Alliance win big in Pro League, with new signing already agreed

Alliance returned to form as they won the third day of the ALGS EMEA Pro League. The trio of Yuki, Hakis and substitute Mande really struggled in their first week finishing 13th.

Today, they were rampant winning games on both Storm Point and Worlds Edge. This is the standard that a team as experienced as Alliance expects to find. Alliance manager Pontus revealed to esports.gg that this will be the last week before Alliance reveal their permanent addition to the roster.

Elsewhere, Scarz, using a radically different legend set up also vastly improved their previous weeks performance finishing 3rd on a tiebreaker. They were just pipped by Horizon Union who had a monstrous last game.

Alliance have a history of leaving things down to the wire. Their CVs feature comeback after comeback - but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been worried by their weak first showing. With the reliable anchor player Vaifs taking a step back from competing just before Pro League, Alliance are without a permanent third at the moment.

It's fair to say they found the best possible stand in. Mande is an incredibly experienced and talented player, so there were no excuses for under performance. Hakis, a very talented IGL should be able to lead any team to success.

Today, they proved what they are capable of. Adjusting their composition and putting Mande on Horizon seemed to give the team a new lease of life in fights. As a result, Alliance put themselves in great positions and found the balance between taking early fights and making end games.

Hakis absolutely excels in calling the final circles, and that has never been in question. The Alliance team made the top 3 in 4 of the 6 games today, racking up plenty of kills in the process.

Despite the win today, this is set to be Mandes last week standing in with the Alliance roster. The arrangement was announced as a 2 week deal, while Alliance explored their options. It seems that they are set to bring Russian 'Effect' into the squad. They played with him a Code Red open tournament a couple of weeks back. He is a relative unknown.

Surely, after such a strong performance both from the team and Mande individually it must be tempting to try and bring the Danish powerhouse into the team full time?

esports.gg spoke to Alliance manager Pontus, who refused to be drawn on the idea of signing Mande full time. On their difficult opening week, Pontus said:

"We didn't have a lot of time to prepare for Week 1 so we went for a comfortable Gibraltar pick for [Mande].

We lacked some firepower in teamfights so by swapping Mande from Gibby to Horizon this week we got a lot more damage opportunities compared to Week 1. Big shout out to him for putting in the work over the past few days to get proper experience on a new Legend in a competitive setting for him.

Then, when pressed on the idea of bringing Mande in full time, Pontus revealed that as rumoured the replacement is already a done deal despite being full of praise for his performance:

"The team performance and team synergy was tighter this week and I was not surprised to see Mande's performance improve as well. With that said we have our new Third player confirmed and look out on Alliance social medias for an update in the following days."

Where Mande will head next after Alliance is yet to be seen.

The highlight for Alliance today was round 5. The game seemed lost, Alliance were short handed with only a full NaVi team left. Yet a brave revive followed by some strong solo play from Yuki helped shift the momentum back to Alliance.

Mande managed to get Hakis back in the fight, levelling it to a 3v3. The substitute was then able to put out some impressive damage before being shot out the air.

Yuki, despite being very weak managed to buy time and hold off the remaining NaVi members while Hakis ran all the way back, swapped his armour and rejoined the fight. This should not have been winnable, but for Alliance - impossible is nothing.

Full standings.

Like Alliance, it was a much better showing from SCARZ too. They struggled in the opening week, dying early with no or few kills in all 6 games.

In some ways, this wasn't a surprise. The SCARZ roster was a complete unknown. The original trio of Mande, RPR and Taisheen are no more. SCARZ only kept their Pro League slot because RPR agreed to be the substitute, maintaining the 2 player rule.

In Gerovic and Hiarka who have joined up with Taisheen SCARZ have experienced players, but an untested formula. All three of Taisheen, Hiarka and Gerovic appeared on LAN last season, but not all together. Hiarka and Gerovic appeared together in Raleigh for AYM, and Taisheen represented Scarz.

It's not clear if the trio had done really any preparation for the first week. For Taisheen, leaving such a long term team would've been a shock and adjustment was always going to take time.

Yet, this week they seemed much more prepared. Having played both scrims and the Shiv series the team played with much better chemistry and much more purpose.

They also sought to address their primary issue, team fighting. They swapped to the Wattson, Valk and Newcastle composition that was pioneered by 100 Thieves in Raleigh.

This defensive composition helped Scarz to secure strong positions and make end games. They won the opening game simply because they had the power spot. When set up in a building the Newcastle Wattson combination is incredibly hard to push. Not because there aren't counters, but because in an end game situation there are countless other teams that are poking and prodding at you while you take the engagement. Then, the risk of being third partied even if you do force a fight.

This helped Scarz stay out of trouble and burst out to clean up the final fight. They only had 6 kills, which is low in the current meta - but this lower risk style is helping them develop chemistry and build up results. Will they stick by this style in future weeks, or get more adventurous as they get more and more familiar with each other?

For more Apex, stay with esports.gg