



Game 1 on Dragon Shire was a risky draft by Roll20--with a Tyrael as their offlaner, they essentially sacrificed their ability to waveclear and lane against the double global of SPT in exchange for a more powerful teamfight. With their stellar coordination, they would be able to deal with the heroics of SPT and eventually win the long fight thanks to Dragon Blade.



Indeed, this is what ended up happening. Roll20 fell behind in structures early, and needed to decisively win a fight in order to catch back up. Fortunately, SPT obliged several times. At mercenary camps, Roll20 got the fights they wanted, utilizing Sanctification to counteract Mighty Gust, and pouring Dragon Blade damage into multiple members of SPT. Goku's rotation and well-timed sanctification in this fight was a thing of beauty. The biggest takeaway from this game is the final Dragon Knight that won the game for NA. Early in the group stage, Roll20 took a DK in a similar situation, and just marched it down the bottom lane for no value. This time, they had the same win condition, but held the DK in a bush for a long time waiting for the waves and the rest of the team to provide the proper setup. With a slower, more methodical push, R2e were able to safely take the keep and leave enough time on the DK to dive into the base, mop up kills, and take Game 1.





In Game 2, on Infernal Shrines, Roll20 took another risky draft by picking up Johanna into triple warrior. I've said before that one of the marks of a great team is their ability to win a game with Johanna in their composition. Unfortunately, Roll20 would be unable to earn that check mark in this match. They played the macro well throughout the game, managing to stay relatively even despite losing punisher after punisher. However, their composition relied on the teamfight, and simply got outclassed by SPT's composition.



There were so many resources available for SPT around the shrine fights. They had Sanctification and Ancestral Healing for defense, Blizzard for zone control, and Poisoned Spear combined with Mosh Pit for incredible initiation. Despite having Greymane and Gul'dan, Roll20 lost so much damage potential in their tank and support picks that they could not close out kills in straight up teamfights, and did not have enough chasing lockdown to create picks. Time and again they attempted to force fights in a long lane, but SPT were able to just run away from Johanna. They had a few solid picks in the midgame, but their inability to close out kills in head to head fights simply allowed SPT to take advantage after advantage until a desperate teamfight by Roll20 secured the win for China and tied up the series.



We saw Game 3 head to Cursed Hollow. Arguably, this is the first game where Roll20 won the draft, building a heavy teamfight composition into a similar style from SPT. However, in the early game Roll20 had the Dehaka advantage. Their play around the first tribute was excellent, layering interrupts perfectly while Dehaka pushed town towers in the bottom lane. Then they executed a solid teamfight around the second tribute. However, SPT made a heads up play in conceding the third tribute, Roll20's second, to sneak a boss. This forced Roll20 to do their own boss in response and reset the game to neutral. The game proceeded back and forth, but would ultimately come down to a fight around the curse-point tribute for both teams. The fight was incredibly close with near-escapes on both sides. Ultimately, the sustain advantage for SPT would prove to be too much, and they would take the curse. They then set up for an incredibly greedy play, ignoring the fort entirely and sieging the bottom keep with no minions. A passive team would likely look to take a wall in this position and then back away to push other advantages.



This was likely what Roll20 expected, as they let Dehaka soak mid and top lane to try and keep up with the advantage of SPT, but the Chinese team refused to blink. They continued to siege on into the keep until they finally caught Muradin out of position. Pouncing quickly, SPT picked up multiple kills, and had stalled long enough to recharge all of their defensive cooldowns, giving them just barely enough time to rush down the core and take a surprising victory.



An easy spot to blame in this game would be Muradin's choice of Haymaker instead of Avatar. Ultimately the teamfight and the ensuing pick came down to his lack of surviveability. However, the game was lost extremely early. Ordinarily, a team in SPT's position takes a fort, gets some damage on keep walls, and then the game slows down for a time allowing Roll20 to use their global advantage to catch up and try for another fight at the 16 talent tier. Had SPT played more passive, or had Roll20 properly read their aggression, it's entirely possible that Roll20 has an opportunity to execute their strategy and win the game. Unfortunately for them, SPT knew exactly how to punish the NA squad and made a risky call with excellent execution to take the game.



Game 4.....Warhead Junction is a stupid map.



Roll20 went for their patented NA boss control strategy with Zarya, and managed to secure the first boss, all according to plan. However, disaster struck as they attempted to take the second boss. Lucio on the enemy team allowed SPT to get into position just as the boss was falling in order to force a fight. It was extremely close, but a few slight misses by Roll20 allowed SPT to take the boss away, and win the ensuing nuke phase. This is what makes the NA strat so risky--if they are unable to take the bosses and force an advantage, they suddenly have a really stupid composition that offers very little in defense, or in a straight-up teamfight. With this, SPT have the opportunity to utilize the poor design of Warhead Junction to its fullest. They grab every nuke they can, soften up the bottom lane before the boss arrives, and have enough nukes left to grab a level 10 advantage, and Roll20's composition has no way to defend against that advantage. Game over, Roll20 is out of the tournament.



The story of this series for Roll20 is risks not paying off. Game 2 was a Johanna that got no value, game 3 was a Muradin with little impact, and Game 4 was their tried and true Warhead strategy that made a single mistake and lost the game. All in all, the drafting from Roll20 gave them the heavy burden of execution in every game. In a long series, this is a huge disadvantage as you have to outplay your opponent at every turn, and keep that consistency up through every game. As a newer roster, this whole series was filled with big risks that ultimately did not pay off.



That said, if there's any positive takeaway from this series, it's that Roll20 got to try out some different strategies against an international opponent, and learn more about where they need to focus on their practice going into the 2018 season. Roll20's goal was never to win this tournament, but to learn. If they can ignore the memes and the Reddit comments, they will still have left this tournament a stronger team than when they came in. After their performance today, many people will write them off and expect other teams to take the dominant position in NA as the new HGC season begins. However, I expect those fans to be quite surprised by just how much stronger Roll20 has become through this experience. Like his namesake, Goku and crew just spent two weeks fighting with weighted clothes on. Now they can return home to a region that is unprepared for just how strong they've become.