Both BeT and WE have gotten a rather rocky start of the season, BeT being on top after their 4-1-win against MYM, but with otherwise shallow victories over underdogs such as aTTaX and srs while WE only has, as I write this, 3 points on mTw (with another one on the way in all likelyhood) and a devastating loss against SK. Both teams need this win, because there are many teams grasping for the playoff spots. WE are under a certain amount of pressure simply because they are lagging behind with their matches since the chinese new year celebration land-locked their players.

Both teams have a lot to prove in the very least; BeT that their win against MYM wasn’t a fluke and WE that they are still one of the top competitors. Let’s get to the games!

	[2:0]
BeT.WinNers	Game 1 | Game 2	WE.TeD

TeD, second in command of the undead fiend armies faces off against Winners, the great fluctuation. Seriously, I had no idea what to expect when I started watching these games because both players are known for pulling crazy stunts; especially when pushed. They are also both known for beating the best players of the world one day and lose to wannabies the next. Unfortunately, the trend as of late has been to streamline strategy all across the board, even among the innovative...

Game 1 (TR): Many of the following games drag on for a bit, so I’ll try to be brief. Initial strategies are ’the basics’, ghouls/DK from TED and archers/DH from Winners. As a sidenote, I’ve always wondered why elves chase down full-health scout ghouls with their DH. It’s not going to die, so why bother? Winners creeps while TED tries to harass, with emphasis on ’tries’. It is actually not exactly true what I wrote earlier, DH isn’t standard on TR, BM is.

DH suggests you’re not planning to expand which means the undead gains little from staying at tier 2. The layout of the map favors fiends, because it is easy to move between the different expansions, where most of the fighting is likely to occur. Gargs work too of course, but not as well as on larger maps. TeD goes for a fiend/destro build while creeping up his heroes. Winners harasses with his DH while power-creeping his deadly panda.

For a quick third hero TeD picks the naga, which I suppose works in theory, but since Winners’ army/hero levels are already approaching critical mass he won’t be given much time to effectively creep up three heroes to critical levels effectively. When the two armies meet TeD’s naga goes down as he tps out. By now things are starting to get interesting however.

Instead of a destroyer-heavy army TED builds a Temple and researches banshee master training. Note that it is in theory a very strong strategy as AMS protects against the panda’s BoF and DotC are among the best units you can possess.

However, this strategy cuts heavily into what is perhaps the most precious resource in wc3, namely time. While you are researching all the upgrades, not maxing your army until they are done, the enemy has map control, and you are forced to creep away from him.

If he is aware of this he can either scout and hunt you down or go attack your base. In both cases you’re in bad shape. Even after the casters pop you’re still not ready because they need to be charged by a spirit touch-casting statue before they’re effective, and it’s meaningless to go into combat before you have 4-5 of those.

This process takes a long, long time and is actually one of the things I’d like to change in the next patch. But anyways... TeD complements his army with aboms and heads out to attack once he discovers Winners building expo. TeD doesn’t really handle his own strategy very well. He casts AMS on his ghouls and heroes (the least deserving in my opinion) while not casting on his banshees. In this case it doesn’t matter much because he forgets to use possess with them anyways.

TeD’s lich goes down, but because of some sloppy micro on Winners part he is able to chase him off for a few seconds. He returns with bears however, and the expo stays up. Superior army size and superior micro grants Winners victoria.

No use running! The glowing purple sperm will get you!

Game 2 (TM): We’ve already seen some innovation, albeit badly implemented, from TED. In game 2 it’s Winners that wields the scepter of innovation by picking a Warden as his starting hero. Note that the idea with the Warden is to keep undead hero levels low. Not only does its abilities work towards that goal, it’s more or less a necessity for its survival.

TeD tries, almost desperately, to thwart the elf by harassing with ghouls, feeling confident with an unthreatened mana pool. However, it is the DK’s health that is in peril when facing a warden, and as much as TED tries to steal creeps and kill archers all he really achieves is handing Winners ghoul kills (and thus even more experience than he would’ve gained from the creeps that got stolen).

TED is relentless however, stocking up on healing potions, grabs a naga and heads off to attack. At first it seems to go rather well as he picks off ghouls and keeps hurting the warden. However, when he at one point fails to kill it the tide turns. His naga goes down and he is forced to flee. Winners is dauntless in the way only elves can safely be. TED destroys several moon wells and prevents his AoLs from being constructed within his main base. So, he simply builds them outside it, away from the undead attack, barely feeling the sting.

Winners has gone for the hero-hunter style warden instead of the army-ruiner (blink, SS over SS, FoK), shadowstriking the dk and naga while the panda deals with the ghoul pack. And lo, moments from coming back from the dead the naga is showed right back into the ground by the Warden and panda. The battle goes contiously bad for TED as his ghouls are killed one-by-one, and the failures to kill Winners’ heroes rack up. Instead his DK is killed along with a hoard of fleeing ghouls.

