From now on I'll be adding some screen shots to help explain my thinking, by popular demand ;)

BeT vs MYM. The fourth placer vs the runner-up of last seasons grand finals. During and before the finals BeT almost appeared to be a pushover team who's steaming carcass SK and MYM had to climb over to reach the one challenging game of the finals. Will that be the case in this match? Hard to say. On paper the two teams are pretty even, especially since Moon is not in todays lineup, but I predict that watching these matches will either be a real pleasure or a complete terror, i.e we either win big or lose hard. Roll it!

	[2:1]
Bet.WhO		MYM]FoCuS

WhO and FoCuS. A Mirror match. Could be boring, if it wasn’t for the player material. In the past, WhO has been a bit of an innovator, using uncommon hero combinations and units (fs/naga + wyvern vs human for example) whereas FoCuS has always been more of a situation man. He starts out with the basics, but make non-standard decisions once the game is on.

As far as player strength goes I’ll give FoCuS the advantage in pure skill, but WhO just might have some special tactics in his pocket. But, it could be that he’s just happy to see him...

Game 1 (GW): Ah, orc mirror: simultaneously the most boring and most exciting of all mirror matches. Strategies can vary heavily, although they rarely do, and battles go on forever until they suddenly turn in one player’s favor at which time things suddenly happen very quickly. GW is a classic orc map, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s a healing fountain or mana fountain as long as you pick SH as second hero (since he can use the mana to cast healing wave). The game starts out with the same hunt for claws and gloves that you always see from BMs and DHs on this map, cutting down the merchant gnolls.

Another common part of orc mirror is to harass peons with your BM, a practice WhO is the first to partake in, although he’s not terribly successful. He does better than FoCuS though, who doesn’t manage to get a single peon. WhO even manages to cancel a burrow, even if it had just started. Regardless of FoCuS’ success, WhO gets a bit annoyed and build a *gasp* witch doctor to set down a sentry ward. Considering how long BMs have harassed peons while both build walkers it’s interesting that no one though of this before... FoCuS quickly follows.

Trying to make something happen FoCuS goes for WhO’s base, forcing him to tp. However, he quickly realizes that his army is much smaller and teleports himself. After a while they do get themselves into a battle. FoCuS makes somewhat more sound decisions during the battle while having more mana left on his SH gaining him a small victory.

However, with WhO's shop being destroyed earlier (and not rebuilt for reasons only WhO can answer) he is unable to heal up very quickly, and when FoCuS comes back to play some more he loses 20 supply worth of units, before his SH-focus forces FoCuS to port, and therein the match. It doesn’t get better from him losing his BM to being undecisive while pursuing.

The Doc is back on call!

Game 2 (EI): Echo Isle is quite BM-friendly for a small map, and WhO starts out game 2 demontrating why. He ’walks into the merc camp creeps and takes out the ogre magi, gaining a healthy dose of xp and a nice item too. This works because the troll trappers block off the ogre warriors, thus reducing the damage taken by the bm with well over 30% as compared to if all the creeps had been hitting him.

After that things just sort of plod on for a while with some creeping, until WhO decides to attack. He hasn’t been banking for as long and has 10 supply more than FoCuS. In orc mirror battles there’s often what seems like an unnatural hatred of Kodos. Unnatural because they are the hardest unit to bring down apart from the heroes themselves. However, one should take into account the avaliable escape routes of each unit.

Raiders are fast, they can quickly move out of the way if they feel like it. Walkers can turn ethereal if the situation calls for it, but Kodos are too fat to move and too stupid to learn even the most basic magic spell. The fact that they probably have a enemy grunt or raider in their belly doesn’t help in removing the kick-me sign.

WhO seems to have taken FoCuS in a situation when he was not completely ready, and his micro suffers. After an extended battle he finally surrenders.

Game 3 (SV): Ah, Secret Valley, a map with 2 healing fountains. It’s not as bad as LT, but one should always expect long, long fights when orcs fight on fountain maps. As both players approach tier 2 FoCuS attempts to cancel WhO’s lodge, but failing at it because of the constant hexing from the newly trained SH. They both bank at 50 food, grab a bunch of uneasy peons and go off to... creep a bit before attacking. Nobody worries about lumber these days...

