Our first step in the Challenger Playoffs was a Best of 3 series against Origen, the first placed team from the regular season. We came into the series strong with a victory in game one after a shaky early game, but our team competition was designed to outscale the mid game comp of Origen, with a very impressive performance from Kubon’s top lane Hecarim being a constant source of disruption for any attempted Origen engages.
The pick and ban in Game 2 looked like it was in our favour, but a surprise Vladamir pick from xPeke into Takefun’s Zed seemed to catch the team off guard after Origen shut down Takefun making him irrelevant for most of the game, while Origen maintained Dragon control and there was little we could do to get back into the game before Origen took the win to bring the series 1-1.
This left the entire series to one final game, the winner would advance to the finals with a chance at auto-qualification at LCS, and a guaranteed Promotion spot failing that. The game was incredibly tense as once again we hoped to outscale Origen with a late game composition. Origen controlled the early game but we slowly managed to pull it back into our favour, but unfortunately some mispositioning in crucial late game teamfights cost us the game, allowing Origen to advance to the finals.
This means that we are dropping into the fight for 3rd place and the final Promotion Tournament slot against Gamers2, who lost 2-0 to dark horses LowLandLions, on Tuesday the 7th of April
