Last night we had great plans. Plans which involved team shooters. But the first few of us who were on Teamspeak decided to have a game of Dota 2 while we waited. Five hours later we stopped playing Dota 2. Sorry. We did get eight of us playing though, at least briefly, which was good. Unfortunately it means I have nothing other than Dota 2 to write about today.
Mr Johnson, last night.
A run of five games were played last night, four 5punky and a proper match vs humans. I completely forgot to take any screenshots whatsoever. Game one was a 3v3 5punky random match: Roman, Anery and Johnson against myself, Fabyak and Bits. We all got fairly mundane heroes (although I think Bits randomed the micromanagement hell of Meepo twice in the course of the night) with maybe the exception of Fab’s Nature’s Prophet. I was somewhat pleased with Templar Assassin, who I’d done fairly well as before. Things didn’t go as well this time and myself and Fab got a bit of a kicking, and ultimately our team lost. Roman (Windrunner) narrowly beat Anery (Mirana) as man of the match, but nobody was outright awful. The theme of conversation at this stage is pretty much summed up by the line “my Dad might not be tougher than your dad, but he’ll seduce him then bum him.” Disarming.
Round two brought more 5punkers into the fray, setting up myself, Roman, Anery and MJ against Fab, Shoes, Tezz and Bits. On paper it was a bit of a walkover for my team, despite Anery being called away for work mid-game. It probably was a rout towards the end, but there were some good individual fights put up and Fab and Shoes’s Lion/Sand King combo was proving to be what I believe the pros term ‘a right bastard’ on many occasions. We noticed during this game that when Anery DCd the bot on the other team simulated doing the same, which was a nice touch. By this stage the conversation had graduated to favours paid for in designer handbags, and Shoes sharing with us a CG picture of a wolf wanking a naked man off. Thanks Shoes, if only for the wolf-wanking theme that permeated the rest of the night (and was a contender for this diary’s title).
No, I’m not putting the picture here. You sick bastard.
Game three then. I hadn’t noticed it last game because he was on my side, but Lycanthrope was to become an unpleasant fixture for most of the games, by coincidence or otherwise. I’m thinking Mr Johnson liked the pic Shoes posted so much that he had to see more wolves. And see more wolves we all did, the bastard. Statistically Johnson wasn’t his team’s strongest player, but the one resounding memory I have of the match is failing to overcome his health regen while having my bum bitten by wolves, accompanied by Johnson’s frenzied “omnomnomnomnom” over Teamspeak. We lost.
Game four was down to 3v3 again. Random characters did not treat the Dire team well, with both Johnson and Tezz struggling to get to grips with Visage and Bane respectively. Fab, however, ended the game with a bloody impressive 623 xp/min despite losing. I picked up Enigma, who I hadn’t played before, and while I liked all the mini-mes he spawns I think I’d have fared badly too if I wasn’t being carried by Roman and Bits.
The last game was against human people. We often get a beating, possibly because of the mix of skill levels mean we get matched against Roman/Bits scale players but are actually mainly consisted of 5punkers bumming about in the form of me, Fab and MJ. This game was looking to go the same way as we were something like 23 for 5 kills down, faced against what was looking like a well coordinated, skilful opposing team. Lycanthrope had made another appearance on their side, as had Enigma, but most telling was Rubik. Rubik is a very difficult character to play well, one you see more often in pro games than low level public matches. He was either cocky or very good, and at that stage it was looking like the latter. We were losing towers, mid had been pushed almost to the barracks, and then somehow we got our shit together.
Pic unrelated. But we all hate Sniper, right?
Despite being levels behind, we coordinated our way into ganking them as they pushed towers in groups. We were still taking losses, but we were winning the team fights. It was looking as though it wasn’t going to be good enough though. Our mid ‘rax fell and the bottom one was wobbly. We managed to team-wipe them and pushed their bottom lane right back to their own barracks. Then as we fell back we got caught out. All but Fab, who was making himself useful by scouting them out as Riki, were wiped out in a nasty gank, and they were hammering our ancient. With only a sliver of health left and a couple of us who had bought back to try to harass it was game over and I tapped ‘gg’ into chat.
Then we performed another miracle. They started dying, and fast. I can’t even remember who it was (although I know it wasn’t me), but between the two or three of them they wiped out the enemy team mere seconds before our ancient fell. We jumped on the chance to push, hitting the mid lane like a steam train and bowling right up to their barracks. They tried to recover in dribs and drabs and were taken out again and again. We were gloating over what they must have been saying to each other. It wasn’t enough though, in the end. We pushed our luck and eventually they took enough attrition on us that we took some casualties and were scattered. They weren’t taking any chances this time and the gank-train steamed back again to finally take the game. As a loss though, it felt like a victory. To be able to recover from the brink of disaster like that was exhilarating, the best game we’d played. a ‘gg’ indeed.