Are you tired of getting stomped in RD2L and disbanding after two weeks? Looking for a way to make a dominant playoff run without reading a dissertation on how to read a bunch of spreadsheets?

I’ve got a simple, straightforward guide with five easy steps to becoming the next dominant RD2L team. With these five easy principles, you’ll be sure to make a deep playoff run.

1. Draft as many smurfs as possible

In RD2L, drafting lower MMR players earlier allows you to draft earlier in later rounds. Because of this, smurfs represent the ultimate value pick in a draft.

Papa Smurf the Fixer is in

As you go through the draft sheet, try to find players that look as smurfy as possible. Find a player who is suddenly shit stomping pubs with Meepo? Someone all of a sudden turned into a brood spammer? This player will surely make a fine addition to your team.

As a note, while smurfs represent a great deal of value boosted accounts are sure to ruin your season. Avoid accounts with a large number of games played on Russian servers, as they most likely paid for some boosting.

2. Don’t take supports until the last rounds

Since RD2L is known for huge MMR disparities it can be hard for talented supports to have an impact. Avoid taking supports early on, as these teams tend to struggle the most and often end up playing their players on other positions in the end.

Only take a support early on if he or she has already slipped extremely far and you feel comfortable flexing the player into a core role.

3. Sandbag as much as possible before the draft.

The draft in RD2L is based on your MMR. While purposefully sandbagging is against the rules, there’s nothing that says you can’t play as many techies games as possible before the draft. This is also a great way to set up your team for the season by forcing Techies bans.

Bags of Sand

4. Set up a discord channel, and secretly mute all your teammates

At the start of the season, set up a discord server for all your players to communicate key team information and meet up for games.

Communication is key to having a successful season. Remember, you are the most important player on your team and everyone else is trash, save for your smurfing fixer. It’s important to keep clean, clear lines of communication going to have a successful season. This means that it is very important your teammates hear everything you need to say but you are not distracted by their garrulous blabber.

You know you want to tick that box

Communicate clear, concise information to your team such as “Oh my god stop throwing” and “stack and ward for me more you garbage supports.” Be sure to ping spam your other cores when they miss last hits so they will know the things they need to improve on. As always, yell as loud as possible when you want to start a fight. Remember that everyone else is muted, so you have no idea how loud you’ll need to be. As such, “definitely louder than everyone else” is the standard you’ll need to set to get your ideas across.

5. Give your teammates a mailing address to send their concerns

Continuing on our previous advice of muting all your teammates, on occasion they will feel the need to communicate how amazing of a captain you’ve been this season. Yet again, communication is important. To make sure you are only reading actually valuable communication, give your teammates a mailing address where they can send postcards and fruit baskets to you.

If you have any comments on my article or captaining ability, feel free to send me mail at:

World’s Sexiest Man 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA, 94043

This concludes my guide to Captaining in RD2L. If you have any additional tips that you’d like to see included here for future captains, send me a postcard to my mailing address.

Good luck to all future captains and players, except those I have to play against at any time in the near future.