A normal player would surely surrender at this point, but TED drags things on for a while longer, and the reason he is able to do so is because Winners has been slow to rebuild his smashed moon wells. The game carries on for a bit without much really happening worth of note. Winners expands, TED knows this and counter-expands on an island. Winners, in turn, knows this and harasses it with his Warden. Both build up their armies, but Winners’ advantage is too great and, as he should, wins the final battle without too much trouble.

	[0:2]
Bet.Sweet	Game 1 | Game 2	WE.InFi

It’s undead vs human, and we all know what that means, don’t we? Towers, lots of them, and a long drawn-out game with fans of both races arguing the wrong player won (regardless of whom it was). A lot of people have been wondering why Sweet hasn’t been playing solo recently. Perhaps these games will answer that question.

Game 1 (TM): Infi wastes little time. Right after militia-creeping the goblin lab he goes off to expand. After killing the first wave of militia with his ghouls Sweet mysteriously runs off as the second wave arrives, even though half of them were already at half health. He heads off to buy a tavern hero, but has neglected to build a ziggurat and thus cannot.

The mysterious part is why he went with his whole army when a single ghoul would’ve been far better, allowing him to keep the pressure on. What could’ve been an easy victory now turns into a strenous siege as Infi is able to set up his first few towers. A naga strangely comes out for Sweet. This gains him little to nothing as he is chased off by footmen. Infi terrorizes Sweet’s base with a zeppelin as to prevent him from creeping.

Sweet goes for meatwagons and beings sieging Infi’s main. I personally disapprove of this since there is little room to move (meaning the human can easily hunt those wagons down), and there are at least as many towers there as at the expo. The shorter distance speaks for it I suppose, but it is already a time-heavy operation, so those few seconds doesn’t matter much. Sweet shows some nice micro however, and keeps Infi away.

Right after that I’m not entirely sure what Infi was up to. Grabbing a sandwich perhaps, because he doesn’t repair his castle, which goes down. Right after he comes in to chase Sweet off his lawn, with little more than he had right before the castle went down. This whole game is strange as Infi goes for gryphons (or did until his castle went down) instead of tanks which would’ve been a quick bane of Sweet, with his naga. Now, however, that now lvl 4 naga is dealing considerable damage to his units and heroes. Sweet hunts down Infi’s army while simultaneously attacking the enemy main again using his wagons and a zeppelin for quick flight. Infi expands again, right under Sweet’s nose.

One thing you’ll have to give TED over Sweet, he scouted much better. With a healthy number (well, I say healthy...) of destroyers Sweet heads off to completely destroy Infi’s main, which he is successful at. Too bad he didn’t have anything important there anways. No, still 2 mines against 1 as Infi’s second expo is now fully towered up. Sweet takes down the towers on the first expo, but Infi simultaneously attacks Sweets main with a force of dragonhawks and the chinks in Sweet’s armor start to show. Not tp! What to do, what to DO? Well, all he can do is a mad run home. It’s lucky for Sweet it wasn’t tanks Infi had been building. Sweet scouts and stops an expansion attempt in the lower left and takes down the production structures of Infi. At first glance this should be Sweet’s game.

He has superior hero levels and is facing only one enemy expansion while having the right units to take it down with. You’d think Sweet would swiftly take down this expo while perhaps scouting with one of his left-over ghouls, but instead he runs his whole army around looking for something which isn’t there, givng Infi time to recuperate. What he does is make workshops. Sweet soon returns to destroy the towers, but he seems just as distracted as Infi was earlier. He doesn’t really focus the towers, lets a destro die against them and doesn’t nuke the peasants that try to repair them to pieces.

Meanwhile, Infi creeps up his heroes for a final battle. Even after Infi’s heroes arrive it’s hard to understand why he didn’t just run the towers over. He does nuke the peasants for a while, but it’s too late for that now. He has no panda, no mine and infi slowly but surely builds up an armada of gyrocopters. The last battle is fierce but predictable. Infi 1-0 Sweet.

Yeah, the peasants here aren't in a union. They're not allowed to make structural repairs.

Game 2 (TR): Turtle rock is a map that is simultanously easier and harder to fast expand on, depending on how you pull it off. With an MK first you simply cannot fail, and you can manage with an AM as well, although it’s much harder, unless you try for the spawn point. Infi takes no chances and creeps to lvl 3 before considering sounding the bell.

Sweet builds some gargs in ready of any coming expansions (gargs are great against building towers you see). Infi decides to counter rather than lame, starting up a gyrocopter production along with tri-heroes with staves and knights. As long as a spot is crept you can always put up an expansion during battle like any other race.

