Sand King — hero grid for mains

The in-game name is Sand King — the same in the English and the Russian client. In chat Sand King also goes by “sk”. Russian-speaking players say “Сэнд Кинг” (or “ск” and “сенд кинг”).

The hero's line in Valve's list reads: “Burrows to stun and slow enemies”.

Search in the hero picker is forgiving: “Sand King”, “Сэнд Кинг”, “sk” — each of them lands on Sand King.

A melee Universal hero — one of 22 — Sand King gets 2 of 3 on Valve's complexity scale.

Valve's roles for Sand King, rated 1 to 3: Initiator ●●●, Nuker ●●○, Disabler ●●○, Escape ●●○, Support ●○○ — maxed out: Initiator.

By attributes puts Sand King in the “UNIVERSAL” (2nd of 22) block; By complexity — in the “MEDIUM” (40th of 59) band.

Sand King is one of the rare flex heroes, scoring 0.5 or more in three positions (mid (2), soft support (4) and offlane (3)), highest as mid; only 8 heroes have more than two. The site's position scores (best = 1) are carry 0.04 · mid 1 · offlane 0.64 · soft support 0.81 · hard support 0.03, so Pick by stats puts the hero into the “2 · MID”, “4 · SUPPORT” and “3 · OFFLANE” rows only.

Median gold per minute for Sand King is 483, experience 700 — between support (360) and core (540), a supportness of 0.49 by the site's formula; by lane, 736 parsed OpenDota matches as of 23 Sept 2026 split 3% safe, 51% mid and 47% off.

The rows of Classic: positions 1–5 hold the 18 most played heroes each and Sand King is not among them; there are two free slots per row, so drop the hero into “2 · MID” yourself.

Sand King in other layouts: not in Meta by stats (ten heroes per position); Two columns — “SUPPORTS”, 39th of 44.

The “Make a grid with Sand King” button opens Mains + situational with Sand King first in the MAINS block, followed by Pangolier, Void Spirit and Earth Spirit — all three share the same main position (mid) and melee attack.

To get the grid into the game, press “Download grid” and, with Dota closed, put hero_grid_config.json into Steam → userdata → account number → 570 → remote → cfg — details in how to install a hero grid.

In the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026 Sand King shows up in 173,694 games (93rd most played of 127) and wins 49.5% of them (69th).

Higher brackets play Sand King worse: 47.5% at Ancient–Divine after 50.9% at Herald–Crusader. Sand King's share of games is 34% above its average at Herald and 28% below at Divine.

Sand King in the snapshot's pro matches: 2 picks, 0 wins, 1 ban. Turbo: 110,378 games at 51.5%, noticeably better than in ranked brackets.

No ready dot drawing of Sand King yet, but any art or screenshot of the hero turns into dots in Picture to dots. Among the heroes with skins that are also played as mid, the closest to Sand King are Dragon Knight, Zeus and Lina — their dot drawings are ready for a mid grid.