taking almost 90% of the vote. The final finish was

KingsurfZA (36.0%, 25 Votes)
tankh (27.0%, 19 Votes)
pX.^ paCman Xtremists (26.0%, 18 Votes)

KingsofSurf had already confirmed late last week that they would not be able to field a team. With KingsofSurf being eliminated, just Tank and PX were left to win the vote. In a real nail biter, Tankh clinched it by one vote. So this week sees old rivals Tankh and Mint take to killing grounds. These two teams have already met once in the King of the Hill series, with Mint getting the better of Tankh. Tankh however do lead mint in DC cups by 2-1 so anything is possible.

As always KotH will kick will kick off tomorrow night between 8:30pm and 9:30pm. Hopefully both teams have no connectivity issues, so we can have things run smoothly. There will be commentary and streaming so check out the voting page for more details.

Fatbob

SA Gaming on the up

Daniel Balusik — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:19:11 +0000

With the current state of the community, many gamers would say the competitive e-Sports community in South Africa is going through a rough patch. A lot of people are focusing on the negatives at the moment, such as Ben “Equinox” Greenwood leaving the SA Gaming community, the number one TeamFortress 2 team, Brazen, are inactive and there are rumors that they could split, many of the good players are moving overseas, and lastly the problem tournament administrators have with the lack of enthusiasm and gratitude gamers show towards their tournaments.Â

While most people are focusing on the negatives lets take the time to reflect back on the positives.Â

In 2008 we saw the very first installment of the BOTC Call of Duty 4 and Counter-Strike: Source competitions, arguably the most premiere online tournaments to date, it could even rival some international competitions, in terms of prizes, organisation and of course the competition. Although it was a rough start for Robert “iNFy” Hart he weathered the storm and pulled through, showing that with enough perseverance and determination, dreams can become a reality.Â

Most of us also saw, or heard of the most notable sponsorship in South African gaming history go to BFB (Big Fat B*stards). Where Incredible Connection sponsored them R60 000 worth of gaming hardware. Again part of the community were negative, and retaliated out of jealousy asking why they had been sponsored as the team hadn’t won anything of note or placed well in any of the premiere online and offline tournaments, and that there were far more deserving teams. BFB too weathered the storm and now boast one of the strongest lineups the Call of Duty 4 community has ever seen. All they need to do now, is learn how to work as a unit, and soon they should be unstoppable.

For Â the rest of the story head on over to theÂ miNt Gaming website.

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 5 – New Kings on the Block

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:27:27 +0000

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

Warning: I wrote this at 5am so if you’re offended by cheap shots and sarcasm, you probably shouldn’t read this.

The Buildup

Before we get started, just so you all know; I Fatbob did not choose this week’s KotH game name. It was chosen by Nitrate who is a HUGE New Kids on the Block fan (Ed: Some 90s boy band for those of you who don’t know). Now that we’ve got that out the way, yes we’ve got a new King of the Hill. With some server issues (courtesy of some Iranians haxing our host and some 200 odd servers), we didn’t get all that many votes. Ol’ SloJ and friends (wait SloJ has friends?) beat out tankh by an eyelash, winning the vote 11 to 9. There have been some rumors that Tankh will never win a vote again due to the fact that Scant called a certain member from the egamer team “king of the n00bs”. Of course there is no truth to this. Good Luck for the vote this week Tankh, and good luck to all the teams.

To vote for this week’s challenger press the voting button right at the top of the page, or click here.

There is a replay and yes I recommend watching it right up until a certain player drops. I won’t ruin the surprise of who this is, but I will tell you we had to restart the game 9 times because of the bongle (Ed: Isn’t that punishable?). I suggest you never ever let this player into a pubbie, because he will drop. Replay link http://www.dota-allstars.com/download/replay/132082

The Overview

Now this week was the second meeting between Mint Gaming and Dedicated’Abuse (dedA) in the Koth series, of course with Mint having 5 players this time things should have been a lot closer than last time. To check out what happened last time check out http://egamer.co.za/2009/05/king-of-the-hill-dota-series-week-2-one-or-none/

Unfortunately due to some connection stability issues, we only got started at around 21:30pm on Tuesday. However the stream was stable and we had quite a few spectators this week. Mint represented the Sentinel this week and also was randomly selected to begin the draft.

