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Infernal Shrines. Fnatic is down a keep in the lane with the punisher, and Method is clearly in control of teamfights. The game is coming down to the wire, and there are only two options left for Fnatic: try to teamfight and delay the game for a bit longer or rush down the core and hope for the best. A last minute call rallies Fnatic on the core with bold bravado just as Method starts to back. Although it’s incredibly close, Fnatic's precision timing comes out victorious!

This is the story of the core rush, the sort of “do or die” situations that teams occasionally find themselves in. And when it works, it looks fantastic. It looks amazing. But when it doesn’t…well, the team doesn’t look so glamorous.

Core rushes appear more commonly during the first couple of weeks every year. The cause isn’t clear. Perhaps teams aren’t comfortable with the metagame yet or riskier moves feel more beneficial than carefully planning strategies. The same sort of trend can be found in early 2016 when the reformed Team Liquid was going crazy with backdoor strategies or even at the beginning of HGC 2017 where MVP Black won multiple times off Sake's relentless Falstad pushes.



Juan "Jschritte" Passos of SpaceStation Gaming has a different theory. According to him, it has nothing to do with the teams themselves. "I think core rushes are happening because of the changes to standalone towers. It's made it easier to ignore towers and take down keeps early." The ease of taking down keeps has made it possible to clear an avenue toward the core much earlier in the game and has consequently made backdooring a legitimate strategy for teams to exploit. In fact, snowballing a keep into the core on the same push is so common that the root seems lie in the lack of punishment from tanking the keep. "In other MOBAs," Jschritte added, "you can't just ignore towers and push in to kill the core."

Whatever the case, there have been a plethora of wonky, crazy, and insane core calls over the past few weeks, and not all of them have gone well. Here is an extensive list of core rushes from the first three weeks of HGC:

• Method vs Diamond Skin G2 - Week 1
  
• LFM Esports vs SpaceStation Gaming - Week 1
  
• LFM Esports vs Team Twelve G3 - Week 1
  
• Super Perfect Team vs Sunny Lion G2 - Week 1 (Honorable Mention)
  
• Method vs Fnatic G1 - Week 2
  
• Method vs Fnatic G4 - Week 2 (Honorable Mention)
  
• LFM Esports vs Gale Force eSports G5 - Week 2
  
• Zealots vs Fnatic G1 - Week 2
  
• Zealots vs Fnatic G3 - Week 2
  
• Team Liquid vs Tricked Esport G3 - Week 3
  
• Team Liquid vs Tricked Esport G4 - Week 3 (Honorable Mention)
  
• Team Method vs Zealots G1 - Week 3
  
• Team Twelve vs Gale Force eSports G4 - Week 3

When it comes to failed core calls, one series stands out in particular: Team Liquid vs Tricked Esport from Week 3. It was an incredibly even matchup with its fair share of great plays and epic fails in equal measure, but what made this series memorable was the sheer unpredictability of the outcome—a reminder that the only goal in the game is to destroy the opponent’s core.

To some degree, the prevalence of rushing down the enemy’s base is due to the current metagame.
The rise of Uther and Tyrael provides invulnerability, after-death effects, and greater racing potential. Combined with high DPS heroes like Greymane, Hanzo, Tracer, it’s easier than ever to reduce the core to ruins in a matter of seconds. And let’s not forget Abathur, who both sieges very well and adds an extra body to backdoor attempts. Jschritte also notes Anub'arak as a problem hero due to his ability to completely shut down an enemy hero with Cocoon and cripple the enemy team's defense. Beetles also provide a great damage buffer against the core's slow attacks.



Is it time to buff core health? It’s hard to tell. The 2018 Battleground changes did a number on the metagame and fundamentally changed how minions, mercenaries, pushing objectives, and heroes interact with buildings. It’s remarkable overall how little has changed in the way that teams play on average, but the propensity for core races might be a symptom of a real underlying problem. It's possible that removing the standalone tower had larger effects than intended, but maybe there's a better fix than a revert. Jschritte's solution is to make the keep harder to get to. "Maybe if you could only hit the keep after destroying the towers, we would have less core rushes."