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Speed Gaming vs Team eHug

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[b] Analysis

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Batrider Neutralizes eHug... Again

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Pool Sorcery Some Tangoes VS Speed Gaming

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Pool Sorcery Some Tangoes VS Revenge eSports

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The day opened with competitive-level American darlingTeam eHug against the world-inspiring Speed Gaming. Speed gaming has never lost a recorded match against eHug, and eHug was coming into the match from a losting streak, having lost every game in every one of their last four matches.banned out heavy push/semi-support: Venomancer and Krobelus, trying to take away early game pacing to give themselves strong control from early on.Teamresponded by taking a defensive offlaner (Clockwerk) and rotating support (Crystal Maiden) who is particularly strong against Chen. They also eliminated mid-game sustain and maneuverability (Nyx, Timbersaw, Visage) which could have givena snowballing effect from strong early-game ganks.then ensured that they would always have strong initiation by drafting the Batrider, which led into's Dazzle pick: Shallow Grave can be extremely strong against a Batrider, and Weave works extremely well alongside AOE stuns and damage in a five-man defense. This is amplified with the late Magnus pick, leading to the potential for Reverse Polarity, Weave, and Freezing Field combos. The final Slar pick gave a negative armor strategy (Weave plus Amplify Damage), but risked not working particularly well with the five-man defense lineupotherwise drafted.'s Gyrocopter ban gets rid of the strongest available counter-push/carry combination, implying early tower attempts. Rubick was a more defensive pick who plays strong against Crystal Maiden and the magic damage coming out of. Pushing early into a Magnus without disabling or killing him first could have proved difficult for's lineup.ended their draft with the Spectre for hard carry. This would allow them to farm until Spectre was needed, since a global reaction from Haunt combos extremely well with Moonlight Shadow/Lassoo ganks doubled into teamfights and/or pushes.As the creeps hit lane, Rubick was caught on the opponent's mid-lane high ground, nearly dropping. His consumables were diminished before the game was even underway, but he narrowly manages to escape Magnus and Crystal Maiden because Magnus skewered him too far for Crystal Maiden to cast a second Frost Bite. Shortly after, Rubick finds the two-minute rune, invisibility, and rotates top to no avail. Instead he rotates into the jungle and harasses Crystal Maiden, who was levelling in the jungle.At 4:30, Chen and Rubick rotated out of the jungle toward Clockwerk in the bottom lane, who had defensive vision and fades back. In the top lane,took advantage of this vision--expecting that Batrider would have no help--and dove into the tier one tower after Batrider.Slithereen Crush and Poison Touch together brought Batrider down to 160 health, but he managed to get to the edge of the map as Rubick scrambled to the bottom lane sideshop for a TP. Rubick teleported top as Slar died to Firefy damage and cleaned up the Dazzle, turning's hubris into afirst blood 2-0.Batrider returned to base to heal, then immediately rotated bottom for a six-minute kill on Clockwerk, successfully throwing out the first Lasso of the game.Batrider, with his successful early rotations, several stacked camps from the Rubick, and strong lane presence secured a blink dagger in nearly the best competitive time in recorded DotA 2 history (operational at 7:12). He immediately turned it into a kill against Magnus in the mid lane, bringing the score to 4-0 at eight minutes. At this point, Magnus was way behind in farm and desperately needed to get up a blink dagger so that his team could command initiation.Upon spawning, Magnus tried to solo the Spectre in the bottom lane, Skewering into the tower and using Reverse Polarity to hold Spectre still. Unfortunately, he didn't have the damage to overcome Hand of God and was immediately converged upon by Batrider, tossing another kill on the fire of's lead.managed to secure their first kills at 10:30 with a four man elimination to the south of the tier one mid tower. They traded two heroes in, including the underfarmed Magnus, but got a much needed infusion of gold. Unfortunately, none of that gold was on the Magnus. Shortly after, they dropped a defensive ward on the West side