The Bans

For a second week in a row, both Rhasta and Krobelus were banned. Â Along with this, the remaining “unpickables” (Tauren, Necrolyte and Zombie) remained banned. Enigma was also banned, despite having little impact in last week’s game. And not surprisingly, Mint banned Bane who has been a stable in the dedA picking diet.

Mint – SentineldedA -Â Scourge

The Picks

Now the picking started off fairly normal, with both teams getting a little creative at the end. This was also one of the longest picking phases we’ve ever had, as Mint needed to use all of their picking time as well as every last bit of overtime. And yes, I’m still convinced that dedA misclicked on their last pick and picked blood seeker and no one is going to convince me otherwise. ;)

Mint – SentinelÂ dedA -Â Scourge

The AssignmentsÂ

Sentinel – Mint	Scourge – dedA
SloJ – Anub’arak – Nerubian Assassin	Phobos – Mirana Nightshade – Priestess of the Moon
Waz_Mac – Aiushtha – Enchantress	Azen – Strygwyr – Bloodseeker
SwissRoll – Puck – Faerie Dragon	Bananas – Mogul Kahn – Axe
MrAsssMan – Zeus – Lord of Olympia	CryT_T.zz – Crixalis – Sand King
Lemon-Gr^ss – Mangix – Pandaren Brewmaster	BonKers – Rylai Crestfall – Crystal Maiden

The Game and the Kills

Both teams picked great combos this week which produced at least 20 minutes of exciting dota. Both teams also opted for 2-1-2 in the lanes, although the game was quite volatile and from early on there was quite a bit of lane switching going on. Although I’m still not entirely sure why bloodseeker (Azen) was soloing Zeus (MrAssMan).Â

Both teams played very aggressively. Â In one of the never ending remakes, we actually saw a first blood before the creeps spawned, however a certain player’s unreliable internet connection saved Bambi (Waz_Mac) the shame. Some early escapes by by SloJ and CryT_T (also known as xera the n00b) drew out first blood a little longer this time, with Mint getting it in the 3^rd minute, Lemon^Grass boxing Xera into a bit of a corner and introducing the Sand Kings head to the end of his bamboo stick (wow that sounds kinda dirty). Lemon Grass fell shortly after however keeping the scores tied at 1-1. Just a minute later it was again Lemon Grass picking on the scourge, killing Phobo’s kitty. However again this was short lived, as Xera/Bonkers were waiting in the bush and had a little surprise for Lemon grass bring the score back to a tie at 2-2.

After 5 minutes, Mint were leading in the farming war with 64 creeps to dedA’s 23, Zeus and a jungle bambi racking up loads of creeps, however neither team was giving an inch on the hero kill front. A 3 on 1 gang was dedA take a brief lead as Xera dispatched of MrAssMan’s Zeus, only to have MrAssMan return the favour to Bonkers’ Crystal Maiden.

Both teams regrouped and got back on to the farming, however it wasn’t long before the deadlock was broken in the 10^th minute with an epic 3v3 battle. Xera/ClitsyB/Azen picked a fight with Sloj/SwissRoll/MrAssMan in a battle for Mint’s top tower. Some bloodrage to shut the Zeus up and a call from ClitsyB’s Axe along with some fancy footwork from Xera saw dedA take this mini battle 3-0 and after the 11^th minute dedA had taken the lead 3-6. Oh and the tower survived unscathed. :)

Mint regrouped and both teams teleported all over the show, looking to further increase their kills and try to swing the game in their favour. Mint pulled one back in the 13^th minute, finding a stray bloodseeker who obviously didn’t get the memo to push top. The score was now 6-4 to dedA.