I’m not quite sure what triggers it, but after seeing each others’ armies they break 50 food and do the dance of the gosus before attacking. Notable is that FoCuS has been able to creep up his SH while WhO has not. The levels are 3 and 1 respectively. A huge difference in such a close battle, usually. WhO however, gets better positioning than FoCuS, shooting down grunts with his walkers while his BM chases FoCuS’ walkers around. It’s doesn’t help much either that FoCuS accidently devours a peon instead of something useful. WhO brings his SH up to level 3 in the battle alone which is no small feat. Even with hero levels evened out and his army annihilated FoCuS still tries to put up a last battle in his base, but to no avail. WhO wins the series 2-1.

	[0:2]
Bet.Myth		MYM]Shy

The returning golden boy Myth, had an easy time last clanwar, on paper. In reality he did have to struggle quite a bit with Bro88 of srs before taking a 2-0 victory. Shy on the other hand lost 2-0 against a strategically brilliant SaSe in two not too drawn-out games.

However, considering the unconventional tactics of Sase, Shy’s true skill was not clearly visible, and in this match I still have to give him the yellow vest, because of Myth’s wobbly standard play against one of the weakest players in the entire wc3l.

Game 1 (EI): Game one appears to prove me correct as Myth loses one footman after the other for what appears to be no reason, while Shy kills off a WE by blocking its escape with a wisp. While Myth tries to do hit-n-run attacks on dryads Shy does sharp moves using LS on his low-hp DH that got surrounded by peasants.

Basically, Shy outclasses Myth every step of the way. Other than that the game progressed in a standard manner. Myth tries to expo, Shy shuts it down as Myth makes contineously bad decisions.

Game 2 (LT): For his second game Myth picks LT. A little naive I feel. I think we’ve concluded earlier that LT is an ORC map, not a HU-map! Although I wouldn’t say that is why Shy picks ORC over NE here. Pro HU players have a general tendency to mass gyrocopters and tanks on LT vs elf, because there is no Tavern (which means no BoF to make short work of those units). Myth gets a semi-good spawn, having his natural far removed from the orcs main.

Myth continues the strategy of sending hapless footmen to their inevidable doom. Insomnia once developed the strategy to assault orc burrows with defended footmen, but sending a single footman to hack on a half-way finished beastiary? He must have something personal against those little guys...

I approve of his strategy though. I recall a game between Miou and Zacard where Zad was massing bats out of 5 beastiaries and still couldn’t stop gryphs massed out of 3. But then again, Miou wasn’t 4 hero levels behind Zacard... Basically, Myth doesn’t seem ready. Not for modern strategy, not for the higher micro demands and certainly not for Shy. The game ends when Shy takes out Myth’s heroes a second time.

	[2:1]
Bet.Check		MYM]Grubby

As for Myth, so it was for Check. He did win his match 2-1, but against another orc player that has to be considered inferior to Grubby, at least at the present. In this match he will have to gear up if he wants to stand a chance. Grubby comes prepared to this match with some exciting matches against his former colleague LiilD.C in the baggage, and the mistakes he did in those games I doubt he will be making today.

Game 1 (SV): SV is as we all know somewhat orc-centric because of the dual fountains of health. Their significance should not be overestimated though. The small size of the map and relatively weak creeps mean that orcs won’t get anything else for free. This game turns out to be a rather strange one. Check hides his Hunters Hall, not to trick Grubby into picking the TC (thanks to luvstyle for pointing this out), but to prevent a cancel on it which is relatively easy on SV because it's both small and has fountains to heal up the BM after doing such a run. I'm guessing this is the reason he uses hunts rather than archers as well. Hunts have almost as much health as a grunt and as such they have the same advantage of healing large quantities of health/second at the fountains. Had he used archers however he wouldn't even need to be careful when chasing them down, because he could heal up even during combat at the fountain, while archers would be almost as vulnerable there as in the open field.

Grubby has prepared a somewhat new anti-bear/dryad strategy (at least for smaller maps), namely solo BM and wyvern. Grubby goes out to fight but just as he finds Check’s army he disconnects...

