He may have swapped out his team for a new one, but Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez is still up to his old tricks.
The backdoor—sneaking behind the enemy team to kill their base—is one of the most exciting plays in League of Legends. It’s one of the few ways a losing team can steal victory, an exciting way to finish games by putting everything on the line. “Backdoor” is common nomenclature in many competitive games, but in League, people also call it something else—the xPeke.
In January 2013, Martinez beat SK Gaming at the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice with a backdoor play on Kassadin that remains the single most iconic play in the history of the game.
This week, Martinez showed his move from Fnatic to his budding new team Origen hasn’t cost him his magic touch. During streamed practice sessions with his new team on the ranked ladder, Martinez replicated one of the most iconic plays in League of Legends not once, but twice in the course of a week.
In the first, against LowLandLions, Origen likely had the game in hand. But Martinez wanted to end it as quickly as possible. In the second, Playing Ducks thought they were winning a team fight. They never knew what hit them.
The second play looked planned—Origen lured the enemy into a trap, providing Martinez the perfect opportunity to slip away by using his flash and take the enemy base.
The two Origen plays certainly aren’t as exciting as Martinez’s signature moment. The stakes aren’t nearly as high. There’s no prize money on the line. No cheers of jubilation, no tears of despair. He doesn’t reach the nexus with a sliver of health, forcing him to narrowly dodge attack after attack with the game on the line. But it’s still fun to see one of the game’s most popular players execute his most popular play, and on such a consistent basis.
Everyone knows it’s coming, especially with Martinez on his favorite champion, Kassadin. But they still can’t stop him.
Photo via Riot Games