Â So yes dedA soldiered on after Azen’s tragic death to push Mint’s top tower and were first to take a tower 13 minutes and 44 seconds in. Of course the party was short lived, as those sneaky folk from Mint Gaming also had some plans to take a tower and pushed dedA’s bottom level 1 tower just 13 seconds later keeping the game even steven (And if you’re reading this, Hi Steve!).

The next 30 seconds were filled with peace and tranquility but the peace and tranquility was short lived. Waz_mac had decided that one tower was not enough, and got started on dedA’s level 2 bottom tower. Of course dedA weren’t going to take this lying down mass teleported down to bottom to have “a word”. Bloodraged and Ruptured, Waz_Mac made a run for it but was caught by Xera’s spike. Xera began an epicenter; preparing to give Waz_Mac a 30 second break and a one way trip to his fountain. Of course Waz_Mac had all of this planned, and who should spring out of the bushes to “have his back” but his old pal SloJ giving Xera’s SK a spike of his own. And of course where there’s a SloJ, there’s an AssMan and a Swissroll and even a shot of lemon grass. DedA were caught on the back foot this time, with Mint taking the mini battle 3-0 and bringing the score to 7-6 in Mint’s favour. Yes that’s right, Waz_Mac’s bambi survived. Mint’s lead didn’t last long, as an unaware AssMan was caught by Bonkers bring the score to 7-7 after 15 minutes with the towers at 1-1.

Things were still neck and neck, with really just Mints lead on creep kills (195-107) separating things. Another epic battle was fought middle around 17 minutes, this time Mint handing out a 4-1 panking, bringing the score up to 11-8. This also left dedA vulnerable with only Kitty to defend and Mint quickly capitalized on this taking dedA’s level 1 tower middle. dedA did strike back quickly to bring the score to 12-10 however keeping Mint’s kill lead to a minimum.

And that’s where it ends folks. Xera’s troublesome connection which was the main cause of the 9 restarts died again and with this in mind, a very late start and lots of players writing exams a decision was taken not to load. A very disappointed dedA played on but 4-5 the outcome was inevitable. Mint started on a pushing frenzy taking towers all over the place, while dedA defended and picked off heroes where they could. After 23 minutes the score 12-12, although Mint were leading 4-1 on towers and were just pulling the game away from dedA. After 31 minutes Mint were leading 22-14 and dedA conceded, surrendering the game and the hill.

The Vital Stats

Click here for the final scoreboard

The Summary

And there you have it, Mint are King of the Hill after beating a 4v5 (Ed: Ironic isn’t it) dedA. Unlike their first meeting, this match was filled with 20 minutes of really great dota and who knows how it would have gone down if Xera hadn’t dropped. Both teams played really well, and I’m sure both will hypothesize about how they had the edge and they would have won it. I think it was too close to call, Mint were better farmed but dedA were strong in the team battles and still had a strong hold on the control of their side of the map. Both teams played extremely well and produced some of the best dota we’ve seen this far. I don’t know if we’ll see another game as close as this soon, and with Mint’s main rival’s bvd pulling out of KotH due a shakey starting lineup, I think it’s going to be up to dedA or Tankh to unseat the new Kings on the Bloc… errr Hill.

Gank you in the bushes – FatBob

P.S. Bukris is NOT champion, and whoever believes this is a . *hint it starts with a P.

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 4 – Two to Tango

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:22:51 +0000

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

The Buildup

And so another week of King of the Hill goes by, with yet another awesome match. This week we had Clan Select Few representing the scheming Scourge up against the reigning kings Dedicated’Abuse playing for the saintly Sentinel. Luckily there were no technical hiccups affecting the game, however we did lose the stream again after 30 minutes. We are actively working on this and hope to have the stream stable for next week.

Admin Log:

No admin decisions this week.

As always the replay is available, so you can see how things went down yourself. Hope the comments don’t ruin it for you though.