Game1(SV) (Regame!): *sigh* Anyways, this game starts out similarily to the first try, but this time Check actually goes for Dotts. Grubby scouts the elf natural with a grunt for some reason, and loses it when the DH wakes the creeps to ensnare it. Check heads into Grubby’s base just as he hits tier 2 and cancels his lodge and beastiary at the cost of his BM and a tp-scroll. He does get a grunt as compensation though. Check creepjacks Grubby’s TC but it gets away without too much trouble. Grubby heals up a bit and returns the favor, jacking Check and killing two of his Dotts.

Grubby tries to play it safe, only attacking once he sees an opening in Check’s defensive position. Unfortunately his Dotts have almost full mana and contiously cyclone his BM and TC. Still, after some shoving he takes out a few dotts, but Check in turn takes down his remaining grunts and a few of the peons he has hanging around. Grubby is in a bad spot now however, because his TC is void of mana and it has just turned lvl 3.

He has to run a gauntlet back to his base while Check continues to cyclone his BM. He has to keep running. The TC’s mana has recharged at this point, but he misses his chance when deciding to keep running and gets the mana burned away by the DH again. The TC gets trapped and he is forced to tp.

The final battle isn’t so much a battle as a display in uncertainty; Grubby runs his units forth, then backs away, then heads forward and backs away again as the dotts keep firing. Once he decides to really fight it out his TC is trapped and killed and the game ends.

Game 2 (GW): Ah, Gnoll Wood. A classic orc map that provides a lot of options because of the distances. Perhaps not as classic as LT (which has the word Classic built right into the name), but the inate advantages of a map aren’t as important as how well the players know them. Grubby builds his shop a bit below his base, making his early creeping extremely fast. Check tries the Huntress Hall-hiding trick for real this game and it seems to work (either that or Grubby appreciates the qualities of the TC more than I thought), as Grubby picks the TC as a second hero.

Check starts pushing Grubby’s base, taking down grunts, burrows and peons as he goes. Comfortable on the edge, Grubby rebuilds his burrow out by his item shop, completely unprotected. Check doesn’t notice this however... After driving Check off Grubby sees the Lore in his base (another one being hidden together with his Hall), and starts to creep his TC, skilling stomp instead of wave, and puts down an expo.

Once they clash it becomes farily evident that Grubby won’t be winning in a straight fight. So what does he do? He does what any extremely skilled orc player would do, lead Check on a wild goose chase ’round the map, stopping to heal slightly at the middle fountain and skirmishing a bit before taking off again. Meanwhile the BM hacks Check’s moonwells to bits in his base. This goes on until Check discovers Grubby’s expo.

Knowing that will eventually lead to Grubby having a stronger army, especially since he has no moonwells he tries to take it down. Grubby siezes the opportunity and rips down what remains of Check’s base. Then he goes back home to fetch the kodos that he has been stacking up on and proceedes to put an end to Check’s misery.

Game 3 (TM): The previous game was a definite must see, and so is this one, although it has a dissatisfactory ending, in double sense. First of all, Grubby loses and he does it because of what seemed like a stupid mistake. At least considering how well he had been microing up until that point. Check must’ve by this point come to the conclusion that he might be able to fool himself once, and Grubby once, but either of those twice? Nuh-uh.

So, this time he doesn’t try to hide his strategy of choice. Before long a DH and a few huntresses are laying the smackdown on Grubby’s rax. When I first saw this, and the persistance he had attacking this barracks, I though ”He must dislike the color or something”, because attacking any orc structure but burrows with that few units will usually just earn you a smackaround by the blademaster at the cost of time.

But now I think I have it figured. You see, as strange as it seems, Grubby can’t just let his rax go down. He can’t repair it with workers, because of the hunts, so what does he do? He has to stop creeping and run home with his whole army to fend it off. That might not seem like a big loss at first, since Check isn’t creeping either, until you consider the enormous burden that the orc heroes are carrying.

Orc have no good scouting units, so the task has to go either to the BM or Farseer wolves (or to Far Sight if you’re a nut). However, a BM under lvl 3 cannot scout effectively since Wind Walk ends so quickly. Also, there is really nothing in the orc army that deals enough damage to be a threat to the NE’s heroes. Bears can be devoured, but heroes just won’t die to raider/walker attacks. The BM has to be able to stand there for a while, attacking the elf heroes, and he can’t do that if he doesn’t have a few levels. The elf heroes on the other hand are a sidenote compared to bears and dryads. Sure, the DH is strong but when playing this strategy he’s more like an extra strong bear and not much else.

