RD2L’s Most Wanted, Part I
…featuring Kimer and Mav
As we slowly but surely approach the end of season 16 and go into season 17, I sat down with some of the league’s veterans to reminisce on the players they enjoyed playing with the most in the past and discuss the ones they haven’t gotten to play with yet but would like to. Starting us off in this multi-part series will be Kimer and Mav. Without further ado, let’s see what our veterans had to say.
Blast From the Past
The four past teammates Kimer would like to play with again
SSD — My little Albanian boy. I had the pleasure of being on “his” team in S13. I remember SSD being a wee lad in S12, coached by Waterfalls himself. And he has improved and changed A LOT. Leaving his hero puddle of Sniper, Sniper and…Sniper, and being a very quiet player, I now consider him an actually versatile mid-player with the skills to show it. Has also learned how to speak up and talk more which is really cool, since he's actually pretty fucking funny.
Nahweh — UK’s pride Nahweh, also from S13. When SSD asked me who to pick during the draft I think I spammed “Nahwehnawhehnahwehnahweh” in PMs. Lovely personality, underrated in skill-level and also very easy to joke around with. This man always brings a smile to my face.
Lokie — Lokie was the first person I thought of when I got asked to do this. Competent, funny, drafts, shotcalls, jokes, kills, wins, hooks, black holes, you name it and Lokie can do it. Honestly don't know what else to write, Lokie is just a god.
Octavian — I miss you homie ❤ The previous 3 were easy to pick, while the last spot was very hard to fill. Decided to go with someone from one of my earlier seasons, and ended up with Octavian. He sits smack down in the middle of the “Crazy as fuck — Funny as fuck”-scale and is like the biggest animal I’ve ever played with, in the best sense you can think of. I have no clue how he ever found a way to win games while being so busy memeing and shittalking enemies and allies alike.
The honourable mentions: ColNilsOlav, Krank, Cilamo, Mav, Kevin Richardson, TheSucker
The Dreamteam
The players Kimer has never played on a team with, but would like to in the future
Waterfalls — I'm pretty sure at least 90% of RD2L players want to be on a Waterfalls-team once in their life. First of all, he's just pleasant as fuck, he doesn't have a heavy Russian accent and like, he's also good at Dota (sometimes).
Crispy Bacon — Continuing with the trend of nice people, having picked up Waterfalls and now Crispy Bacon, and already having me — this team is gonna be a feeding frenzy that RD2L has never seen the likes of before. Crispy is just a nice dude, and I'm sure the only way I ever get to stack with him is by picking him into my dream team.
Glete — I don't know if I've actually played with Glete or not before, but watching his streams and talking with him, he gives off this aura of…not finn-tism. Seems super chill and doesn't feed like the previous 2 picks. Also kinda looks like Jerax, which is cool.
DNC — And now for the finale. Having picked 3 nice guys and then forcing DNC to play with them is probably the most sinister concoction I’ve ever had the honour of mixing up. The power of PMA compels you, DNC. I love playing with DNC, you literally never know how a game will end up, but it's fine because you have DNC’s sweet vocabulary mixed with some idiotic plays and a man who always brings his humour with him.
Nostalgia
Boelens — Those who know will know why but that will suffice to start. Played with him in S14 after rigging myself onto the team through a concerted effort with ry0ka, had a rather disastrous season in terms of having to sit and mediate between my highest MMR player and captain stubbornly arguing all the time but, all things considered, I was happy to play with friends even if it kinda crumbled and maybe slightly ruined friendships. Regardless, I think Boelens has improved immensely as a player and in terms of becoming less easily tilted, and we get along really well, so despite that one season going rather poorly, things have changed a lot and I think we’d have a lot of fun playing together. P.S. We both also have several cancer picks so it’d be nice to always have some cancer draft advantage.
Glete — Played with Glete this season, basically the highest MMR person I’ve ever played with on a team and I feel like a learned more about drafting from him than anything else, as well as giving me a bit more confidence in my personal understanding of the game. I also learned more about some of our timings and to be honest, I’m extremely glad that he was completely open and willing to go with my selfish request to play Furion 4, and I don’t play a lot of Dota, and I hadn’t really been playing much support Furion either, but we managed to make it work and there were some off games, but overall we’d always had a clear game plan and were happy to experiment what to do. There is a downside in that I’ve always liked Windrunner (YES, WINDRUNNER NOT WINDRANGER) support, but that always gets banned vs Glete so I didn’t get to play it at all. Otherwise, I really enjoyed playing with Glete, and honestly massive shoutout to him picking pos 3 Rhasta with 12 seconds of reserve time to go in the 4th pick of the draft and forcing me into it because it was one of the most fun games I’d had this season despite not believing in pos 3 Rhasta during and even after the draft (but Kimer pos 3 would be worse).
