Alliance made a terrific run through the entire ESL One Birmingham Online: Europe and CIS division to secure a top two finish from the upper bracket.
They finished second in Group B, tied with VP.Prodigy in the overall games score, but with one series loss more than the youth squad of Virts.pro. The group play placement secured them a spot in the playoff upper bracket and they held onto their position with a first victory over Team Secret.
Headed into the semifinals, Alliance met VP.Prodigy and once again they took them down 2-0. The first win over the youngsters was secured at the end of May during the group stage, and it seems that the overall tactic from back then prevailed in the upper bracket finals as well.
s4 and co. came prepared to match VP.Prodigy’s fast tempo and slayed them in less than an hour. In game one, VP.P revealed their strategy with the first two picks, Death Prophet followed by Queen of Pain and got heavily countered with an Ember Spirit, a carry Riki and a support Nature’s Prophet, all three heroes perfectly suited to match the mobility and the push power drafted by VP.P. The second game unfolded pretty much in the same manner, starting with a similar drafting stage. VP.P once again first picked Death Prophet and although they tried to trick Alliance by placing it in the safe lane, while their mid lane choice was Nature’s Prophet and the offlane was reserved for an Ember Spirit, the overall push plan was nullified by their adversaries with Gustav “s4” Magnusson’s Beastmaster and a Radiance – Wraith King build from Nikolay “Nikobaby” Nikolov.
In the post series winner’s interview, Nikobaby gave no chance to VP.Prodigy to take down Team Secret in the lower bracket finals and said that he and Alliance are ready for a re-match with the European juggernaut for the tournament title. The lower bracket finals, Team Secret versus VP.Prodigy are scheduled for tomorrow, June 6 at 16:00 CET while the grand finals will be held on Sunday, June 7 at 15:00 CET.
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