Bottle Crow Reborn

Congrats to Virtus Pro for being the first team to clench their International 2018 invite! My sympathies to Most Dota Players for being unable to get tickets to said International, because they sold out in mere seconds! Dota Plus is changing the way we play, but perhaps catastrophic hardware failure is changing it even more. Reso needs a rez, five anchors unsecured, the newest Hero Concept. And, J...

The old Bottle Crow RSS feed that we lost access to has been delisted. At last, Bottle Crow Reborn is again your ONLY Dota 2 podcast named after a technique that has since been patched out of the game. And we’re celebrating with a jam-packed episode! Dota Plus, Artifact, the future of VR (I know, but hear us out), our new cooking corner, and The Only Way To Get Banned. I wonder if we should...

Do you like QUIZZES? Do you like DOTA? Well, we have two Dota quizzes for you this week! Play along with Nick as Six plays quizmaster! We’ve also got the latest from Iceberg eSports (rip rip rip rip), Jacky Mao’s Kitchen Nightmares, Patch Is Here Once Again, we’re salty about the Sunder cooldown. Plus, Valvebro isn’t back, stop it, that’s obviously OBVIOUSLY a fake. L...

This week, Six and Nick are going all in on ESL. (Katoviiiice.) We take a deep dive into the history and structure of the esports behemoth, in an attempt to learn where its corporate clumsiness stems from. Then it’s on to observations about Artifact, applause for Envy, and a very happy birthday to Fear. And, uh… Car Talk? Listen, Nick was pretty sick. Be nice. We’re on iTunes, Google P...

It’s a sad time for Dota fans. Not only is one of Dota’s favorite sons, Merlini, retiring from pro Dota, but LD is stepping back as welll… and then to add insult to injury, doofuses like Slacks and the Bottles Crow, Nick and Six, aren’t stopping while they’re ahead. We wish a warm farewell to Ben Wu, one of the greats, and look to the future… it sure as shit ain...

This week’s news might spell the death of the patch note special? We can’t do those every two weeks, we seriously can’t. But if the average quality of our standard episodes goes up because of it, it’s well worth it. Inbetween talk of beef stew and microwave bacon, we find time to dish dirt on Navi and VP’s player swap, the Fate of Sonneiko, our biweekly patch future,...

You know, I’m sure Icefrog MEANS well, but the consistency with which he makes our podcast episodes incorrect by the time they post is a tad frustrating. Then again, it’s also on me for being a bit slow this week. The ESL One Genting drama starts to calm down, but we still manage to get fired up. We tackle some big questions: how will they nerf Tinker? What changes need to happen to ge...

Oh my goodness gracious god. We had no time for anything but drama this week, and even shaving off all the other things we wanted to talk about, it was STILL a long episode! Nick and Colin have things to say about all the drama around ESL One Genting, scheduling error forfeits, The Salt Lord, and how to pronounce Katowice. We even had to delay the episode to record a little drop-in because the dra...

Grab a can of Energy Drink ™ because it’s time for Dota talk! Nick reports on his Captain’s Draft experience… but fails to drink the Promised Beverage, and Colin must take up that burden. New teams form, custom games are Even More Dead I Guess, and we aren’t the only Aghs show in town. AD2L begins, and with it, a new chapter in our amateur careers. …Is amateur c...

The year is dead. We will not mourn it. No, friends, celebrate 2017. Celebrate its life, for all its joys and… hang on please. Hang on. I’m… getting reports 2017 was trash? Shit year? Ded gaem? Hmm. Well. Regardless, there were some interesting events in 2017’s Dota, from the pro scene to the patches, and the way we’ve evolved as players. Let’s talk about it. P....

May the Christmas Spirit fill you, and CONSUME YOU. There is no escape. Even here on Bottle Crow, Frostivus Fever has set in, and the only cure is a tired reference. Headlining tonight’s show: Sumail vs. Peter, match scheduled for one fall. Nick does the work Valve is unwilling to and actually reviews the Frostivus custom game contest entries. Morph is ded hero. EG is ded team. The offlane m...

This week, we’re making up for the previous off episode with a content-packed banger of an episode. This is like the Hot Pocket of podcasts! Pizza Hot Pocket! Four Cheese. The pepperoni one is okay, I guess, but kinda too greasy, and the five cheese one is like… weirdly not great? You’d think if four cheese were good, five cheeses would be better, but no. Five cheese is a bad Hot...

please. don’t make me come up with show notes. haven’t i done enough? editing this podcast for hours and hours, day after day, almost made me give up podcasting. but i did it. is it good? i don’t know. it’s probably terrible. i don’t care, i can’t care. it is done and it is gone and god willing i never have to hear it again. qop support. dc disbands. middle sist...

