Alliance scrapped its entire Dota 2 roster ahead of another rebuild in late September. But Entity’s Fishman recently revealed on OG’s Monkey Business podcast that Alliance’s fate could have been different.
According to Fishman, Jonathan “Loda” Berg, former TI winner and Alliance’s co-founder, was in talks with Creepwave, which later became Entity in 2021. The Creepwave squad currently has a relatively successful track record under Entity’s banner and it was just getting started in 2021. Despite featuring impressive talent, the team was flying under the radar as Creepwave.
“Loda had a good chance to sign Creepwave, if he rated us more than the existing Alliance roster with Nikobaby,” Fishman said. “We could have been Alliance now, but we were nobody back then.” Loda eventually decided to continue with Alliance’s existing roster and build around Nikolay “Nikobaby” Nikolov.
Around the time when this possible deal was in the talks, Creepwave hadn’t seen any major success. Alliance had a roster who played at TI10, earning a top-12 finish. And given the circumstances, Alliance decided on the option that made the most sense. After the deal went south, Creepwave turned into one of the best teams in Europe and a player factory.
Entity later signed Creepwave and the team underwent multiple roster changes since many top teams from the region continued to recruit its members. ATF and Chu went to OG, while Crystallis was signed by Team Secret, meaning almost whoever played with Creepwave/Entity turned into gold.
Though this may sound like a good thing, it’s one of the worst scenarios for a team that is just starting to get used to playing with each other. Adding a new player to a roster can always impact the chemistry of the team. But even after having to make more roster changes than a regular squad, Entity still qualified for TI11 through the Western European qualifiers.
