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A look into the first round of the upper bracket where Phil "LongWalk" Crawford defeats his teammate Franklin "Nilknarf" Pearsall ![]() Game One: Twisted Meadows Nilknarf spawns in the upper left corner, using the standard Archmage build. He opens up his creeping pattern with the goblin laboratory on his right. His opponent, LongWalk, sends in his Demon Hunter towards the lab in anticipation. He uses the immolation ability to take down some peasants, before escaping by the skin of his teeth. He quickly heals up, and upon sending his hero back towards Nilk's base, realizes that he is about to be tower rushed. In favor of teching, LongWalk builds a second Ancient of War to counter the push. An amazing battle ensues, where Nilk constructs towers inside the base, while LongWalk builds addtional AoW's to defend. The Demon Hunter has many close calls, where his death would certainly end the game. LongWalk is able to delay the inevitable for a while, with excellent micro and positioning. Using his four walking trees, he is able to protect his archers from the footmen, while they take down the towers. Nilk is forced to retreat. The Human player quickly regroups. and after adding a second barracks, triest to tower his opponent once more. Upon entering the base however, he notices LongWalk's expertly positioned ancients, and decides to creep out the gold mine for an expansion instead. He is able to finish the creep, and begins construction of the expansion just as his opponent arrives to thwart him. With an army of archers, he looks to gain the advantage as he picks off the footmen, and forces the Archmage to retreat a little. Nilk starts to build towers though, and with the aid of a goblin shredder, kills off all of the archers, saving his expansion. The towers complete, but LongWalk shortly returns with a new army of huntresses and glaive throwers. Things aren't looking too good for Nilk, as the glaives are destroying the towers rather quickly. Nilk finally reaches tier two though, and starts pumping out rifleman with a Mountain King as his second hero. He uses a zeppelin to help delay LongWalk a bit, in order to add more units to his army. While LongWalk seems to have the better army, Nilknarf is ahead of him in tech now, as well as having the expansion. A storm bolt surround on the level five Demon Hunter secures the first game for the Human star. Game Two: Echo Isles While Nilk starts off this game with his standard build, LongWalk switches it up in hopes of a win. He grabs the Dark Ranger first, and begins amassing a skeleton army from the graves at the mercenary camp. Nilk has already put up a second barracks, in hopes of an early push for a fast win. He sends his army, accompanied by militia to the Night Elf base. He leaves his militia attacking a moonwell, while he sends the rest of his forces towards the merc camp, where he knows LongWalk is creeping. The militia have turned back into peasants, and they start building towers inside the base. What looks like a good diversion on Nilk's part, turns sour as Longwalk's army of about 4-5 skeletons, archers and hired trolls make quick work of the footmen. LongWalk makes his way up to the constructing towers, destroying them without too much contest from Nilk. LongWalk chases the low health Archmage towards the bottom of the map, and Nilk accidentally loses it to the southern gold mine creeps. Still at tier one, things are looking terrible for him. Nilknarf gets his quick game, but earns a tally in the loss column during the process. Game Three: Terenas Stand The success of the previous game, as well as the creep make-up of the map, encourage LongWalk to use his Dark Ranger build once more. Nilknarf decides not to make any changes to his build, and after creeping out the goblin lab, he heads to the northern gold mine for a fast expansion - a bit of a change from the previous tower rushes. LongWalk has been happily creeping out the bottom left half of the map, earning himself a hefty army of skeletons. He's scouted the expansion, and decides to try and take it out before too many of his skeletons fall to the summon time-limit. While Nilk's footmen are waiting for him at the expansion, the Archmage is missing in action, and is forced to teleport in by himself to help defend. LongWalk manages to take advantage of this by expertly surrounding the Archmage, taking him out of the picture. He proceeds with his assault on the expansion, taking down a good amount of footmen, before once again losing most of his archers to a goblin shredder. LongWalk does manage to take the expansion down however, and upon reaching tier two and grabbing a Panda, Nilk concedes the game due to being sufficiently under-teched. |





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