Tit for Tat: How Origen took down KT Rolster

Last weekend marked the start of the group stage at the League of Legends Season 5 World Championship. In group D, one team in particular stood out amongst the rest.  Europe’s third seed, Origen, went 3-0 last weekend defeating the likes of TSM, LGD, and KT Rolster.  The closest of those matches was against Korea’s KT Rolster and we’re going to take a look at just how they came out with the win.

Draft Phase:

Team compositions:`

Origen start off the draft phase by banning out Azir, Lulu, and Gangplank.  This is incredibly smart by them because Nagne, the midlaner for KT Rolster has shown that he has a preference for long range control mages such as Azir and Viktor as well as support mages such like Lulu.  Moreover, Arrow, the AD carry for KT has a habit of playing late game carries who would be hard to deal with when paired with a Lulu or a late game Azir, so they opt to simply ban them both out.  Their last ban Gangplank, which is a prime first pick champion right now that can be devastating in  the hands of star top laner for KT, Ssumday.

On the other side, KT banned out Kalista, a target ban on Niels who played exceptionally well on it in his first two matches, Braum, the most contested support pick so far this tournament, and interestingly enough, Mordekaiser. By not banning Mordekaiser in their first two bans, Origen indirectly exposed a weakness in KT. As KT had blue side, they could have either left Morde up for Origen to ban or plan to pick it if Origen doesn’t ban it out.  Instead, KT shows that they do not play Morde by choosing him as their third ban.

In terms of picks, KT first picks Elise, who is a top tier jungle champ at the moment; however, Origen is not too concerned with this. Their primary objective is to get good matchups for mid and toplane, so they pick Thresh and Gragas, two strong champs who can fit into a wide variety of compositions.  By doing this Origen gets to see two more of KT’s picks without really giving much away about their comp to the opposition.  KT then lock in Alistar and Kog’maw, the same bot lane they used to beat TSM earlier in the week.  Origen responds with Twisted Fate and Sivir.  The Twisted Fate is something that we know xPeke has a wealth of experience on and it will allow him to have strong map control in exchange for a likely poor lane matchup, as he is blind picking his champ.  Sivir is an all around safe pick for Niels, where he can excel at pushing early in the game while still providing utility late game with his ultimate.  

KT’s last round of draft is where they fell short.  They picked Olaf for Ssumday and Ekko for Nagne.  First off, Olaf is not inherently a bad champion for Ssumday, in fact, it is quite the opposite.  He is a talented top laner and an excellent split pusher; however, KT has already seen Origen lock in Twisted Fate, meaning that even if both Nagne and Ssumday take teleport, due to Twisted Fate’s ultimate, Origen are going to have an easier time controlling the map.  Secondly, Ekko is not a good pick for Nagne.  Historically, he has had the most success on long ranged mages such as Viktor and Azir, and not on assassins like Ekko.  To finish out the picks, Origen locks in Fiora for their top laner, another somewhat contested pick at worlds that we’ve players like Marin have a wealth of success on.  

Early Game:

The game starts out with KT lane swapping, but there is a delay from the standard fast push for first turret.  Although the advantage is slight, this delay favors Origen because Ssumday will be a stronger split pusher than Soaz, and by delaying the push for first tower until 5 minutes into the game, it marginally delays Ssumday’s split push.  Early on Origen loses vision topside and give up two free kills to KT.  This really set the tone for the entire match, which was a constant back to back struggle between these two teams.  What was impressive was Origen’s adaptation.  They quickly realized that KT was going to have stronger vision control than them throughout the game, so as opposed to trying to compete with KT’s vision, after their initial flub, Origen prioritized drawing KT into the areas of the map where KT did not have a significant vision advantage.

Around 8:30, xPeke on Twisted Fate catches Score warding which turns into a skirmish that nets a return of two kills for Origen.  Less than a minute later, KT brings the score back to 4-2 in their favor with a clean dive onto Origen’s bot lane.  At this point Olaf has a kill, and Arrow’s Kog’maw has three kills before ten minutes.  A Kog fed this early is really hard to come back from.  KT gets dragon and the game begins to look like it is tipping into KT’s favor.  Frankly speaking, KT won the early game and were able to accumulate more gold onto the players they wanted gold on.

Mid-Game Decision Making:

Origen seeks to get some map pressure and global gold by focusing down the top lane outer turret.  Despite the three kills on Arrow, Niels maintains a cs lead and remains competitive with him gold wise.  Once again, KT collapses on Origen in the bot lane and gets two kills; however, Origen still keeps the gold lead.  How can this be?

Every single time KT invests heavily into getting picks on a few members of Origen, the rest of the team crisply focuses on whittling down turrets and keeping a farm advantage.  In addition, Origen’s tower pressure investment while their team gets picked actually works in their favor as they will obtain significant map control once all of KT’s outer turrets fall.  

Since KT has been prioritizing getting picks, and Origen has simply been farming and pushing while their allies get picked, around 13:35 KT finds themselves in a situation where both Nagne and Ssumday have no teleport (due to expending them on the previous bot lane skirmish) and both xPeke and Soaz do.  Immediately upon spotting Ssumday toplane and unable to respond, Peke and Soaz tp bottom and get two kills for their team.  All the while, Amazing was taking down mid outer turret uncontested as KT scrambled to respond to Origen’s play, leaving their own side of the map exposed. 

This was exceptionally high caliber decision making.  Many teams would teleport the instant KT went to make the initial TP play bottom a few minutes ago; however, Origen realized they couldn’t win a full on fight and waited till the right time to strike.  

Error and Recovery:

At the 20 minute mark, Origen positioned improperly and lost mid outer turret and also gave over 3 consecutive kills.  Just as it seems the game is starting to go in favor of KT, they opt to group up bottom to push in Origen’s bottom inner turret.  In response, Origen confidently makes the call to rush Baron.  This is a cool play because it really feels like Origen was doing their research into KT’s tendencies.  Just before this, Niels and Mithy were stopping Ssumday’s back to prevent him from being able to delay the baron, and Origen knew they couldn’t contest the dragon or defend from the KT’s bot lane push, so instead they group up, wait for KT to be too far from baron to contest it, and they take it.

Vision Mind Games:

Perhaps the most impressive element of Origen’s play is how throughout the majority of the game they were at a vision disadvantage, but they managed to play around this fact without significant hindrances.  As stated earlier, whenever Origen did get caught, they were gaining some valuable advantage elsewhere on the map, but nevertheless, when they weren’t getting caught and making the best of the situation, they were keenly aware of where they were at the vision disadvantage and stayed away from those places.

Final Thoughts:

Ultimately, this was one of the most exciting matches of the first week of worlds.  Both teams played exceptionally well, but Origen simply rose to the occasion. Their draft set up Nagne for failure in the midlane by putting him on a champion he was uncomfortable on. Also, despite getting picked constantly, they moved around the map to gain control and objectives more efficiently than KT, which was synergistic and partially facilitated by their Twisted Fate pick.  As a result of this dominant map control, Ssumday could never properly split push, and KT couldn’t hope to have a standard teamfight when it would have worked in their favor because of how Origen moved around the map.  It was a fantastic display by Origen and they showed the world that they’ve really improved from their level of play that they displayed in the summer split of the EU LCS.