After a longer slump, Alliance claims a much needed title by winning the Dota 2 Champions League. They appeared to be struggling in the first game tonight but managed to turn it around and carry the momentum onwards into a 3-0 victory over Speed Gaming.
Dota 2 Champions League was settled once and for all tonight. Changes made within the Alliance line-up were Jonathan 'Loda' Berg taking over the role as drafter from Gustav 's4' Magnusson. Alliance showed strength and co-ordination after a shaky start in the first game, managing to pull a three to zero victory over Speed Gaming, thus gaining a much needed victory while Speed continue their losing streak. Alliance will have to prove themselves further in the upcoming StarLadder playoffs but winning tonight was certainly a motivation boost even though one could argue that Speed were not performing at their best.
Just prior to the final, the remaining qualifying game between Empire and RoX.KiS was played and despite RoX.KiS having a good start, Empire turned it around and took the victory in the end, thus joining in with Alliance, Fnatic, Na`Vi, Speed, Sigma, Liquid and Virtus.Pro in the upcoming season.
Dota 2 Champions League prize pool
1st - 
Alliance - $25,000 + ??? from ticket sales
2nd - 
Speed Gaming - $15,000 + ??? from ticket sales
3rd - 
Sigma International - $7,000 + ??? from ticket sales
4th - 
Team Liquid - $3,000 + ??? from ticket sales
Note that the share added to the prize pool coming from the ticket sales is yet to be revealed.
Both teams went into the match with a lot to gain, a lot to lose and a lot to prove. In the first game, Alliance was seen with Loda as drafter and a firm mindset to apply the Meracle Rat strat, picking up Naga Siren as their second hero. However, Speed massively won the laning phase and were up to a 12,000 gold advantage at minute 15. A while after that though, they fell into a passive pace and were not able to push against Alliance's line-up despite Alliance lacking farm and levels. Alliance successfully kept them at bay while farming up Loda's Siren to Meracleous levels. As seen often before, it is very hard to shut down the late game push and team fight coming from Naga which was the case this game. Alliance turned game one around and stood victorious in the end.
Alliance seemed sure of their plan in game two as well, going for a push strategy revolving around Shadow Shaman, Chen and Luna. They hit their timings well, found their farm and successfully out-maneuvered Speed in the fights, especially EternalEnvy who went straight BKB with Clinkz, skipping Orchid altogether. Speed could not deal with the early push, and a few missplays certainly did not help them. An early kill on Roshan while he sat helpless, trapped in s4's Serpent Wards more or less sealed the deal, from there on it was Alliance's game all the way to the "gg".
During the middle of the draft of game three, Loda's connection went dark and the teams were forced to remake. After waiting for the return of their drafter for some time, Alliance were forced to start the game with a stand-in. MiSeRy joined as fifth player and s4 returned to being the drafter, if only temporary. Speed opted for SingSing's Kunkka and EE's Spectre while Alliance picked the Venomancer + Io + Dragon Knight combination (inspired by Invictus Gaming). The game started out in a perfect way for Speed, managing to wipe the entire aggressive trilane of Alliance with bOne7's Prophet teleporting up and getting two kills. This allowed Prophet to have a very fast start of the game. But Alliance powered through and forced towers at the back of s4's Dragon Knight. The team managed to beef up the tanky tri-core and inbetween five-manning and quick Relocate-kills, Alliance eventually claimed the title, not letting Prophet's split push get the better of them.
"We had to change up the draft"
The team felt that changes were needed in order to improve, which is why Loda was seen as drafter tonight. "We felt like we had to change up the draft a bit so changing captain to Loda was one way to do it." is what Joakim 'Akke' Akterhall told GosuGamers after the match. "We pretty much still pick as a team but Loda has the final saying."
As mentioned, they were left without their new found drafter in the third game and forced to use a stand-in. "It's always a bit off to play without one of your main players but Misery is an awesome guy with a lot of experience so he made sure we were able to perform well anyway!" In the end it was enough and MiSeRy fit well into the game, despite having a poor start.
>> Check out the VODs of the Dota 2 Champions League final
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In the video below, from game one, SingSing saves EternalEnvy by passing him a cheese mid-clash, otherwise he would have surely perished to the follow up of that Earth Shaker initiation.
The first chapter of the $214,000 Money Week is done, the remaining two chapters are G-League and StarLadder. Read more about Money Week and the development of prize purses in Dota 2 in this article.
