Alliance resurrects its Dota 2 roster

After failing to achieve its Dota 2 objectives in 2022, Alliance has decided to press the reset button and rebuild from scratch.

The old roster was released at the end of September. At first, people thought that Alliance would choose to keep at least its position 1 and position 2 players. Both Nikolay “Nikobaby” Nikolov and Aliwi “w33” Omar were excellent competitors who excelled at their respective roles. But Jonathan “Loda” Berg decided to let them go.

Why 2022 was a bad year for Alliance

Alliance spent most of 2022 in Western Europe’s second division, known as Division II. To some, this may seem shocking given the fact that Alliance won The International in 2013 and some of the old players are still involved in running the org.

But for those who follow Dota 2 events regularly, it’s quite obvious why Alliance couldn’t keep up with the top European teams. Let’s not forget that at The International 11, the top three competitors were all from Western Europe.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Nigma Galaxy, led by one of the best captains in the history of Dota 2, missed The International completely. If Kuro “KuroKy” Takhasomi couldn’t even qualify for the tournament, the implication is that the competitive level in this region is off-the-charts.

So what can a team like Alliance do under these circumstances? Not much. But now that their roster has been rebuilt under the leadership of Gustav “s4” Magnusson, a former TI winner and one of the most knowledgeable players in Dota 2, Alliance stands a chance of qualifying for Majors and actually competing at The International 12 in 2023.

The new Alliance roster

Apart from s4, the initial Alliance roster will include the following four players:

• Charlie “aQua” Arat (position 1)
• Ng “ChYuan” Chyuan (position 2)
• Remus “ponlo” Zhi Xian (position 4)
• Simon “Handsken” Haag (position 5)

It’s really interesting that Alliance chose to bring in two players from Southeast Asia. Their knowledge of the game will surely be valuable for the team and the good news is that both of them have already been tested severely.

ChYuan comes from Fnatic while ponlo comes from Quincy Crew and Aster.Aries.

Nobody knows right now how good aQua is in the carry role. But what we do know is that he used to play for goonsquad. And that team was quite good in 2022, finishing fifth-sixth in the Western European qualifier for The International 11.

The roster has great potential and s4’s deep knowledge of drafting will certainly help to unleash it.

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