Game24 Preview: [A] vs TT, a global war?

Game24 Preview: [A] vs TT, a global war?
posted by Roshkiller,
EGM takes on his former team-mates Alliance in a best-of-5 later today as Team Tinker take on the TI3 champions in the NVIDIA GAME24 Challenge. Alliance are most likely without Joakim "Akke" Akterhall and have yet to beat Team Tinker. If previous encounters are anything to go by this will be all-out war on a global scale.


For a long time after TI4, se [color=gold]AdmiralBulldog[/color] would title his Twitch-broadcasts ”Top 11 team in the world” in reference to se [color=gold]Alliance[/color] ending up at 11th place in the tournament that they won the year before. He did not seem like the only one upset by these results as the team went through some rosterchanges shortly after the dissapointment they suffered at The International.



Both se [color=gold]s4[/color] and se [color=gold]EGM[/color] left the team and made space for se [color=gold]Chessie[/color] and dk [color=gold]MiSeRy[/color]. Chessie is an ex-HoN player who followed in the footsteps of old teammates se [color=gold]zai[/color] and us [color=gold]ppd[/color] by making the transition from HoN to Dota 2. MiSeRy needs no introduction.

Friends or Foes?
And now the new line-up of Alliance are up against world [color=gold]Team Tinker[/color] in a Bo5 that feels a little bit like the family gathering of a slightly incestious family. Looking at the ”family trees” of these players, their paths intersect more than once. EGM and nl [color=gold]SingSing[/color] were teammates before he went to No Tidhunter(who would eventually become Alliance) and are now reunited again. se [color=gold]Pajkatt[/color] and MiSeRy has played together under six different teamnames. Pajkatt and se [color=gold]Akke[/color] in two and one of those also had se [color=gold]Loda[/color] as a member.

As you can see these players share a past to say the least. Now it seems they are destined to share a future as well – but as enemies. The two teams are quickly creating a rivalry between one another. This Bo5 in NVIDIA GAME24 Invitational marks the third encounter between them this month alone. The current score is 3-0 in favour of Team Tinker but fans of Alliance should not be too worried about this in regard to the upcoming Bo5, as all the previous games between the teams have been single-game series.

Fast and the Furion
A big factor in the latest win Tinker got against Alliance was the split-pushing Furion of Pajkatt, who showed AdmiralBulldog that he is not afraid to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Furion is actually the most picked hero for both teams and one of the best heroes of AdmiralBulldog, Pajkatt as well as de [color=gold]qojqva[/color].

AdmiralBulldog has some really impressive overall stats on his Natures Prophet. With a total of 178 professional games on the hero he has won 129 and only lost 49, giving his Furion a 72.5% winrate. Out of the 20 games that the new Alliance has played together he has gotten to play as his favorite Prophet 6 of those, managing to win 4 out of 6 times. That is a 66% winrate compared to the 50% that the team have as a total winrate for the 20 games that the squad has played together.

qojqva, who is number two on the list of most played Furion games with a respectable total of 108 professional matches on the hero, has played him in 8 out of the 37 games(67.6% total winrate) that Team Tinker has played during the same period as Alliance's 20. On those 8 games he has a 5-3 record with 62.5% winrate.

Pajkatt, who despite only having 24 Furion games on his datdota-page, can brag about his name showing up side by side with qojqva's and AdmiralBulldog's when looking through records on the hero for things such as highest KDA, highest GPM, highest tower damage and highest hero damage. His NP-stats on Team Tinker is currently 3-0 with a 100% winrate.

A global battlefield
In addition to the teams having three of the best Furion-players they also have one of the best Wisp-players. EGM is renowned for his Wisp and has a 74.4% winrate on it with a total of 90 games. And nobody knows the potential of it better than his old teammates in Alliance. That is probably why they have first-banned it in 2 out the 3 games they have played against eachother since he joined Tinker.

MiSeRy and se [color=gold]Key[/color](the most likely stand-in for Akke – who is on vacation in Japan – in these games as he played in his stead versus ru [color=gold]Virtus Pro[/color] yesterday. He usually plays support for se [color=gold]House of Gamers[/color], a team that is currently dominating in Division 2 of joinDota League Europe.) might not have anywhere near the same numbers on Wisp as EGM does but they have both been seen playing the hero with great results so it is certainly a posibility for Alliance to draft it for themselves as well.

So no matter what surprises this battle/family gathering brings us, we can expect global line-ups coming out from both sides. And if Team Tinker gives Furion to Alliance, it might be to counter it with the return of SingSing's Meepo, which have been in hiding since The International.

To find out what happens, make sure to watch the games on NVIDIA's Game 24 stream at 4:00 PDT / 7:00 EDT / 13:00 CEST. Casting by Aaron "Ayesee" Chambers and Mark "Tralf" Seidel.

The mini-tournament continues at 11:30AM PDT / 2:30PM EDT / 20:30 CEST with the grand finals where the winners of this series will play against us [color=gold]Evil Geniuses[/color] or world [color=gold]Cloud 9[/color].

More info about the tournament can be found here.

Who has the best Nature's Prophet?


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