Alliance gets one last hurrah at TI12 Qualifiers as Old G disbands

Alliance are doing it, after all. Despite placing seventh place in Division 2 of Dota Pro Circuit 2023 (DPC 2023) Tour 3, this team will still compete in the International 12 Western Europe Qualifier.

In most scenarios, that wouldn’t be the benchmark for a Dota 2 team to qualify for regional qualifiers, let alone a TI12 regional qualifier.

Facing Western European Powerhouses

Quest Esports, Luna Galaxy, Team Secret, Team OG, and Entity will all compete in the regional qualifier. Division 2 teams filled the remaining seven vacant slots. Alongside Alliance, we got: Level UP, Nigma Galaxy, KX Team, Into The Breach, and Ancient Tribe.

For the uninitiated, Alliance hasn’t been in its prime since their TI3 winning moment. In Alliance’s defense, the current roster isn’t the founding players either, but Gustav “s4” Magnusson still leads the young team into the qualifiers.

However, the roster sticking together since late 2022 just didn’t paid off as they struggle to even stay in Division 2.

A week ahead of TI12 WEU Regional Qualifier, Alliance announced the latest addition to their TI12 roster, Axel “Pablo” Källman. Pablo will serve as pos-4 support, replacing former player, Remus “ponlo” Goh.

Big Game Hunting in the Regionals

Old G’s withdrawal from WEU qualifiers came as a surprise, considering the stack of all-stars had committed most of the DPC 2023 season to reach here. They cited that performance just wasn’t up to par, so it was reasonable to withdraw from a heavily contested qualifier.

Frankly, even without Old G on the playing field, Alliance will have a rough time dealing with most opponents in the qualifier. Given the matchups, Alliance will face the loser of Entity vs Nigma Galaxy’s match. This isn’t the worst match-up in the TI12 WEU Qualifiers by any means, considering it could have been against one of the fan favorites, such as Quest Esports.

Quest Esports is arguably on the same level as the Big Trio, so they likely got this in the bag.

Fortunately, there is still another slot for WEU teams, so that’s where the other teams have their eyes on. OG are another strong contender in the qualifier,. They will face Team Secret in the upper bracket match. However, if Alliance wins their lower bracket round 1 miraculously, we might just see Alliance face off against Team Secret or OG.

With Quest Esports out of the way, securing the second qualifying slot doesn’t seem too difficult, if only Alliance stepped up their game. We could always give s4 the benefit of the doubt here, considering there is a brand new Dota 2 Update 7.34 with many undiscovered meta yet to be exploited.

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