Alliance is definitely back as the Swedes dominated the grand finals of WellPlay Invitational 6, taking the series out of Team Empire with a staggering 3-1 results. It came as a surprise considering that Team Empire previously dominated Team Liquid in the same competition with all of their three matches having a clear lead at start - although game two was taken by Team Liquid after a decisive two clean wipes on Empire. Here's the recap of the grand finals of WellPlay 6.
Game 1
Alliance made a surprise last pick, taking sniper into the middle lane against the team's stand-in, fn Medusa. Although the Team Empire was viewed to have a better overall pick, Alliance' early game rotation had pressured Empire to stick early game into their top towers, falling into the Swedes one by one. And despite getting equal trades, it just shows how Drow Ranger and Medusa fall behind when it comes to trade offs as those heroes definitely needs farm more than any other carries. Starting from 20+ minutes, the gold difference is quite clear from both teams and the Alliance quickly pushed their way to claim game 1.
Game 2
The Alliance had a very solid pick, getting Bat Rider, Luna and Void right off the bat with their supports being Ogre and Vengeful Spirit. Statistically, these heroes have the highest win rate from the Swedes which was made clear after a decisive domination on this game. Empire had taken Drow once again coupled with more squishy heroes, Invoker , Weaver and Oracle. Their main initiator is Clockwerk but it clearly is a very bad pick specially against Vengeful Spirit that can easily swapped out the cogged target. Game 2 ended with utter domination starting from the laning phase - although Empire also took some trades from here and there but those are mostly from Alliance's supports making the scoreboard rather trivial.
Game 3
Alliance had taken their "comfy" heroes once more, getting Luna, Shadow Demon and Doom. Added to these pushing heroes are Shadow Shaman and Mirana. The casters were already saying that the Swedes will take the series 3-0 but Empire managed to take Timbersaw and Slardar form the Alliance which the latter was banned from Alliance in the previous match. In this game, Empire struck hard as they dominated the game early on, getting a whopping 10-24 score at 25+ minutes into the game. The final nail was struck when four heroes from the Alliance fell in a decisive clash near the Rosh pit.
Game 4
Empire had taken Slardar as their first pick followed by Dark Seer. They then took a core Slark and a support Rubick and finally Queen of Pain to close their draft. The draft look extremely solid specially against the Alliance's Magnus and Jugg picks. But instead of getting a definitive offlaner, the Swedes has switched their final draft into another core hero, Blood Seeker which they put solo in the bottom lane. Instead of getting Magnus as their mid, they put the hero into a tri lane and switched Jugg to solo against QoP. The move definitely caught Empire by surprise but the champion from CIS has yet to faze.
Empire managed to get a nice lead against the Alliance due to the latter's tri lane getting train wrecked by the Slark + Slardar and Rubick combo. It was all going well until they lost three consecutive team fights. In the last two fights, Empire was caught by a huge RP + Bloodrite combo that basically ended up their chance of ever bouncing back.
