Sand King core...

I don't understand why anyone would want to play him core. All he really needs for team fights is blink dagger.

It doesnt matter if he doesnt benefit from items late into the game. What matters is that the whole reason for picking him is to get a 9-12 min blink and get early kills.
You cant do that with a shadow shaman and a weak carry in your safelane.

You should pick SK when your lanes can handle it and for that you need to be the 4.

Exactly! A Magnus can get early blink and go for kills as well but Magnus NEEDS mid lane to do that.
What makes SK a strong hero is the fact that he can do the same thing *as a 4 position support*.
So if you play him mid you're basically wasting what makes him strong in the first place.

+
Just read the last few pages and i wanted to say almost exactly this. Play to your heroes strengths, dont avoid them.

And i have seen S4 play SK mid, while it did work (let's be honest, he could make mid work with anyone) i still see it as being a very situational pickup and not something that should be considered in 99% of games.

Keep calm and I are buddy buddies now.
Must say he really said golden words.
You farm blink and you need nothing more to start a ganking career. Rest of all that items suggested can be bought with gank money.
You don't need to farm creeps when you can farm heroes.
Also being in jungle doesnt hurt the teams economy. Aside from that he can buy wards and consumables by simple pushes.

Enough of me, i wanna see what wulfy has to say.

Farming Sand King is mostly a solo-queue thing for players that don't have too much faith in their allies. In a five stack or team, he should play position 4. Sand King as a lane farmer is usually not a good idea, as he jungles quickly in a safer environment, and his lack of lane presence usually means he'll not want to be there.

Recently, with the turtle meta, SK Midas has suddenly become viable because very few team I've come up against push t2s at 15 minutes anymore, so in my soloqueue games, I've actually had success more recently as a "pub lifestealer"/"pub nature's prophet" style, jungling a midas (more money, more levels) and Dagger and participating, while getting a little bit of CS from lane defense. Maybe I need to move up from my current skill bracket.

But the beauty of Sand King is that he is quite versatile (more than most people give him credit for). He should not be drafted with the intention of being a core, but he can move into it okay if the situation calls for it as he's hard to kill unless counterdrafted (DAMN YOU ZEUS!) and he farms quick as Jesus.

But addressing the first post, SnY+Drums, are very bad items on SK as he's terrible at frontline manmoding, Blink Dagger should be bought on him every game as he is more dagger dependent than any other hero in the game (except maybe Batman), and almost always he should not be strangling his team by taking lane farm.

I'd say a carry sk is like a carryshaker, but less good.
Basically you can pretty much have only utility items and not real offensive items (if we exclude veil and aghs). Hes not a right clicker (duh), and relies on his spells heavily, which means bkb = carry sk denied at 100%.
On the other hand, a carry shaker can do massive dps, and can be useful in every period of time. Although that he drops super late, he's still a chainstun god and got massive CC. I dont even think theres a niche for a carry sk, like MANY people mentionned he can do just as well as a 4 in jungle, and pretty much be at full potential.