The Origen of a championship
Western super teams haven't been successful in League of Legends, but Origen marks the first time a collection of veterans from other squads have enjoyed this much success as a unit.
Origen is the brainchild of legendary and long-time-Fnatic mid laner xPeke. At the end of 2014, xPeke left Fnatic to create his own team. It was his intention to battle through the Challenger Series and climb into the LCS. Not only was he successful, but he has created one of the best teams in the world.
Among Origen's stars are top laner SoaZ (also formerly of Fnatic), jungler Amazing (formerly of TSM), support Mithy (formerly of Lemondogs), and AD carry Niels, a rookie who made his name in EU's Solo Queue ladder. Unlike most teams, Origen doesn't have a signature style, or a key carry -- any one of their carry laners can step up at any time, and they are capable of matching other teams at any time and on any axis.
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"We just made so many mistakes that they capitalized on and [they] pretty much punished us with every mistake we made."
At times Origen opts for mid game snowball compositions and aims to close out games by 30 minutes. Sometimes they go for hyperscaling late-game compositions. No matter what their composition or their strategy for the game, Origen has become defined by the carry potential and individual playmaking of Niels, xPeke, and SoaZ.
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The Play
xPeke has become somewhat notorious for lackluster regular seasons before course correcting during Playoffs and Worlds. During this season he still had generally underwhelming performances, but he has stepped up in clutch moments.
Similarly, SoaZ has been known for only playing mages in top lane, but has expanded his range this season, most notably becoming (probably) the best Gankplank player in the world. When xPeke is in form, and you add a much-improved SoaZ to the hard carrying potential of Niels, you have something very special.
Origen is able to make plays in a number of ways: owning the map with split-pushing, setting up great vision for better objective control, controlling map zones to setup great team fights, and poke from a distance to setup amazing sieges. And sometimes… they do all of it at once, making them a very hard opponent to tackle.
The Triple Threat
The difficulty of facing Origen is in controlling their three carry players -- starting in Champion Select. Normally, teams would be able to ban marquee "OP" champions or ban out a specific player to reduce a team's effectiveness, but Niels, xPeke, and SoaZ are all capable of playing supportive champions like Sivir, Orianna, or Lulu, respectively. They also are all capable of carrying on champions like Vayne, Vladimir, or Gangplank, respectively.
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The three stars are greatly assisted by Amazing and Mithy, who generally play supportive tanks to allow the others to make plays. While Amazing and Mithy ward the map to set up the vision control necessary to utilize Origen's aforementioned playstyles, the carries will execute the core of the strategy -- either farming for late game, shoving turrets, controlling objectives, or split-pushing.
Talk of the Rift
"What's made Origen stand out all Split is their ability to maximize farm on three carries."
Often Origen is thought of as the "old Fnatic," in that two of their primary carries were part of Fnatic for several years. Like the Fnatic team of old, that relied on SoaZ and xPeke's playmaking to win games, Origen is able to do the same. But now, they've vastly expanded their strategic depth.
"I love to watch SoaZ on a pick where he can be annoying…where he can split push, where he can move behind enemy lines and kill everyone 1v1. Gankplank is perfect for him," says Deficio.
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Origen is able to exploit weaknesses of other teams due to their versatility, both in Champion Select and on the Rift. The weaknesses of Origen's opponents become Origen's strength -- they are able to adapt to any situation in Champion Select, and then execute on it in game.
"We've played a lot against Origen in scrims so we knew that they could possibly pull out this poke-comp strategy, I think they're the best team at it," says Fnatic's support, YellOwStaR.
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Interested in learning more about the other teams competing at Worlds? Check out the whole lineup, now.
