Heroes of Newerth Week Three Round-up

This past week saw the Heroes of Newerth (HoN) Telkom Do Gaming Online League 2010 heat up with some big wins and some potential upsets in the groups.

In Group B, the biggest upturn of this round's games was ZtM beating Pantheon Gaming in a closely contested game that lasted 52 minutes. ZtM topped the kills with 48-30 and the combination of Deadwood, Pestilence, Defiler, Valkyrie and Soul Reaper proved too much for Pantheon to handle.

Also in Group B, oWnage Ouens (0ND) were able to best RuRu in a 23 minute game with a final score of 30 kills to four, while MrD Crows were able to beat S7S in what was seen as quite a close contest with a final score of 43-22.

MrD Crows picked Andromeda, Predator, Pyromancer, Accursed and Magmus which was able to allow the Predator time to farm a lot of gold in order to get items. The combination of Plague Rider, Legionnaire, Witch Slayer, Forsaken Archer and Hammerstorm were unable to best them.

Due to Section 8 dropping out of the HoN League, Group A is now open to anyone. Synergy Gaming and Kai managed to easily win their games against LoeG and DNA respectively. Kai was able to win their game in the fastest time yet in the league, a time of 19 minutes and 33 seconds.

ZtM versus Pantheon

Do Gaming caught up with Matt ‘fluKe’ Merks from Pantheon to find out what went wrong in last night’s game against ZtM.

Telkom Do Gaming (DG): So what happened last night?

Well, we were a bit unfortunate with multiple people from both teams dropping during the drafting (hero picks), where we were unable to pause. We played badly, we lacked the coordination to gain the upper hand and lost due to a harder carry and support play.

DG: So with the drafting, did your captain drop and how did this affect the team?

Paul ‘Vetoll’ Fairbank dropped from our side as well as two other players and a couple from ZtM. We had first pick and had used up most of our overtime. Due to their bans, we ended up with a hero selection we would not have necessarily picked. So in essence, we were rushed on our final picks, but we were still confident.

DG: So how did you guys play badly? Did you not have any Wards or was the Carry not farming well?

I believe we made too many mistakes while trying to gang. There were too many 4v2 situations where we did not get a kill. This was also hindered by me playing Carry as I was unable to get to the team quick enough. We basically fell behind without being killed.

DG: Do you feel you guys could beat them given another chance?

No doubt. Unfortunately, it was just one of those games where the whole team underperformed.

DG: So where to from here? Pantheon still has oWnage Ouens (0ND) and MrC Crows left to play. How are you guys going to approach these games?

This loss was a big wake up call to us. I think the shock will force us to play smarter for the rest of the leg. We still have an opportunity to tie for first place in the group. We have regarded 0ND as our main competition in our group and they play well together but I think their strategy can be exploited. We haven’t given much though to MrD Crows as all of our talks have been regarding ZtM and 0ND.

DG: Thanks for your time, any shout outs?

Everyone is curious about our new player and when we will announce him. He will be playing with us at the Wits competition on Saturday, so people will see then.

Shout out to Nicky for being the one that supports my passion.