[Replay] Fun war & some notes on -cm drafting

This is a fun war played 2 days ago that I thought I'd share on here to emphasise something about banning/picking in -cm mode that I wanted to talk about. Its just with some guys I know, not exactly our "first team" of players, but tollfin is there who is our usual captain. Not a serious game, we're not on teamspeak together so lacking a bit in co-ordination, but still is a pretty nice watch in some respects.

Link to replay parser & download: http://www.dotaparser.com/index.php/replay/view/63816/

FoQ (Sentinel)	WMA (Scourge)
Bans
Picks (Scourge with first pick)

Spoiler:

Sentinel Wins!

Although the scourge team went for more sort of "fun" picks whilst we went for proper league-type picks, its still worth the watch, and there are some good moments. Our shadow fiend plays nicely, maiden ganks well, my arrows seem to practically have auto-aim on, maiden aura allows for lots of mana for gank opportunities... was fun.

Notes on -cm drafting

Ok, the thing I wanted to get across via this replay was that you dont always have to ban the "nastiest" heroes, you can actually allow the other team a top tier pick, if it allows you to pick what you want. All too often I see teams with the 2nd pick banning all the top tier heroes, in order to prevent any being taken by the opposing team with their first pick of the pool. This isn't the way it needs to be done, if you have the 2nd pick, you can leave lots of high tier heroes in the pool so that although your opponents get one with the first pick, you then have the chance to pick up 2 of them.

In this game, you can see by the chat my team asking me to ban nerub, presumably because they know he's "imba" and we couldnt afford to allow the other team to get him. But what they failed to recognise was that I'd also left Dirge and Necrolyte in the hero pool, two of the best possible picks still this version. Basically by leaving 3 of the top heroes in the pool, I force the opponents to pick 1 of them, and allow me the other 2... which was perfectly fine, I would happily give away one of those heroes in order to obtain the other two. As it happens, they picked necrolyte, setting me up nicely with nerub and undying.

So people, just because a hero is "imba", doesn't mean you 100% have to ban it. You can even "give" the opposition a high-tier hero, in order for you to pick a strategy that counters it. If you allow the opponents to first pick a hero that forces them to continue down a particular strategy route which your team will be perfectly fashioned to beat, by all means allow them that nast pick. Of course, don't go throwing around high tier heroes to teams if you dont have to, but if you be clever about it, you can create some nice strategies :)


Thats about all I wanted to say really - take home message, you dont always have to ban the top heroes, sometimes its a worthwhile sacrifice to give one to the opposition and come away with the heroes that you want to pick.