UPDATE : Some of you might be wondering why we haven't held another match of our KotH series, the reason behind that is that Moscow Five were busy at the Star Ladder LAN Finals so they were not free to play their next game. We will now be looking to schedule the next game between Moscow Five and their next opponent which will try to take the title away from their hands, and the handy prize of $100. Stay tuned for updates.

Status: Concluded.

Today Absolute Legends is announcing the start of our own AbsoluteArena King of the Hill series which will see the best teams in the scene invited to compete against each other for bragging rights and cash prizes.

Our competition will run once per week in a best of five games format, to the winner of each set of games will go $100 in prize money and they will be titled king. A team may stay as the king of the hill for up to five weeks in succession with a total earnings pool of $500! In the event that occurs we will invite another top team to have a shot at the title.

The first match of the series is already scheduled: Next.Kz vs Moscow Five, set to kick off on Thursday the 5th of July at 19:00 CET. Every game in the competition will be streamed out on AbsoluteTV with our resident caster  Austin "The Capitalist" Walsh bringing you all the action play-by-play. You can find the stream here.

Tune in on Thursday and enjoy the first match of the series. Have a nice day DotA fans!

Next.Kz

Andrew "eQual" Railyan   Ernar "Mantis" Urazbaev  Ilya "StalCat" Dorman   Nursultan "Reeves" Askero  Daniyar "LuCky" Kasenbaev

Moscow Five

Vladimir "PGG" Anosov (C)   Vadim "Bl00DAnGeL" Trushkin   Igor "Admiration" Kalnysh   Airat "Silent" Gaziev   Ivan "Vigoss" Shinkarev

Arthur "breakthedeskplz" Cechladze of M5.BenQ commented on the event:

"I would like to thank Absolute Legends on behalf of Moscow Five for letting us to participate in AbsoluteArena KotH #1. I am personally really fond of such a tournament format even though I have not witnessed any of them in Dota 2 or DotA so far. NEXT is a tough opponent, who has proven at TI2 Qualifiers that they are capable of beating any team. I hope that M5.BenQ and NEXT will put up a decent show for an audience, with us coming out victorious."

Next.Kz VS Moscow 5.BenQ

Next.Kz

vs

M5.BenQ

0 : 3

Game 1: Moscow 5.BenQ have taken the first game in a very one sided bout. Unfortunately for Next.Kz they had some latency issues persisting in the game.

The laning phase was indeed odd with no small amount of help in some unconventional picks in the draft phase. Moscow 5 picked up a Weaver for which they were rewarded greatly in the form of combo kills on Lone Druid in the bottom lane with PGG's Enigma jungling in the opposition (Radiant) jungle. Moscow 5's Dark Seer held his own at top against Invoker while the middle lane was back and forth, however M5 won that battle in the end as well with Leshrac and Earthshaker getting the better of a seemingly out of place Kunkka and Shadow Demon.

The laning phase ended very early with the game spiralling out of control for Next.Kz, all of their outer towers demolished by the 15th minute. With the first T3 tower falling the teams called for the next match. Stay tuned for game two ladies and gentlemen, hopefully our ping issues will be resolved and we see an equally interesting draft/lane phase!

Game 2: The Russian's have achieved victory in the second game of the best of five series in a crazy but equally one sided event as the first game.

From the word go Moscow 5 were completely dominant the lanes, Reeve's Dark Seer was totally shut down on the bottom lane with Bloodangel's Bane standing between him and his creep wave for the vast majority of the first five minutes. When he eventually did foray down into the opposition (Radiant) jungle he only found death in the form of the that same Bane combined with a scary Night Stalker.

Vigoss played the Windrunner in mid and quite frankly was nearly flawless the entire game. No unit on the map was safe from absurdly angled and far flung shackles, least of all Next.Kz's heroes. Vigoss earned blood on every lane and - it must be noted - a ridiculous deny kill on his own Night Stalker in the opposition (Dire) jungle. PGG on Enigma in top lane did his thing, accrueing his items steadily and safely against an aggresive trilane in Venomancer, Faceless Void and Ancient Apparition.

By the twenty-fifth minute of the game the Moscow 5's ganking in Windrunner, Night Stalker and Bane had snowballed their team to a 15000 gold lead with just as much of an experience gain. They never gave Next.Kz room to breathe despite some subtle and skillful retaliatory efforts. Onward to game three!

Game 3: Sometimes it's just your day. Moscow 5 have dominated the first week in the AbsoluteArena King of the Hill series with an uncontested three game victory in the first match-up.

Just as fast paced and action packed as the previous two games the early game was as one-sided however. From the very first minutes kills started coming out in the shape of Vigoss's Sand King against a Vengeful Spirit and Chaos Knight dual lane on the bot, irregardless of a very unconventional and oddly played enemy Bounty Hunter by Mantis roaming around in Moscow 5's jungle.

eQual played a stunning mid-game with his Queen of Pain, earning the vast majority of the few kills Next.Kz managed to pick up despite the fact he was dogged at every step of the way through Moscow Five's Tinker and Natures Prophet ganking squad. On the top lane LucKy faced off as Broodmother against a solo Tidehunter, with little success. Anchor smashing his way to ten minute Arcane Boots and with the momentum gained in ganks dictated the flow of the early to mid game transition.

By the twenty fourth minute Moscow 5 had core items up on most heroes and some absurd luxuries on others: fully equipped in the way of Blink Daggers, Refresher Orbs and Vanguards Tidehunter was base diving and the game quickly descended into a bloodbath with the vast majority of the fights taking place inside Next.Kz's base. Moscow 5, needless to say, went on to take the throne in around thirty minutes.

Wrap Up: Well the first match up in our King of the Hill series was very entertaining. All the games were packed with kills and while they were mostly one-sided we saw some amazing displays of finesse. Now we look to next week where an undecided challenger will contest the Hill and attempt to take the title from the Russians. If you have Facebook you can have your say on who that team should be if you head on to this link.

Thanks very much everyone for joining us in the first night of many AbsoluteArena King of the Hill matches, stay classy!