Anyone remember the chess situations in the newspaper where you were supposed to read the board and solve the puzzle of how to accomplish a certain goal? I'm going to bring that to you, here, with DotA. This isn't an entirely original idea, but something I thought could benefit everyone.

Situation:

Low/mid skill pub game
5-person party with doobs on voicechat, playing against a similarly matched opponent

Your picks (Dire): Lone Druid, Lion, Bounty Hunter, Shadow Demon, Dark Seer
Enemy picks (Radiant): Templar Assassin, Anti-Mage, Sven, Crystal Maiden, Tidehunter

Where do you put each hero on your side, why? How do you expect the enemy to lane, why?

Early Game:
The enemy (Radiant) decides to put Templar Assassin mid, Anti-Mage and Crystal Maiden bottom, and Sven and Tidehunter top. What advantages and disadvantages does the lanes you selected above have during the laning phase.

Mid Game:
Your Lone Druid struggled a bit in lane, but has purchased a relic by the 25 minute mark and is now close to a Radiance. The Anti-Mage didn't have a fantastic time in lane either, but he hasn't been joining teamfights and has been escaping ganks. He's finished a Battlefury and is working on his Manta Style. Everyone else has about the same level of farm, and the kill score is balanced. Everyone has lost their tier 1 towers, with some damage to their tier 2's. Roshan hasn't been killed yet. Gem hasn't been purchased yet, but dust has been used in fights. EXP graph is even and all heroes are between levels 9-12. What is your plan to win the game, why?

If this thread gets some attention I'll post my thoughts in a week or so. Post your ideas! Don't be shy! There's no right or wrong answer. Unless your answer is feed Anti-Mage. That's the wrong answer.

all i know is dont feed antimage!!

No you have that backwards. Feeding antimage is how you win.

Well, I know I have a terrible strategic brain - hence why I never captain. But Christmas makes me so damn good inside, I thought I'd give it a go.

Selection Stage:

I'd expect the enemy team to be running Templar Assassin mid, with Anti-Mage in the bottom lane (Radiant safe lane) supported by a Crystal Maiden for stun initiation. That leaves Sven and Tidehunter for a top lane, AoE stun and a minus armor mini-nuke - even if it is two melee characters in one lane.

I presume that they'd be farming up their Anti-Mage as a priority late-game carry, and then Sven and Templar as semi-carries.

My first natural instinct is to only look at our own line up and try to judge where characters are suited in lanes. This is partly why I wanted to give this challenge a try. On natural instinct, I'd have Lion mid, bounty hunter bottom (with the possibility of picking off CM if she gets out of position) and do a trilane top to give Lone Druid priority farm.

NB. Just read the next part of your paragraph, and I'm glad to see they picked in line with my idea! Phew!

Early Game:

With Bounty Hunter getting solo exp at bottom lane, he'll get to tracks quicker, which is a plus. On the downside though it's unlikely that he'll get much farm with the quick attack animations of AM, and with CM for supporting harrass should BH become visible. Also, if the CM is smart, there will be sentries to prevent BH coming too far into lane. Therefore the main carry we'd be looking to shut down would be getting great farm, and would need ganking as soon and often as possible.

With Lion mid there would be some stuns and possibly mana-harass going onto the templar, but with psi-blades and Lion's pitiful health pool, I don't imagine Lion would win that lane (especially when Templar will eat harass with refraction charges). Which would make the aforementioned ganking of AM difficult.

Dire top lane has some good potential though, shadow demon can bubble one of the two top for a gank (preferably sven as tide doesn't have stuns) or just spam poison to harass. Dark Seer can place ion shells on enemy range creeps to get a bit of gold and keep both of them behind their own lines.

Mid Game:

This is where my strategist head dies. Generally I play support characters, I follow around the bigger kids looking for ganks and don't really need to worry about where the carries are up to. Usually, they just appear after 30-40 minutes and own shit up.

If Lone Druid is almost at his Radiance, then I'd leave him to farm the jungle until he gets it. Ideally, we'd need to get a few kills and then go do roshan. With a TA around, I'd be looking for the supports to be carrying dust, and checking where they are upto with wards and mech before pushing anywhere.
As I expect anti-mage to be farming bottom lane and Radiant jungle, I think drawing the rest of them away to top lane for an engagement would be good - even better if we can get the fight near the edge of dire jungle for Lone Druid to join in.

Following Radiance, I think Lone Druid should go straight for BKB for avoiding Ravage, and Sven/CM stuns. We can either turtle to get Lone Druid farmed, or go for what we can and try and push one of the lanes towards a rax. I never like to play a turtle game into AMs hands, especially if Syllabear hasn't had a great headstart. Early BKB will get Lone Druid through the teamfights and then can focus on things like a Skull Basher for mini-stuns, or crystalis if we're on a budget.



I have no idea whether that's right or not, but I'm chuffed I picked lanes the same as what came next

My first goal is to identify rough farm order for myself and the enemy team as this can inform my lane decisions:

Lone Druid 1, Lion 5, Bounty Hunter 2, Shadow Demon 3, Dark Seer 4

Templar Assassin 3, Anti-Mage 1, Sven 2, Crystal Maiden 5, Tidehunter 4

This indicates to me that I'm likely to put SD against TA Mid, and I want LD to have access to the jungle, so he's top for sure, leaving BH bot. I'll think about supports after I think about the enemy team.