Replay: http://www.dota-allstars.com/download/replay/130328Â - 745Kb

The overview

Week 4′s game between dedA (Dedicate’Abuse) and sF (Select Few) started at 20:49 on Tuesday night. No major hiccups occurred, and for a change (while the stream worked anyway) spectators got the chance to watch the ban/pick phase which was a first. dedA were randomly drawn to start off the ban phase. Incase you have the memory of a goldfish, dedA represented the Sentinel (as they were scourge last week) and sF were representing the scourge.

The Bans

This week’s bans saw a slight adjustment, with one of the “unpickables” (heroes that have been banned since the start of KotH) being dropped by both sides.Â Enigma was not banned this week, and suprise suprise, he was picked. Other notable bans were the two super pushers (Rhasta/Krobelus) along with Crystal Maiden who made a return to the bans.Â So the remaining “unpickables” are the Tauren, the Necrolyte and of course the Zombie.

Sentinel -Â Dedicated AbuseScourge – Select Few

The Picks

Starting off this week’s picks was dedA with n00b assassin followed up by sF picking Enigma, this being Enigma’s first appearance in the KotH. dedA’s s overall pick was slightly different to what you’d expect, opting for lots and lots of disable, which they put to very good use. sF picked a more rounded team, with a traditional strong pusher (Lanik), a tank (Axe), a strong damage per second (Nevemore), a spammer (Zeus) and then of course a pusher/disable with Enigma.

Sentinel -Â Dedicated AbuseScourge – Select Few

The AssignmentsÂ

Sentinel – dedA	Scourge – sF
Azen – King Leoric – Skeleton King	Leto – Demnok Lannik – Warlock
PhoBos – Atropos – Bane Elemental	GmadmaN – Zeus – Lord of Olympia
Clitsy – Mirana Nightshade – Priestess of the Moon	NooB_likeVigo – Mogul Kahn – Axe
Bonkers -Â Lion – Demon Witch	[ft]-[d]eath – Nevermore – Shadow Fiend
CryT_T – Anub’arak – Nerubian Assassin	zieOwnz – Darchrow – Enigma

The Game and the Kills

Week 4 produced an exciting game, with both teams going for slightly different strategies. Playing to their hero strengths, sF focused on pushing hard early game and farming as much as possible. Watching the overall CS saw sF leading 100-82 on creep kills after 10 minutes of play. With strong farmers like Axe and Shadowfiend it’s not all that suprising. 20 minutes of play and sF had stretched this lead to 239-154. Small problem with all of sF’s creep farming… They were being farmed by dedA. Almost every single team fight saw sF come off second best as dedA put all their stun to work. Pictured: Gmadman just misses a tripple with zeus with some quick tango eating from ClitsyB and Bonkers saving the day.

The hero kills tell a very different tale. From 10 minutes in, dedA ganged and picked off sF every chance they got. As sF racked up the creep kills and tower kills, so dedA racked up the hero kills. The table below gives a little idea of of how dedA progressed.

Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â dedAÂ Â Â Â sF

5 minutesÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 1Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 2
10 minutesÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 5Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 3
20 minutesÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 16Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 7
30 minutesÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 26Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 9Â

Pictured: ClitsyB taking over the helm from dominator as “the running man”.

The Towers and the Map control

Again with sF’s hero combination and determined farming/pushing, they struck first taking dedA’s level 1 top tower in just under 11 minutes. And sF were quick to strike down dedA’s middle and bottom soon after, having taken all three of dedA’s level 1 towers in just under 20 minutes. Of course when dedA stopped ganging and started pushing, the situation was quickly rectified.

The Vital StatsÂ

Need it a little bigger? BIG

The Summary

So it was dedA to win for a 3^rd week in a row. The first 15 minutes were quite evenly matched, however dedA’s team of disablers coupled with some good play stole the game right out from under sF. The game only lasted 36 minutes with sF calling just after dedA had taken mid, the final scoreded 37/11 in dedA’s favour. It was a convincing win and dedA are slowly proving that they’re one of the top teams, having already having beaten mmk, a handicapped Mint and now sF. Hopefully one of the big three (bvd/mint/tankh) will win next weeks vote so dedA can really be put to the test.

