[2:0]
aTTaX.XlorD		KoD-MiNiMuM

Minimum... A decent orc player to be fair, but faced with arguably the best undead player in europe most would predict his fall. However, not even Xlord is 100% certain of his abilities vs orcs and is sometimes seen playing human in league matches.

Game 1 (MV): Woah woah, a first for Melting Valley in my articles. MV doesn’t exactly bring variety to the map pool. It has the same kind of troll n ogre camps, the same balance of green, yellow and red camps and a building of every kind for both sides.

Xlord starts out by militia-creeping a strong yellow camp with his MK while Minimum clears some lesser creeps. It looks like the map-maker expected this because the Troll Warlord drops low-level items (the MK gets a cloak of shadows).

He builds a farm at the mercenary camp, basically turning it into a private production building. Minimum keeps on creeping while Xlord sets up an expasion in the upper left. Minimum discovers it, but too late to give a serious chance to stopping it.

Xlord heads off to Minimum’s base to harass his burrows. Minimum misjudges his mana pool when trying to fight him off and gets his BM killed by a Storm Bolt. What was supposed to be a simple harass turns into a slaughter.

Granted, Xlord loses most of his footmen as well, but most of them die to burrow fire and thus give off no XP. Minimum on the other hand manages to lose his SH and two grunts as well.

Minimum hangs on by a bare minimum and tries a desperation attack with demolishers and towers. However, Xlord returns to Minimum’s base to destroy those burrows he was after originally. He manages to take down 2 of them before he is chased off.

The siege continues but Xlord isn’t particularily worried seeing as how his Gryphons start to come in. Things heat up for a second as Xlord draws the big golems into his base by mistake, but Minimum doesn’t manage to really take advantage of it. When he finds gryphons partying in his base he conceedes defeat.

Game 2 (GW): Minimum picks the standard orc map GW, but Xlord lucks out with a close spawn. They pick the same starting heroes as in the previous game. When trying to harass Xlord’s creeping Minimum gets two grunts stuck while Xlord dexterously switches out hurt footmen to keep them trapped. He messes up right at the end letting the second grunt escape as he tries and fails to kill the Blademaster.

After some healing Xlord gathers some militia and prepares to tower Minimum’s base. At first it looks like Minimum will fend it off easily, but with a mistake similar to the one in game one he loses his BM.

"You need to learn to be mindful of you surroundings!"

Minimum buys back his lvl 2 BM slowing down his unit production, only to lose it again shortly thereafter. Xlord does get his MK killed shortly thereafter, but at this point there are 4 guard towers firing on Minimum’s base.

Minimum finaly gets a demolisher out while Xlord sends defended footmen into Minimum’s base to cancel salves and clarity.

Xlord buys back his MK, but it’s actually a good idea for him since he can pressure harder before the BM returns. Not only that, but he creeps the close green camp to gain lvl 3 and with it the deadly lvl 2 bolt as well.

With an abundance of defended footmen Xlord pushes into Minimum’s base and slowly wears down his burrows. Shortly thereafter Minimum loses his heroes and gives up, but considering his micro during the last minute he had already given up.