of their jungle, hoping to open up space to farm. This did not stop the Batrider from regularly farming out their camps, however.As Chen tried to take advantage of some posturing by both teams in the mid lane, he grabbed's tier one, but overstayed his welcome. With a rotation from Slar and Dazzle, he nearly escapes via scroll of town portal, but it is cancelled by an autostun from Slar. Score was 10-5 and two towers in favor ofat fifteen minutes. Rubick secured his blink dagger as a support at a comparable time to Slardar (the farming carry for).continued to struggle to gain ground--they found a rare opportunity to grab an easy kill as Clockwerk and Crystal Maiden find a Mirana alone at the bottom run spot and immediately move to get the much-needed game control. However, Mirana Lept out of the cogs, leaving's duo without the ability to chase.As they retreated toward their side of the river, Batrider blinked in, grabbed Clockwerk, and dragged him to the south side high ground, leaving him without an ability to get out.re-engaged trying to save him and forced all ofback. Even as Clockwerk tried to TP out, Batrider uses an expertly placed Flamebreak to interrupt channeling without freeing him from his tall prison. Meanwhile, the rest of his team charged DEEP into's jungle, grabbing a kill on Rubick but unable to press the advantage asmakes their escape. Because their lanes were not pushed out, they were unable to secure a tower on the heels of this minor victory which ends as a 1:1 trade.continued to pull ahead rapidly with one-man picks. At 19 minutes, A tower for tower trade gave's bottom tier-one for's mid.lost their first tower whilehas no remaining tier ones.At 21:30,secured their lead by killing three in the top lane, and throwing a very long-range flamebreak to kill a routing Magnus as shallow grave wears off.The trade ended four for zero, and a tier two to boot, leavingwith few options. They were well off the mark of being able to easily gank any member of, but they also could not win a teamfight that they were not initiating. In a last-ditch effort,respawned and moved directly to the Roshan pit, hoping to secure enough of an advantage to win a team fight and push a second tower. However, they were spotted out by a Sacred Arrow and forced to retreat.waited by the Roshan pit for moments, regrouping, then using the Moonlight Shadow to move toward's jungle to wrap around the mid lane. Sensing trouble, Clockwerk and Slar backed out fast enough to avoid conflict, and Spectre moved into the jungle alone to find a kill. The tide turned on him, as three heroes converged on his location, but they were unable to secure a kill through Spectre's survivability and Hand of God.[/b]The draft went fairly evently, although the final pick of Slar forproved to be short-sighted. Of course, Slar can snowball and initiate, but he also has little counter-push and can easily be picked due to his melee range. While chasing, he is much more fragile, and it was optimistic at best forto believe that against a Batrider/Mirana combo, they would control enough initiation athe 6-10 minute mark to give Slar the space to farm up his items.With a Chen and Batrider,should have known thatplanned on using early game aggression and push--the counter to this could be a strong offensive trilane, since Chen would be in the jungle, to force back a the farming carry and take an early tower advantage. Another possible counter would have been to apply early pressure on the Batrider, securing a farming carry or ranged support who could sucessfully zone the bat out. Instead,largely kept the pressure off until they were willing to dive the tier one tower. This proved to be an impatient and costly move, leading to the Batrider snowball which is largely the source of's victory.Magnus had an enormous amount of trouble in his lane, partially due to his posturing leading to his early deaths. He actually commanded superior CS over the Spectre, but Spectre had a significant advantage due to his supports' successful rotations. His team did not prioritize his farm after his troubled early game, and he was unable to get any initiating items until far too late into the game. Without the ability to counter-initiate or pick fights on their own terms,had absolutely no recourse for curbing's lead.In addition,continued to pick single heroes off--rather than forcing a defensive engagement as five and taking advantage of their teamfight combos in the mid game,tried to catch up in farm as independent heroes, allowingto continue their pick-off playbook.As for, prioritizing the Batrider farm by placing the Rubick into the jungle