Mikel — Where do I start with Mikel? He was simply one of the players I got on with best in the Ladder, which was what led to me joining RD2L, and I hadn’t had the commitment to play on a weekday at the time, so we played together in SAT and effectively had a team that reeked of the power of friendship. Any veteran from Season 11 would know that Mystogan Ember + yb Earth Spirit is a very scary duo to go up against, and we went up against that, and beat it, at least we did in Game 1, and that’s served as a proud moment, at least for me, but I think also for Mikel. Honestly, Mikel’s quite simply always been one of my favourite people to play with and talk to and he’s a highly capable player who can and will shotcall mid-late game while breaking his back carrying a quad-anchor ship, and I can say that if at least for just the atmosphere, I’d love to play with Mikel again.
Amos — I don’t know if Mini counts for this but Amos was probably one of my favourite people to play with, probably since I also managed to dodge his choke because I was on a train to Stockholm and couldn’t play, but he’s a very fun and frankly rather empathetic person, despite his atrocious Discord shenanigans for which I’d hated him before. He effectively captained our Mini team last time round and made sure we had a clear vision and playstyle for the team the entire time, and this stemmed from what I believe to be a very quick and early realisation of how the meta was going to unfold: we were buying Vlad’s and picking Magnus before it really began to permeate the meta, and this can only be attributed to Amos’ personal understanding and knowledge of the game and the patch. He was never afraid to play less comfortable heroes that he believed would win the draft and the game, and he was also rather experimental in light of 7.20, along with a strong conviction and some measure of confidence in how he thought each game should be played out. I do have to say that he should watch his sleep schedule and he also has nice taste in music in my opinion.
The Wishlist
I wasn’t asked to write a short paragraph here but I decided to anyway. It’s really hard for me to decide this because while I’m somewhat considered a veteran, I’ve pretty much always played a season, skipped the next. That said, there are plenty of other players I’d really like to explore playing with, but I think these are the top ones for me, all things considered. I’ve always prioritised improvement and held more conviction in knowing how to play out the game on the macro-scale, at a more strategic level, rather than the little things like mechanics and pressing spells, which I think I kinda suck at, and I believe that these players are all good at this aspect of the game and would help me improve a lot on that. — Mav
DNC — So DNC’s always been a loudmouth, but from personal, more private, and significantly less autistic interactions with him, I’ve learned to respect him as a player a lot, and I’ve always felt that he really knows how to play the map. Sand King is his hero for a reason, and in my humble opinion, it’s because that hero cuts waves, splits waves, does everything you’d want a core to be capable of doing in a dangerous situation where the enemy might want to 5-man highground without a massive lead outside of an Aegis. As a pos 4 player myself as of this season, I think I could learn so much from him about map movement early game should a roaming meta ever return, and I could also learn so much more about being in the right places at the right time, and how to salvage what might seem like a lost game by knowing your limits about cutting waves and pulling enemies away from taking objectives even at the cost of feeding, but good and reasonable feeding.
Shift — I know Shift personally, I talk to him quite regularly, and he’s taught me an immense amount of things as well as butted heads with me on lots of things that have helped me realise and learn new things about which moves are good or otherwise. His potential has remained unexplored in RD2L due to being a high MMR support player pretty much forced to play core every time so far, but he’s an excellent captain and shotcaller, as well as a superb support player, his high rank is testament to this, and I, for one, can confirm that this is not as a result of sniping Mugen; I have personally and physically heard him micro teammates to victory in solo queue while watching his games. As a result, I would personally like to actually play a season with Shift as captain and shotcaller, which I believe would help me improve even more on map movement leading to victories even from terrible deficits.
Paul — I remember the first time I ever played with Paul, and the first time I ever played against Paul, both times I felt for the first time what it really meant to be a 6k player, and these games were over 2 ½ years ago. Since then, Paul’s gotten worse because he’s been playing less Dota and appears to have stagnated, but I’ve always admired how he seems to have a clear vision on how the game should play out, and how his hero should be played, as well as his tendencies for rather amusing outbursts of toxicity. Those who have heard his motivational speeches before and after games especially during qualifiers in the last DPC season will be more than aware of this side of him. I’d also like to think I get along pretty well with Paul, and sure he’s a high-MMR player too but I think, again, that I would learn a lot about that which I want to learn about by playing with him.
Severe — I’ve known and liked Severe as a person for a while, it’s probably fair to call me a sympathiser in light of his many antics and now rather, infamous reputation. He’s pretty smart about the game but he’s also generally quite carefree and I’ve pretty much always enjoyed playing with him. He can tilt easily, especially when playing core, but otherwise, I think he can probably map out how to play the game for your team, and I think there’s some level of mutual understanding of the game that we share. He’s pretty much the same as Boelens in many regards for me and I think I’ve learned a lot from him in the last couple of years about timings, and figuring out which fights to take, and which objectives either team would be after next, so I think that we could work really well on a team together and he’ll be more vocal with people he knows and likes playing with, and maybe arrogantly so, but I do think I’m one of those people even if I’m significantly worse than him at Dota.
This wraps up the first part of RD2L’s Most Wanted. Did you like it? Who do you miss playing with, and who would you like to play with in the future? Either way, join us next time at The Sentry Ward as we talk to DNC, Nsphere and Denden to find out who their Most Wanted are.
