Mousesports takes the cheese during the second season of The American Dota League grand finals. They win 3-1 against the defending champions, Team Liquid in a best-of-five series.
Casted by Maut, Kotlguy & Whatiship, today was the conclusion of the American Dota League. With Mousesports heading against the defending champions, Team Liquid, it was definitely a series worth watching. Both of these teams will also appear at the International 4 tournament, making this series an important marker for discovering any unique strategies that these teams might have kept secret beforehand.
Game 1:
With Team Liquid as the Dire and Mousesports as the Radiant, Game 1 was set in motion. Each team displayed unique drafts: Mousesports was especailly interesting with Razor being chosen as their last pick. Razor has immense variablility in what role he can contribute for a team; he's an enigma, however it's safe to say that he usually wins his lane due to his tankiness and ability-set. In essence, Mousesports' draft relies on aggression, which will be set by Pajkatt on the Bounty Hunter.
Team Liquid had a bulky line-up that is oriented towards a Dragon Knight core and either the Doom or Mirana playing as support. The good thing about their draft is versaility. The bad thing, is that it was simple; meaning it wont' catch Mousesports offguard and they are probably accustomed to playing against this lineup. However, Team Liquid has a late-game advantage, as their cores scale better than Mousesports. So when watching, the timer will be something to keep an eye on.
For bans, one point of interest is the Troll Warlord. Mousesports, specifically FATA, is renown for a high win-rate on Troll Warlord. Nobody can really explain it, but Mousesports are able to create niche strategies centered around a Troll core, which is respectible of a ban. The other bans seem to focus on heroes that are a sheer annoyance to deal with; nothing out of the ordinary,
You can tell that both teams were concentrated for their first game. For instance, Pajkatt on the Bounty Hunter escaped his lane to go camp in between the Tier 2 + 3 towers of Team Liquid's middle lane. However, there seemed to be some communication among Team Liquid with Pajkatt's dissapearance from lane. So Doom left the bottom lane to walk towads the mid-tier 3 tower, picked up the bottle from the courier, and delivered it to Liquid TC; Doom abandoned the bottom lane and went to the jungle. You don't really see plays/communication like that, but it is the season - being so close to the International 4.
The game starts off both slow and defensive. At 4:20 minutes we finally have a First Blood going in the way of Mousesports. Misery on the Sand King was able to pick up an Invisibility rune bottom (which wasn't warded) and went mid. Sand King alongside Invoker was able to secure a kill on Liquid TC. Prior to this engagement, the game was equal. However, the kill gave Invoker enough money to purchase a completed midas at 6 min.
After the First Blood, Mousesports took risky plays and threw away their lead, making it an even game at 20 min: Score 4-4. Interestingly, each side was at a stalemate until Invoker secured his Necronomicon 3 @ 21 minutes and Razor completed his Aghanim Scepter around the same time. This allowed Mousesports to have a huge pushing potential, where they started pushing towers and racking up the Track kills.
Unfortunately, it seems that Mousesports weren't able to capitalize on their lead during the miid-game. Eventually, it seemed that the game was again at a stalemate with each team being unable to accomplish much advancement in terms of objectives after team-fights. It was certain that the pushing capability of Mousesports would prove to be exceptional, however Razor's tankiness began to shed as Qojqva started to acquire items exceptionally quick. He had 340 cs at 42 minutes, in spite of having an awkward item progression and sloppy mid-game. At 59 minutes Qojqva and Team Liquid were too much for Mousesports, leading to an eventually Good Game. Team Liquid take Game 1.
For your viewing pleasure, there is a Classic Jimmy Moment @ 27 minutes.
Game 2:
Game 2 begins with some heavy pushing line-ups from each team. Mousesports pick up an Invoker + Lycan combo, usually banking on both heroes to get Necronomicons and pushing barracks before 30 minutes. However, Team Liquid have a similar strategy, one that relies on focusing in the early game (>20min) to try and manage an early victory. Each team doesn't have your tradition Hard Carry - although some may argue Lycan is one.
Right off the start, 20 seconds prior creeps spawn, there was a First Blood going the way of Mousesports as they pick off a lonely Tidehutner in the bottom lane. Mosuesports secured the kill and headed to their respected lanes before the creeps spawn. One point of interest is that Tidehunter is farming the easy lane for Team Liquid - who apparently fares pretty well against a Centaur Warrunner. However, understanding their lack of a Hard Carry, Liquid immeditely group up when Dragon Knight is level 6 and manage to asault Mouseports until they destroy two tier 2 towers at 11 minutes. However, Team Liquid underestimated the Lycan pick, so whenever Team Liquid grouped up, Lycan would retaliate by taking towrs. Pajkatt on the Lycan was able to get a 17 min Necronomicon 3 - really impressive.
