Rapture Gaming Network

Training and MUFC

8190 times Posted by admin on 2010-05-05

Before the recent Alienware Arena competition in Kuala Lumpur, I stalked MUFC-Winter for 2 days and 2 nights so I could catch him in LAN training with his team and find out the secret behind his successful team dynamics. While the above isn’t totally true, the following is written straight from MUFC (the cybercafe), where I am right next to MUFC (the team) watching them in LAN training action.

Stage 1: The drafting process

As the game starts, Winter sits alone at blue, silent and lonely. The rest of his teammates are either watching Naruto, some other illegal stream, or are busy doing things completely unrelated to Winter’s drafting. Winter poses a few question to them, to which he gets no response. While this is a common occurance in many training games, I will be able to see if the presence of “the lonely silent team drafter” is also felt in their competition games. After the first 3 picks (1 from MUFC, 2 from their opponents xLo), Silvercross starts requesting heroes. He fires a “panda” then a “drow” at Winter, then a “troll”, then finally enthusiastically screams “URSA!!!” Winter responds by picking neither of these heroes. At their 4th pick, Silvercross starts actually starts arguing for a Doombringer. Doombringer is picked, followed by the rest of MUFC’s surprise screams of “DOOM?!” and “WHO PLAYS DOOM? SILVERCROSS???”. Deejaysharky wants his Templar Assassin, and Winter doesn’t even bother providing him with a response before picking Chen.

The lineup ends up at MUFC: VS, Silencer, Broodmother, doombringer, Holyknight, and xLo: Sandking, POTM, pugna, Rhasta, Witchdoctor. Silvercross plays the broodmother. Deejaysharky plays the doom.

Stage 2: The early game.

Winter commands it. Pretty much. He even gives Sharky an impromptu lesson on playing Doombringer. MUFC communicates a lot, and the training area is never silent. However, most of anything constructive and game related in the first 3 minutes (where MUFC gets a streak of consecutive deaths) comes from Winter. The rest of the noise is filled with taunts, some light-hearted jabs at each other’s deaths, and whining about facing a tri-lane.  Lane reporting however is very common. Among many things, MUFC is good at developing a common map awareness. Koy, who is just sitting back against a trilane, watches the minimap for Silver at mid, warning his farmer of any hero’s appearance on the minimap, allowing Silver to safely concentrate on farming.   I guess it’s enough to say that early game, with heroes missing all over the place and ganks being coordinated everywhere, every member of MUFC communicates, and very well too. 

Stage 3: The mid game.

  This is the stage where battles get bigger. It’s no longer so much about tri-lanes and lane reporting but about battle coordination and map movement. For the first battle, Winter has clear command and preperation. He prepares Koy for the silence, and calls for it at the perfect moment, with Silver adding in to the noise to REALLY make sure that Koy casts his Global Silence as he rushes in.   Silvercross, the team’s farmer, has gone nowhere but mid lane the entire game. It’s no wonder he can check facebook when he’s not busy doing anything – he doesn’t exactly make any decisions about where to go.   Finally, with xLo seeming to disappear from the map, MUFC is silent. And I’m sitting beside Silvercross’ ever-same-lane Broodmother, so I’m very bored.   Another engagement happens with Silvercross elsewhere, and the command seems to come, amazingly, from everywhere. With no real way of entering without their broodmother, each of MUFC’s members simply cast at their own discretion. The initiator, RedHotRay’s Vengeful Spirit, is surprisingly silent, but the rest of MUFC is quick to follow up.  

Stage 4: The mid-late game.

  This is where farming and pressuring takes piority. The heirachy of farming is made very evident when Silver moves to a lane and orders Sharky to basically go away so that he can farm. Winter suddenly goes silent on commanding, and the lapse of command has obvious impact on MUFC’s coordination. In a moment of horrible coordination, Broodmother activates her 10 second BKB miniseconds from a global stun, which is a huge waste.   After a few lost battles without command, MUFC goes silent.  

Stage 5: The late game.

  This is the part where any mistake usually results in a base tower or a rax.   In a moment of unplanned bravado (on the part of the team), Koy’s Silencer intentionally rushes right into the middle of xLo’s entire team (a team of 4, since one player has disconnected), with absolutely no verbal cue. The rest of the team is trusting enough to actually follow Koy in. Koy gets swapped out and still dies, but causes enough confusion in xLo’s ranks, combined with the rest of his team charging in, to completely wipe xLo. But this only nets them the first bottom tower (which is still up at 30 minutes).  

Suddenly, MUFC is no longer silent. The next battle is a coordinated attack with MUFC’s normal messy yet precise communication. Winter begins once again laying down game plans, calling map movement, roshans, and coordinating his team’s movement. With MUFC once again commuicating, their engagements go off very well. xLo (albeit with one player down) is completely caught off guard by MUFC’s sudden coordination, and after getting caught trying to catch MUFC at Roshan, xLo’s middle rax goes down, and they call a GG.

Stage 6: After the game

I watch many of MUFC’s next few games, and they go in pretty much the same way. In competition, MUFC has much less screwing around and taunting, and much more coordinated shouting of “NICE!” after a good engagement. Winter pretty much drafts alone, and does the bulk of the commanding. Koy keeps a hold on his crazy antics. RedHotRay is still silent, and Silvercross and Sharky keep up their usual communication and farming hierarchy.

Witnessing MUFC get owned in a training game seems eerie, as it speaks of the total confidence they have when it comes to competitions. Winter picks heroes that have absolutely no synergy at all, and up against EHOME, MUFC actually laughs and enjoys themselves as they get owned in consecutive games. They don’t care about losing training games. Training games are after all, training, and they know it is absolutely no indicator of their competition performance. They don’t care about each other’s mistakes, which could be detrimental to their performance in the long term, but certainly a key to their stability for now.

MUFC proceeds to win the Alienware Arena competition in KL, completely steamrolling over team Nirvana, but with no motivation to play properly, gets dominated by KS in a show-match. This is a team that truly does not unleash its prowess until they need to in competitions.

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