2010 at a glance: seraph's top 10 dota games

2010 has been pretty eventful in competitive dota calendar, with the Chinese showing total domination in all offline events, from the ESWC 2010 to the end-of-the-year tournament, SGNDT 2010. Throughout the year, many epic games were played, some which will forever be remembered for various reasons. Here, I listed my top 10 memorable dota games played in the past one year. Most of these games had been featured in my monthly top replay or tournament entries.

10. AlienwareDigi vs SOS [Storm the Front]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: 10 minutes game, epic push strat by the sentinel, even more EPIC fail pick by the scourge. I've never seen a "competitive" team retarded enough to still last pick Naix+Ursa after the opponent picks obvious pusher heroes.

09. Tofu vs Ice [AEDL]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: This game wasn't RR'ed on gosugamers, but I think it was a very entertaining and action-packed games. Watched -n|cXh-|'s Sven MVP performance, aided by excellent viper usage by PemakanDunia to totally shut down Tofu's Storm.

08. Nirvana.my vs LGD.sgty [ADC]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: Sick Shadow Fiend by Yamateh, and Lion by Mushi. Nirvana.my was heavily pressed all game, and almost made a terrific comeback if not because of a single mistake by VS late in the game that arguably seal their defeat.

07. Days vs CH [U9 Cup]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: Perfection. Balanced, action-packed, great team coordination and positioning, perfect execution of aura strategy, amazing Layana and CM lessons. The first time I saw a Dagger Nerubian Assassin in competitive games.

06. DTS vs EHOME [WDC]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: DTS revenged their loss in ESWC to EHOME with an unorthodox jungling+fast push strategy that totally caught EHOME by surprise. Too bad that EHOME went out of the group stage thanks to the sudden change of tie-breaker rule.

05. Nirvana.my vs Starsboba [WCG 2010]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: Unorthodox picks by SB to utilize mass heal combined with armor reduction strategy, yet they execute the strategy very successfully. Nirvana did play their part in the defeat with some sloppy play especially the teamfight near Roshan, but overall it was a well played game by SB.

04. Nirvana.my vs Starsboba [SMM 2010]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: One line to describe the game - THAT FURION! THere's not much at stake in this game considering they're only playing for 5th-6th placing, but both teams give their all and provides a tense and action-packed games. Hyhy's Lion performed admirably but Yamateh's Medusa was unable to fend SB and Soso.on's Furion who come ganking from every angle.

03. LGD vs EHOME [SMM 2010]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: EHOME devised the perfect picks to counter LGD's reliance on LGD's only carry, ZSMJ's Alchemist by clever usage of Tinker. ZSMJ and AAA's Morphling was equally farmed to the point of unkillable, but there's another thing in EHOME that cause LGD all sort of trouble - Dai's Tinker. With lots of mana and Guinsoo, he totally perma-hexed ZSMJ's Alchemist while the rest of EHOME aimed for other LGD heroes, leaving ZSMJ all alone in the end of the team battle to be raped by EHOME.

02. LGD vs EHOME [WDC Chinese Qualifier]

game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: I'm speechless by YYF's Storm, truly epic storm storm spirit. He singlehandedly hold EHOME from claiming early victory with superb buybacks and ultra kills.

01. LGD vs EHOME [WCG Asian Championship]
game info and download: Gosugamers
comments: CHINESE DOTA!!!!! The game was long, but it was very intense, marked by ZSMJ doing the unthinkable - 720 creep kills and Divine Rapier on Medusa. Then died, buyout and instantly buy ANOTHER Divine to end the game.

honorable mention: CHN vs Nirvana.cn [G-League]

comments: epic end to an epic games, I seriously thought "that" team that went pushing into the enemy's base in the end will win the game, but then suddenly...!!!

There's actually several more games which I think worthy to be included into the list, especially a few games in WDC and SMM which were definitely tense and epic.EHOME and LGD really produce some of the best games whenever these two teams met, shown by the top 3 games in my list which was dominated by the encounter of these teams. Overall 2010 showed that Asia, or to be specific, Chinese dota is still superior than the rest of the world. The rest of Asian team, in particular Nirvana.my and Starsboba, as well as European powerhouse DTS had the potential to break the Chinese's domination, however until competitive games were taken seriously in their country, as China did, we will probably not going to see this happening any time soon.