ESTC overview and Strategy Analysis of Orange vs MitH-Trust

ESTC delivers its first day of group stage games with dazzling plays and incredible tactics! Here is the overview of Day 1 of the group stage and strategy analysis from the impressive Orange.Esports versus MitH-Trust game.

The results are in and after various games we have the winners from groups A, B, C and D from the ESTC stage group phase. This championship has no winner/loser brackets so only those who take the top will advance to the playoffs.

As for tomorrow, a plethora of clashes will shake the floor and present the last contestants for the playoffs. For now, we'll move to the strategy analysis of Orange.Esports vs MitH-Trust!

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Orange tears apart Mith.Trust by unleashing the power of Mushi's Anti-Mage in the hottest match of ESTC 2011's day 1. The Malaysian powerhouse managed to utterly outplay their enemies by using an aggressive half-turtling, half-pushing line-up focused on .
by George "L3vaThiaN-" Psimmitis

The game began with the banning phase being kind of uncommon. Mith banned 3 solo heroes with excellent initiating abilities in , and . Orange replied by banning and , pretty much standard bans, but they also gave out a respect ban to Mith.TnK's famous . Mith then proceeded to pick Invoker first, a hero that has been known for his versatility and his ability to turn a whole battle around on his own. Orange came up with a Magina and Chen double pick, getting one of the strongest late game carries and probably the most feared early game hero. Afterwards, Mith picked up Lich and Mirana while orange got .

In the second ban phase, the two teams decided to go for pretty standard bans with Mith removing and for their pushing abilities that could cause so much trouble along with the support provided by Chen, while Orange bans out proving that they don't want to mess with such a strong lane defender. In the second pick phase, Mith get for his team battle abilities and to be their end game carry while Orange decide to pick up and in order to maximize their pushing abilities.

Generally we see that both teams have one hard carry which is the core of their play, they are gonna try to get their carries farmed up one way or the other. Mith is going to try to defensively hold onto the game until is ready to dominate while Orange will push hard in order of getting their his core items.

Mith decide to put the classic and combo in the top lane, up against Orange's Mushi and his , in order to make the life of the Scourge's carry a living hell. In mid lane, Rhasta is going to be facing Void and Lich, in a strategically correct move by Mith to put their carry in mid along with the support provided by Lich, since Void will have no problem farming against a harassed and mainly heavily denied Rhasta. Finishing, at the bottom lane will try to dominate over while Shendelzare and Holy Knight will be roaming the Scourge's woods.

The first action in the game comes with the fourth minute mark. and his comrade Lich, try to initiate on Scourge's , but a timely Smoke of Deceit-using counter gank by Vengeful and Chen result in Lich giving the first blood and Void leaving the lane with very low health pool. It is right then that ,coming from top lane picks up a haste rune and kills off Rhasta to make the score 1-1.

Generally, in the early game there weren't that many actions mainly due to the teams not wanting to give away any advantages. On the 9th minute, initiates upon the Sentinel's mid tier 1 tower using wards and then proceeding to disable enemy Invoker who ends up dead. The same fate had , that got Burrowstriked and killed off, right after using his ultimate. At 12 minutes, 20 seconds in, Rhasta uses his Serpent Wards on Scourge's Tier 1 Top tower but scourge will be pushed out by Invoker, Crixalis, Lich.

Later on, 14 minutes inro the game, Rhasta finds and kills off a severely wounded Void in Sentinel's bottom lane Jungle when in the meanwhile, at top lane Magina's, Vengeful's and Chen's tower dive gets killed while Invoker is watching, unable to provide any help.As we can see from the board, the Scourge's non-supportive heroes are in a slightly better position when it comes to creeps (177 against 173) but the Scourge is better leveled (summaries: 26 vs 29).

In the meantime, the score is coupled to 4-all. The game was being utterly balanced up until that point, with Orange having a slight upper hand due to levels and tower gold provided by the Sentinel's Tier 1 Mid tower but also Tier 1 Bottom that falls to the hands of Venomancer and Shadow Shaman at 15:12. Onwards, the Malaysian team kept the pace up, took Scourge's top tier 1 tower some seconds before 19 minutes in the game and established a nice map control advantage. 22 minutes in the game comes the first big fight, that finds Orange.eSports as the winners with a 4 for 0 trade, only allowing Invoker to escape using his Ghost Walk. From that point on, Orange kept the pace on and created constant mini-fights that were always in their favour, killing off 2 or 3 enemy heroes and loosing usually none.


As one can see from our summarizing board, the game turned out to be uneven after the 15th minute mark. The Scourge proceeded to totally dominate their enemies in every term possible, while it's pretty interesting to check out how they decide to fill the hole that less creep kills cause with Neutral kills. Orange, using their early advantage, advanced to pressure their enemies even more and by picking up heroes and killing tier 2 items they practically won the game. They started by killing the top Tier 2 tower, moved on to get an Aegis of the Immortal from Roshan, then finished ofg the bottom Tier 2 and moved on to mid where they finally found some defence, which they did overcome, starting at 34:2- when they took down the mid Tier 2 tower without any casualties for either team and finishing at 33:50 when after 's initiation they won a fight over the Sentinel, pushed down the barracks and forced their enemies to forfeit the game.

The gap created with the early game towers was too much for Mith.Trust to handle, and effectively gave the Scourge and especially Magina the boost he needed to become the decisive factor of the game. Especially in terms of items, the Scourge was so much better equipped than the Sentinel that one could wonder how come the game is not over yet. With all this extra early gold, the Anti-Mage managed to overcome the Sentinel and especially Faceless Void and ultimately carry his team to victory in what has been a hell of a first day for ESTC Winter 2011!

This wraps the analysis up. As you already know, the finalists for the first four groups are already set. This means that from group A we'll be seeing Orange.Esports, with no losses and MitH-Trust further in the tournament. Ritter-ART achieved the same feat as Orange and will be leaving group B together with Mixer to join the fray in the playoffs. As for group C, which had the most balanced results, MG.Asus and Exterminator take the lead. Unfortunately for G7, which had the same results as the winners, they were taken off due to their time rating. Finally, in group D we have the same style of results as the first two groups, letting Fate and MI.Powercolor emerge as victors for this round.

Thank you for reading and enjoy ESTC!

Links
GosuGamers - Replay of the Match