Valentine Madness: vs Alliance

Dota 2 / News / 13 February 2019 — 13:16

The start of the match at 17:00 CET

February 14 at 17:00 CET within the Weplay tournament Dota 2 Valentine Madness will start the match between the teams NAVI.GG.BET and Alliance. Match format — best of 3.

The story of the rivalry of the two tags stretches from 2013 when the teams came together in an incredibly spectacular battle in the grand final match of The International 2013. That meeting is still considered as one of the best in the history of the championship, and the intensity of the match was so high that the face-off of these two teams was named as "el-classico in the world of eSports".

A lot of time has passed since then: the teams have changed a lot of players, and there is not a single former member in their current rosters. Nevertheless, the fact that Natus Vincere and Alliance meet is an outstanding event, and for sure it will attract more than one thousand viewers in front of the screens. In the preview of the match, we will examine who currently represents the Swedish organization and what success has had the team lately.

It's hard to believe, but more than five years have passed since then.

In fact, to say that from the very, legendary Alliance roster no one left is not quite right. At the head of the team, and also as coach, is Jonathan «Loda» Berg, who last year himself defended the colors of the tag on the battlefield. The two co-founders of the organization are Joakim «Akke» Akterhall and Henrik «AdmiralBulldog» Ahnberg — the latter is also the official streamer of the Alliance.

As for the composition of the team, Loda, who originally wanted to create a team entirely from the natives of Sweden, still eventually abandoned this idea. Thus, Maximilian «qojqva» Bröcker joined the team, he has been considered extremely talented for a long time, but could not find a proper place for himself. In Alliance, this player looks good and is able to play both on the mid- and on the easy-lanes, which the team skillfully uses in their strategies.

The rotation partner is Michael «miCKe» Vu — a 19-year-old player who previously performed on the professional stage of Heroes of Newerth and even became the champion of HoN Tour World Finals 2017. In May 2018, he received a personal assessment from Loda, who said that the mid player would soon become the best in his position. A curious fact: before The International 2018, OG negotiated with miCKe about him joining the team.

The Dota 2 team led by Loda

The offlane of the team is Samuel «Boxi» Svahn— another player, who transitioned from Heroes of Newerth to Dota 2. It is noteworthy that it is offlaner that occupies the highest place among the teammates in the leaderboards of the solo MMR, being at the time of writing in the top—5.

One of the supports is Aydin «iNSaNiA» Ayder Sarkohi, who is also holding the captain's position. This is the player who won the most amount of prize winnings in the world during his performance in the Heroes of Newerth. The second support — Tommy «Taiga» Le — began his professional career quite recently: his first team was SFTe-sports, where he played together with The International champion 2018 Topias «Topson» Taavitsainen. It is noteworthy that both Alliance supports quite often change up the heroes, choosing which of them are on position 4 or 5.

It is worth noting that four players (with the exception of qojqva) have been playing together for over a year now. Given that some of the participants used to play Heroes of Newerth together, the best professional teams could envy the mutual understanding of the Alliance.

Alliance players in The Chongqing Major

As for the team results, the start of the season 2018/2019 was very good: 1st place at Reshuffle Madness, 3rd place at GG.Bet Invitational Season 1, as well as successful qualification of ESL One Hamburg 2018 and The Kuala Lumpur Major. Fans began to pin high hopes on Alliance, but the team failed to keep up the pace — a natural decline occurred. Nevertheless, this is a very strong team, which is currently in good shape (this can be seen from the game in the qualifying round for StarLadder ImbaTV Dota2 Minor).

Anyway, our guys need only the victory: “yellow—black” in the match against Vega Squadron showed a good game while surprising with the draft. We hope that in a duel with Alliance, Natus Vincere players will also demonstrate interesting strategies and, of course, achieve a winning result! #NAVINATION

WePlay! Dota 2 Valentine Madness (best of 3)

February 14, 17:00 CET