So dedAÂ have earned two points in the tournament so far with a chance to make it three next week. sF will be taking a break as they lost their lost game and Pantheon have pulled out of KotH. Otherwise all other teams will be eligible.

To cast your vote for next week’s challenger, check out http://egamer.co.za/koth-voting-results/

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

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 3 – First Blood

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:33:18 +0000

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

The Buildup

So after a few technical hiccups, Xera’s 286 rebooting, glitch’s ADSL resetting, Wingster’s Â power tripping and a cat on fire, this week’s King of the Hill turned out to be quite an awesome game. A big thanks to both teams for agreeing to a re after about 6 loads, as we could restart the stream for the fans and so our guest commentator had something to commentate on. We didn’t manage to record this week’s, but I hear Waz_Mac’s take on the game was quite entertaining. Thanks for filling in Waz, we’ll have you back anytime. We do apologize for the technical problems; the team at egamer is working hard to get things smooth for next week’s game. Also yes yes I know the write up was a bit late, but that really wasÂ all Nitrate and Blink’s fault.

Admin Log:

Due to game stability issues, it has been agreed by both teams that the game will be re’d. – KotH admin team

Don’t care what I think and want to form your own opinion? You can get the replay and check it out yourself.

Replay: http://www.dota-allstars.com/download/replay/128053 – 679KB

The overview

So this week’s game started a little later than usual, with both teams and EVENTUALLY Fluke joining. The game started at 9:51pm as an AP due to the draft having been decided in the first game. For those of you who want to know, mmK were randomed to go first. As dedicated’abuse were sentinel last week, this week they represented the scourge with mmK playing as sentinel.

The Bans

No suprises here, although this week was the first time we’ve not seen Crystal Maiden banned. The other four regulars (Necro, Tauren, Zombie and Enigma) made the list as well as some of the other common bans we’ve seen before.

Â Sentinel – mmKÂ Scourge – Dedicated Abuse

The Picks

This week’s picks were loaded with surprises, as mmK decided that they didn’t need any agility heroes or much DPS, and decided on two meat shields with three spell casters/support heroes. Let’s just say it didn’t work which was especially noticeable in the team fights as they had no real way to initiate which left them on the back foot most of the time. The Axe did go blink, but due to dedA’s map control, Axe (Cookie-Monster) only farmed this after 23 minutes of play. On the other side, dedA opted for a pretty standard pick, with only the Bane in their starting line-up from last week. No real surprises as to how they played, Puck initiated, Rhasta ward pushed, Abaddon (a.k.a the man on the horse) tanked and Kitty did lots of damage. Even though it didn’t work that well,Â it was refreshing to see something different from mmK and not the usual cookie cutter strats.

Sentinel – mmKÂ Scourge – Dedicated Abuse

Â Â

The Assignments

Sentinel – mmK	Scourge – dedA
Wingster – Pugna – Oblivion	Bonkers -Â Rhasta – Shadow Shaman
daekiNho – Rylai Crestfall – Crystal Maiden	Glitch – Mirana Nightshade – Priestess of the Moon
Cookie-Monster – Mogul Kahn – Axe	BounCy – Abaddon – Lord of Avernus
D-o1shi – Lina Inverse – Slayer	PhoBos – Puck – Faerie Dragon
Ecstacy- Nâ€™aix – Life stealerÂ	CryT_T – Atropos – Bane Elemental

The Game and the Kills

Both teams got off to a good start, each going with a 2-1-2 lane strategy. dedA had Kitty/Bane top and Rhasta/Man on a horse bot against mmK’s Axe/Crystal combo top and Lina/Naix combo bottom, leaving Puck and Pugna to Battle out middle. Both teams got off to a good start and overall things were close early on. 10 minutes in dedA had a 2 kill lead and were only 1 creep kill ahead.