to stack camps and quickly reacting to his needs in the top lane was a gamewinning strategy. Batrider's excellent initiations starting at seven minutes forcedinto a defensive position they failed to overcome throughtout the game. Spectre was able to farm, as was Mirana, withoutactually reducing pressure.At nineteen minutes, Batrider bought a Gem of True sight and immediately counter-warded all of's vision. Throughout the game,failed to regularly carry true sight (neither wards nor dust) for counter-warding or defensive vision of a Moonlight Shadow engagement. This lack of priority allowedto continue to dominate initiation and make picks over the entire map. Without vision, any semblance of controlhad was lost.Finally, Slar spent the bulk of his early farm on a Vanguard, which is largely ineffective against's lineup: firefly is magic damage and all of's right click is well above the 80-120 damage threshhold at which Vanguard usually more effective at preventing damage than five armor. Nobody on his team was able to farm an early Mekanism. Had Slar prioritized the Mekanism, it would have given him the ability to offset significant magic damage with burst heal and allowed his team to sustain in fights. Without a Mekanism to handle the fast and furious engagements picked by, fights were over beforewas able to respond.Riding the high of their victory against eHug,matched against). Once again,was considered the far and away favorite--is a relatively unknown team well below the tier 1 levels.had heavy odds to overcome if they wanted to pull away from this match with a point in their wins column.ran this draft with significant bans on defensive supports (Dazzle, Naga, Venomancer, Crystal Maiden, Chen) who counter-initiate or punish aggressive initiation with heals, AOE damage/effects. They then moved to pick an extremely aggressive, stun-heavy lineup featuring a farming Nyx Assassin in a triple-stun defensive trilane.As the lanes broke into place, Viper was sent in a 2-1-2 formation along with the Windranger, butimmediately gave away first blood. At 50 seconds, Viper was triple stunned in the tower as Windranger watched, helplessly trying to deter's bloodthirsty pack. One minute later, Viper moves in to try and steal some neutral farm from Sand King and Leshrac, but is stunned out near the Western entrance of his opponent's jungle. Once again he found himself perpetually stunned and removed from the mortal plane as Windranger watched unable to help.Meanwhile, in the mid lane TA ran rampant, dominating her creep stats against Puck. Nature's Prophet spent much of the early game rotating between the jungle and the bottom lane, but manages to keep ahead of's freefarming Luna.At 4:20, Viper was caught out on the north side of his secret shop and forced into tree cover by the Leshrac. Taking full Diabolic Edict damage and a fantastic Earthsplitter around fog of war, Viper dies a third time. Trying to help, Puck rotated from mid toward the shop's high ground, but could not move quickly enough to help. Instead, he moved into Sand King and Leshrac and orb/jaunted back into lane, where TA patiently waited to secure the kill. The score now was four to zero in favor of, mostly at the expense of the Viper's farm.Trying to gain control of the game,decided to group up near the mid lane and take a kill on the TA, who very nearly escaped by refracting through a full Eclipse and bottling back up. They move toward the tier one tower mid, buttook their tier two tower bottom as Nature's Prophet pushed the advantage aswas grouped. The trade ended highly unfavorable forAt eleven minutes,took an uncontested Roshan (although Viper was given a second kill on Sand King who dove without cause into the tier one top and died immediately). Even so, the trade was once again way out of favor for, which was rapidly losing any ability to maintain equality on the game board.At thirteen minutes,'s Winranger was still level five,had the Aegis, andhad no towers. To make matters worse,had two blink daggers and a Hand of Midas between them, whilehad no major finished items.saw a potential opening at fourteen minutes as TA moved into three heroes, trading an Aegis away for no gain and looking to be in trouble. However, Nyx assassin moved up behindand landed a HUGE three man stun just before Sand King made up for several unnecessary early game deaths by using burrowstrike to move up the cliff and demolishwith a perfectly executed Epicenter. Afterward,had no recourse, and those few survivors turned to run. Four dropped, which were followed bykindly demolishing all of's remaining outer-tier towers by 15:30. The game