The VOD is up here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k4pQ2HRW9Vo. Special thanks to Luminous for casting and uploading the VODs.
I just watched the VOD to get the caster/commentary perspective on the game. I know I made some minor mistakes this game. I definitely should have been more active in using the hawk and pig, especially during team fights. When I made the decision to go BKB, I should have skipped Arcane Boots and gone straight BKB---that 1k gold delay made it a more-or-less useless item. Toxin suggested after the game that it would have been better to go Force Staff, and, having seen the VOD, I agree.
This game is a good example of a team executing well early and then throwing away the win by executing poorly down the stretch. Our early game was pretty strong. I definitely didn't like having to play the Beastmaster "throwaway" lane at bottom, and giving Pugna a free Arcane/Mek definitely hurt us, but since it took Pudge ganking/a silly mistake by me (if I had been more active with the pig I would have seen Pudge much earlier and nullified the gank) to get the kill. This gave our Invoker some extra farm mid which was integral to our strong early team fights and his 9-0 spree. When we took a good advantage in fights early we were all pretty confident that, if we executed well for the rest of the game, we would take the win. The hardest carry for Scourge side was a Panda, and he would have to go up against Chaos Knight, Invoker, and Dark Seer('s wall) late.
Unfortunately we executed really poorly down the stretch. There were three team fights that should never have happened: the one at bottom river where we engaged, threw some stuns, and I ran through the enemy team to escape through the other side only to turn around and come back because my team was still fighting them; the one at mid where Pudge was able to walk around behind us and we scattered and got picked off; and the one at top where we ran out of our base to chase a hero and ES/Pudge were able to use fissure to split the team and hook the Invoker out and focus us down one at a time. Every one of those engagements was a silly one by our team. When the bottom engagement happened, we had taken a good lead on kills early already and were poised to transition into the late game on even ground in terms of levels and gold. Instead of engaging we should have just backed off. Ditto for the other two fights. In particular, the third fight was silly. We could have simply defended base. With Invoker and Darkseer, it's possible to rebuff almost any push. Every one of those fights was a loss and gave team Mist the one thing that would let them beat us: level advantage. The gold they got from those fights didn't translate into much that could beat us, but the huge level advantage that they got over our team meant that they could simply outlast our damage and grind us down with Thunder Clap/Rot/Blast spam.
Overall I think it was a really fun tournament, and, for a team that was basically a pick-up group (the first time I played with our five was our round one match), we played really well. I'm considering uploading the replays from all our games, but the VODs are online, and, frankly, rounds 1-3 were one-sided stomps that probably aren't worth watching (unless you have a huge desire to see a 5 minute midas/9 minute Dagon into Heaven's Halberd on Ancient Apparation...).
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