First off, I’ll introduce the way most teams usually approach drafts, this is very general and there are of course a million exceptions. It deserves its own article going into more detail, but the point for now is just to highlight the difference between CM and CD drafting. For those who are aware of this and only want to read about the specific game, feel free to skip until the next header.

The first three bans are generally ‘strong’ heroes of the patch (heroes offer a lot in any situation and/or have few counters and/or are very strong laners)

The first two picks are either both supports, or a support and a core that is a strong laner / can go on multiple lanes / can lane solo if necessary

The next two bans are heroes that go well with the enemy first-picks / heroes that your own first-picks cannot deal with

The 3rd pick for each team is the one that is most open, least predictable and reveals the most about the direction the team wants to go in.

The 4th picks that follow simply complement other the rest of the line-up, fill any potential gaps / fulfil any role that’s lacking, and allow the last pick to be as open as possible

The 5th ban is often the easiest since the enemy team’s plan is often quite clear by now and the best option for the enemy is simply removed.

The last picks are often the cores that are expected to have a good lane and over-all just match up well against the majority of the enemy line-up, so that they have a timing to hit at which they’re strong enough to carry and end the game.

As for roles for the heroes to fill, this is again an overly simplified list of check-boxes a solid line-up needs to tick

Sufficiently strong lanes

Catch/disable/lock-down (ability to get pick-offs / punish split-pushing / chase)

Teamfight (aoe disables / area denial / “big ults”)

Variety of damage (magical/physical, single-target/AoE, right-click/spell-based)

So, what really changes when going from Captain’s Mode to Captain’s Draft?

Most importantly, the hero pool is a lot smaller – with ~75% randomly removed, some heroes become a lot stronger since their counters are gone, some situational heroes become the only options (since heroes that do their job more reliably are gone), and some weaker laners are less likely to get punished since there are fewer strong laners to choose from. Lastly, there are no additional bans after the first three, so while choices are limited, the ability to ban out key heroes for the enemy’s strategy once you realise it, is also gone.

Now, onto the actual game.

Game 1

1 – No team has any experience playing against Pangolier in a team setting, and the hero is dominating high-level pubs.

2 – The only hero that can win the lane against Razor is Nature’s Prophet, so with him not being in the pool it’s an obvious ban – Razor is a top pick at the moment for a good reason.

3 & 4 – Enchantress is often banned because she can either solo-lane and apply a lot of pressure, or roam and pressure multiple lanes at once. With Enchantress gone, there are few solid counters to Lycan left in the pool. Secret are also possibly already thinking about grabbing Lifestealer for Ace, a hero that matches up very poorly against Lycan.

5 – Naga Siren has seen a lot of success in this tournament as a roaming pos 4 when other conventional tanky roamers with catch (Tusk, SK, NS, Clock, Earth Spirit) are unavailable. VG has firstpick so they don’t need to ban Omni. Still, VG surprisingly used a lot of their reserve time on this ban.

6 – Omniknight is another highly contested hero whose only strong counter on the lane and throughout the game is Razor – with Razor gone it’s an obvious ban.

7 – VG go with a safe opener in Disruptor. He’s not very strong on the lane, but it’s still a safe pick because it doesn’t reveal anything and perhaps most importantly has the most reliable catch left in the pool. Once again though, VG thought about this pick a lot and end up with only 41s of reserve time left.

8 & 9 – There are only 4 conventional, decent mid-laners left, namely Mirana, Medusa, Invoker and OD. Secret smartly chose to go with OD as one of their first two picks because he matches up well against the other 3 later on in the game, and does fine in the lane against them too, as well as discouraging a Morphling pick from VG. While Ogre is a classic pairing support for OD (since he’s one of the heroes benefiting the most from Bloodlust), Kunkka would’ve been a support that provides catch, combos nicely with Astral, gives OD the sustain in fights he needs in the form of Rum’s damage reduction, and has a counter to Glimpse in the form of X-Marks.

The only reason why I suppose Secret did not go with Kunkka is because it is often played as a roamer/position 4, and they wanted to keep the Yapzor KotL available (anticipating the likely Medusa pick by VG) and therefore pick Puppey’s hero first.

10 & 11 – Now there’s an interesting situation. The three strong cores left are Lifestealer, Medusa and Void. Even though Lifestealer is good against OD and Ogre (and good with Disruptor since Kinetic Field prevents Forcestaffs), if VG pick him they basically deny themselves the Void pick (Lifestealer and Void on the same team is some serious anti-synergy) and Secret can respond with Medusa+1, and if VG pick Lifestealer + Medusa, then the Void pick becomes great for Secret. They go for Doom since he’s the one good roaming front-liner left and a classic counter to OD (Kunkka gets countered by OD, Undying is already not great due to Bloodlust making the Tomb easy to kill)

Afterwards they follow up with the Medusa, a hero that’s obviously been a top pick for a while because it’s so easy to play around and provides a clear win condition (get farm advantage -> push towers as 5). Even though OD is a decent counter, OD himself has many weaknesses and is not even close to Medusa’s farming speed, so after the lane is secured by some harass from the roaming Doom, it’s pretty much guaranteed that Medusa will be far ahead of OD in net worth which then allows her to itemise against him and basically not care too much about the hero as a counter.

