It's always a pleasure to watch SK-Gaming and MeetYourMakers face each other in the various online tournaments they take part in - and this match made no exception. Both teams had approached the upper bracket semifinal of the Hostile Tactics Gaming League (HTGL) DotA tournament after having made it through a preliminary group stage and the first two playoffs rounds. In the opposite side of the brackets TeamQ was unsuccessful against Xero Skill while in the lower bracket the MYM Prime Defending champion Virtus.pro, after having defeated the same TeamQ, is waiting for the outcome of MeetYourMakers against Serious Gaming.

The history of SK-Gaming against MeetYourMakers is pleasantly dithering, as neither of these teams seems to be able to overcome the other for too long - even though MeetYourMakers holds the upper hand in the DreamHack off-line engagements. The one played tonight was in fact their first official match after DreamHack Winter and SK-Gaming managed to defeat their rivals; a victory that, according to Jonathan 'Loda' Berg's words, the team saw coming. 'We felt really confident about the game before it started' says the team captain, adding that 'throughout the game it went pretty much as we wanted it to.'

SK-Gaming practiced and adopted an unconventional strategy for this match; the DotA competitive scene is not new to uncommon heroes choices being brought by success, may it be a Butcher or a Bounty Hunter, and SK-Gaming showed once more time how the DotA environment is incredibly sensible to unexpected moves: there might even be no need for frequent new map versions as long as unusual moves can renew the meta-game this much. We could say that in a game format where a huge part of the match might be decided during the heroes draft, preparing a different strategy which is able to keep par with the most common lineups and at the same time nullify the risk of having the basic heroes being stolen by the opponents is priceless. 'We have been practicing this strategy a couple of times' comments Jonathan, 'and we felt that we could surprise MYM with the pretty unconventional picks and therefore we weren't afraid of getting out-picked.' In the lineup they used tonight we can see for example a jungle Holy Knight, which after having shined during the 4/4 sentinel combo times almost fell in oblivion due to a couple of nerfs and the game type switching from normal mode to -xl mode.

When asked about a post match statement, Jonathan says that 'it's a really nice feeling to beat MYM since it was a while ago we did so. We proved the community that we are still a force to be reckoned with, and that it pays to look for strategies outside the box.'

In the next days we will see SK-Gaming and MeetYourMakers against each other one more time for a postponed Pick League match, perhaps the swedes will have another surprising strategy to show us.