High Noon - Alliance vs. SK
When Alliance and SK Gaming play each other this week, it will be another chapter in their ongoing fight for the lead of EU LCS. Alliance have had the better of that matchup so far, and owe much of their lead over SK to their head-to-head record. With the summer season halfway over, and playoffs looming, SK will want a victory over Alliance not just for how it will affect their standings, but also to prove that they can beat this summer powerhouse.
The ongoing battle between Alliance and SK is not just about the standings, playoff prospects, or even who will be going to Worlds. It's also a study in contrasts, a sports morality play whose ending has yet to be written.
CLASS WARFARE
On one side is Alliance, a team of stars who gave up their previous teams in the belief that they could achieve greater things together. With Froggen at the heart of the team, arguably the best mid-laner in Europe, Alliance grabbed nothing but top talent. Each position was filled by someone who excelled in the role. Alliance were built to dominate head-to-head matchups, beating their opponents piecemeal. Win all the lanes, win the game.
Meanwhile, this current incarnation of SK Gaming has always flown under the radar. They limped into the 2014 LCS season, and it was hard at first to identify their strengths. They didn't have the star power of an Alliance or a Fnatic, nor the collective daring of a Gambit.
Despite the different expectations surrounding them, both Alliance and SK had a difficult start to 2014. Alliance started poorly in the spring, and inadvertently highlighted the dangers of "dream team" logic. While their individual mechanics were strong, Alliance often fell apart around objectives, where trust and coordination are the deciding factors. SK, meanwhile, seemed like they would confirm pre-season expectations by with an up-and-down start to the year.
But both Alliance and SK rose to meet their springtime adversity by addressing their most obvious shortcomings. For Alliance, more time and familiarity resulted in better coordination, and hiring an analyst helped them evolve on a strategic level. For SK, hiring a sports psychologist helped the team of underdogs develop faith in each other and in their own abilities.
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Both teams have been improving ever since, dominating the closing weeks of the spring split and jumping to early leads this summer. Yet their core differences remain. Alliance have come into maturity as a team of star players, with Froggen and Tabzz appearing as top performers in almost every category this summer.
By comparison, SK don't have any players who dominate in their individual role. And yet the victories keep coming.
PEER PRESSURE
SK overcome their shortcomings thanks to great play-calling from fredy122 and tons of teamwork. Their strong, opportunistic map sense has enabled players like Jesiz and CandyPanda to start punching above their weight and help lead the team to top of the standings.
SK are an extremely difficult team to pressure, because they are quick to exploit their opponents' aggression. Attack them in one lane, and they'll swarm into another to grab a tower. So even as SK will let their opponents win the individual battles, they are winning the war by seizing objectives and gaining control of the map, which only amplifies their strengths.
Alliance, meanwhile, try to get ahead right at the start, and rely heavily on Froggen and Tabzz to blow apart their opponents' mid and bottom lanes. When it works, as it did the last time these two teams played, the results can be devastating. In their last game against SK, Froggen went 7/2/6 while Jesiz, who is often such a strength for SK, was a complete non-factor at 1/3/1. CandyPanda, likewise, struggled to accomplish anything. Right from picks and bans, Alliance were shutting down SK's most effective weapons.
Even when teams contain Alliance, the late-game poses new problems. Alliance are a very dangerous team in close games. They're capable of stealing a surprise victory, simply because they're a little more decisive at the right moment, or because one of their stars makes a clutch play. On the other hand, they often put themselves in the position of needing a big play, just because they are prone to lapses in the late game. If not for a lucky trap killing Airwaks in their game against Copenhagen Wolves in London, they might have racked up another loss thanks to a poorly defended inhibitor and a series of bad fights.
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Still, the big plays are usually there when Alliance need them. For instance, Alliance got their first win over SK this summer because Shook found CandyPanda in an awkward position and took him out of the decisive battle. That let the rest of the team clean up SK and take the victory.
With Alliance looking so good, and having devastated SK in their last meeting, SK come into this game as slight underdogs. They need to contain Froggen, and they're going to have to work harder to control the jungle after Shook did so much damage to them the last time around.
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Watch for SK to try and make CandyPanda an early roaming threat in order to take some pressure off Jesiz. That won't be easy, though, because Alliance know that Svenskeren's control of the jungle and vision isn't always what it needs to be, and they can run some aggressive pick plays without SK catching on. It's an awful lot of pressure on Svenskeren, who will likely be under attack from the start. Somehow, he needs to fend off Shook and help SK apply pressure on Froggen.
Both SK and Alliance look they'll be making a strong playoff run this summer, but SK really need to prove that they can get the better of this star-studded team. Not only are they fighting to hang on to second place and a favorable seed in the playoffs, they have to show that their teamwork and endurance can overcome the raw talent and explosiveness that have taken Alliance all the way to the top.