We already said TA Mid, so I would expect to see AM bot (and almost def with a CM babysitter as they'd want some range to go with AM). I don't expect them to trilane AM, so I'd bet Tide goes top with Sven.

This means I can choose between sending a support with BH or trilaning my LD Top. I think Lion is more likely to help BH generate an early AM pickoff, but I don't think it's terrifically likely if they do send a CM to babysit him, so I'd rather trilane.

I don't really want this game to go long as I suspect the AM will eventually outcarry my lineup, so once BH hits 6, I'm going to consider rotating him out to hopefully gank us up some spare cash (I like his chances of landing a track kill with SD against TA Mid around first nightfall. This should hopefully get his snowball rolling)

Midgame: if we're neck and neck with an AM team at 25 minutes, I think we're behind in that we need a bit of a lead in order to compensate for AM coming on late. It's time to ward our jungle defensively to keep an eye out for a backdoor/split-push and go 4 man-push bot (leaving LD to farm/join the fight if it appears to be going badly). If we can get AM out of his farm/jungle for even a few minutes we can create space to get back in the fight. I'm less worried overall about killing Rosh than I am about making sure AM doesn't get that aegis. At this point int eh game, I'm comfortable trading kills, as long as we're slowing down AMs farm.

Forgive my overreliance on commas. I look forward to any feedback you might have to offer.

I would put silly bear mid vs the TA because fuck her and her refraction. Bear harrasses and TA is going to be sad. Dark seer offlane because fuck antimage. He will spam the shit out of ion shell and am will hopefully be sad.
The rest goes in a trilane up top where bounty gets farm, not battlefury farm but farm. At level six shadowman and bh goes to gank mid and gets a lot of gold because trackgold is OP.

GG !

Pre-game
I see a few possibilities for their lanes. The first is solo Tidehunter top, TA mid, trilane bot with AM/CM/Sven. The Sven would be focusing on stack/pulling leaving CM to babysit and harass out the opposition. This is what I would consider as the "best" lineup, although the most skill intensive so if we are saying low/mid skill I would put it at 30%. The most likely (60%) for a low/mid skill game would be Tide/Sven top, TA mid, AM/CM bot. The CM should still be able to secure farm for the AM, and the offlane with two tanky heroes should not give up early kills. The problem with this laning is that although the offlane will not give up kills it should be incredibly easy to shut down the farm for it. A remote possibility (10%) is to have Sven/CM top, TA mid, AM/Tide bot. This would work quite well if it is a solo BH against the AM/Tide, since the BH cannot contest AMs farm. The Sven/CM actually gives some potential for kills (triple disable) and the ranged harass from CM may allow Sven more farming space.

What are the needs for my team? BH and DS both need levels quickly. BH can sacrifice early lane farm in order to get a fast level 6/7 and hope to recover with track gold. DS needs to get to level 10/11 as quickly as possible so that he can contribute. This means that we need to put BH in a solo lane, and DS in either a solo lane or in the jungle. The LD is going to be our carry, so ideally we want to get him some early farm. We also need to be concerned about TA snowballing mid, and giving AM early free-farm to transition into jungle farming. If AM gets an early BF he will outfarm our LD.

So here is my lane-by-lane setup. First, I put DS middle. TA is really strong in lane due to her refraction, and the usual way to deal with this is some DoT. Another way to deal with this is to keep her mana too low to use refraction (its mana cost went up) so putting Lion here with an early point in Mana Drain could work but I opted for the safer bet of DS. Now we can contest mid and secure DS his required levels early. My choice for offlane may be quite controversial; I put an offensive trilane of LD/SD/Lion there. I except to see either a defensive trilane of AM/CM/Sven (30%) or AM/CM (60%) there. If it is trilane vs trilane, we are going to have issues since they have the stronger nuking supports and disables. Even in this case some good play from the SD can save whomever they focus (disrupt after disables). The reason that I want to do this is because I want to shut AM down early. SD is incredibly useful against AM early if AM levels his mana break. LD is also useful for early lane harassment and Lion gives you some disable and nuking power to get aggressive. That leaves us with the solo BH which won't be able to contest a dual lane of Sven/Tide, but will still get early levels and the farm is much less useful on Sven/Tide than on AM.

Early game
Already discussed above. I will get only exp on BH top (which is fine), DS and TA will be up to skill, and I think my aggressive trilane will be able to secure farm for LD if not completely dominate AM/CM.

Mid game
This depends a lot on which heros have what items to be honest. The radiant has the much stronger Rosh lineup with double minus armor (meld + gush) and I would also give them the stronger teamfight especially if Tide/TA/Sven have blinks. For this reason I would prioritize keeping vision up at Rosh but not trying to take it before the Radiance is up or we had track/vision on a few of their heroes and could smoke in. In order to take Rosh quickly we would need a Medallion on BH. Once the radiance is up and there is a resummon on the spirit bear I would try to take the radiant T2 bot by pushing the spirit bear right up, perhaps even past the tower a bit to disable blink dagger initiation and have the BH/ward vision covering the approach from mid. The T2 bot is important to try and establish map control to not allow the AM to freefarm his jungle. The ideal situation would be to slowly establish map control to the point where only AM is comfortable split pushing, but the radiance bear can slow down those pushes and be quickly resummoned for seiges. If things go poorly, well we have an excellent turtling lineup for the T3 with DS wall and the SD illusions of AM. But really, map control is the key to giving your carry the farming space that you need so getting those important T2 towers near rosh and radiant jungle are the keys. Denying vision with a gem would also be good for both teams.