Round 2 match report - Xzone vs The Rantners

Hey again, first of all good new decade. I have with me a match report from round 2 between Xzone and The Rantners in division 7 for you to enjoy in these times. Both teams came into the match fully prepared with matching portraits at hand.  

Division 7
    Xzone vs The Rantners

Match link:  https://heroeslounge.gg/match/view/8149

Previous standings

Xzone is a new team to Heroes Lounge. As such they got a great start winning 2-1 vs InPanic in round 1. The Ranters on the other hand is a regular in division 7 at this point, playing their third season in it. Last season they placed 3rd and got to the playoff were they got knocked out in the group stage. This season in round 1 they lost 1-2 against Mighty Minion Army. Still the opponent this time will be a nice indication of what to expect from Xzone in the future, when they go against one of last seasons best teams in division 7.

Result

The match ended in a close 2-1 in The Rantners favor. First game was a whole 32 minute long game on Alterac Pass, with each team going back and forth until Xzone could finally finish it. Game 2 on Towers of Doom was surprisingly fast and dominate compared to what one saw in the first game. Were The Rantners ended the game around 11 minutes and with 12-1 in kills. In the third and final game on Cursed Hollow things were looking  grim for Ranters with all 3 keeps down. Despite this Ranters manged to seize a miraculously win in the game and winning the match 2-1 with one last good teamfight.

MVP

Often the MVP is handed to the guy who played well consistently over several games, but in this case a good play turned around a game and match that looked completely lost. That player in this case is LGM captain of The Rantners. The play itself, will be be down below in play of the game. As for the overall picture, LGM did struggle in the first game on ETC. Not landing many Moshes or stopping the Arthas Syndragosa and Sylvanas Wailling Arrow combo on the opposing team, making it so they got runned over several times. But in the two next games when he played Mal'ganis he shinned much more brightly, especially using his sleeps to setup kills for his team.

Play of the game

As said above LGM made a game winning play when his team was down to the last map with 3 keeps lost. His team was trying to get their first curse 19 minutes into the game. LGM smelled that some of the enemy heroes was hiding in the bush around the tribute, so he engaged the bush with his Q. Stunning two heroes with his Q, before continuing with his sleep on Mal'ganis setting up an easy Crushing Jaws for Orphea on 3 heroes. Resulting in a quick kill on Brightwing before they cleaned up the rest of the heroes on Xzones side, thereafter they could end the game and match. Below you can see video attached from this moment.

Highlights

Here other moments from the match will be shown, those can be great plays, misplays or anything in between. This time i will show a good old fashioned brawl on the boss point after Sonya did a great Leap on it in the last second to contest it.

Interview

Let's have a talk with the captain of The Rantners LGM and fellow teammate Keks to get their insight on the match.

What are your thoughts about your teams starting the season with 1 loss and 1 win now in the early rounds this season?

Keks: We started into this season quite bad obviously. We won today which is of course nice, but we did not dominate except for the second game which was kind of silly. I do think we have many problems which we should address in our mid game, cause we do risky stuff and we get no validation for it. We get the feeling this keeps happening all the time, so we do want to get rid of it but we don’t know how.

LGM: Yeah, we have some problems in the later stages of the game to obviously throw a lot of games. We were behind on the first game, but still the window was open to win the game. But then we made a critical call to reengage into higher number. It was stupid, I instantly died and everyone else after me to.

Tell me about the first game, how was it to play over 30 min game compare to the usual 20 min games. Did it get tense?

LGM: I am sweating. But I think the third one was more intense for me I guess.

Keks: So, after the first game I was more frustrated cause we again with our problems with risky calls threw the game. Cause I do think we could have won it. I got kind of relaxed, cause we had a certain plan we wanted to do on the second map. That gave me confidence and I was quite calm and could concentrate on my job. It was great, but all of that went somewhere else in the third game. It was really intense and the third game was hell. It was just hell. Hero (HeroesAtSchool) our offlaner after the game said ok I am done guys. I have to go now I can’t do anything anymore.

