The Alliance

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We don’t need to play their game

Versatility is key

The Chinese are human too

You will get better playing European teams

There has been a myth going around for some time that the Western metagame is inferior, that the Chinese just understand the game better and that whatever strategies they favour, they know better than the rest. They’ve scoffed at heroes that dominated the Western meta game and even ardent Western supporters came to believe that there had to be some truth to it, that Wisp would surely not work, that the Chinese overlords were too good for such things, that we were only exploiting the inherent weaknesses in each others play.After the weekend, this case becomes a lot harder to make. The Chinese did not in fact know how to play against Wisp, or indeed any of the strategies that had worked in Europe which The Alliance employed. They did not fare well against the Slark of Team Liquid either. In fact, it’s becoming fairly evident that they struggle not just against many things that the West has been using, but that they also struggle to utilize them effectively, in particular Gyrocopter often standing out as a hero which they can’t seem to make the most of, for all that RattleSnake brought it to their attention some months ago.As Hot Bid famously stated during his appearance in the BeyondTheSummit Kickstarter video, “It’s like taking a time machine to see what the Europeans will be doing in three weeks”. This no longer seems to hold true. Strategies move back and forth, but the recent emphasis in the East has seemed to be on trying to catch up with what the West has been doing over the past six months. And it’s only going to be ever more true after the G-1 LAN Finals, to the point that we may see the early effects of it already tomorrow, as the International East Qualifiers pick back up. With the next major balance patch, we will have a cornucopia of Western teams producing new strategies once more in addition to those strategies which remain valid from this version, and so it seems that for the foreseeable future, they will look to us to shape the metagame.But is this really a new phenomenon? The Chinese are famous for their tendency to adopt strategies from other sources. In Dota 1, they copied a lot of Pinoy, Malaysian and Singaporean strategies, but as the Pinoys have not transitioned over and the Malaysians and Singaporean scenes lag behind China and Europe in terms of support offered for the teams, the quality of innovation in surrounding the Chinese has fallen. In fact, talking to pro players, some of them have mentioned that they felt the Chinese grew more from scrimming the western teams prior to the second International. Indeed there was a healthy metagame developing in the West prior to last years big clash, including slow pushing strategies, ganking strategies and split pushing.And then came the event itself. The Chinese were strong, no doubt about it. But what surprised me, and what players such as Loda have talked about afterwards, is that the Western teams abandoned their own style of play in favour of the Chinese. And it wasn’t just the Western teams either, teams such as Zenith, who had a very specific style of their own which had been shown to work against the Chinese in scrims, albeit online, came to the event and decided to change their whole style of play. We all tried to suddenly out-Chinese the Chinese, and it didn’t work for anyone, not even Na`Vi. It was only when at the last minute they changed up what they were doing that both Zenith and Na`Vi began playing slightly better, but sadly it was too late for either of them. Na`Vi might have taken it all, but in the end they had arrived with a too limited heropool and too few strategies, hampering their draft and allowing the Chinse to ban their “one trick”.For those doubting that things could have been different, CIS teams played various Wisp strategies prior to TI2, but when it came to the event, the most famous Wisp team came to be a Chinese one. Just as it is now becoming in both scenes, Wisp could have been a first pick first ban hero at TI2.The Alliance exemplifies strategic innovation. They have developed many strong strategies which have shaped the metagame and they have no preconceived notions of what can and can’t work. They try to build broad heropools for their players and different paths from any given early pick so that they can always get their hands on a strategy which has synergy. They are by far the hardest team to draft against, and as we saw during the Grand Finals, even after a days worth of time to think about it, LGD.cn were still at a complete loss, trying widely to ban out s4 or Akke in order to disrupt the Alliance play, to no avail.But the Alliance only exemplifies one kind of versatility. The most famous is probably that of the former Na`Vi lineup, which ruled the Western scene for so long. They were comfortable picking a larger array of heroes than any other team during their heyday, which made them hard to ban against and made their lanes difficult to predict. At a time when Sand King was popular, each player on Na`Vi was capable of playing the hero in their own position, meaning that picking up the hero bound them to nothing and telegraphed nothing of their intentions. However, over time and with complacency, Na`Vi lost that unpredictability and versatility, and with it their form started to falter.There is a third kind of versatility, exemplified by yet another team. As Fnatic rose to prominence over the winter, they became known as one of