First, there IS a valid point in the tagboard. We don't really answer much... but like I said in the dotasg forums, if you want real answers, msn me or drop me a mail. I think I've answered about all the queries asked on mail or MSN, but there are some things I won't post on public domain. We still appreciate all the people defending us though.

For the record, we did not pull out of TFL, and had no warning at all. We are hoping that we can get back into TFL, and perhaps even with a roster change (my plans currently include getting xqr, dN* and micronology players in, though they haven't been informed yet and I'll await TFL's response before doing anything).

Now, I don't flame on forums, and at the most I'm rhetorical or sacarstic. However, I have absolutely no qualms flaming on this blog. Here's an entire post quoted in verbatim (or whatever the term is) from the Dota-Allstars.com forums.

streetrock14:
"AntShark, as a fellow Singaporean, your whinings and excuses disgust me.

First of all, you should INFORM people (admins and fans alike) about the delay in your matches, yes. Yes, make a post HERE or something. Don't go saying...oh I busy this and that, then oops I got booted with no warning. YOU take the initiative to tell people, instead of the other way round.

I read the forum everyday, and not once did Zenith post anything. We needed Metro to tell us YOU don't have time to play. Have you heard of the word "RESPONSIBILITY" before?

And whats this crap about LAN tournaments taking up the WHOLE weekend? U mean Zenith plays LAN 48 hours over Saturday and Sunday? 1 hour also cannot find? Like Metro said and I agree, u signed up for TFL, jolly well make sure your TEAM got the time to play it. So you have IGC, fine. So what? U win it. So what? Big deal when you've shamed Singapore in the international scene.

Be more of a man and maybe you might be given a second chance."

Of which I won't reply to in the D-A forums, but I find it amusing enough to reply to here.

Dear streetrock14,

You are correct to say that we do not LAN 48 hours over Saturday and Sunday. We definitely had an hour or two to squeeze in. Being superhuman that you are, I'm sure that unlike us mere mortals, you never considered that we had to use that time to sleep or eat.

Naturally you also, understandably, have forgotten that the other team has to sleep and eat as well. We are humbled by your almightiness but pray that you will understand and account for the weakness of us as mortals.

In your almightiness, ye who do not perceive time as an obstacle, perhaps my worthless self should remind you that us mortals in Earth live in separate timezones and sometimes have difficulties being available at the same time because while others are awake, others are also asleep. Thou who is ever-prosperous, might fail to grasp that concept.

I am eternally humbled by your care and concern, forgive me for not being able to discern that you were ever-watching, for I assumed that arrangements with the other team would be enough. I did not perceive that making a thread stating "oh zenith is busy everyone should know hohoho" would be something I should do. Forgive me for not having your infinite wisdom. I mean, just because other teams don't post anything about them being busy or anything doesn't mean we shouldn't follow suit. Oh no, we are surely important enough in your presence to have to update you on our status every week.

Of course in your infinite ability, you would think IGC is completely unimportant and winning it would be completely worthless. O thou who has infinite potential, do consider that us mortals in our finite life have our own piorities that, in our less than infite wisdom, might differ from yours. Perhaps in your immaterial being you want us to choose to play one TFL match rather than fight local teams for $2000.

O thou man of man, most manly of all, teach this foolish one how to be man and get a second chance. You have been kind enough to show us our wrongdoings. We beg of thee, teach us more. Being so man, teach us your ways of being MAN-NER.

Wow I didn't actually flame.

6

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?

Hey All! its been awhile since i made a post. Seriously miss all u guys back there. mm. Australia's a land full of new adventures. But also full of weird people and stuffs, well for me at least. Their shops actually close at 5 pm and school ends at 3. that pretty much cancels out where i can go. Just went to the Blue Mountains and i actually did some driving! The best part was that my parents would start screaming everytime i begin to approach near a passing car, and throughout the 1 hour journey.! But the view of the mountains is really worth the while going. its just calm and peaceful. something u can seldom find in Singapore. But of course i would rather be back in where i belong. Tho, the worse thing here is whenever u go to a restaurent or a cafe, they tend to put things like "Singapore Laska " , " Singapore Curry Chicken " . And when u actually test it. Its like. " omg u call that curry? " About the dota scene here , well , Australia's too big a place for u to move around freely and finding good lanshops and stuff. But the dota scene here isn't as huge as what it is compared to Singapore. Their competitions here are still held in 3v3s. Still. They do have some decent teams here in Australia such as iM , SGS ( which i think is a chinese team ) , and TKS. Aight. It gets dark here at 5 pm now. its gonna get even darker during winter. Thats all i gotta say for now. Cya all soon!.

hi all!

asterisk* is looking for teams to train online/lan. if you are interested to play a match with us, post a comment in this format..

Team Name: (if its a group of friends, state so.)
Preferred timing: (date, day, time etc)
Lan/Online: (if lan, venue.)
Email(MSN):
Contact number: (its ok if you dont want to give.)
Others: (whatever you'll like to say)

just post it in the "comment" at the bottom of this post. requests on the tagboard will be ignored. we will get back to you asap.

thanks! (:

"Who would have known, that beneath that fierce exterior lay a soft and sensitive side" ...

It has never ceased to amaze me how you can pick up your ally's ironwood branch in base, drop it 1 second later, and get disqualified.

I'm looking forward to the day where someone gets DQed for speaking in all chat.

For the record, I've always maintained the stand that DQing for something that doesn't affect the outcome of the game even one bit is stupid beyond measure. It's just that after hearing about an incident where someone passed Roshan's Aegis after Roshaning and getting DQed, I realised that I didn't even question the circumstances and accepted without question that the marshalls actually WILL DO those things without question since they have done it so often, and that's when I figured that something was definitely wrong.

I still haven't played Panda. I haven't forgot, but it's just not a phase I'm at yet.

In response to Tammy's chain-blog thing, I'm supposed to list 6 things other people perceive to be weird about me. I don't usually perceive anything to be weird though, it usually falls into either 'annoying', 'impressive', 'curious', or 'disgusting'. Everything listed here, people probably know about already, otherwise I wouldn't list them. Hurhur. Not on public domain thanks.

1) Sometimes during conversation I move my hands far too much for absolutely no reason to no effect except to be distracting.
2) I rarely address people by their names or even nicks unless I make a concious effort to or am rather familiar with them.
3) I talk to myself.
4) I don't look people in the eye very often when talking.
5) I look down when walking sometimes.
6) Most of the girls I know are already happily attached.