Pictured: Cookie on the run from Glitch’s Arrow

However mmK were clearly struggling top, with all the mmK deaths coming from this lane. This was the calm before the storm, as dedA shifted up a gear, ganking left, right, centre and even catching an offguard daekiNho in the bushes. Just 10 minutes later the game had shifted into dedA’s favour, with a strong 10 kill lead (13/3) lead, even though mmK were doing a better job farming 196/180. With dedA’s early tower push strat, mmK were confined to their base and from here on dedA just picked them off one at a time as they pushed. The game finished 9/35 in dedA’s favour after just 36 minutes and 11 seconds.

Pictured: Daek sleeping most the gameÂ

The Towers and the Map control

Wow… that’s going to be your response when you watch the replay and see dedA’s tower blitz. In previous games, I had mentioned that at times dedA seemed disorganized and generally never seemed to push. Well that definitely wasn’t the case this week, as dedA smashed down mmK’sÂ tier 1 and 2 towers in just over 9 minutes, the first 4 falling in 3 minutes and 3 seconds. The trouble all started when a push bottom, spearheaded by Rhasta’sÂ wards, on the mmK tierÂ 1 bottom tower in the 12^th minute, led to dedA taking both bottom towers in one push. This was followed up with a quick regroup and gank mid, leaving mmK exposed and another hard push with both mid towers falling. A quick trip to town for some hp/mana and dedA started their assult on the top towers, taking slightly longer (about 4 minutes) to get these two, as mmK had cottoned on to their plan. The bad news was that 22 minutes 45 seconds into the game, mmK were left with no tier 1/2 which as we all know leads to farming problems. To make matters worse, dedA still had all their towers and a few well placed observer wards to keep mmK in check.

The Vital Stats

If it’s a little small, check out the bigger vesion here.

The Summary

dedA spanked the monkeys (Ed: Not that kind of Monkey Nitrate) and soÂ defended their hill and remain as king for this week. The game was named first blood as dedAÂ are the first team to get a point as they won while being king. GG WP to both teams, and thanks again for playing.Â Although things were a bit rocky in the beginning this weeks Koth turned out alright.

mmK will be out of the next vote, but I’m sure we’ll see them back soon. So who’s going to play dedA in the next game? That’s all up to you. Pantheon and Mint both return, so vote wisely for who will take on dedA.

To cast your vote for next week’s challenger, check out http://egamer.co.za/2009/05/koth-4-results-and-voting/

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

P.s. Shout out to oldman, boo, ronnie, farmer, hulk, grumpy,Â and of course Jesus

KotH 4 – Results and Voting!

Dean — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:31:43 +0000

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

Vote for the team which you would like to challenge the King!

Rules:

You can view the full rule set and how the tournament works over here.

Your admins are:

Alcardu â€“ Admin Head
Contact him by email here

Blink â€“ Co-Admin
Contact him by email here

SlobberÂ â€“ Dedicated Host & Game Reviewer
Contact him by email here

MortaL â€“ Ingame Admin & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Fluke â€“ Ingame Admin & Streamer
Contact him by email here

Demraz|B| – Dedicated TeamSpeak Host
Contact him by email here

hallow – Commentator
Contact him by email here

Nitrate – Deity
Contact him by email here

TeamSpeak tutorial for commentary available here.
WaaaghTV tutorial for live streaming of games available here.

For those of you living under a rock, dedicated’abuse are King of the Hill for the second week running! This poll will decide who faces off against dedA in our forth game in the KotH series.

Oh yeah! You need to be logged in to vote… So sign up! Noob! Register to vote here!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Exclusions:

mmKÂ is excluded this week as they lost their last game.
Pantheon have pulled out of the KOTH.

Results:

This tournament is proudly sponsored by Rectron!

King of the Hill Dota Series: Week 2 – One or None

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Wed, 20 May 2009 09:52:54 +0000

-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

PCPro Lan in Hatfield! 29 – 30 May 2009! Be there!