Check gets a Keeper second, probably because he doesn’t want to chase Grubby’s army around the map again if it comes to that. Even after these setbacks however, Grubby pushes on. He fends of Check and goes creeping while setting up an expansion. Whether he picks Critical Strike lvl 2 at lvl 3 by mistake or not I cannot be certain of (thanks to LUMS`thegame for pointing it out!), but since having to rethink my view on what at first seemed like bad planning by Check on SV I'm going to say 'no mistake'. For scouting and harassing lvl 2 WW at lvl 3 is excellent, but Critical Strike is far more useful in a straight-out battle, at least if the enemy has a lvl 3 DH. And considering that Grubby had just built an expo while Check had an army capable at forcing a fight at any time it would seem like a more logical choice.

Serpent Wards serve as discouragers (for the same reason you don’t want to fight a battle at a tower, even if it’s just one) as well as scouts (they give almost no xp, but can be a great way to see if the enemy passes a certain location) while he creeps and tried to hold Check off. After a few skirmishes both hero levels and army quality seems to be in Grubby’s favor, and when he even manages to take down Check’s expansion things seem over.

The only thing remaining for Check now is one final assault attempt on Grubby’s expo. Grubby portals in and... doesn’t move his BM out of the way quickly enough. It goes down to Entangling Roots. In triumphant fury Check throws his heroes after the remaining SH, and without the BM he can’t hold the DH off for long. It goes down too and Grubby calls GG.

	[2:1]
Bet.Fov		MYM]Lucifer

This is by far the hardest match to call beforehand. Undead mirror is always tricky, because things can change so quickly. One player can be ahead and one Nova later his whole army is dead. Lucifer comes to this clanwar with a 2-1 defeat by the hands of Fly100%, but there’s no shame in that. Orc is hard enough to battle as it is, and Fly is one of the very best. FoV on the other hand is back from PGL where he beat said Fly 2-0! He also beat Lyn and ToD, losing finally to Moon and XiaoT.

Looking at recent results I’d say FoV has an advantage, but he was never tested in mirror during PGL. So, slight edge to FoV; he just has to watch it so he doesn’t cut himself on it.

Game 1 (TM): Interestingly I’ve always associated Lucifer with fiends and FoV with ghouls, but this game they switch it around, if only for a while. Lucifer starts out creeping up his lich and then heads over to FoV’s base to harass his acos. He’s quite successful at it too, and gets away with most of his ghouls intact (they’re already dead you see...).

He doesn’t seem overprotective of them though, because he lets a number of them die right afterwards while creeping a merc camp. Lucy isn’t the only one who seems a bit out of it though. As he runs (floats?) his lich over to FoV’s base to harass the acos again he runs right past FoV’s army. FoV doesn’t seem to mind however and runs in the other direction.

The harassing continues for a while yet, and FoV really does seem a bit unfocused, losing a fiend to Nova for no apparent reason while fighting Lucy in his base. Finally a real battle comes at the leftmost merchant. One thing to remember about ghouls vs fiends is that the conditions change as the game goes on. The first few battles between fiends and ghouls most often belong to the fiends. With decent micro you can pick off ghoul after ghoul. Once the dk hits lvl 3 it doesn’t even matter much what level the lich is, you will win most battles.

Things change drastically as you hit tier 3 however (which the ghoul user will do quite a bit before the fiend user). That means ghoul frenzy, orb of corruption and possibly (as in this case) even a DR to stop the dk from healing wounded fiends and suddenly it’s a complete slaughter. Lucifer gets two fiends and the lich of FoV before he runs away, traded for two ghouls, which is more than fair.

It’s also fair to mention that with no tech units out and no lich to nova the ghouls your base, as a fiend user, is become a buffé table for angry necrophages. Not that this knowledge does you much good, except that you’ll be ready for the pain that is to come.

FoV loses all his acos and several fiends for a couple of ghouls before Lucifer backs off. After a bit of creeping the final battle begins. For this battle Lucifer has translated over to fiends. The battle is quickly over though, through a very simple move. Focus with everything, cast nova, cast silence on the dk, dead lich. GG.

