Replay Analysis - MYM]Grubby vs mouz.ToD

Hello people! Today I bring to you a review of a game played just a few days back between former team mates, and now rivals, Grubby and ToD. This game took place at the Extreme Masters finals in the first round of the upper bracket.

 Grubby, also known as the King of Orcs hails from the Netherlands and plays for team Meet Your Makers.  ToD on the other hand is a French Human player representing team mousesports. Both of them are considered top world class players and have a bunch of notable accomplishments.

The map is Turtle Rock and the game starts off with Grubby spawning at 5 o’clock and ToD at the 4 o’clock location. Close spawn is generally considered favorable for Humans in this match-up since it makes offensive towering for them easier, along with harassing the orc’s base early game.

Both players open up with standard builds. Grubby opts for the BM and ToD goes with the AM. Right as his hero spawns, Grubby heads off to harass ToD’s militia creeping and manages to steal the level 4 turtle. Interestingly, Grubby chooses to build a warmill before he techs so that he can make a defensive tower in order to counter the tier 2 tower push. He has been doing this very often lately against humans and has also written an article on it which can be found here. A few minor skirmishes take place as ToD desperately tries to level up his AM to level 2.

Upon reaching tier 2, ToD’s AM still hasn’t leveled up, which can be considered as a job well done by Grubby. Grubby puts up a lodge, a beastiary and trains the TC, whereas ToD builds two sanctums and trains the MK. Both players creep a camp after which ToD decides to push Grubby’s base, only to find out that Grubby has TWO towers in his base which force him to abandon his push.

As ToD creeps the yellow turtle camp outside Grubby’s base, Grubby goes for a hit and run attack on ToD’s base, taking down the arcane vault before he has to speed scroll out as ToD comes back to defend. While banking at 50 food, both players manage to creep three big camps before their armies meet and Grubby TP’s out choosing not to fight. Even though both players had the same hero levels, it was a wise decision on Grubby’s part since he had a few low health units.

ToD wastes no time and immediately goes off to creep another camp. Grubby on the other hand starts constructing an expansion at the 10 o’clock spawn location and hits ToD’s base in order to buy time for his expansion to set up. This works out perfectly for Grubby as ToD was on his way to check out the 10 o’clock spawn but had to TP back to his base. Grubby simultaneously TP’s out.

At this point, both players break the 50 food mark and get back to some creeping. Their armies meet yet again, this time right outside Grubby’s expo which is up by now. However it’s far enough for ToD to not have sight of it. Grubby cleverly speed scrolls in the opposite direction in order to drag ToD away from his expo. He loses two units to bolt, and then decides to TP out. Grubby is successful once again at not letting ToD find out about his expo.

Soon after that, a major battle takes place outside Grubby’s base. It turns out pretty even… but by the end of it ToD’s MK has leveled up to level 5, which is a huge boost to the human army. Grubby’s TC is still at level 4. Knowing that he has the upper hand, ToD launches an attack on Grubby’s base, but is forced to TP out as Grubby focuses his MK despite of it having a potion of greater healing and a healing scroll.

Both players heal up, after which ToD picks another fight. Hardly any units die in the battle, but ToD has to TP out again as this time his AM gets focused. By this time, one of ToD’s peasants has scouted Grubby’s expo and both of their mines at their main have run out. ToD knows that chances of him winning would decrease over time since he has no gold income, and heads off straight to Grubby’s expo.

The final battle takes place, at the start of which ToD is at a slight disadvantage in terms of food count. ToD desperately focuses Grubby’s heroes and manages to slay the BM.

However, Grubby’s superior army kills almost all of ToD’s units, and since Grubby has ample gold, he revives his BM at the tavern and chases the low health AM… eventually killing it. ToD neither has the gold to revive his AM, nor to create any more units and calls good game!

The replay of this game can be found here (w3g.replays.net)