LGM: Well he was a little bit complaining about us. Playing maybe not to the standard that we should have and there was a lot of discussion. I tried to end this discussion, cause I think it was a feeling that we are gonna lose this game. When the discussion goes on then eventually you lose the games, but we stopped this discussion and focused on our last chance to get the tribute. We knew we could do well in the teamfights, it was our strength on this map. Since we had a better teamfight comp, at least in the late game.

What are some of the stronger picks in division 7 based on your experience?

Keks: Greymane. I don’t only say that cause he is one of my favorite heroes and I am the Greymane player on our team. But I just think he gives so much great value. He can burst someone down with Cursed Bullet, he has consistent damage if you play him on the autoattack build and you can do camps.

LGM: I think we can add Johanna also, She is a very solid pick through all division I think. Very many people play Garrosh these days and Johanna is a great counter to that.

Keks: Maybe Rehgar too. I am thinking about specifically Division 7. I am kind of scared to say, but Taunt Varian maybe? I don’t know actually, since we never used it, but you see it here and there.

We saw an interesting drafting process and respect bans in the draft. Do you feel like drafting is one of your teams strength?

LGM: I think we have to improve this by a lot to get really better in drafting. Well I mean with the strategies Jay (JetsamJay) comes up with that helps us really tremendously, but when they do something surprising I am not sure if we always take the right choice. We knew the Brightwing and Malfurion was coming, but they did not capitalize so much on it. With better opponents they could have done more with that. They didn’t ban Mal’ganis out in the third match, but it was instantly clear they took something like Brightwing to counter that.

Keks: Ehmm, I kind of disagree with my captain, but I am scared he will hit me. I think actually drafting is one of our strengths, exactly because we have Jay who has his statistics, so he looks at all of our enemies. Looks at what they want to play and what are their favourite heroes. What comes when they play, how often do they play and how good do they play them. It’s really really great and he always gives us great explanations. And this alone makes me feel comfortable and relaxed.
Today I think we drafted pretty well. We saw the Sylvanas silence was great, so we banned Sylvanas out cause it was too much to handle for us. We obviously had no answer to the Auriel resurrect buff yet, which came out today it was quite surprising. So we had to ban Auriel too and we were on the point of in the third game to ban Li Ming again. I do think we solved where their strengths were and how we are countering them. As of today.

Any moment in particular that you want to highlight from the games today?

LGM: I think the last fight on Cursed Hollow (video above) was great, because that turned the game for us obviously. We approached it very well. They were hiding in the bush, but I was smelling it somehow, so I was stunning them and sleeping them there. Then ParalyZ our new addition to our team, with his first match put his Crushing Jaws and they were annihilate there. So, this was my favorite moment.

Keks: I am not quite sure, cause I loved the second game cause we were quite dominate in it. But I just can’t remember what we did in there. So, I will just go with teamfight of LGM to. Because we won it and I am really quite happy that we won it.

You guys showed a good trend with 12^th place your first season. Being top 3 last season in div 7 and making it to the group stage in the rare cup, what do you hope to achieve this season?

LGM: I mean top 3 is good it can’t get much higher than that. But what we really want to achieve is to get further in the playoffs. I mean last time in the playoffs it was really disappointing. One game we lost, and I hate to say that actually, because Keks couldn’t play on because of internet issues. We had to substitute to someone else who was not as good at the same heroes as Keks. Then we had to adjust so much, that it hurt our match a lot. Yeah, I think we want to go through the first round at least of the rare cup.

Keks: Yeah, I agree with that. Reach the playoffs and be better than last time.

Any last words before we end the interview?

LGM: Yes, shoutout to our opponent they made a very impressive performance. Of course a shoutout to my team everybody played well, at least well enough to win this. And of course shoutout to myself i was great.

And so we reach the end of this article, many thanks to the LGM and Keks for the interview.

If you have any ideas for things to add or change on the article, don't hesitate to contact me on Discord.