Deja Vu! Acend do the unthinkable in ALGS A vs C

Acend won the fifth day of the ALGS Pro League in style as the EMEA ALGS Pro League resumed. They issued a carbon copy of their day two performance, dominating in the exact same fashion as when groups A and C last met.

The Acend roster have established total dominance over this match up, with no other team even coming close in the standings after the days six games. Acend's dominance spanned both maps, with the eventual winners taking first place in four of days matches.

Elsewhere the Pioneers and VZN battled it out for the right to be the best of the rest behind Acend. The Pioneers snuck second place, earning some crucial points for the overall standings, by winning the final game.

When groups A and C met back in the first week of the ALGS Pro League, Acend dominated. They won three games, and posted 90 points. This was, until today, by far the most impressive performance across the Pro League so far.

At the time, this was put down as one of those days. Sometimes, everything just clicks. Like when esports arena broke the ALGS points record or Alliance performed a miracle comeback to reach the Sweden LAN. Teams have their moments, but these are considered one off's.

You would be forgiven for treating Acends performance the same as those performances. They have performed fairly averagely against group B sit neatly in the top 10 of the overall standings.

Yet today, they showed that it was no one off performance. Acend repeated their groundbreaking performance, making every single end game and winning 4 of the 6 matches on the day. This earned them a huge total of 104 points.

Acend also break the mould of recent months, playing a defensive early rotate playstyle. These incredible points totals have been often associated with teams like OpTic and FURIA dropping a couple of insane games.

This isn't the approach of Lukfa, PostKill and K4shera. Instead, they rely on consistency and positioning. Several of their wins today came easily, with the final two teams often forced to fight as Acend looked on, bided their time, and then cleaned up.

Why is this match up so favourable for this squad?

Firstly, they are a very talented team. K4shera is an incredibly experienced IGL, he has hundreds of games under his belt. For an IGL, the more you can experience the better your gameplans can be. In a BR game, the ability to think on the fly and improvise is crucial, but so is preparation. K4shera knows what spots they can rotate too, what spots are strong to hold and how other teams behave.

Secondly, this match up has very few of the top early rotate teams. The Pioneers only rotate fast on Worlds Edge, and other strong rotate teams like Invictus Gaming and Element 6 are in group B. Also in group B are some of the other big names like Alliance and Vexed Gaming. This doesn't mean that Acend are only successful because the lobbies are 'easy', but it means that there are less teams rotating for the strongest spots.

Without some of the most aggressive edge teams in the lobby there are also more kills available for Acend. Furthermore, Acend are able to comfortably sit at the top of a lobby which is otherwise very tight, making their win seem even more comfortable. They also are able to land Staging on Worlds Edge in this match up - with Vexed taking it in Group B. Staging is such a good early rotate POI that NRG are changing playstyle to accommodate it's power.

The bottom line is frankly that Acend have just shown up in a big way on both occasions. Of course, there are big names missing and Acend were under fairly minimal pressure in zone - but you still have to know the zones, know the rotates and know the spots. Acend still had to play with coordination, discipline and win their fights. It's not even like Acend had low kill totals on the day, they averaged over 7 kills per game, all without playing Seer, Bloodhound or Horizon.

While all credit will go to Acend for their outstanding performance today, they will be under some pressure to perform slightly better against group B when they play next.

Not because they need the points to qualify for the regional finals or the playoffs, but because they will need to find something close to this level of performance in those events. They won't be the only fast rotate team in the regional finals, and teams will be studying their performance very closely. Could teams make some adjustments to counter Acend? How much of their success on Worlds Edge is down to being able to land Staging - which is contested by Vexed in group B?

Full standings here.

The Pioneers bounced back from a frustrating day four performance to take second. They finished 14th last weekend, and Gnaske tweeted his frustration afterwards.

Sometimes, that can happen in a BR situation. Bad days can be had, and it's important for rosters to bounce back and keep a feeling of positive momentum.

Luckily, the Pioneers are one of the strongest teams in the game. Not just mechanically, but with team understanding and synergy. Having competed together on and off across multiple years of the ALGS, this roster has been through thick and thin. Even now, they are competing under the cloud of Max Strafe being based in Ukraine.

The key to the Pioneers success is that chemistry. Especially on Storm Point they play aggressively, looking to rack up kills. This results in performances like the second game today.

The Pioneers only placed 5th, earning them just 4 placement points. Yet they earned the second most points in that game, almost scoring as many points as the games winners Acend. This is thanks to the Pioneers racking up a huge 13 kills, playing aggressive and running through team after team throughout the game.

The Pioneers are sitting in second in the overall standings, just 4 points behind Acend who sit in first. They are possibly just one more strong week away from a guaranteed spot in the top 10, and have already comfortably made the regional finals.

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