Rated Replay: GG.HoT vs. mTw-Satiini

Two of Europe's finest clans - Gravitas Gaming and Mortal Teamwork - clashed last Saturday in an extremely important game in the WC3L Qualifiers. Featuring players like Satiini, Rainbow, HoT and XyLigan, great games were to be expected and the players delivered for sure. The game that stood out from the rest was the second game between Gravitas' Mykhaylo "HoT" Novopashyn and mTw's Juha-Matti "Satiini" Bäckström. It's been long since a more epic Night Elf mirror match was played.

HoT gains an early advantage

After creeping a green spot early, HoT gets the Boots of Speed at the Goblin Merchant just before Satiini attempts to do the same. While HoT goes for a quick visit back at his base, the Finnish Night Elf player starts to creep the orange creepcamp to the north. The Ukranian is, however, aware of this and scrambles his Demon Hunter and archers, which is the same force as Satiini decides to muster early, to intercept his adversary. Although Satiini managed to finish off the Ogre Mage, he loses an Archer and is forced back. HoT adds the Naga Sea Witch as his secondary hero and continues to pressure Satiini in his base, but is driven back when the latter adds a Naga of his own.

Lore vs. Wind

Aware of his advantage, HoT decides to expand while making sure that Satiini is unable to do the same. After creeping his heroes a bit, it's the mTw player's turn to go on the offensive and he manages to take down the Tree of Life at HoT's expansion at the cost of three of his Archers. Despite of this, HoT has no trouble in rebuilding his expansion. At this stage of the game, both players are heading to tier 3 where Satiini opts for dual Ancient of Lores and HoT for dual Ancient of Winds. Aided by mercenaries and a superior income, HoT's musters an impressive army of Druids of the Talon and Archers.

Unable to put up an expansion of his own, Satiini stays put with a 50 food Druid of the Claw dominated army and soon begins to add Mountain Giants, a unit which is rarely put to use nowadays, to his army as well as putting up an Ancient of Wind for Faerie Dragons. The Dragons prove to be futile since HoT gets a group of Hippogryphs to counter them as well as adding more and more Mercenaries and even Ancients of War to tank for his powerful ranged army. Although HoT seems to be in control of the game, Satiini has a couple of succesful base-raids which buys him time to gather a larger force. As the game rages on a couple of larger battles take place and units are lost on both sides. Although HoT is able to rebuild his army quickly, all those fragile units are starting to become weaker against Satiini's Forked Lightning spell and melee army.

Walking trees take on Giants from the mountains

When both main goldmines run out, Satiini attempts to expand with his Tree of Eternity. HoT anticipates this well and takes it out, which once again puts him in the driver seat of this game. His adversary has, however, surpassed HoT in hero experience and is making him pay. But by maintaining his superior income, it still seems like the game will go to HoT who starts adding more and more Ancients and mercenaries to aid him in the final moments of the game. Things do look good for him, but when Satiini manages to pick off more and more Ancients his Demon Hunter turns level 6 and transforms with Metamorphosis. This completely turns the tide and spells the end for HoT's ambitions to take this game as he loses both his heroes.