Game 2 (TR): Phew, things are back to normal. Lucifer: fiends, FoV: ghouls. As things should be. FoV quickly creeps out the close spawn expansion, but gets harassed by Lucifer's fiends and is forced to tp out. FoV’s lich is badly hurt, but he recognizes that standing still is just as dangerous as heading out to creep again, because Lucy will out-level him. In this instance though he isn’t subtle and Lucy finds and kills his lich.

He isn’t very effective with the time given though. He creeps one camp, sure, but then he goes off for a bit of ineffective harassing of FoV’s base. FoV won’t stand for that however and uses a shade to teleport into Lucifer’s base to harass his acos a bit, forcing him to run back home. After this a long streak of creeping ensues, during which Lucy steals a Gargantuan Turtle from FoV (although not the item).

FoV creeps his army up to critical levels on his DK and DL while preparing an army of gargs and destroyers meanwhile Lucifer grabs a DR in addition to the mandatory DK to the lich and prepares to produce Frosties.

One of the problems with the fiend strategy is that it relies on units too much (which sounds weird, but still...) whereas the lich first DK to DL combo eventually needs only the heroes to take on entire armies, although a statue for mana/health regeneration never hurts. The fiend build starts out with the dk, WhOm’s hero levels aren’t as crucial as the lich’s or the teritary hero’s. Because of this you shouldn’t feel calm just because you just busted all the enemy’s ghouls.

After a battle in Lucifer’s base that is pretty much what happened. After the battle Lucifer is ahead on food, but behind on useful hero levels. FoV retreats to a complete garg army because that’s all he needs now. To hunt down running units, kill flying ones and perhaps feed the lich on occasion. He could’ve had great use from a destroyer to eat the silence though... Which he does get after the first moderately successful encounter. That, unfortunately, is the last nail in Lucifer’s coffin. With gargs, sleep and nova FoV chases down his secondary and teritary heroes and slays them.

Game 3 (EI): Faced with a reinvigorated FoV, Lucifer prepares to counter picking Echo Isles as his map. In mirror there are three things that govern what map you choose. Firstly, you might want to switch races and therefor pick a map like LT (common in elf mirror matches). The second and third reasons overlap in being what strategy you want to use or avoid facing.

Say you faced and lost to archers/dotts last game. Then you’d pick a large map where that strat isn’t as viable. But in undead mirror the maps aren’t as important as in other mirrors as to what map to choose so it’s more up to choosing the map you feel comfortable with. EI has some nice choke points , so fiends are quite popular here, although ghouls are viable as well. It’s only a matter of making sure you don’t fight in a bad spot.

The match itself plods along for a while with FoV, still in his element (ghouls!) holding the initiative. Harassing creeps while creeping Lucifer’s base. There’s always a supply of acolytes to creep in undead bases, in case you didn’t know.

As his tier 3 tech slides into the station he goes of to harass again, knowing Lucifer's is always half done. He claims to aco-heads and teleports out. That might seem like a loss, but consider the gold lost to Lucifer while waiting for his tech to finish...

Knowing Lucifer won’t be able to attack in full force for a while FoV sets down an expansion. Eventually he does attack however, now with a DR and a Frostie. Unfortunately FoV’s army is to large, even though it is more or less countered by the frostie and fiends. All fiends get ripped to shreds, and the expansion allows FoV to quickly replenish his army ranks with gargs and goes to hunt Lucifer down again, killing both his Frostie and his lich.

Still, it wouldn’t have been completely impossible to make one of those sensational comebacks, but with what seems like a bonehead decision Lucifer definately ends the game for himself. He resummons his lich from the Tavern while having no mana on his DK. The lich dies again and with it the last chance of victory.

	[2:1]
Bet.Check Bet.whO		MYM]Lucifer MYM]Susiria

2s seem to be nothing but a neccesary evil for the korean top players, still prefering to rely on cheap tactics like massing and their micro advantage to take the wins rather than original strategy. This usually means an NE/UD combo with a mass of hunts and spiders. Recently however, I’ve noticed that 2s teams containing an orc player generally win out in the end against similar strategies.

Small units feed the orc heroes until they can almost fight off entire armies alone. If Lucy and Susie intends to play this kind of strategy they’ll have to watch out once the WhO-train gets moving.

Game 1 (TM): Things proceed pretty much as I predicted, excluding the Pit Lord (+2 Coolness-points to Check). The game starts out rather standard (standard for play at this level) with heavy creeping, unit lending to that purpose and harsh harassing from the BM. The hunt/spider army of MYM reaches critical mass and they proceed to attack.

