Recently, a Swedish Journalist Kim "Drayich" Larsson, conducted an interview with Alliance's support player Akke. He talks about the new atmosphere in the team, transitioning with Mad and TI5.
Alliance took the world by storm, by winning The International 3 not on the basis of individual brilliance but by superior game knowledge, strategy and playing their own style of Dota. Post TI, the Curse was in full effect and the team never looked like the 'TI3 Alliance'. In September last year, s4 and EGM left the team and since then they've been one the most unstable teams in Europe over the past few months, playing with stand-ins and never having a complete roster. Recently after the pick up of Niqua and 7ckngmad, the team has hit a new gear, beating the likes of Cloud9, NiP and ASUS.Polar, the Swedes are 21-6 since the arrival of Sébastien "7ckingMad" Debs on 6th March. It'll be hard for them to get a TI invite since its still unclear how they'll perform at LANs because they have a limited number of tournaments left.
This interview was conducted by Kim "Drayich" Larsson, a Swedish player turned journalist who also casts Dota2 in Swedish. Joakim "Akke" Akterhall talks about a variety of things about Alliance, their future goals and his support play with Sébastien "7ckingMad" Debs in the team.
D: First of all, congratulations! Last time you faced NiP it was another story.
A: They are a very good team indeed, I’m not surprised it can go both ways though. Overall it feels better and better as we’ve had some success the last two weeks, both in terms of teamplay and drafting etc.
D: I talked to Loda last week and I asked him if you, as a team, ever lost the desire to play during the hard times, and he mentioned that even you was quite upset. Can you elaborate?
A: Well, it was not that bad really. It comes to a point where you have to see this as a normal job and just fight on. Force yourself to play games that you don’t want to play and just work harder. With a full roster you can work on things that do not work, but for a long time we didnt even have that. I mean, in December Loda was in USA as a standin for Team Tinker and during that time we played five games in Starladder. I had to spend three hours a day just looking for standins, and that was not alot of fun I guess. It’s alot better now though, obviously.
D: I have noticed that the some players have changed their name, now playing without ”standin”. But Niqua still uses it?
A: Yes, I don’t know what he has done but it should not be that way. He is a member of the team. We are not that serious with that thing.
D: You have gone from a very good team with great synergy to a struggling team, now with different nationalities. Is it equally fun now as it was back then?
A: Yes, I think so. It’s more about the team atmosphere, how we communicate and how we handle losses. You have to encourage each other even though it is not going so well at certain times. But every team has these issues at some point.
D: Considering handling losses, who is the worst at that? (whispering Loda)
A: It’s Pajkatt I guess. That was something I was worried about when we took him to the team actually, but the situation was in fact the opposite. He always tries to see positive things of stuff, it’s really nice! Five out of five stars.
D: When I think back on the time when you and me used to play together, I remember Pajkatt also played. He was a great player, but he didnt seem like a ”teamplayer” back then so to speak. This is something that seems to have changed, has he developed on that front?
A: Absolutely! We’re all getting older and see that game from different angles, learning new things all the time. Pajkatt is one of the best solo players out there, very good at matchups and descision making. He has really showed that he is a teamplayer. But this is one of the hard things with Dota, it’s a team game and everyone learned how to play in different ways.
D: Looking at you now, you and Niqua seem to have found another level. Do you feel the same? That you play a bit better?
A: Well, it all comes down to the team. If I support Loda during the laning stage the first ten minutes and we lose all lanes, then it’s hard for me to do anything about it. But when we play as a team my role gets more noticed. I would say that my play goes hand in hand with how the team performs. I have not really felt that I’ve stepped up my individual play that much to be honest.
D: Interesting. To me it seems that you are better at finding farm and also broaden your hero pool since many teams do not let you play ”your” heroes.
A: Looking at my last games its Skywrath, Skywrath, Skywrath! laughing
D: Ok, you have atleast learned one new hero then.
A: It’s a nice thing about Mad, that he likes to play the heroes I dont like. I don’t like Bane, Rubick, Treant is OK, Wisp is a hero I’ve been somewhat forced to learn no that EGM isn’t with us anymore. So I guess that’s the only hero that I play now but didn’t know much about before.
D: That’s a really special hero!
A: Yes, there are almost no limitations on what you can do with that hero. At the beginning i stacked pubs with Loda and just played Wisp+CK and Wisp+Tiny over and over until we felt that it worked out.
D: Either way, I still think you have become a better player.
A: Thank you!
D: Lets talk a little bit about Mad, the handsome French. What has he brought to the team and how does the future look, is he coming to Gothenburg?
A: Yes, before any LAN-event the plan is that we use our team house to practice, which then including Mad coming here ofc.
D: You communicate in English I assume?
A: Yes! It happens from time to time that me and Loda speak a little bit Swedish if we just talk to each other about a small thing happening in the lane, that does not include Mad.
D: I’m not gonna draw this out too long, I’m sure you have other things to do.
A: It’s OK, Loda had to run over to his brother so we have some time to kill anyway.
D: Did he forgot to turn on his VPN?
A: We should not go into that too much. All that should have been fixed already.
D: So you knew it was going to be a problem?
A: Yeah, but it’s not really something you make an official announcement about. laughing
D: Niqua, have you ever met him in person?
A: Yeah, we have met him at Dreamhack, couple of times, he’s really nice.
D: Almost all of you are experienced LAN-players, has he ever been to a LAN
A: He have played a lot of HoN so I think he is experienced enough when it comes to that. But this thing is very individual overall. Some people that have not played at a LAN does’t really care much about it while experienced players still can be at bit shaky when there’s a big crowd in front of them and cameras everywhere.
D: TI5?
A: Of course we do not expect to get an invite at this point. But if we keep playing like this and maybe win a tournament or two, we can talk about the possibility. As for now, it looks like we’re gonna play the qualifiers though. We take it as it comes. I have no idea how Valve thinks about the invites, but it seems like they consider the ranks, i.e the one at JoinDota, just so roughly see how teams perform. We were at place 25 something before but have climbed quite a bit recently. They are also very active watching tournaments so if we have some good placements within this month maybe we can snatch a place, otherwise it’s qualifiers which is totally fine. All we can do is to play our best.
D: How is it going for you in ESL One?
A: We started off in the lowest bracket which is fine, we got to play more games and therefore got more time to practice and prove ourselves before facing C9.
D: Your mindset is totally amazing!
A: It’s not only about me, it’s just the truth.
D: Do you want to say anything to the stream before we end this?
A: Thank you to all of our fans, especially you guys who cheered for us even during the darkest of times. And I hope we can qualify to TI5 to show everyone that Sweden still has the best teams in Dota.
Credits : Kim "Drayich" Larsson and Reddit User bingoberra for the translation, Original Video
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