Greetings, I am here yet again with another match report. Teams are now beginning to crunch numbers as they check if they still have a chance or are safely within playoffs. Two teams who are definitely crunching numbers are houseoffail at 7th place and The Naughty Otters on 11th place before their round 9 match. Can houseoffail not fail themselves as they try to reach playoff or will The Naughty Otters live up to their name and be naughty and steal their playoff spot.
Match link: https://heroeslounge.gg/match/view/8779
Previous standings
Houseoffail skipped last season, but they played in season 9 in division 5. There they managed to reach 7th place and qualify for playoff, but they got knocked out in the group stage. This season they started strong with four straight wins in the beginning against Escape Artist, BioParco, WereBears and Triggered Newbies. Before they lost their next three rounds against Lucky Play, FAT N64 and eXon-Horizon. They did however win their last round, round 7, 2-1 against Oni Chan's.
The Naughty Otters are a new team, but its members are a mix of new players and players who has been in a number of different teams over their Heroes Lounge career. For The Naughty Otters first season it started with a loss in their first round against Oni Chan's, before they won their next four rounds respectively against Vacation in Purgatory, GoodLookingGuys, Not Even Klaus and FAT N64. Otters' are however in a bit of slump after having lost their last three rounds against Triggered Newbies, Honk Goose Criminals and CoB Geile Banger.
Result
Game 1 took us to the popular Lounge map Volskaya Foundry. After The Naughty Otters lost the first Protector they were far behind, with two forts lost and a level behind. But two good teamfights over the second Protector made them get the Protector and even out the game. For the fight over the third Protector a great Fear from Gul’dan completely won the fight, Protector and game 1 for houseoffail.
Game 2 on Battlefield of Eternity houseoffail got first Immortal, but got nothing more than a standard fort wall from it. The next two Immortals went to The Naughty Otters and they secured themselves two forts and a keep with it. Later on thanks to Diablo setting up kills for his team, Otters' got three kills and could secure themselves a full shielded 4th Immortal and end game 2 with it.
For Cursed Hollow in game 3 we jump forward a bit to when the score in tribute was 2-2 and the game is even. Both teams fought long and hard for the third tribute to get their first curse. Thanks to Nazeebo on houseoffail side, catching two heroes inside his zombie Wall, they became easy targets to focus and kill. Houseoffail got a keep and all forts thanks to the curse. Otters never managed to get their curse and instead houseoffail got enough for a second curse, and could at that point march onto the core and the match. Making houseoffail more or less, guaranteed playoff while The Naughty Otters have to win their next match and hope for luck in other matches.
MVP
This match MVP is Wildfire on team houseoffail. Wildfire might not have been the overall best player, but he was the one who won his team the most important battles. In game 1 on Gul'dan his Fear's was always top notch, and his last one won them the game as well (check play of the game). Game 2 on Li Ming he did not get much accomplished as The Naughty Otters were quite dominate that game. Last game on Nazeeboo he would split push a lot for his team, providing a lot of experience for his team. But when it came down to which team would get the first curse, a good Zombie Wall sealed the deal. Moreover, over the first two games Wildfire was second highest damage, only beaten with 7 K or less by a Nano Boosted Chomie.
Play of the game
The Fear from Gul'dan won his team the third Protector and the game.
Highlights
A well executed boss steal by The Naughty Otters.
A well placed Zombie Wall from Wildfire on Nazeebo got his team two immediate kills and their first curse afterwards.
Interview
Today Astroknaut, Wildfire and Nereza from houseoffail are joining me for the interview.
What does the win mean to you?
Astroknaut: Well, we got a chance for playoffs. So, we are excited for the matches that will come through this placement on the ranking. It will always be a challenge to get better and better and we are glad we can prove it.
Wildfire: Yeah, it’s like the last season we’ve played. We play and do our best and the more we play, the more we can learn about our heroes or our mistakes, and be better than before.
Astroknaut: We started not the last but the one before in division 5. We were able to rank up in the season that we didn’t take part of. So, we match in division 3 for this season. You’ll see quite a good learning curve that is going up.
How was it to get placed in div 3?
Astroknaut: Quite excited I think.
Wildfire: It was a really big surprise for us. That we get so high, we thought that we get maybe the same division or one division higher. But division 3, never.
Astroknaut: It was a surprise like fire said.
Wildifre: At the start we thought maybe we will lose most of the games. But now we see that we are better than we self expected.
Is there one thing your teammates do that annoy you?
Astroknaut: Yeah, our tank Schmiddi got the drive to go in. The e is for engage as he says. So, every time he is able to go in, he goes in. With passion, with big passion. That is annoying sometimes.
Nereza: He makes a Schmiddi.
Astroknaut: We call it to make a schmiddi and when he goes in then he is just saying “Guys, where are you? I was in the front getting shredded while the whole team was 5 feet away” We are screaming back then “Boy what you doing”. He is like a maniac. But we see progress on his skills and playstyle. And he has adapted more to us, to our playstyle. Cause he is quite new to the team, and he just needs to adjust himself to our playstyle he does it very well. Sometimes though he gets a little bit greedy.
Wildifre: Yeah, but we need to say he is our newest player in the team. He joined us three or four months ago, and I think for the time that he played with us. He learned very much and he know what he can do with us. Yeah, sometimes it’s a little bit rash what he’s doing, but it’s really good that he can tank for us.
Astroknaut: He learned to hear wrong calls.
Wildifre: Yeah, that’s the most important thing he learned.
How do you feel about the level of competition this season in division 3?
Astroknaut: It’s quite thrilling on some matches. Competition is quite good, you can see that on the ranking. That top teams are quite close together. You got a very compact skill set on the teams themselves.
Wildifre: I think most of the games are really close. In our division so many of our games were so close or we are were able to turn around with one fight or one mistake from the enemy. The enemies can turn around the game with one mistake from us to, it’s really exciting.
What is the origin behind your name houseoffail?
Astroknaut: It’s just random, we just thought about a team name and we came up with that. In a stupid gaming session. It was just like “how do we call ourselves?”
Wildfire: We had many different names as option, but we with democracy elected this name, cause most of us preferred it than the other names. There is nothing really special about this.
Astroknaut: In the beginning, it was quite uncoordinated. We have sometimes thought about our games. It was really shit and other games were x/10 good. And some were really bad and so we called ourselves houseoffail. Cause of the really bad mistakes we made and it carried on. Not the mistakes, but the name.
Wildfire: But one special thing we could bring up is our logo. That was made from the boyfriend of Nereza, he designed it by himself for us. I think that we should tell the story behind it.
Nereza: In one game during season 9, one streamer I think said “Oh, they have no logo”. And then we designed it to have one and not fall out of the other groups.
Thank you for your time, anything you would like to add before the interview ends?
Astroknaut: No, we are looking forward for the next games and for the relegation, and we are happy to take part of it in season 11. We are always working on our skills to get better.
Wildfire: Yeah, and we hope that we are going with a positive feeling in the next games. And maybe in the playoffs or slowly into next season.
That's all for today, many thanks to the members of houseoffail for the interview.
Written by Mekaku
Heroes Lounge Content Creator, Member of EU Division 4 team Munchies.
.png){kind=small}
