Disclaimer: I can’t access these replays anymore so I’m not sure about some of the bans. Format heavily inspired by, blog-god, Danny

Game 1:

Overall Strategy: My analysis of Smacks team is that Osis is the star player that I need to worry about with Smack and Kizu as a strong, but not scary, mid/safe duo. I assume Osis will get what he wants out of his lane no matter what we do; so the general plan this game was to have the supports ditch safelane and focus on winning the other lanes, hard. Most importantly I wanted Ryrk to have the ability to snowball out of control.

Phase 1

Smack Bans: Invoker/Spirit Breaker

I assume these were respect bans for me and Ryrk. Both heroes are also very strong in the SEAL environment

Clare Bans: Axe/Abbadon

Respect bans for wunderkid Osis. I thought making sure DerpyDots didn’t require help in the safelane was very crucial to winning laning phase so I didn’t want to give Osis a hero he could wreck with.

Clare Pick: Rubik

ButteryGreg’s most played hero and a solid support hero with the added bonus of countering the likely clockwork pick. I had picked this for him in our scrim as well and knew he could make it do work.

Smack Picks: Clockwork/Ursa

Ursa, a hero that is strong in lane and smack likes to play combined with the hot roaming support, Clockwork, seemed like understandable choices. This also gave their draft some versatility as both heroes work well in two different roles.

Clare Pick: Kunkka

I picked myself Kunkka since he is not only a comfort hero for me but also offers good kill potential in the mid lane with his massive range torrent. I wasn’t totally convinced on this pick though since it meant our support duo didn’t put out great damage in laning phase but I couldn’t think of anything better.