Season 1 - Episode 1: Double Jungling with Crystal Maiden (Midas as 1st item!)

Drafting Phase

Our team started by choosing all cores in Ember Spirit, Mirana and Dark Seer while the enemy team started with Storm, Anti-Mage and Lion.

It was followed by our jungle Legion Commander and a Broodmother Dire. I closed it with a Crystal Maiden as the Dire picked Sven. The latter being unusual since they already have a safe lane Anti-Mage.

Had it not been an LC pick, I would have actually went jungle Bloodseeker. But we needed a hard support so I chose Crystal Maiden. 

Why Crystal Maiden?

Her skills are so fitting in this game - primarily the Frostbite which is an underrated but very good skill to disable the right clicks of Sven and Anti-Mage and help keep them in place for Legion Commander, Mirana and Ember to attack them. The mana regeneration from Arcane Aura also helps Ember, Mirana and Dark Seer (thanks for the correction Haffy@Dotabuff ^^) spam their skills. And lastly, Crystal Nova to ensure chase potential during ganks and enemy escapes.

Special Note: At Max Level 4, it's a 3-second disable which a not-so-tanky Anti-Mage has to endure against a right clicking Legion Commander.

Game Play

Although I bought wards and courier for the team, I wouldn't brag that this is the proper way to play support. I actually went for the infamous "double jungler" strat while helping Mirana secure the runes. To add more appreciation and sarcasm, I even went 1st item midas (@8-min mark), before concerning myself with upgrading the courier or planting more wards.

Why did I go for a jungle maiden?

We see a lot of rants whenever players go jungling, and most of the time it is correct. The primary sign if you're doing a bad job as a "jungler" is when your teammates flame you for doing it.  When this stuff happens, you have to understand them past the "flaming", "shouting", and "ranting" - the real message that they want to convey is "they need help" or "you can be of more help if you just go lane". Other than Mirana nagging me about upgrading the courier, nobody bothered me about what I was doing. Why is this so? Very important to understand is the lineup composition and the match-ups, let's have a quick look.

Dire Line-Up:

Anti-Mage - safe play-style until Battle Fury, Vlads and Manta.

Storm Spirit - neutral play-style until level 6 with a good rune or 2nd item Orchid/Bloodstone

Broodmother - aggressive but focuses on lane dominance

Lion & Sven - now this is something else; prior to 0:00, I scouted the Dire Jungle to get lane information. Sven caught me and started hitting me. 

Here, I noticed that he 1st skilled cleave.

This alone gave me critical information that he will actual go "jungling". This point, I have decided that I can also jungle with Maiden because this means there will be very little success for a Dire aggression since it's only Lion who will be capable of doing it, let alone Mirana having an escape mechanism. The only vulnerable target would be Ember Spirit but since he's is solo-ing the lane, he would get quick levels and have Fire Remnant escape mechanism before Lion decides to gank and leave his safe lane carry Anti-Mage, who's getting harassed by Dark Seer ion shells.

Item Choice - why greedy Midas Maiden?

There are only 2 ways to do this, either I go standard Tranquil + Urn build and start roaming (or sap lane experience) or go greedy. Why did I choose the latter? Again, let's go through the options..

Broodmother - to successfully gank her, I need to buy dust/sentry but being the squishy hero that I am, there's also that risk that I might die to her broodlings in return . Also, with her lifesteal, I'm not sure Ember Spirit will be able to deal enough DPS to bring her down.

Storm Spirit - easy ult escape

Anti-Mage - no kill potential if partnered with Dark Seer alone

The only probable success of a gank is if I do it together with Mirana + Moonlight shadow.

Considering all these options, I was convinced that without my aggression, skirmishes will only start by mid game when people have some levels and early game items. Hence, getting midas was greedy but not lethal.

Team Fight/Clashes

And as it turns out, a simple 2-minute DD-rune secure combined with a no-vision/unaware Storm Spirit still got me a 1st blood and 418 gold $$$ as I rotated for a kill in the middle lane.

LC's dagger also put us in the offensive side with a 12-8 score. This was very critical considering that our Tier 1 towers in the top and bottom lane were gone by the 15th minute. I also made sure that we have advanced wards deep in their middle lane and jungle camps as we strongly transitioned to the mid game.

Side note, this is how I actually think a successful LC should play - with early aggression, he needs to be killing people as soon as possible for him to be effective. Finding the proper timing is the key. The sweet spot should be between 12-17 minutes. You have to start aggression during this timing,

By the 24th minute, we took down the middle lane raxes after a series of skirmishes where Anti-Mage and Sven got caught. Sven's God's Strength + Blink + MOM combo actually caught 2 of my allies, but a well positioned and well-timed Frostbite had him disarmed and stuck.

Anti-Mage being very careless as he farmed even we're around.

Sven's God's Strenght + Blink + MOM combo actually caught 2 of my allies, but a well positioned and well-timed Frostbite had him disarmed and stuck.

Couple of minutes later, we got careless and lost 4 heroes in exchange for an Sven.

This was followed by another careless attempt as Legion Commander and myself died to Anti-Mage.

and led them to secure Roshan @ minute 31.

It was clear at this point that in-spite of our rax advantage, that Anti-Mage has caught up with his items and that the Dire is on the brink of a turnaround.

Anti-Mage with Linken's as he tries to negate the initiation of Legion Commander.

We lost 3 heroes as Lion and Storm Spirit counter initiated on us.

At this point though, in-spite of losing the clash, I knew that my BKB will eventually payoff primarily because of the nature of the team clash. Sven, Anti-Mage, Broodmother and Storm Spirit will all be coming and bursting in 1 go.

Right after we re-spawned, I called for a 3-man smoke gank and we were able to remove Storm Spirit's Aegis.

This time, I made sure to fully utilize my 10-second BKB with the 10-second Freezing Field, from Anti-Mage,

to Storm Spirit...

to Storm Spirit and Broodmother

Winning this clash led to us getting Mega Creeps...

of course, game is not complete without my traditional words of encouragement ^^

I had a higher GPM than Storm, Sven and Legion Commander...

Thanks for reading my 1st entry, I hope you got entertained or have learned something. 
Feel free to provide comments, feedbacks and suggestions.
If you're in SEA and we're in the same MMR range, add me up in Steam: BlackXargon

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