esports
The former Fnatic mid laner has brought his self-made team this far, but can they go the distance?
The only thing harder than starting from the bottom for Origen’s Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño Martínez is starting at the top and staying there. The mid laner made a name for himself immediately in League of Legends as part of the Fnatic side that won Riot’s Season One Championship. And after a few years working to maintain that position, he finally struck out to make something for himself.
Now, as captain and founder of the newly formed European team, he is set to face off against an old rival, Faker, in the semi-final of Worlds in Brussels. But this time he has a fresh team with new strategies that have put them through some of the hardest tests League can pose. So what tricks do the team have up their sleeves, and where would xPeke be without the help of his team-mates – and his mum?
You were playing a lot of Anivia in the quarter-final against Flash Wolves – what inspired those picks?
I feel like it just fits really well when we play these comps, we're more AD based right now and when we play Calista, Anivia creates a lot of space for her. It's not that hard for her to hit, but it's easier for her to hit if we have Anivia walls on our side, ultimates and stuff, and then she can just go hard on whoever I wall.
At the same time I feel like it was really good against the playstyle of Flash Wolves: we knew their mid laner really liked to play LeBlanc, Diana and Yasuo, and Anivia is really good against them because she has good wave clear, pushing potential to punish passive teams. At the same time I am really tanky and stronger against all of them, because if they go on me I have a stun, ultimate, wall and everything.
Do you think Anivia will help you in your upcoming match, or matches if you make it past SKT?
I feel like we can use her, but I don't think it's going to be the same. I don't think she's a blind-pick champion. I think, last pick, we can pick her many times: we have seen other teams playing comps that it would be really good against but it depends, because sometimes it can be a gamble. In this case it's easier because we knew what they play and they didn't change much, so it made it easier to justify the Anivia pick. And we just realised at some point we can keep picking Anivia because it was always going to be a better pick, since they weren't throwing anything else out instead.
This will be your third appearance at a Worlds semi-final now, but this season’s been a bit different. How has it been for you?
This one is a lot different, it feels more like a journey. We started in the Challenger, coming here with my own team, we had a completely new team pretty much, because I didn't know any of these players except SoAZ until we created the team. I knew who they were, but I never spoke with them personally and I never knew them in person aside from watching them in LCS.
It's been quite an adventure and it was really fun to be honest, seeing how we improved, seeing how the mentality changed, how it was in the good times and the bad times. I really enjoyed it because I thought maybe I wouldn't have fun playing at some point, but I had fun throughout this whole season because it kept coming with new things. Everything was really, I don't know, exciting compared to other years where maybe I would have just done LCS for the whole time, getting bored sometimes and not being so excited by everything.
Was that sort of feeling what lead you to leave Fnatic and head in your own direction?
Definitely, it was one of the reasons, though there were many. It was obvious that the team was kind of splitting apart, with Rekkles leaving and cyan not wanting to play, soAZ as well not wanting to stay in Fnatic. Many things made it easier, the fact that the team fell apart and me not finding the same motivation within Fnatic pretty much, because at some point, for season four for example, I played to play.
I had this motivation when it came to playoffs, when it came to Worlds and so on, but I felt like in the regular LCS it was just another week, practice hard non-stop, another week practice hard, and I felt like I was getting nowhere but playing and that's what I did for three or four years already. While this is more of a new thing, I look forward to more than just playing: I have Origen now and I like to see it grow. It takes a lot more times and sometimes I stress as well, but in the end I love it. I go to sleep and I don't get too nervous unless it's an important game the next day, then I have some troubles, maybe.
What was the hardest thing about that decision?
The biggest challenge was not having that many people to help me. When I created this I didn't straight up hire five guys to do everything, it was more like only one guy helping, my mum helping with some things. Having to build everything and find the house; I remember when we first moved to Germany it was a really bad house and we ended up moving out of it, and yeah, we didn't have that many people to make sure everything was alright. I feel like that was the hardest, to keep the team still motivated to play while everything was getting fixed without them having any worries.
Hold on, your mum was helping you run the team?
[Laughs] Yeah! My mum was helping a lot at first, especially because at the beginning with the creation of the company and everything, I had no idea. How to create a company, what was the best way how to set it up, how to do everything.
She helped me a lot finding an accountant, helping us create the company, how to release the merch and everything, she helped me with that so I could still play. Because I had to do everything on the go while I had to still play solo queue and practice, so it did help a lot at the beginning, as well as with the store. She did pretty much everything for that, finding storage and who to make the stuff for it and where to buy it from. So it was really helpful to have her there for me.