the most versatile laners, who would have no qualms swapping around their players and catching their opponents off guard. While they initially also exemplified a broad range of heroes and strategies, similar to Na`Vi and the Alliance, and while they are likely to return to that as they begin their bootcamp next month, it is the fact that their players can each play several roles (even Fly, although we’ve not seen much of this from him in Dota 2) which makes them stand out, and which is something that many other teams have lost over time, as such rigid adherence to roles did not always use to be the case.This is not to say that pocket strats and surprising your enemy is going to carry you through a major tournament like The International. No, the lesson is something entirely different. Versatility has to be the backbone of your strategy, in whatever way that suites you best. It allows for superior drafting and laning, which helps you gain momentum and direct the flow of the game. You no longer respond to your opponent, you are able to make them play your game.Naturally you don’t necessarily need great versatility to take control of the game, but if you rely on one strategy which makes you unbeatable, then eventually teams will ban it out, or they will figure out how to counter it. If you have more options at each point in the draft, they can’t ban you out, they have to deal with you as players and as a team on your terms. And that makes all the difference.The Chinese have been on top of the scene for so long, that the popular belief has become that they are somehow different. They are just better players, more naturally talented and they’ll always work harder and perform better. They don’t make mistakes, they punish every mistake you make, and none of your strengths matter because your weaknesses are too big and the Chinese will use them against you, while they have no weaknesses for you to use against them.It’s a ridiculous notion. They may have been playing the game in a professional manner for longer, and the top Chinese teams may have superior backing from their sponsors, but they are still human beings. They make mistakes, they psyche themselves out, they take time to react and learn and their knowledge has holes in it. They have weaknesses, and they can be exploited.But before you can exploit those weaknesses you have to be of a mindset to do so. This is what set The Alliance apart from Team Liquid. Liquid could have gone in there and just played their own game, as I said before, Slark and the likes were something the Chinese weren’t prepared for. Liquid also showed their nerves in some games, trying to force a hasty conclusion when there was no need to do so, such as against DK when they were ahead at the start. They haven’t been alone in this, as LGD.Int has displayed much of the same issues, diminishing their chances in games they were winning by trying to force an end because they were afraid to take that lead any later. And it also shows in the draft, limiting your options and painting yourself into a corner.Naturally you need to respect your opponent, but you also need to respect yourself and your capabilities, and see that you have strengths as a team which allow you to defeat your opponent. It’s not a question of disrespecting your opponent; we’ve seen where that gets you in 2010 and again this weekend. No, it’s about having a realistic understanding of your opponent without making him out to be more than he is. The Chinese work hard, they are disciplined and focused. They will learn from what has happened, but it will take them time and effort to do so. They will follow the West to see what our next move will be, but as long as they do, they will be playing catch up. They should not be ignored, they should not be belittled but neither should they be immune to a critical inspection. Study the details, find the cracks, exploit them, take them out of their comfort zone. Because in the end they are no different from us; they are mortal.Finally, the elephant in the room. The Alliance is not an isolated case, and although they are on top of the Western scene right now, just as the dominance of iG did not diminish the capabilities of the other Chinese teams, neither does The Alliance diminish the teams around them. There is talent, motivation, dedication and innovation in the West, and by playing against other Western teams and pushing yourself to do better, you can grow to be the strongest team in the world.Again, this means you can't disrespect others, you can't dismiss their strategies as "cheesy" or as "unfair", you can't dismiss their style because it differs from your own or your vision of Dota. There can be many different visions of Dota, and each can have merit to them. By studying them and playing against them you become a better, more well rounded player and team, as you would playing any other varied group of teams and learning from them. This applies even if you do not take to playing their style of Dota, as there are many insights to be had from what they may try to do in order to counter you, and where your attempts to counter them come up short.You need to work hard, refine your play and develop with the teams around you. There is no magic bullet, no Chinese bootcamp which will fix all your problems or that will suddenly teach you how to play the best Dota in the world. There are no shortcuts. Whatever you want to achieve in Dota it will take effort, and that effort will be the same whether you live in Sweden, China, Russia, the U.S., Singapore, Malaysia, the Philipphines or anywhere else in the world.