IGC was probably the best local competition I've had in a long time. We didn't bulldoze through any team without at least putting in some effort. The game against Micronology was probably the closest win we have pulled in a tournament game.

The prelims weren't that hard, to be honest. It was massively fun though to pull off our 5-fatman combination against Tammy, and then fastpush against Disc. Those are strats we might someday out of the blue pull out when other people least expect it.

First order of the final day of IGC was a game against Wrath*. They attempted to pull off a Doom + Medusa on us, and got foiled by us pulling a Bristleback on them. I've also never seen so many people rush for Linken's Sphere in such a short time. Both me (Warlock) and Tofu (QoP) rushed for Linken's Sphere as our first major item. I think I got it up in around 20 minutes.

That game left me feeling somewhat untouchable. I managed to walk away from most battles with barely a scratch on me, not by anything I did, simply because no one wanted to aim me. It feels eerie when your teammates leave the battle with an inch of health on their healthbar and you realise no one has bothered trying to attack you. Except for the one where they wasted like 3 ultimates on me alone and in doing so gave my team the perfect chance to wipe them.

If you notice the thread by ice to ban Bristleback, it's totally serious, and partially because of this game. He was gallavanting at bottom lane when suddenly EVERY SINGLE HERO from their side came up and proceeded to lay down EVERY SINGLE ULTIMATE on him. Epicenter, Doom, Macropyre, Purge etc. What does he do? He turns his back and makes them all half HP, and runs around. By the end of the massive spam, he's still around half HP. I mean, he was withstanding spam in the entire duration it took us to not just go from mid lane to bottom lane, but to also wipe all the creeps in the mid lane (we thought he was not rescue-able). Afterwards, as one should know, a half HP Bristleback and his full team up against a team that has no more spells really isn't much of a fight.

I think it was this game where ice pulled off the fountain guard. It's where the Bristleback stands with his back facing the enemy fountain, and all 5 heroes don't dare come out. Or something like that.

Then we went up against team Wudi, who had the chance to pull QoP Bristleback back on us. They sort of forgot about lane control though, resulting in Bristleback soloing mid (and actually doing decently against Tofu). Unfortunately, they sort of couldn't farm anything much, so we won.

I'm keeping those two games really short because I intend to keep the focus on the next two matches.

So up we went to the semi-finals against Micronology, already knowing fully well that they were going to QoP BB first, planning to pull a Bear later since Bear does reasonably well against them, and since we had Warlock we could aim for a fast push while QoP and BB were unfarmed. Lo and behold, they choose Bear on their 3rd pick, screwing our plan over.

Well, we did Omniknight 2nd pick. On hindsight this was actually a really good pick. We would not want to be fighting an Omni BB, and the dN* match should show you why. The final drafts are something you probably have never seen before in a semi-finals game, but probably will be seeing a lot more of from now on.

They had QoP Bristleback Bear Veno KOTL against our Warlock Omniknight RK LightningRevenant Enigma. The battle plan was clear from the start. Win lane control with superior lane control draft, get a fast dagger on Enigma, push in with repelled Enigma and Razor, use GA to win and end the game as quickly as possible.

The plan didn't screw up along the way. It just crumbled from the start. KOTL BB was an insane lane, ruining the trilaning RK Enigma Omni (though admittedly this isn't exactly the best trilane in the world). Warlock against QoP was looking to be rather good, before the Venomancer came and screwed things up badly. He basically camped to drive me out of XP range, letting the QoP farm, while not gaining any XP himself. True altruism. Luckily, I somehow pulled some crazy farm hack early game and even after dying at level 4, managed to get a voidstone to last out top lane.

The bright side though, was that there was not much on their side to control Tofu from farming. A fast radiance from the LR gave us a fighting chance, while LuX managed to get his dagger up also.

When their major items are up, Bear with Treads Radiance, QoP with Skadi, and BB with Vanguard Heart, they decide to push. They mostly have a 3 man team at this point, because KOTL and Veno have been just running around helping that they are nothing but food. Nevertheless, those 3 overfarmed heroes can pretty much run through our entire underfarmed team. Well placed GA, Blackhole, and Infernal though, manage to fend them off. We don't really win the first few battles, but it gives us time to catch up on farming while they are getting organised. Euls up also disables the Bear from most major battles while I farm for my items, and ice's rk, though having a ridiculously slow start, seems to be farming better now.

