Going into this set, a lot of people who have watched these two teams expected a slow paced series given how much longer their games go compared to their peers and competition, but the strengths of these teams were not to be taken lightly. The series of games definitely decreased from the Flash Wolves as each game went by, with itemization and draft mistakes, and also emphasized what an important pick Jinx is in this worlds meta. Maybe Anivia too, as xPeke won every game where he chose the frozen bird.

Game 1:

Both teams came in with a slower paced game. It would be a major surprise at a high end tourney if either team had a huge lead at the beginning. In this case, Origen did have that lead, but they lost it very quickly from a play gone poorly, even with double teleports coming out of Origen -- so the lead evened out and it turned into a strong push from Flash Wolves in the mid game. This is something you’ll see throughout the series, but Flash Wolves is just not good at teamfighting compared to Origen.

At the same time, Flash Wolves stalling the game out was actually advantageous for Origen even if they lost ground because they had Anivia and Sivir, both champions that scale the team hard the longer the game goes on.  Furthermore, even though Maple came out ahead of xPeke, OG’s sidelanes came out ahead too which made it increasingly more difficult for Maple to make a real impact with his lead. In the end, OG played to their Baron and Dragon win conditions and took the first game for themselves in this best of 5 series.

Oh, and to top things off, almost mirroring C9 Ball’s pentakill against Fnatic, Soaz brought his team back with his own Darius Pentakill.

Game 2:

The early game played a lot more like people theorized with a much slower early game, but the midgame was almost deja vu of game one with Flash Wolves getting a lot of kills on the European team despite the gold being even. That being said, OG’s team composition -- with several methods of protection and high levels of scaling -- put OG over FW’s sloppy teamfight every time the longer the game went on, making it a clean and standard win for the third seeded team from Europe.

Game 3:

The game that almost broke the giant’s back: Flash Wolves came into this game with Viktor’s massive late game aoe damage and some really sloppy plays around baron. Trying to catch out the Flash Wolves at baron, Origen shoved them off for a skirmish, but lost said objective to a Caitlyn Piltover Peacemaker snipe, giving the LMS team a really powerful win condition of coming back into the series. In the first two games of the series, even if Flash Wolves started pushing Origen into their base, they weren’t able to find a way to counter the wave clear from both Anivia and Sivir, but this time, Flash Wolves had a better response in draft against the Orianna and Kalista, and made it look like the easier win in the set.

Game 4:

Flash Wolves made themselves an opportunity to climb back into this series, but their draft was extremely questionable, giving Origen their comfort composition for the series and picking the questionable Irelia for Steak.

If there was a game for Niels to step up and silence all the critics, it was this game. Barring their failures in game 3, Origen returned to their Anivia and Jinx combination, allowing them to have total dominance over towers and have indomitable scaling and power the longer the game goes on. E even if xPeke was camped with a ferocious four man gank squad from the Flash Wolves, Niels proved he wasn’t the beta version of Rekkles and eviscerated the LMS team in the mid game until the very end where he hit three-shot status.

Images couretsy of Lolesports.  Connect with the author at @SirNoogs.