12 – With the Medusa now locked in by VG, this KotL pick is a no-brainer for Secret since it’s a pretty hard counter – Mana Leak, together with OD’s ult, are the only two spells that burn a percentage of the target’s max manapool, which makes them far more effective than a static amount of manaburn and even Nyx’ manaburn, which scales off of int but not flat manapool boosts such as Medusa’s lvl 20 talent or the point booster stats of Skadi. Furthermore Medusa is immobile and therefore an easy target for long wind-up/delayed spells such as Illuminate, her damage output is all but nullified by Blinding Light, and her weakness of dealing with split-push is punished by Recall.

13 – Secret barely spend any time settling on the Lifestealer pick – it’s obviously not bad, the hero makes good use of Bloodlust and acts as a decent front-liner for the OD and KotL, while not caring about Doom nor Disruptor. However, considering that Void is in the pool, which is a hero that matches up very well against Lifestealer, I still think this is not the optimal pick.

While Doom and Disruptor have good ways to lock down the Void, as a safelaner in this line-up he could easily get a fast Linken’s to deal with them and still not lack damage thanks to Bloodlust and having an OD mid. More synergy, stronger teamfight, and more options for their lastpick (e.g. an offlane Kunkka/Sky/Undying to deal some damage in Chrono while keeping the Ogre on lane-support where he shines).

Player preference still plays a big role though, and we’ve seen many games of Ace Lifestealer so I imagine that’s what made them go for it instead of the Void. Even though they ultimately won the game, they really shouldn’t have, and I do think this pick has a lot to do with why.

14 – VG don’t have to think too hard about picking up the Void here, in fact I’m sure they were a little puzzled as to why Secret didn’t take it themselves. OD has a save for the Chrono, but with KotL wanting to stay back and Ogre not having any tanking capabilities past the early game, there isn’t really anyone to tank the Chrono and get saved by OD – if Lifestealer goes magic immune he cannot even get Astral’d.

15 – They spend all their remaining time on the offlane pick – they need a hero to deal some damage in Chrono while laning decently against Lifestealer + 1. Enigma would’ve been a good candidate if not for the fact that Medusa and Void are already two very greedy cores, meaning a heavily farm-dependent offlaner is a bad idea.

They go for Mirana which is a solid choice despite being a hero that puts little to no pressure when solo on the offlane. This is not just because of the obvious Arrow follow-up to Chrono, but also because Moonlight Shadow is insanely strong versus short-range carries that run in (think Sven, Lifestealer, Jugger, Gyro, CK) for a very simple reason – they very quickly run out of slots to carry detection and therefore cannot target the backlines the way they would like to.

She did get destroyed on the lane, but ended up having a huge impact anyway due to her spells and quickly recovered once VG started rolling fights, and Secret arguably made the wrong choice by shutting her down instead of slowing down the Medusa (they figured it’s unnecessary since Medusa is counter-picked, but anyone who watched the game saw that OD was basically a non-factor for 30+ minutes because he got zero help on the lane).

16 – Obviously, only the players on Secret really know, but this was presumably the moment they decided to put the Ogre on the offlane and last pick a Venge support. Now, the pick is not bad – it’s a save for the Chrono and boosts physical damage, working well together with the Ogre.

However, Ogre is one of the best lane-supports and by letting Venge take his role instead they basically forfeit their ability to help out OD on the lane, and as much as Mirana got destroyed, Ogre could’ve done the exact same job while also rotating.

Enigma offlane wasn’t an option because of the way KotL is played – he is position 3 or even 2 in terms of farm priority until he gets his Force Staff + Aghanim’s, meaning he takes most of the offlane farm while the ‘offlane hero’ is there just to frontline for him and contest the lane, meaning a greedy midas offlaner cannot work.

Secret wanted some more stun, but presumably didn’t pick the Earthshaker to go with KotL because they felt he wouldn’t contest the lane as much as Ogre could (which is not really the case, since Earthshaker matches up quite well against Void on the lane). The Ogre with his 8 armor applied more pressure initially, but that didn’t last for long as VG simply started bringing in the Doom after mid was already secured, and the Venge, being a hero that doesn’t really rotate too well, mostly stayed bottom.

This resulted in VG crushing both the safelane and midlane while arguably having greedier heroes. Secret did end up playing extremely well and pulling off a miraculous comeback, but anyone can agree that in 95 out of 100 cases the game should’ve been in the bag for VG once they had a 15k lead at 30 minutes.

Let me know if you enjoyed this or found it informative, and be on the lookout for the next part going over game 2!