The EG vs. Ks game took place at the ESWC Grand Finals in San Jose on the last week of August. This was not even a playoffs match, but arguably the most interesting one in the entire competition.

The match was crucial on Kingsurf's road to a second place in the world's most prestigious event. It was a gateway for the Asian team to go through to the playoffs allowing them to afford to lose to SK Gaming in group play.

ESWC tournament overview available here.

Line-ups

Evil-Geniuses: Lich / Mirana / Broodmother / Zeus / Eartshaker
Kingsurf: Dazzle / Spectre / Leshrac / Queen of Pain / Tidehunter

Nothing special about the line-ups - EG goes for a nasty AoE (Echo Slam > Chain Frost > Thundergod's wrath) and nuking combo, with Broodmother as an extemely strong main carry with free map-vision and Priestess as dynamic all-rounder.

Ks has a heavy AoE team (Ravage > Sonic Wave/Scream of Pain > Pulse Nova) as well, but they use Spectre as a very mobile carry with anti-initiation purpose against Earthshaker's Blink+Echo Slam opening and Dazzle is used to back-up Mercurial on the lane as well as later on with Shallow Grave.

Early game
Like in my previous replay analysis, I'm going to present you all lanes separately, to provide an in-depth overview.


Top-lane:
-EG: Kel'Thuzad - Lich (WhispeR), Mirana - Priestess of the Moon (King)
-Ks: Dazzle - Shadowpriest (SakuRa), Mercurial - Spectre (xiaogui)

EG's lane starts with a package of observer-wards. This is pretty unusal since most of the time teams buy sentry wards to save the cooldown on observer-wards as well as to counter a possible enemy ward. The thing to look out for here is the perfect ward placement by King, because he blocks the neutral spawn, has vision to avoid incoming enemy ganks and it cannot be seen from the other side since it's hidden in the trees.

It's very hard for Ks from the first second - Spectre is getting harassed a lot, Lich and Mirana are denying many creeps in addition to Dark Ritual, Dazzle cannot creep-pull since the spawn is blocked and so Spectre and Dazzle are always close to the enemy tower, leaving Spectre with almost no farm at all. To put an end to this Dazzle buys sentry wards 4:37, but it remains useless as he can't see the observer ward.

Ks' top-lane misery continues and it gets even worse when Zeus takes a little journey from bottom- to top-lane with an invis rune - no one dies here but the neutral spawn gets blocked again and Dazzle has to go back, losing valuable experience. At around 14 minutes, Spectre and Dazzle get killed, though Spectre manages to tear Lich apart before she dies. Mercurial has a poor farm and Shadowpriest is not lvl 6 yet to buff her with Shallow Grave.

Mid-lane:
-EG: Black Arachnia - Broodmother (Remstar)
-Ks: Leshrac - Tormented Soul (papaxiong)

For the few first minutes things aren't going as well for EG as on the top-lane. Here, Leshrac immediately goes for a package of sentry wards, to negate Broodmother's invis advantage. He's playing very aggressive, harassing the Broodmother as much as possible, keeping him below 50% HP most of the time. Therefore Broodmother is not able to farm with his normal attack and is forced to last hit with Spawn Spiderlings only. However, Broodmother is showing some resistance, by harassing Leshrac with the spawned Spiderlings.

Around 7:00 Broodmother gets himself some sentries and destroys Leshrac's wards, and is farming pretty well from now on. A few minutes later, the Queen of Pain who had come for a gank on Broodmother before gets killed by Mirana, because of a decent arrow. At 14 minutes Leshrac gets killed by Black Arachnia, with the aid of Zeus' ultimate.

Bottom-lane:
-EG: Zeus – Lord of Olympia (DOGKaiser), Raigor Stonehoof – Earthshaker (HiT0Mi)
-Ks: Leviathan – Tidehunter (x|aOmA), Akasha – Queen of Pain (YamateH)

This lane is a great example of what advantage creep-pulling gives you. As Ks does not buy wards for the bottom-lane creepspot, you will see Earthshaker in the woods most of the time. At the 4th minute mark Earthshaker is on the same level as Akasha and Leviathan, while Zeus is one level ahead. Another thing is that EG is close to their tower most of the time, thus the chance of getting ganked is much lower – everything done with creep-pulling.

At around 7 minutes Queen of Pain and Tidehunter try to go for Zeus behind the tower. Zeus hides in the narrow wood-way just below the tower while Tidehunter and Queen of Pain try to surround him there. With a fissure and a nice juke Zeus manages to go around Leviathan and escape. Now Leviathan finds himself in a bad situation, since he's behind the tower and there is no creep-backup.


Thus, shortly after Zeus gets the First Blood on Tidehunter with Earthshaker's stun assist:

The lane stays quite calm for a while, since Akasha and Zeus are ganking from time to time.

Watch out for a great action by Queen of Pain (YamateH), around the 15th -16th minute! With awesome play YamateH ends up with 3 kills there just with the backup of spectre although he gets finished off by Zeus in the end.

Also, do not miss how Broodmother and Zeus try to push the middle tower around 18 minutes. As it goes down to low hp, Leviathan overwhelms them with an awesome TP+Ravage combo while Akasha's and Leshrac's follow-up put a quick end to them. The tower gets denied and the Midgame has begun.

Early game update (18 minutes):


Mid game:
The mid game goes really well for EG – they pick quite some team fights which they are able to win, while Broodmother grabs lots of kills and has a very good farm. Ks' on the other hand is having a tough time, as they lose many towers and most of the fights, on top of that Spectre still has no Diffusal Blade yet.