Dean — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:03:02 +0000

PC Pro in Hatfield are hosting a LAN with a DotA Compo. The LAN will run from the 29th of May and it will end on the 30th. The PCproLAN will host over 100 gamers in the Hatfield Shopping Centre, where teams entered into the competition will face off for various prizes.

Details:
Date: 29th and 30th of may 2009
Place: The fields Shopping center Hatfield
Time: 19:00
Entrance: R150 for contestants and R10 for visitors
There are spots for 100 people and 23 all ready booked
Great prizes from Sponsors: Rectron and Asbis and ASUS
Contact Nr: 012 342 5691
Contact email: pcprohatfield@gmail.com

Prizes:

1st prize : 5 X transcend axe gaming ram(2 X 2gig ddr1066) value of R6000
2nd prize : 5 X canyon Chat packs (web cam and headset) value of R1000

So if you’re interested in this, don’t hesitate, enter now by booking your seats (click here!)

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

Bob "Fatbob" Smith — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:38:58 +0000

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

Â 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
-

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.Â

Â SentinelÂ - Â TankhÂ Scourge – Mint Gaming

The Picks

Â 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.Â

SentinelÂ - Â TankhScourge – Mint Gaming

The Assignments

Sentinel – Tankh	Scourge – Mint
Scant – Yurnero – Juggernaut	Waz_Mac – Razzil Darkbrew – Alchemist
Nakor – Anub’arak – Nerubian Assassin	Sloj – krobelus – Death Prophet
Angel – Zeus – Lord of Olympia	Mouth – Rhasta – Shadow Shaman
Sphere – Lion – Demon Witch	Valprax – Mogul Kahn – Axe
RadoxÂ - Mirana Nightshade – Priestess of the Moon	SwissRollÂ - Puck – Faerie Dragon

Â 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.

Â Pictured: Scant offering to trim more than just a little off of the topÂ 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 thatÂ 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

eGamer Interviews scant From tankh^

Nitro — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:08:22 +0000

Watsup Peepz Im back with another interviewÂ and this time I bring you some wise words from Anthony ‘scant’ Hodgson who is the current manager of the notorious tankh^. scant has been playing Dota for a long time and has grown from strength to strength through his hard work, dedication and love for the gameÂ he has earned the respect from alot of players in the local Dota scene. He started out with the infamous ICP and is now in tankh along with Angel , Radox , Sphere, nakor and Horrorcast.

Q: So how do you and your clan feel about the KOTL tourny?
KOTH* :P
lolÂ T_T will edit laterÂ ;p
Though, a KOTL tourney would rock
rofl
I highly recommend a KOTL tourney
apsh all KOTL
i think we’d be quite good at that
rofl

Maybe IÂ Wont edit it ^_^

With respect to the KOTH tourney, we’re excited to take part in a tournament
that offers actual prizes and motivated by the prospect of winning the title of the kings of the hill.

Q: Do any of the teams in the tourny pose a threat to tankh?
Of course, it would be arrogant to suggest to the contrary :D

Q: Which team do you feel will be the hardest to overcome ?
Â mint

Q: How did you feel about the exhibition match against Dedicated Abuse ?
pretty relaxed – though they gave us a decent game, we felt like we were
always in control.

Q:Did u notice any issues / problem areas that your team needs to work on ?
Yeah, Angel is a loose cannon and we need to get that under control!

Q: Do you feel that you and your team will progress far in the tourny?

Yes I do reckon we can win plenty, provided Angel gets his act together :D.

Q : Which player do you respect the most in the local dota scene ?

Tough question…I’d have to say sagie. He is an indomitable force in dota
and his commitment to his team is unbreakable.

Q: How do you see the future of DotA as it lost some prestigious
tournaments and clans? Even if new ones are popping up, there are still no big
steps forward ?
DotA is going to be around for as long as people are playing it – the game
doesn’t require very many resources except for people and this makes it easy for
it to sustain itselfÂ sure it has its ups and downs, but i believe that overall it can only grow,
given the mass appeal of the game.