Fifty/Fifty: I forgot to give this episode a proper title, I am making a dumb reference to part of the episode. New MMR is here, and people upset because they’re egotistical jackasses! (There are also legit complaints, but most of it is just “y i no 9k”) Midas Mode is over, and it was FANTASTIC. We’ve got an update from the FiftEE/FiftEE front. And finally, our fears of Dot...

Hey hey hey hey, smoke deceit every day. As Midas Mode delights, in the background, war was beginning. Beyond the Summit or Moonduck: it’s time to choose a side. For one must live, and the other must- what? I’m in the middle of a… hmmm. Well, okay. I’m being told the situation is really not that dire, and I’m being melodramatic. Is that true? Only YOU can decide, dear...

English is hard, okay? Join Colin and Nick as we tackle drama, drama, hats, drama, and a certain malaise that has settled over our co-hosts in regards to the recent patch. We join the chorus of people expressing their disappointment with GranDGrant’s latest idiotic claim, we can’t pronounce words in treasure names, a mohawk is not an afro. Valve should do better. Take a shot if you&#82...

During our Extra Life stream, we brought folks a special treat. This is the podcast archive of that present. Colin and Nick are joined by a special guest- Sam Wendel of We Like Dota, the internet’s casual Dota podcast! Colin is nearly ten hours into streaming and slightly out of it, Nick is sharp and ready for action, and Sam is a gracious guest. Join them as they talk 7.07, recent news, and...

We roll into our second hour with the second part of our Dueling Fates patch notes special! Colin and Nick have managed to keep special guest Mistablue interested somehow, and now it’s time to talk about hero changes! Buckle the EFF up! We’re on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher! You can subscribe on those, and leave a review if you like! That would really help us out. Tell your Dota friends...

I hope you are ready for two and a half hours of Dota patch analysis, because it’s comin’ at you. This first part clocks in at a little over an hour, but there is also a part two. Join Colin, Nick, and special guest Mistablue (formerly of Defense of the Patience) for breakdown of the Dueling Fates update! We’re on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher! You can subscribe on those, and leave...

Well, when we RECORDED this there wasn’t a patch yet. This week, we tackle Mercedes memes, Anti-Kings, ESL One Hamburg, another WLDL update, and more! Keeping this description on the shorter end, because I am going to go pass out, wake up, and then immediately edit more Bottle Crow (specifically the patch notes special for 7.07). Life is the ultimate game, and Game Is Hard. We’re on iTunes,...

Listen, I’m gonna be honest with you. If TF2’s servers were working right when that big patch hit, that’d be what we were talking about this week. Probably? Maybe. Honestly, TF2 hasn’t changed much in the past… five years. Going back to it, it’s a game I used to love so much, but its design just doesn’t do it for me anymore. In an attempt to figure out wha...

Curse you, v1lat! A tease of a patch, born of falsehood! In its wake, we scramble to pick up the pieces. Starladder’s a mess, with tactical pause rules and an observer clearly out of their depth. SFTe-sports suffers a mutiny in the wake of its incompetence. Should we ever have another Dota 2 holiday event? Plus, a WLDL update. Trust no Lich. We’re on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher! You ca...

I fully expected this podcast to be a battle for the soul of Dota- me vs. Nick, arguing whether or not we should all quit Dota because it’s a bad game. I have had a bad week of Dota. It has been miserable. My spirit was tested, and truly, I faltered. And it took a small wonder to get me to pick myself off the mat, and dust off. There are still battles to be fought. The Ancient yet stands, an...

The definition of “desolate” to make a place depressingly barren or empty. Maybe the Desolator’s name stems not from its powers, but from the goal it strives towards: an empty field, devoid of buildings and structures it has long since torn down. Or perhaps it’s a comment on what the effect on a friendship it can have when you slip your Desolator into another person’s...

We’re really at a stage with this meta where it’s hard for me to boot up the game. So, we take a little time to talk about news: the ongoing drama with Ana and his former manager, your bi-monthly cry of “Navi’s back,” the Immortals AMA. Then we bury our heads deep in the fiction of a better world, and an imagined meta, as our own ideas for new Dota content come forth!...