Greetings, It's a new season with new matches for me to report back on. For the first match we are taking a look at the round 1 match between AkhundelarAcademy and Falstad No Travels in division 3. Will AkhundelarAcademy take their first victory this season or will Falstad No Travels take the match back home?
Match link: https://heroeslounge.gg/match/view/9458
I also recommend watching the VOD from HeroesAtSchool cast of the game here (starts at 03:21:00)
Previous standings
Falstad No Travels is a new team, but with several players having a common origin from a div 1 team called Grow Up eSports back in season 4 through 6. AkhundelarAcademy is also a newly established team, with the only different being all their players have no previous experience with Heroes Lounge.
Result
Game 1 on Cursed Hollow was quite even, until AkhundelarAcademy went for their boss as soon as they got level 10 talents. Falstad No Travels sniffed it out, however, and managed to steal the boss and get four kills as a result, putting them massively ahead in the game. Falstad No Travels won the fight over the fourth tribute soon after with a level 13 talent advantage and could get their first curse. Later in the game Falstad No Travels attempted to take AkhundelarAcademy boss again. However, AkhundelarAcademy would not let themselves get duped twice and managed to get the boss and four kills. With that same boss AkhundelarAcademy could end game 1 after things looking quite grim for them not long ago.
Game 2 took us to the newly added map added to the Heroes Lounge map pool, Braxis Holdout. AkhundelarAcademy was dominating the game by withering down the enemy structures slowly, until nothing was left, after the three first full wave and the two bosses they had taken. When Falstad No Travels in the late game got their first full wave AkhundelarAcademy just opted to push with what little wave they had and win game 2, a lot more confidently than what they did in game 1.
MVP
The MVP for this match I choose to hand out to AkhundelarAcademy solo laner Lulliduf. In game 1 as Deathwing he held his lane okay, but where he really shined was his impact in the teamfights. He always managed to be well positioned with his hero, making him able to dish out damage while still not losing too much health doing it. There were also several instances with him landing into the opponents team would net his team a quick kill before the teamfight really started. Lastly, he would always hold his Q to set it up with an allied heroes ability, which did get his team that last bit of damage needed to secure a kill.
However, in game 2 it was more about his solo lane capabilities on Chen that was noteworthy. Top lane was quite even on a map such as Braxis Holdout, but they had drafted Chen with the small advantage over Imperious in that he does not require mana. Which Lulliduf really seemed aware of and took advantage of by provoking Imperious to use his abilities, which eventually led to Imperious having to back or send an ally top to gank. During teamfights Chen had the strategy of popping his ult Storm, Earth and Fire to jump on the backline, keeping a large part of the opponents team busy getting the pandas away from their backline, meanwhile Lullidufs team could focus one target down more easily.
Play of the game
This fight just after both teams hit level 10 talents put Falstad No Travels quite ahead in the game.
Highlights
AkhundelarAcademy was out for revenge after their previous boss was stolen. After winning the boss they could walk all the way to core with it and end game 1.
Kael'Thas kept himself alive long enough for his rescue team to come and save him. In the end it was actually AkhundelarAcademy during the chasing that lost one hero.
Interview
I meet up with Folstag, Lulliduf and Behemoth from AkhundelarAcademy for a quick chat after the match.
First of all congratulations, for your victory. I am sure it’s a confidence boost to get a win at the start of the season?
Behemoth: Yeah, it's quite a confidence booster to win the first matches, although we're still down to earth and know that harder games will face us in the near future. So we're happy, but still focused.
Folstag: Yeah, its nice to start with a win, but we need to not get overconfident for all the next matches.
Are you satisfied with your performance today?
Folstag: We are globally satisfied, but we also did some noticeable mistake, but in general we did a good game and we can only do better
Behemoth: During the first game we made a huge mistake that could have cost us the game, giving a free boss is never a good idea folks! But we stayed focused, had a good macro and came back on the tracks when enemy team got the confidence to start our boss 4v4. We had it stolen from us earlier, and it snowballed hard, we were happy that this game ended to be honest We were way happier from the second game, we made little to no mistake, had a really good macro and good team movements, so we're happy with that performance. We still have a margin for progress, as we did obviously some mistakes and had some bad focuses as well.
Your team was placed in div 3, does your team have any goals, you hope to achieve this season?
Lulliduf: Not now
Behemoth: Yeah, I think its too early to set goals like climbing to another division. I’m the one who lowered the mmr of the team, hehe
Lulliduf: We did some scrims with division 2 and 3 teams though, before this match.
Behemoth: It went well
Lulliduf: Yeah, we won most of them so we were quite confident before this match, and climbing to division 2. Maybe division 1 someday, we will see.
Folstag: Yeah, when we say we won a lot of them, generally it was 50/50. So ….
Behemoth: That is a lot, hehe
Folstag: But we int in some games so it doesn’t count.
Now AkhundelarAcademy is a unique name how did you guys come up with it. Is it representative of what your players do?
Behemoth: Well, you know about StarCraft? Well, some of us have played in tournaments there. So, we found it fitting to have a name coming from StarCraft so we went for Akhundelar. As heroes such as Tassadar was an ahkundelar, which means the tip of the spear, those sent in all the way in front of the attacking waves. Our understanding of the word, however, are the Protoss who feeds.
Folstag: So, adding the word academy to it we are basically the Feeding Academy, which we feel fits us perfectly.
How did the team come together?
Folstag: Me and Lullidof started it I guess. We played Heroes quite regularly and are masters to. So, one day I asked him why we didn’t play competitively. And he agreed with me. So, we began to ask our friends who we knew played regularly as well, to see if they wanted to join us.
Lullidof: Then we had some practices, got in some more people, and here we are.
Thank you for your time, anything you would like to add before the interview ends?
Behemoth: Yeah, shoutout to the casters of this tournament, because without them we couldn’t play this kind of matches. And that is really important for us, we can make some good progress because of that. So, thank you guys and we had great fun today.
That's all for this seasons start of match reports. Many thanks to the members of AkhundelarAcademy for the interview.
Written by Mekaku
Heroes Lounge Content Creator, Member of EU Division 4 team Munchies.
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