Q : Where do you see tankh as a competitive clan in the future ?

tankh’s future depends on Angel’s ability to control himself – he can be reckless and impulsive and his vanity often ruins the mood on teamspeak we’re currently working on ways to settle him down and depending on our
success in that regard, I would expect tankh to be a team to worry about for every
dota team in the world.

Q : Is there anything you would like to say to your fellow S.A gamers ?
Play to learn and have fun. If you’re doing neither of those things, you’re
missing the point.

Q : Anything else you want to add ?
Yeah, just a shoutout to convergence who faithfully heads up tankh’s
cheering squad!
And a reminder that even though Angel needs to improve a bit, he’s trying
his best.

Q: [Off Topic] tell us a joke .

What did the little girl say when she saw a herd of elephants running down
the mountain?
Look, a herd of elephants!
What did she say when she saw a herd of elephants wearing sunglasses running
down the mountain?
Nothing, she didn’t recognize them!

Lol thank you for your time.

eGamer wishes scant and tankh the best ofÂ luck in the upcoming KOTH tournament.

Ps : The turtle at the top is tankh’s logo if anyone was wondering :P

scant

scant with some chinese guy

eGamer Gets down with clitsybananaS and Phobos

Nitro — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:15:44 +0000

Watsup peepZÂ so basically I thought since the KOTH tournament is next week why not get some interviews rolling. So fresh off the block I get the low-down From Tristan ‘Clitsybananas’ Yo Badger and Warwick ‘Phobos’ Nortier who are members of the newly formed Dota Clan Dedicated Abuse. Both these players are highly skilled and have accomplished many achievements in the competitive aspect of the game. After a close game between TankH and Deda with tankh emerging victorious I am sure you must be curious as to what the players were thinking ;p ?

Q: So what did you guys think of the KOTH warm up match against Tankh ?

Clitsybananas : Well I knew it was gana be a fun game and also competitive as tankh
are one of the best clans in sa.

Phobos: Our match against tankh went well considering it was our first match online
as a clanÂ the game itself was about 52mins and endgame scores weren’t horrific.

Q: When you look back at the match did you notice any problem areas in ur teams
gameplay / style ?

Clitsybananas : Our early game was good but when it got to miD / late game map
control and pushing towers after a team battle we never really did well in that
area. Little errors by us cost us the game in the end.

Phobos : We couldn’tÂ push towers they had good teamwork wpwp.

Q: How do you rate yourselves as a team in the king of the hill tourny ?

Clitsybananas : Well we are a fairly new team that started a month ago when we won at
ocÂ together. I rate we can do pretty decently in this tourney seeing that
we are all experienced and decent players. I really think if we can put alot of
effort into the tourney we can win it or do extremely well by beating some of the
top clans etc..

Phobos : Having only played online with this team once against tankh its kind of
hard to answer your question but i know that individually all 6 of us are fairly good
so we’ll have to see how we manage as a team :D

Q: Who do you and your team see as the biggest threat in the koth tourny?

Clitsybananas : tankh need a reason? We don’t only think tankh as aÂ threat but yeah. bvd and mint
are also threats :D/

Phobos : mint , tankh, bvd

Q: Is there anything you would like to leave your fellow S.A dota players
with and to the rest of the teams in the tourney?

clitsybananaS:Â UMMM welL BRA this tourney Is probably going to be a new One for
many people. ie Me, so 4 all those playing in this tourney gl hf and even if u
lose. DOnt Let it BreaK u apart bEcuz teamwork builds Up from Time and
experience! :D DotaÂ ftw And remember Watch Ur Replays.Â :D?

PhoBos : Yeah, i think everyone online should have a goal to join the IHL.Â The IHL
has a good system thats advancing our SA dota quite rapidly.Â To the rest of the
teams in the tourney GL HF!~

Egamer Wishes Team dedA the best of luck as well as to all the other teams participating in the KOTH tournament.Remember to watch this space for more interviews from the teams of the KOTH tournament.

Phobos

Clitsybananas