There are two big skirmishes happening throughout the first phase of the mid game:

The first is at the 22th minute – a really nice fight for EG at Ks' top tower, Leshrac gets intercepted before the battle starts so EG has the initial advantage here: 2-5 exchange for EG.

While the second is at the 25th minute – Broodmother has aquired her BKB before this fight, and so the outcome is quite clear in this stage of the game. 2-4 in favour of EG.



Between and after the fights both teams are mostly farming, as the late game has probably the most importance in the current type of game. In addition to that, the lack of Boots of Travel has to be considered, thus the lack of mobility and with it the inability to push other lanes after great clashes. Therefore farming is likely the best available option, particularly if the battle happened just in front of the own base. Another reason for the farming - especially in this game - is Dazzle's ultimate, which means that EG has only a short amount of time to push, even if they kill a lot of heroes.

Mid-game update (30 minutes):


In the second phase, Ks slowly starts to come back into the game. With a Diffusal Blade on Spectre and a Guinsoo on Akasha teamfights run much better for them, but of course EG remains as the dominant force in the midgame with a stacked Broodmother and awesome spell combos.

Important actions in the second phase of the mid-game:

35 minutes – A fight near Ks' mid-lane tower, Broodmother miss-uses BKB and so Ks decides to start a fight. This time it's a 3-3 barter, but Broodmother gets a triple kill here, so one could say that EG is the actual winner of this fight.

40 minutes – EG takes down Roshan, after Broodmother had picked off Leshrac.

43 minutes – Top-lane push by EG; Ks' tries to buy time by teleporting on the tower. Queen of Pain decides to finish the teleport and to start the defense, but gets stunned instantly and almost dies, forcing her to stay out of the fight. 3-2 tradeoff for EG.

46 minutes – A fight started by Akasha and Spectre, who tried to gank Earthshaker and Lich near EG's bottom tower. 3-4 swap for EG.



As you can see, EG clearly dominates the midgame (especially because of the really really strong Broodmother), but they couldn't take down a single lane yet, perspicuously showing the power of Shallow Grave. Dazzle is not really present in the fights himself, since he has no items and is totally underleveled, but the buff on key heroes like Queen of Pain and Spectre makes the vital difference for Ks in this game.

Mid-game update (46minutes):


Late-game:
Onto the late-game EG's mid-game dominance slowly fades away, though Broodmother is unstoppable they still can't get into Ks' base. Spectre and Queen of Pain are getting more powerful, while Broodmother can't get much stronger anymore and Ks' does numerous successful ganks on Earthshaker, Lich and Zeus.

NOTE: Around 50:XX both teams' couriers get killed - at first Ks' courier dies, with circlets and wards in it, shortly after Akasha takes down EG's courier containing Broodmother's Buriza recipe. Bad luck for Broodmother!

At 52 minutes Ks attempt to kill Roshan, but since there's a web in Roshan's lair EG immediately make a move to interrupt them, which turns out to be successful. Eventually, EG takes Roshan down and Broodmother grabs the aegis.

One minute later around the 53th minute, it's game time for EG who go for a backdoor on the scourge's second bottom-lane tower (this is allowed due to ESWC rules) as they want to take down the barracks now. EG directly move on to the middle-lane base tower, to backdoor it. With a solid defense Ks' take down three of EG's heroes with only one casualty. This displays the beginning of an end for EG, since things only get worse for them from this point.

From now on Ks' is using Spectre's and Akasha's mobility (Haunt / Boots of Travel) to permanently push all of EG's lanes, completely crippling them within their base, since no one of EG has bought Boots of Travel (except for Broodmother in the very end). In addition to that, Akasha and Spectre always have the Shallow Grave buff, allowing them to suicide push if needed.

Late-game update (62minutes):


Around 66 minutes, EG make a crucial mistake – Broodmother, Lich and Priestess are scouting the area around Roshan, when they encounter Leviathan and try to kill him. As they are distracted by the Tidehunter, Queen of Pain and Spectre comfortably take down EG's bottom barracks, because Broodmother has no townportal.

At 77 minutes the game is decided, Broodmother dies twice within a short period of time and has no money left for a buyout. All lanes are pushed and so EG can't defend against Ks' full force, barracks go down and finally the world tree. GG – Kingsurf wins.

Final Stats:


This was a very interesting game to say the least. It is safe to state that EG was dominating early- to mid-game and even the early stage of the late-game, but they couldn't 'seal the deal', because they were unable to push into Ks' base. Plus the lack of a Guinsoo and Spectre's counter-initiation versus Earthshaker's dagger turned out to be neck-breaking for EG.

Also, this game is a great example of how powerful Shallow Grave is/was (it got changed in the new version) as you can see Dazzle had no items at all (in a 78 minutes game !), he just bought a massive amount of wards throughout the game and buffed Mercurial and Akasha. So basically team fights were mostly 5on4 situations for Ks'.

However, they still managed to win as Akasha and especially Spectre didn't lose gold as well as they didn't even take half of the time to revive and defend/farm after. In addition to that, you have to consider that EG had a Broodmother with a full inventory (which is probably one of the strongest late-game heroes in the current version), that couldn't take win for them.

Nevertheless, both teams showed an awesome performance in this game and it's a well deserved win for Ks. Good game!

The replay is avaiable for download here