They are surprised by dense resistance from the standard orc army and the elf mass dryads, backed up my Rain of Fire from the Pit Lord. After all hunts are killed Lucy decides to retreat. Things do not improve however. Susie is unable to get good enough use out of his Hunts thanks to the dryads and RoF. To the BeT-team they must’ve looked like books of xp that could skip around.

Game 2 (TR): MYM picks TR as their second map for a number of reasons that I can think of. Firstly, it’s shorter between bases, both ally and enemy, so you can easily converge with your ally and swiftly go in for the kill. Secondly it has quite powerful creeps so the UD –player will have no shortage of fodder for his nuking capacity, which the hunt/spider strategy rellies heavily on later in the game.

In this case though, it’s the decision to attack earlier and having the shorter distance to make it possible that decides it. BeT goes for the same strategy but WhO is attacked before he has any decent amount of units or hero levels to stop the hunt/spider horde. Check tries to hold out for a while longer after WhO’s base is destroyed, but to no avail.

Game 3 (GW): This is the big one, once again, for a number of reasons. It’s on GW one of the biggest maps in the arsenal, it’s the deciding game for the match and it turns out to be a great game. In the same was as last time, MYM tries to attack earlier but the greater distances bites their bums. They are able to cancel Check’s Lores though, which in many cases would mean good game right there, but WhO is able to drive them off so he can set them up again. He is behind on his production though, and Lucy has been creeping heavily.

2v2 players, don’t be surprised if you see a Pit Lord hopping around in your next game, because Check is showing off his best sides. Hunts/spider masses are his prey, and he cannot be easily nuked. Paired with the TC there is almost too much AoE for MYM to handle. Almost. They keep the fights even with great decision-making during battles.

Check manages to set up an expansion however, something Susie has neglected to do. When they finally discover and attack it, BeT counters by taking out all of Susie’s main base and later also Lucy’s. All they are left with is a Necropolis they build right next to the middle fountain. After some dancing around, setting down new expansions BeT attacks, and in an epic struggle they finally manage to take down the remaining forces of MYM. Lights out for the lightbringer, Susiria... I don’t know what Susiria means ~~

An excellent series all-in-all. And my prophecies came true, although the Pit Lord probably did more than BM&Co in this series.

Conclusion: 4-1 to BeT? Not exactly what people were expecting from the runner-up of last season. It would be easy to dismiss this heavy tumble with ”shit happens”, but I do think it goes a little deeper than that. MYM has great players, no question of that, but there has been a theme throughout this clan war that is a little worrying. Grubby showed three admirable games, but he became a little passive and indecisive in the end of game 1 and 3, which seemingly cost him those games.

Even though Lucifer gave a strong performance, it sort of became clear during those three games that fiends just isn’t as viable as ghouls if the opponent is ready for both strategies. The ghoul user prevailed in all three. If we consider the first game between ReiGn and XlorD in the match beween SK and aTTaX it is clear that a prepared ghoul user can make minced meat out of fiend users of the same level of micro, whereas fiends do not really provide many advantages. They slow down movement, do not really provide much in map control and slows down teching without providing any real advantages. Maybe it’s time to let the fiend build die...

The FoCuS vs WhO-match was highly situational. Either one could have won that, although we did see some innovation in using a Witch Doctor to make the BM less useful.

And that’s what decided this clan war, as I see it. A lack of innovation and fresh thought. I did predict the 2s would go in BeT’s favor because they had an orc, but to be frank they did not micro as well as Susie and Lucy did.

It was their strategical innovation that won them the game, using the Pit Lord and TC to rip the mass unit army to shreds. Myth lost his match because he hasn’t been able to keep up with modern strategy and micro requirements and Lucifer lost by using a sub-optimal strategy, namely fiends.

I feel we need an injection of innovation. Stock up on a few surprise strategies for the tough matches, work out a new, more effective 2s strategy than just massing. The player material of MYM is possibly the best in the warcraft world. Kind of like Real Madrid was.

But in the same way as Real Madrid the players have become somewhat complacent, comfortable and satisfied with status quo. BeT has adhered to this danger and done their homework, and so must MYM do if they want to win this season.

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