was all but over.From this point forward,tried to control the game by defending as a group, but they simply were too far behind in terms of experience and farm to take fights. Each fight was punctuated by a multi-man stun by either Sand King or Nyx, and by twenty minuteswas over 20,000 gold ahead (athough only 7500 experience in the lead). The score was deceptively close: ifhad managed to take any towers, the 11:19 deficit they were playing into may not have been so significant. For quite some time,was unable to push fully into the defensive strength of, but waiting out Roshan they continued to pick fights on their opponents' doorsteps for slightly favorable trades untilwas forced to call GG at 23:10This game was almost a loss from the beginning, based on's laning decisions. Forcing out a dual lane top against a highly coordinated triple stun kill frenzy cost them three early kills on the Viper, who should have been their most survivable hero.In addition to this decision, they placed the Puck against's TA, which is a highly favorable matchup for. Not only does TA have enough range to be able to attack and deny creeps from high ground, but Puck has no method of reducing Refraction charges. Had Puck been sent to lane top, Phase Shift and Orb/Jaunt may have been enough to allow him to receive some farm without dying, while Viper mid would have been a much more favorable matchup forEven their safelane farmer, Luna, who had a partially uncontested lane, was unable to keep up in farm to's offlane/jungle Nature's Prophet. With the laning decisions they made, it is difficult to imagine the early game going any differently than it did, especially considering's superior experience and coordination.After their initial mistakes,was simply unable to pull out of the spiral. They did not perform any successful ganks without a personal cost, although more emphasis on smoke and counterwarding may have provided an edge they needed. Their draft had enough push to knock down towers, but they had no answer to the Nature's Prophet split push, which cost them two early towers in their bottom lane.After their first failure at an upset against Speed Gaming,moved into their second match of the day against Revenge. Once again, they were significant underdogs, this time against the Peruvian players who had won three of their last four matches against US teams, including Liquid and Joikernaut.eliminated mostly survivabl/mobile heroes. Timbersaw, Nature's Prophet, and Bristleback and all be used to close distance, gank in mid game, and push lanes out quickly to buy space.simply eliminated popular heroes, at first focusing on aggressive heroes but then removing more defensive heroes. Their bans did not seem to focus on any specific draft goal, but instead focused on overall consistently performing heroes, trying to forceout of their comfort zone.ended their draft with a rubick, giving them a less conventional rotating support lineup.looked strong moving into the early game with the makings of an offensive trilane with roaming supports in the Venomancer and Earthshaker. Viper would lane bottom, while Doom would not contest his farm, instead spending the bulk of the early game roaming the jungle for farm.As the game started, both teams scouted the Dire jungle as five, withpeeling away just on the edge of a potential engagement. There would be no pre-buzzer action this game, nor wouldbe able to get deep enough into the woods to drop their aggressive pull camp vision. Both teams broke into top-lane trilanes. After two minutes,was able to sneak into the jungle to drop pull-camp vision, which was promptly dewarded by a highly awaresquad.In the mid lane, Windranger was keeping a narrow advantage over Invoker, but short of four minutes she dove into the tier one tower, taking aggro and significant damage. As she retreated, she landed a Shackleshot on Invoker and stopped, still in tower range, to throw an additional Powershot. During the animation, the tower devastated her health pool, givingfirst blood.Six and a half minutes into the game, Revenge's trilane had no kills, Earthshaker moved to the bottom lane to stack and pull, giving Viper even more ease of farm. At this point, Viper was nearly doubling any other player in last hits.Realizing that Viper would soon be a problem,rotated Doom, Rubick, and Crystal Maiden to gank bottom at 7:30, unaware of Earthshaker's presence in nearby fog. As they initiated, Earthshaker was spotted around the trees. As Crystal Maiden hit him with Frost Bite, Rubick lifted him, dropping him into the river's low ground. He reacted with an excellent Fissure, separating's