Gaimin Gladiators find their form in ALGS Pro League

The Gaimin Gladiators rediscovered their best form in the fourth day of the EMEA ALGS Pro League. The former Gambit roster were under pressure after two disappointing results in their opening weeks.

They narrowly beat out Invictus Gaming to take first place. Just three points separated the two rosters. Despite narrowly missing out on taking the overall victory, iG will still be pleased in their performance. This second place is their best performance since linking up with Graceful.

Gaimin Gladiators have leaped all the way up to 8th on the overall standings following their win today, having languished in the relegation zone heading into the day's 6 games.

The struggles of the Gaimin Gladiators was leaving many fans and competitors scratching their heads. On paper, things seemed absolutely set for the Gladiators absolutely excel in the Pro League.

Known for their incredible mechanics and team fighting the Gaimin Gladiators should have been relishing the aggressive Seer led meta. There are far more early game fights in Apex Legends than at any point during the games history.

Yet, the Gladiators actually played a very defensive Newcastle and Wattson combination in the opening week. This seemed to go against their natural strengths and perhaps indicated a lack of confidence in their ability to run the board and get big kills.

To their credit, the Gaimin Gladiators seemed to identify this and switched to a much more aggressive Seer set up in week two. They still struggled to get going, but were not deterred in keeping the same aggression based approach in their third set of games in the ALGS Pro League.

They will be glad that they held their nerve. Averaging 7.5 kills per game today, they rediscovered their best form.

Crucially, they have also managed to find success on both Worlds Edge and Storm Point. Some of the more aggressive teams in Apex struggle with finding success on both maps. Storm Point is much more suited to aggression, but you cannot be successful consistently if you cannot create big games on both maps.

That is exactly what the Gaimin Gladiators did today. They consistently racked up good kill totals, and secured a win on Storm Point, and a second place on Worlds Edge.

You could feel the confidence returning to the Gladiators throughout todays games.

They managed to navigate a tough final zone on Storm Point, holding their nerve. Having cleared out their side of the map to claim a strong position they were in a tricky 3v3v3 situation. Fighting first in a three way battle can be risky. There is a huge chance that the third team runs in and cleans up - yet the Gaimin Gladiators were able to keep their cool.

Having the confidence to engage in a fight, trusting their ability to stay alive is what won them this game. They repelled both teams, even when Horizon Union took their high ground, to clean up both teams. Undoubtedly, a less confident team might have folded under the pressure of such a move from Horizon Union and been forced into a weaker position.

Now, the focus will be on keeping this standard of performance and maintaining that top 10 position in the overall standings.

In a complete juxtaposition with the Gaimin Gladiators, Invictus Gaming (iG) were just denied their first overall win of the season.

iG, led by talented in game leader Noiises play the complete opposite style to that of their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts. Playing Crypto and Wattson, they prioritise fast rotations, taking powerful positions and cleaning up the final circles.

They found incredible consistency across the six games, securing a top 3 finish four times across the days games. They were also able to pick up solid amounts of kills, which can sometimes be a challenge for fast rotate teams.

You could interpret iG's placement first approach to be an admission of weaker team fighting abilities. Staying safe and staying out of trouble because they don't quite have the ability to rack up huge kill games.

Yet, that is clearly not the case. All day, iG showed incredible mechanics and coordination whenever they took engagements. In particular how to combine Crypto's EMP ability with grenades to siege positions and force teams onto the back foot.

Their best example of this came in the opening game. The IG roster rolled up on their favoured position in zone, but found a team already occupying it.

They managed to chase Ember down into another building, but weren't satisfied with having the roster co-existing so close nearby. To resolve this, they deployed the EMP and Grenade combination to force Ember to totally abandon the position.

This works so beautifully because of three things. The EMP's initial damage and stun, which allows the aggressors to close the gap on their opponents. Then, the low risk of the opening because it is done by the Drone, so there is limited risk of taking any real entry damage. Third, the prevalence of Wattson teams. The EMP destroys her Pylon and fences leaving a team defenceless to both grenades and enemy players.

With how defensive LAN games can get, iG will be especially hopeful that the style of gameplay they are honing will see them find success for not just the remainder of the Pro League, but in future LAN events as well.

Full standings here.

Elsewhere, it was another very encouraging result for Ember. Formerly known as High Peak, the roster of Friqs, YungHongKong and Bavis came through the Pre Season Qualifiers and are all playing at this level for the first time.

Ember have adapted to the standard of gameplay in the Pro League fantastically, and took 4th overall today. Currently the rookie team sits 10th overall. This is above dozens of much more established and experienced teams like FUT, ScarZ and NAVI.

They picked up their first game win in the Pro League today - managing to bully iG from the game winning spot, cleaning up the Horizon Union duo to close out the victory.

Can Ember build on their success and keep pushing towards LAN qualification?

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