Alliance were the favorites going into Dota Summit 10 and they showed why by only dropping a total of three games en route to winning the tournament today.
Sweeping Complexity Gaming, J Storm, and Team Serenity put them at a great pace, while paiN Gaming proved that they were the only team really prepared to battle with one of the European teams heading to The International 2019.
Once the playoffs started, Alliance knew paiN could hang with their team when they handed them their only loss in the group stage to stop a perfect run. And when they clashed in the upper bracket, the South American squad showed their great play again.
After taking game one in a very one-sided contest, Alliance just couldn’t close out against paiN. Games two and three broke 60 minutes as the pair of talented teams traded blows. Specifically, in game two, the advantage was swapped over a dozen times, with paiN pulling things back in the final three minutes to steal the win.
After getting knocked into the lower bracket, Alliance immediately beat Serenity and jumped into the grand finals for a rematch with paiN.
From the start of the finals, paiN looked utterly lost against what Alliance was throwing at them. There was very little opposition while Michael “miCKe” Vu’s Sven and Max “qojqva” Bröcker’s Death Prophet cleaned up during lanes.
Even after getting run out in game one, game two started slightly better for paiN. They executed well in the early stages and managed to get Adriano “4dr” Machado going on his Gyrocopter.
All that went straight into the trash when Alliance stopped trying to play the solo game and actually grouped up in lane. Once they were together, it took the pressure off qojqva and let him start destroying with Death Prophet again.
Facing a 2-0 deficit, paiN really tried to put up a fight in game three. The first 10 minutes were promising and they actually held a decent advantage over their opponents, but some poor decisions and just straight-up bad play cost them the series.
Samuel “Boxi” Svahn just couldn’t miss his spear throws as Mars and his teammates capitalized on every little mistake paiN made. The game was called without Alliance even getting past some of the upper-tier structures because their heroes out-leveled paiN’s by so much that some attacks could nearly one-shot supports.
Alliance secured the Summit trophy and completed a great warmup heading into the start of The International 2019 on Aug. 15.