The game is more action packed than the last, as the score is 12-13 @ 24 min. You also can see Liquid Demon getting a Mega-kill @ 27 min, taking advantage on an early Refresher Orb. There were a lot of back and forths, making this game interesting even though it spanned +40 minutes. However, at 39:52 Mousesports strikes at Team Liquid's base, by destroying two melee barracks (mid and top lane). This sealed the eventual fate for Team Liquid, since they couldn't afford to push out of their base.
The game ended when Pajkatt took the risk of buying a new Black King Bar, instead of saving money for buyback. The new Black King Bar allowed him enough time to kill Liquid Demon on the Tidehunter before he was able to get off his Ravage - Refresher - Ravage combo; seeing as Demon saved his ultimate for Lycanthrope. The result was a competle team-wipe with Mousesports taking game 2.
Game 3:
Game 3 is where the tides of the war begin to shift in favor of Mousesports.
Team Liquid drafted another line-up that is not good in the early game, but makes up for it during the mid and late game. On the flipside, Mousesports picked a strong early game line-up with a Mirana & Bane combo -devastating, annoying, yet effective. Strangethat Team Liquid chose to pick Disrupter as their first pick, later picking into a Dark Seer and Kunkka - Wombo Combo Anyone? Also, FATA picked up his Ember Spirit, which he is extremly good with.
This game, I gave the advantage to Team Liquid since their team doesn't rely on cheesy methods like the Mirana + Bane combo. If they manage to safely deal with the early game of Mousesports, they should be in agood position to take the game around 25 min.
Man was I wrong. Team Liquid was too focused on ganking FATA in the intital stages of the game. They rotated Disrupter and Treant Protector mid to help Kunkka achieve a lvl 1 kill on FATA, which proved to be a waste of time. Meanwhile, Mousesports was able to capitalize on their Mirana + Bane combo, with the help of Ancient Apparition Chiling touch, to kill Qojqva on the solo Morphling bottom; First Blood goes towards Pajkatt. Team Liquid supports later go back mid, for another attempt fail, and actually die from a <2 min teleportation support from Mirana and Bane. The score is 3-0 @ 2:30.
However, it kept becomign progressively worse for Team Liquid, as the Mirana, Bane, and Ancient Apparition combo proved to be devastating within the bottom lane. The score is 5-0 with Mousesports leading at 3:10 minutes...
Then the score became 9-0 @ 10:45, with Mousesports leading, Then 15-1 @ 17:00, and finally 21-1 @ 20 minutes where Team Liquid called the Good Game.
The issue with this game was that Team Liquid spent too much resources trying to kill FATA mid and not protecting Qojqva against the devastating Mirana, Bane, and Ancient Apparition tri-lane. Team Liquid were too aggressive for their own good.
Game 4:
Mousesports 2, Team Liquid 1. This game is set as Mousesports just needs one more game to secure their positon as the 2nd Season American Dota League Champions (even though only one person on their team is American!).
One difficult portion of the draft for Team Liquid was that Troll Warlord was able to slip through as Mousesports' first pick. FATA plays an extremly well Troll Warlord, who is apparently 8-0 with him in competition. Troll secures Mousesports early game, alongside Lich, which can make an easy transition for Sven and Io to destroy the mid-game.
Team Liquid on the other hand, has a decent mid to late-game line-up. However, similar to their past picks, they aren't exceptionally well during the early game. So the same recipe follows: If Team Liquid is able to divert harassment from Mousesports in the early game, Liquid should have enough capability to win the game late.
However, Team Liquid proved to be tricky, as they sent their original safe tri-lane, to the hard-lane (perhaps after evaluating how worthless Io is within a tri-lane). Mousesports were put in a difficult situation and it appeared that everything was going Team Liquid's way. However, there was a First Blood that occured @ 4 minutes, making the game 2-0 in favor of Mouseports. What had happened was that Death Prophet and Ancient Apparition tried to kill Troll Warlord, however they were counter ganked by fantastic teleportation support from Mousesports.
Team Liquid fought back and the strength of their tri-lane showed as they managed to get 3 kils @ 6:30 , making the score 3-4 with Mousesports leading. There were some casualties on the side of Team Liquid, thanks to the tenacity of MiSeRy on the Io (who managed to get a dominating spree at 6:30).
At 18 minutes, the score is 10-9, in favor of Mousesports. However, Team Liquid seemed to have diminished any lead that Mouseports had over them during the early game. Nevertheless, there is a small window of opporuntity for Mousesports to take the game for their favor if they are able to coordinate their busrt damage within team fights.
Which occured when each team began to 5-man, making it impossible for Liquid TC on the Death Prophet to make use of her ultimate - as Death Prophet was just obliterated by Nyx, Sven, Lich, etc. After Death Prophet was taken care of, Mousesports concentrated on taking out the Tiny, making the rest of Team Liquid crumble.
The score is 14-10 with Mousesports leading @ 20:20. The game continues to snowball in Mousesports favor, until the game was called at 29:20, making Mousesports your American Dota League Champions.
Final standings:
1st place: Mousesports ($5,000)
2nd place: Team Liquid ($3,000)
3rd place: NAR ($1,000)
4th place: SNA ($1,000)