Tofu of course, is farming like a madman.

One major factor is that even though the KOTL got a diffusal blade, he was using it to purge Guardian Angel and God's Strength, not my infernal. Ladies and Gentlemen, Infernal is still a freaking pain in the neck if you let it roam around the battlefield untouched. To illustrate, at a major battle outside Roshan, I drop Infernal and in the process of the very disorganised battle, with Blackholes, split heroes, and whatsnot, manage to QUADRUPLE KILL with an Infernal. Heh.

Much credit to our Omniknight too, who has really sweet Guardian Angel castings. More on our Omniknight player later.

At a certain point, Tofu gets really pumped, and we decide to push them back. Repelled Enigma keeps them back while Tofu harrasses the tower. Repel then switches to Tofu so he gets free hits off on their tower. Tower goes down really quickly.

Their farming perhaps is distributed a little too evenly among their 3 late gamers now. At this point, I could probably 1v1 any of their late gamers. They have a lot of HP, are really difficult to take down, but lack a bit in the damage department, so Tofu easily stands up to all 3 of them. He rips through their team repeatedly, and we win in one of the more draggy games in this compe, where for a rather long period of time we were actually losing, just holding back and gaining what advantage we could.

Then in comes dN*, who pull off Warlock Pugna DP Zeus Visage on us. We counter with KOTL BB Omni QoP and POTM.

Lanings are surprisingly weak for us. Tofu gets pwned at top lane, and LuX and GPS with POTM Omni are losing bottom as well. Luckily, ice and me, with KOTL BB, lay a lot of own in the middle lane.

Then they start their expected push. Towers fall, mistakes are made, but for the most part KOTL with the help of Omni's repelled Bristleback easily defend wave after wave, until we make a mistake or I run out of mana (meh, KOTL isn't that much of a mana fountain when you have to keep 3 heroes fully charged). This leaves Tofu a free lane to farm, and LuX also farms rather safely against the Visage.

Tofu and Lux sort of blow a bit. Some sort of myopia takes over their heroes where they can't seem to hit any spells. Wave flies in the wrong direction, and arrow seems to weave artfully through the enemy heroes, but to LuX's credit, he's the only POTM I've seen who knows when to cast his ultimate.

But so much for that. We're all still farming a lot more than them, seeing as how they're busy just smashing towers and failing while we have most of all 3 lanes being farmed. I'm happily enjoying just waving every creep wave that comes in, a luxury you don't usually engage in unless your opponent in turn clears your creep waves for you and pushes their creeps back. It's a rather slow and steady farm. I get a diffusal up quickly, followed by Euls, and then Agahnim, and it seems all so quickly because I'm farming in a position where I'm never actually in any danger at all. I end the game with 1-0 btw, no idea who the poor person is who got killed by a KOTL.

To cut a long story short, we hold off their push for BB, QoP, and POTM to get imba. Their underfarmed heroes can't really do anything against us. They try to salvage the game by thronerushing us though, but honestly it wasn't exactly a close game like some might make it out to be ^^. They took down about 1 tower while we took down the entire set of 2 protecters and a Tree.

For the most middle two games of the final day, we were actually using GPS' inter-school teammate (and my ex-classmate) to replace him. He turned out to be surprisingly good, unfortunately probably better than GPS. Especially in the Micronology game, it doesn't matter that he had a bad ratio, but he did all the engagements right (especially for an Omniknight) and didn't get caught in an engagement or before a push. That really, was what we needed him for, and all we needed him for. Feeding is one thing, and lack of farming is one thing, but getting caught before an engagement or screwing up engagements is really what can cause games to be lost. Plus we don't really need another farmer, so he was perfect in the team.

Pity he isn't interested in playing competitively.

To end this, I shall present...


An ode to Tammy Tang (by Ant and Pinksheep)

Through the twilight trod Tammy,
Thinking "tis this techies' treachery"
Tammy Tang though transformed to Tammy tank,
‘Twas tragically thrashed by techies.


Perhaps we shall wait till the next stanza where we introduce the tantalizing Tofuboi?