Infi goes all-out as he judges his army to be superior, storming his natural with militia. Sweet shows true grit; standing his ground and with excellent micro he defeats the human army. Microing gargs against gyros isn’t the easiest thing ever. They try to pull you into the WEs or just hit n run with their splash damage. One trick (that Sweet uses) is to stone form and then un-stone form as the copters’ order sends them into position right over the gargs whom then come right up and rips them to shreds.

Once again Sweet does something strange however, showing some signs of being a bit rusty. Instead of storming the human base and ending the game now that Infi has nothing, and I do mean nothing, he goes off, hires a panda and goes creeping. Had there been tons of towers in the human base I could’ve understood his move, but there were only two towers present. Theoretically it’s a correct move; gargs can’t fight gyros forever, but the goal was wide-open! At suc h times you shoot!

Both players creep, but Infi comes out on top because he harasses the gargs with his gyros while creeping with his heroes, snagging a kill here and there. In the end Infi holds both superior hero levels and has a superior army, and he deserves the win.

	[2:0]
Bet.Who	Game 1 | Game 2	WE.Like

Like lost last playday to Kiwikaki, and although I’m not underestimating the Canadian I was expecting Who to win this mirror rather easily; especially considering his previous efforts.

Game 1 (GW): Who builds his item shop in the exosphere of his base, by the itemshop and creeps it out. Like creeps his shop too, but refrains from similar advanced city planning. Who manages to not once, not twice but thrice to cancel Like’s burrow before he’s driven off. After that incident Like’s seeing ghosts, keeping his grunts in his base, creeping only with his BM while Who creeps with his entire force.

It’s Who that makes the first move, assaulting Like’s base. Here, however, things go a little better for him. They trade units as per usual, but while Who manages to take out Like’s SH Like gets the big prize, the BM. Who backs off and goes creeping with his SH while Like harasses his base. When Who renews his attack he is lucky enough to catch Like just as he power-creeps a golem-expansion spot.

Many of his units are hurt and as such he is an easy prey for their equal-size armies.

Game 2 (TR): Close spawn on TR usually suggests a short game, because a disadvantage can be exploited immediatly. Like wants to return the favor from last game and cancels Who’s item shop several times while he is off creeping for BM-items.

Apart from the huge item advantage of Who the creeping patterns turn out to be very similar; the unit choices too. When they finally fight it seems like Who comes out on top until his SH is killed, together with some other unlucky units and he is forced to back off.

During the battle that follows in Who’s base the boosted BM of Who gets to do his business while his Kodos tanks damage. The final battle at Like’s base doesn’t ever look even really. Who has the win in his grasp, and clutches it.

Ichi... ni... SAN!

	[1:2]
Bet.Check	Game 1 | Game 2 | Game 3	WE.Sky

Check has beat Sky the last time they met in the WC3L, using immolation and heavy harassment. The question is if Sky has learned his lesson or if Check has forgotten his.

Game 1 (EI): Sky expands the first thing he does; Check comes in to harass with his trademark immo. It goes fairly well, but Sky does not relent. Soon Check returns with archers and a naga, getting some unit kills and stopping the initial towers.

Check separates his DH from his archer force however, which allows Sky to chase it off and get those towers up. Check takes over the middle with a shop and an AoWi, getting Dotts to get a cheap boost to his offensive force. Sky uses his archmage to draw the DH away constantly, and with threetowers up he finally techs. Check sees what’s about to happen and puts down lores. The problem is that his chosen strategy is two steps away from a counter to what is now coming from Sky.

He cannot win with bears/dryads alone against a breaker/mortar army. He needs an expo of his own. Sky comes in with a wave of bodies, a few casters, a few rifles, a few breakers and a few militia. Check manages to fend it off, but he loses both his lores. At this point there’s nothing he can do to recuperate. His production is halted while Sky’s is on full speed. The next fight will be against a huge supply disadvantage. Sky storms Check’s base. The end.

Water burns?

Game 2 (SV): Check, yearning for revenge picks SV as his second map, deciding he’ll be damned if he can’t stop the expansion this time. It plays out just like last game. Sky expands, Check tries to stop it. Only this time it goes better. First he manages to get a cancel on the town hall, and then he kills the enemy AM. Sky counters however, with a rush of militia and footmen he surrounds the DH, forcing a tp. Meanwhile towers complete at his expansion. However, Check does have some respite left, and he uses it wisely.

The naga and archers shoots down the topwards tower and position themselves outside of the lower towers’ range, shooting down peasants from safety. As bad as this situation looks Sky handles it in an unorthodox way, that could’ve worked better had it not been a naga he faced. He sends out footmen with defend to stand closer to the archers than the peasants are. Since Check can’t issue a focus order (because the units would run into the towers) the footman can absorb the damage from the archers.

