The hows and whys of Origen's two mid-laners

Despite being the only team in the EU LCS to not lose a member during the off-season, Origen still went ahead and made changes to their roster.

Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage was added to the team as an additional mid-laner. Not a sub, but rather someone who will be sharing the laning responsibilities with team-owner and LCS veteran Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño Martínez.

With the Unicorns of Love, PowerOfEvil came within a hair's breadth of reaching Worlds on three separate occasions, but a lack of team cohesion even before the loss of their jungler, Mateusz "Kikis" Szkudlarek, led to failure every time. It's no surprise then, as the strongest member of the team, that he would begin looking elsewhere. "I was looking for other offers already," Schrage explains. "I was asking over Skype at some point - I think it was [Maurice "Amazing" Stückenschneider], to ask if they had changed anything or if they had any ideas of what their plan was - and pretty much got a 'no'. In the end Peke came back to me. He added me on Skype and asked me if I was still free. We spoke about it and he offered to share the mid-lane with me."

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It's a unique situation within the EU LCS. Substitutes are common, but few are actually used unless disaster strikes, so it's even stranger to see two players share the mid-lane starter position like this. Why would they choose to share the spotlight? "You need to have two mid-laners who respect each other and help each other out," Schrage says. "Of course there should be the competition of who should be the starter, but you should still try to help each other with picks and strategy and tips." The internal competition, coupled with the help that the players can give to each other, fosters an environment of growth and improvement for everyone involved. That's the idea, anyway.

"I actually took this offer over other LCS offers, because I felt like I could learn so much from Peke and Origen especially. It helps me a lot to grow as a player and as a person this season." But isn't that what coaches are for? Every team has coaches. "The difference is that [Peke] can see outside of the box, because he's not in the game and he's a mid-laner. So he sees these little things that you can actually improve on. A coach would watch all over and look more at the strategy." In this way PowerOfEvil and xPeke will be acting as devoted mid-lane coaches for each other, focusing on mechanics and other details with the knowledge and experience that only a long-serving mid-laner can provide.

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How exactly all this will work in the long-term is unclear and even PowerOfEvil and xPeke aren’t entirely sure of all the logistics. They’re taking a play-by-ear approach to the whole thing. “I think it will work out that we will discuss week by week who is going to play,” Schrage explained. “Right now we didn't share the scrims, but soon we will start to share the scrims. So he will have this scrim set and I will have another. Then it will depend on scrims and match ups. We will probably have a talk every week I guess, with the rest of the team as well. That's kind of how I imagine it. It's something new for me as well! A new adventure.”

For week one, Schrage played in both of Origen’s LCS games. In the weeks preceding the start of the season, xPeke was doing a lot of travelling to arrange sponsorship deals, which meant PowerOfEvil was practicing full-time with the rest of the team. It makes perfect sense to have him play in a situation like that. It’s also a great opportunity to get the LCS audience used to seeing him up there on the stage. “I don't actually know the reasoning, but I think it's about getting some play time with the team and spending more time together to build synergy. Even LCS experience is different to just playing scrims. If you lose a scrim it doesn't really matter, but if you lose an LCS game it's different.”

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Sadly for Origen, they lost both of their games in Week One, surprising many despite being up against two strong teams in Fnatic and H2K. How this will affect the roster going forward remains to be seen, but that’s when things start getting competitive between the two players. A healthy competition to see who can adapt most quickly to the ever-shifting meta and perform best in scrims and LCS games alike. This will force both players to grow, not only by helping one another, but in spite of each other. It’s something we’ve seen once before with Korean team SKTelecom T1. At Worlds they famously included Easyhoon on their roster, allegedly to keep Faker’s ego in check and make him work for his place on the team for each game.

It’s a slightly different situation to Origen’s, because while xPeke and Faker are both legends in their own right, Faker is as close to a global household name as we have in League of Legends. As great as xPeke is, Faker is often referred to as the best player in the world. It’s no surprise, then, that tensions within SKT flared and Easyhoon left the team after Worlds, stating that he did so because he was fed up of being in Faker’s shadow. Could the same thing happen on Origen?

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“Peke has been playing for so long and obviously has the larger fanbase. He has so many legendary moves that I was even watching on my own, so it's like… I'm just happy to have the chance to share a mid-lane with such a legend and I will try my best to do as good as he will, or maybe even better in the future,” Schrage says. “I'm not too worried right now. Let's see how the next week goes!”