From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

The first round of the qualifiers against Team Master was uneventful, with a comfortable 2-0 victory. In the second round, Team Soulstone will face Team Brothers.

At 3 p.m. the next day, the five brothers sat in front of their computers on time and turned on their webcams. They all looked relaxed. They had already analyzed the draft strategy for the match against the Brothers team the day before.

At the start of the draft phase, Brothers immediately picked Puck as their first hero, a mid-lane pick that Brothers was very confident in, and a continuation of their draft strategy from the previous games.

[Puck's pick was expected, so let's stick to plan. Night Stalker and Lion are in the lineup to boost Bear's strength!]

Gu Ran smiled. Their Night Demon can play both the second and third positions, and is specifically designed to counter teams that like to pick Puck first.

"The Soul Stone team picked Night Stalker and Garen right away! This hero selection is so targeted, two heroes that counter Puck, and they picked them so quickly, it's like they knew the opponent would pick Puck first."

Commentator Feng Zhuiyi noticed that the Soul Stone was specifically targeting two heroes, and lamented that Xiong Ge wasn't having a good time this game.

"Brothers picked Phoenix in position 5 to counter the enemy Night Stalker, and Rubick in position 4, which is Kaka's favorite champion. They probably picked him because the enemy Lion's skills are quite good."

Their support picks are fairly standard. While Phoenix's egg transformation forces daytime and Rubick can steal Lion's abilities, these three heroes already reveal a problem: low mid-game damage. The enemy's offlane needs a damage-dealing hero. If we pick Drow Ranger, they'll likely be playing Timbersaw, so we can pick Witch Doctor for our support to counter him.

Lao Fang evaluated the opponent's first three picks and then pointed out his own team's advantageous lane combination based on the analysis.

"When it comes to Soul Stone, they immediately picked the Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor combo. This combo is very strong in lane. Let's see what offlaner Brothers will pick to counter it, or will they choose to pick a carry first?"

Commentator AA has already sensed the strength of the Soul Stone in the lane, and he is also considering what to build for Brothers. It is not easy to build Terrorblade and Kayn on Drow Ranger, and there doesn't seem to be anything worth fighting for in the carry position. Timbersaw is usually a good counter to Drow Ranger, but this Witch Doctor makes people hesitate about whether to build it.

"They still chose Timbersaw, which is indeed better against Drow Ranger, but Witch Doctor counters Timbersaw in lane. It feels like Brothers picked Timbersaw against Witch Doctor, and they're going to be in trouble in lane."

At this moment, in the voice channel of the Soul Stone

[We banned Tiny, and their last two bans were Doom and Underlord, basically meaning they're going to pick Naga Siren. They've won with this hero in the Immortal Cup, so they'll pick her.]

Gu Ran made a prediction about the opponent's position one pick.

[It's okay, we won't ban Naga Siren and will let him pick her. We'll give Lu Chen a Plague Mage later so he can farm Naga Siren in lane. With their three cores countered and no damage output in the mid-game, we can easily push and win.]

Old Fang said he would give them the little Naga to take.

As expected, the subsequent drafts saw Brothers pick Naga Siren, an uncommon carry pick in this patch, while Soul Stone immediately picked Necrophos.

The lineup is finalized. The Soul Stone team is Radiant, with Drow Ranger in position 1, Night Stalker in position 2, Necrophos in position 3, Lion in position 4, and Witch Doctor in position 5.

Brothers team's lineup consists of Naga Siren as carry, Puck as mid, Timbersaw as offlane, Rubick as support, and Phoenix as position 5.

At this moment in oldchicken's live stream:

"How did they pick this lineup? Giving my Bear a Puck pick against a Night Stalker and Lion, how are we supposed to play? They already rely on Bear's tempo, and now they're making him tank the pressure. Picking Timbersaw in the offlane against Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor is a recipe for disaster. And Necrophos in the top lane against illusion-based teams is just a pushover. This lineup is ridiculously bad!"

[Chicken Bro is secretly overjoyed. He really can't let Bear Bro and Kaspersky get into TI, otherwise who will he play ARAM with?]

[That's correct; the sword is bound to be won.]

[Is Emperor Gaozu about to fall again in Pei County?]

The screen was flooded with comments.

Commentators in various live streams expressed their pessimism about Brothers' lineup, saying that regardless of their late-game team fights, their laning phase seemed doomed.

[The opposing team's strategy seems to be to win by having Naga Siren and Puck push lanes in the mid-game and avoid direct confrontation with us by playing mind games with minions. However, it feels like they're a physically strong team and can't handle such high-level tactics. Their previous wins were mostly due to snowballing their lane advantages. This time, they'll likely roam to other lanes if they fall behind in their lanes, so we just need to be mindful of that.]

As Gu Ran left, he and his teammates analyzed the opponent's possible intentions.

[No problem, we'll buff them in lane. Hey Lao Fang, let's put a ward here and wait. When their third and fourth tiers come back after taking the bounty rune, we'll unleash our full combo.]

Jiangxia's Lion and Lao Fang's Witch Doctor placed a ward above the stairs leading to the tri-zone in the Dire mid lane, then stood there waiting for the enemy to come. When they saw Timbersaw, the Witch Doctor immediately cast a curse, Lion used Impale, and the two chased after Timbersaw, forcing him to learn Chains at level one to escape. By the time he reached his own high ground, his health had been reduced to a sliver.

"The damage from the Witch Doctor's curse is still terrifying. The lower the enemy's health, the higher the damage. It's hard to imagine any other skill that can deal more damage in the early game than this one."

Seeing the horrific state of the logging machine, the two commentators could only offer a three-second moment of silence.

The bottom lane was already at a disadvantage, and Timbersaw was heavily fed before even reaching lane, making the laning phase a complete disaster. Around 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the game, Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor finally snowballed their advantage and found an opportunity to kill Kaka's Rubick, securing First Blood. At this point, Drow Ranger had 11-5 CS, while Timbersaw only had 5 last hits.

"The bottom lane is already destroyed. Now it's 3 minutes and 25 seconds. You can see that our Kaka is taking advantage of the bottom lane minions pushing into the tower so that Timbersaw can farm under the tower. He is quietly moving from the Radiant main jungle to the mid lane to roam against the enemy mid laner Night Stalker. He has already pinged the signal in advance. The top lane Phoenix has also retreated to the tower to prepare to TP to support."

The commentator AA noticed Labick's attempt to move around.

"But is the mid lane strong enough to kill this Night Stalker? You can see Night Stalker standing right in the middle of the river. When Rubick reached the mid-lane high ground stairs, Phoenix immediately teleported back! Night Stalker also immediately ran back, and Witch Doctor reacted quickly, teleporting to his own mid-lane tower to save Night Stalker!"

Both commentators could tell that this attack was unlikely to kill Night Stalker, but the players on the field still wanted to try, since they didn't have a god's-eye view.

"No good. This Night Stalker still has nearly 400 health after consuming Puck's Illusion Orb, and he has six Magic Wands in his hand. Rubick's level 1 stun duration is too short to even get a few auto-attacks. Even if Phoenix comes over, its damage is very low. This game exposes the problem of the Dire's two supports having low damage – three people can't kill the enemy Night Stalker."

However, even though the phoenix had already teleported over, it couldn't just walk back. The phoenix charged over and gave Gu Ran a Fire Spirit, but Gu Ran was immediately cursed by the witch doctor and died from the curse when he reached the river.

OldFang defeated Tianming and received 190 gold coins + 41 gold coins and 1 hero.