Only, the naga generally ensures he gets the kill, meaning the naga levels quickly, and much of the gold is lost as Sky is forced to replace those lost footmen. Meanwhile Sky harasses Check’s wisps with his AM (with boots on of course). This doesn’t help too much though, because Check has been able to limit Sky’s income while teching to bears while setting up his own expansion. Sky gets a fair rifle/caster force, but it crumbles quickly under the maul of bears and the nukin’ naga.

Game 3 (TS): TS, the Warden map. Check keeps up with the trend, but not as much the execution. Basically it’s sub-optimal scouting that does it. Check scouts neither expansion spot, and when Sky expands at his natural rather than his exo he arrives too late.

The Warden doesn’t handle tower fire very well, especially arcane ones. The idea is to stop the expansion before it goes up, or delay it so badly that you not only have time to expand yourself but also tech to tier 3 before the opponent reaches 2.

At this point Check is pretty much doomed unless he does something out of the ordinary, which he doesn’t. He makes it even worse for himself by getting a naga second. Game 1 of Sweet vs Infi walks again, only this time the human does go tanks. Check finally techs and expos. Too late though. Had his heroes of choice been DH/panda or perhaps even Warden/panda he might’ve stood a chance, but now he’s stuck with two heroes not equipped to fight tanks. They need soft targets, and Sky does not intend to give Check any.

Check does what he can, getting a few Dotts to lower the armor of the tanks, but it’s not enough. The remainder of the game is just a slow march towards oblivion. Notable is that Check refuses to teleport in his Warden to save his naga as it is attacked by the human heroes. The game ends with a suicide rush on the top expansion’s towers. Sky wins.

	[2:0]
BeT	Game 1 | Game 2	WE

The ORC/UD combo is tricky to play. There aren’t really any peaks in power to be had, nothing to really work towards. This, of course means you can take advantage of the chinks in the enemy’s armor, but this combo is probably one of the easiest to stall for time against. NE/ORC has its given strenghts a short while into tier 2, and especially if the elf can get an expansion up (which shouldn’t be too hard), when the orc army can mutilate the enemy army with the support of dryads and powerful elf heroes. If I had to call this match I’d give it to BeT, simply for fielding the stronger players.

Game 1(TR): Creeping is the name of the game, and it continues for quite a while. Like borrows TED his grunts for him to creep more efficiently, because undead nuke is always useful. At tier 2 the PL is once more fielded. Who tries to steal creeps from WE’s team, but fails. He does snag an item though.

WE attacks at midday, but they get into bad positions and have to run away. RoF does some good damage, but mostly it is the BM that takes care of the DK and his fiends. Frost armor on the BM is pretty rad though; it greatly increases his life expectancy. WE are forced to port just as TED’s lich arrivers, and BeT snags the kill just before they port out. BeT gathers their forces and attack. WE tries to sneak around the bend and attack from behind, but they are scouted by the BM making it possible for the PL to RoF over the forest.

Eventually BeT let’s them through for a final battle (although I don’t understand why myself). TED keeps his fiends inside the RoF for most of the battle with predictable results, while Who out-micros Like. A clear victory for team BeT.

Game 2 (TM): The game starts, and the creeping is on! Check harasses TED and Like with hunts and DH while Who creeps hard. A mistake by TED loses him his DK to hex and focus. An observer in the previous game asked whether or not Howl would be a better choice as it is most effective against unit masses. A good question to which the answer is no. The orc army will consistantly include walkers, which means dispel which means RoF will be more useful even if you do get a few seconds of howl being in effect.

Once the undead gets destroyers things would get even worse. After some creeping it’s time for another battle. Who disenchants Frost Armor and Check RoFs anything that can be RoFed. Under the influence of slow poison Like’s army is no match for Who’s and WE is forced to tp out. After another stint of creeping BeT attacks Like’s base, just as WE attacks Check’s base. Like doesn’t port right away since he wants to kill off a few moon wells when he has the chance; maybe even make BeT portal out. And so they do, or Check at least.

Who wisely backs off as TED’s army is at the moment superior. WE doesn’t really gain from it though as Check dispels the speed scroll from a few orc units and kill them, forcing Like to tp. The final battle happens in the middle square of the map, where BeT has a 25 food advantage and stronger heroes, and a good crowd controler in the PL. 2-0 to BeT.

Conclusion: A 3-2 win is hard to interpret, as it could mean practically anything when just looking at the score. In this case however I’d say the figures give a fair representation of reality. Bet is currently a slightly stronger team than WE and unless something changes over the course of the season I believe they will place higher than WE.

When players of this high caliber face off the small problems become possible to see, like Sweet’s need to scout more and TED’s need for some general catching-up. Things just might start looking bad for WE if they don’t regain their footing though. Unless they clean the clocks of their next opponent they might have to see themselves run past by mouz and perhaps even some other team too if they’re not careful. BeT’s future seems all but assured, whereas I’m now looking forward to WE’s next game more than anything, because it is there that their future will be decided.

Bet 3-2 WE

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