heroes and immediately TPs, knowing that there were no remaining stuns. Meanwhile, CM also tried to TP on the wrong side of the fissure, but Viper was able to secure a kill, giving him a huge turn-around on a costly gank attempt from. The miscommunication between's supports all but gave Viper his first taste of hero blood on top of his enormous creep lead.One minute later, Viper erased's bottom tier one tower alone and uncontested. He continued to freefarm the bottom lane well beyond that point, only being harassed mildly as her approached the tier two tower.When Viper finally left his lane at ten minutes, he had a finished Mekanism.rotated five men top, taking an easy kill on Razor and pushing the tier one tower. They continued to push the issue on the tier 2 tower;had no team fight or levels to sustain a defense as they danced behind the tower. When they finally moved forward to mount a defense, they find themselves as teamwipe victims, only killing the Earthshaker for their trouble.during a forced retreat, losing everybody and their tier 2 top. The team celebrated by purchasing two Hands of Midas.The pain didn't end there--at 15:00 and with a 10-3 lead,gathered outside of's tier one mid, rotated behind the jungle in cover of moonlight shadow, and made an encore performance of their smash hit "genocide."would soon be having a team meeting in the fountain with a nasty hangover and no remaining tier ones.At 18:00,takes their first significant step forward as they successfully picked off an overaggressivesquad on the tier 2 bottom.split their heroes and dove the tower, allowingto pick them apart one at a time, starting with the Earthshaker alone in the tower. That single engagement closed the gold gap by nearly 2000--unfortunately for them, this still leftahead by 12,000 gold well before the 20:00 mark.would follow this with an Aegis to accessorize Viper's Heart of Tarrasque.At this point, it was only a matter of time beforewould be able to crack the base. They continued to dive and feed on's heroes until a mercy GG was called at 23:00.Starting with the draft,'s strategy seem uncertain. They opened with a ban on the two most popular heroes that Doom Bringer can be used to counter, but then prioritized a Doom Bringer for their own lineup. In a conventional sense, either the Doom Bringer was a wasted draft, or the Timbersaw and Slark bans were. The ability to provide a long silence did not gain them anything this early in the draft, andrefused to draft into their opponents' strengths, picking largely heroes who are survivable and provide damage without casting. A similar decision was made by banning the OD, then picking the Razor (who would have trouble securing a Static Link against Mirana, Invoker, or Viper at any point in the game).The Doom Bringer also made no sense for's lanes, and instead of putting a competent offlaner (such as the Windranger they drafted) to reduce a solo Viper's farm, they failed to contest or rotate on their opponents' safe lane. They spent far too many resources in the early game creating a stable safe lane for Razor, who was never going to be able to out DPS a freefarming Viper.In addition to these significant laning errors which providedwith an easy route to an overpowering gold lead,failed to rotate on any lane successfully. Other than an opening Smoke of Deceit, no smokes were purchased for eighteen minutes of the game. By the time the smokes were purchased, they were essentially useless 13,000 gold and 9,000 XP deficit. For the majority of the game,made no attempt to counter-ward (in fact, they largely didn't even carry true sight).This led to's failure to control any vision on the map, even relatively early in the game. By thirteen minutes, they had virtually no warding throughout the match. One ward on Roshan, most of the time, and one ward at the Southeast entrance to their jungle to provide an attempt at defensive vision. Revenge, on the other hand, had complete map dominance both in terms of wards and rotations, and were able to regularly raid, scout, and ward their opponents' jungle.The coordination fromwas just not on par with Revenge's ability to move as a unit, and their draft and laning decisions gave them little to fall back on as they began to lose control of gold and XP in the very early game.Click to EnlargeThe games today all went in favor of the favorites, but be sure to pick up a ticket in the DotA 2 store for more professional Western DotA 2 action in both Europe and America as the MLG T.K.O. series continues!Gorgon the Wonder Cow is a caster with CEVO.com; you can find his analysis and casting at twitter.com/gotcowdota