Popular League of Legends team Origen is rebranding to the Astralis name, the organization announced.
This decision comes after a split of poor performance that saw Origen finish in last place in the 2020 LEC Summer split. Many fans were calling for a change in the organization that’s struggled to live up to its historic pedigree in recent months.
The change “will reflect a new, yet well-known direction” and will involve rebuilding the organization “to include both known and new faces,” according to a blog post on the official Astralis website. The key stages in this proposed rebuild include the departure of general manager Martin “Deficio” Lynge and owner Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño, although xPeke will remain a shareholder in Astralis.
The role of current coach André Guilhoto is “yet to be determined,” but in the aforementioned blog post, Astralis introduced the core coaching staff around which the new organization will be built. This includes the promotion of former assistant coach Baltat “AoD” Alin-Ciprian to head coach, where he’ll be supported by Bjørn-Vegar “iHansen” Hansen, formerly a coach for NLC team Nordavind, in the assistant coach role.
Origen was initially founded by xPeke in December 2014 after he departed Fnatic to found his own team. Jungler Amazing (of Team SoloMid), support Mithy (formerly of Lemondogs), and rookie AD carry Niels joined xPeke as he played mid lane. xPeke’s former Fnatic teammate sOAZ joined shortly thereafter to play top lane. Origen established a base and gaming house in Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain.
For the 2020 Season Origen signed Xerxe from Splyce, Upset from S04 and Destiny from OPL team Mammoth while Kold, Patrick and mithy left the team. With a win against Fnatic they had a good start into Spring Split and found themselves near the top of the league after week 2 only dropping their game against G2. After another loss the week after they kept a flawless record against the worse teams until last week but were not able to beat the top teams and therefore found themselves in 3rd place with a 13-5 record.
In Round 1 of playoffs they faced Fnatic and did not find an answer to their comp in games 1 and 2 before struggling to close out game 3 and throwing an advantage in midgame of game 4 which meant that they dropped into Loser’s Bracket. There they recovered from a tough game 1 loss against Rogue to win the series convincingly 3-1 and face G2 in Round 3. Following yet another game 1 they lost another game where they had a clear advantage in a lategame teamfight to come back with a great game 3 but stood no chance in game 4 which ended their split.