So you've gotten a group of friends together and you've decided that its time to start playing dota in a properly organised fashion against other teams, there are a few things you're gonna want to think about to try to up your standard a bit more than everyone just playing as they would in a public game.
Lineups
One of the important things here is knowing the strengths of each of the players on your team. Theres no point picking up batrider for example if you've got no-one on the team who can play him - take heroes that your players are already well versed in and confident with.
At this stage, more important that picking the best heroes is just picking heroes that your team plays decently, and making sure the team has a balance to it. Obviously if everyone on the team thinks they want to play a carry hero, dont pick 5 carries.. use some common sense. But there's no reason you can't be bringing heroes like Leshrac, Skeleton King, Pudge, etc, etc into your lineups if thats what your players like, even if they're not seen too often in competitive lineups.
Be sensible with the balance of your team, 1 carry and a semi-carry is definately sufficient carry power, 1 or 2 full-on support heroes is nice, a couple of heroes with AoE capacity is nice, a dedicated initiator or two is nice (shaker, tide, crixalis, puck, you get the picture), heroes with decent ganking and/or pushing capacity that span across these roles are nice.
I think what I'm trying to say is don't try to pick a lineup of 5 full AoE based heroes, the chances of actually getting a teamfight off exactly as you want to aren't too high, and you're pretty well countered by bkb's and pipe. Equally, its probably not the best idea to pick 5 target stun gankers lacking in AoE, because you're completely messed up by pushing heroes. Basically just pick a nice range of heroes, that will mesh decently with each other.
This is something you'll learn with time I guess, but most important thing to take away is that you dont have to pick up all the "imba" heroes, you can craft a lineup to your individual players' strengths and it'll work just as well in lower level games.
Know your roles
Making sure that everyone on the team knows what they're supposed to be doing is very important. If you're running a Warlock + Spectre lane, make sure that the warlock is doing a good job of harassing the opponents and not taking many creep kills, later in the game he shouldn't be sitting around farming. Equally, the spectre should know that he's supposed to take as many creep kills as possible, and during the mid-game phase should be trying to farm and not running about the map trying to get involved in as many ganks as possible. May sound like common sense, but can quite often be gotten very wrong by inexperienced players.
If a hero is meant to be buying the chicken, make sure they know that. If one hero is meant to initiate a teamfight before anyone else, make sure they know that. If one hero is meant to be buying wards rather than other items, make sure they know that.
Cunning tricks of the trade, to give you the upperhand
Upgrade your chicken to flying courier nice and early! Gives you a definate advantage well worth the cost, items come quicker, courier is much less likely to die, you can refill bottles nice and quickly with it.
Observer wards on Level 1 (shock, horror). This should definately be done to give you immediate rune control. They don't have to be bought by your designated ward-buyer for the rest of the game, anyone can by the wards as part of their starting items - I quite often end up picking them up at the start with potm for example.
The ward war: so you've got one of your heroes buying observer wards, great, but its not enough. You should also be getting sentry wards to destroy opponents observer wards, map control via warding is such an important part of the game it can't be overlooked at all.
Level 1 first-blood. This is often quite a clever thing to do in a clan war situation too - send a couple of ganking heroes against their solo on level 1 to kill it off, giving their solo hero a disadvantage for the rest of the game. Can also be coupled with picking a rune up early for extra killing potential.
Heres a pretty funny replay of a fun war from a few days ago where we went with sand king and lina both going mid at the start with viper to get a kill on Kunkka on Level 1, so that viper would have an easier time in the lane from then on. Worked a charm, but the opponents showed a bit of bad manners and left the game after we beat them rather easily early on, pah. Still, shows how to first-blood early for some fun times :D
Download Replay
Well thats about all really, moving your play up into clan wars is a great thing to do, but you cant just play them the same as you would a random public game, gotta be some teamwork shown there too :)
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