After an entire Summer where the undefeated Fnatic sat atop the standings as the European team to beat, the squad that took them to five games assumes their position in the World Championship Qualification Gauntlet. After months of being called the team of highly skilled players with minimal strategy, Origen put on the best display of macro play in Game 1 of the Finals that Europe has seen all year.

Origen go into the final gauntlet for the third seed into the World Championship as heavy favorites, not because they have the best players in every role and or because they've managed to outsmart Fnatic in two games, but because they’ve adapted: something almost every other team in this weekend’s tournament has failed to do. The theme this weekend is change, and it’s time to see if Giants, ROCCAT, and the Unicorns of Love have done enough to challenge the team that's transformed the most this summer.

Giants spent most of their split rehashing the same strategies to an almost comical effect in the quarterfinals. A simple lane swap strategy of placing wards around buffs allowed Giants to get the lanes they wanted. Later on, they discovered heavy scaling compositions using multiple stacking tears. Against weaker teams with poor early games, Giants could win easily by scaling their mid laner and jungler.

Origen’s last encounter with Giants ended most disastrously for the underdogs. Giants’ greatest resource, their mid laner, Isaac “PePiiNeRo” Flores, found himself floored by Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez’s Diana. This stood out as perhaps one of xPeke’s greatest solo performances of the split, which isn’t something you want to see if your main carry is his opposite.

To Giants’ credit, the draft during that game was questionable. The Yasuo composition picked into a champion counter, Diana, wouldn’t make for a strong foundation. Origen’s drafting has improved drastically since the Playoffs started, however, and Giants’ drafts have remained inconsistent. Old pick composition muscles floundered. Jorge "Werlyb" Casanovas failed to execute split-pushes.

In some ways, the fact that we haven’t seen Giants Gaming since Quarterfinals could be a blessing for them. The 0-3 loss to H2K could have been the dash of cold water to make them realize their same rote strategies don’t work against Europe’s top teams. Unfortunately, to even get a chance at Origen, Giants will have to take down ROCCAT in Round 1, a prospect that seems nearly as unlikely.

When I mentioned earlier that the largest problem plaguing the teams pitted to face Origen this weekend was a lack of change, ROCCAT stands out as something of an exception. It wasn’t so much that they changed their approach, but that they finally got the roster to make it work.

ROCCAT began the season with a team designed to play around mid laner Erlend “Nukeduck” Våtevik Holm, but Remigiusz “Overpow” Pusch didn’t immediately transition to the top lane well, requiring heavy jungle pressure. Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski didn’t succeed as well without his signature aggressive champions. AD carry Paweł “Woolite” Pruwski, while an upgrade over ex-AD carry Paweł “Celaver” Koprianiuk, didn’t provide any consistency in an already fickle roster. Nukeduck himself didn’t flex a very large champion pool and seemed to refuse to play certain meta picks.

This summer, new top laner Etienne “Steve” Michels took a considerable amount of time to sync into the EU LCS and provide some consistency. Initially, his tendency to die frequently and fall behind made him seem problematic, but he eventually leveled up his reliability. It’s a wonder what he’ll default to without Maokai or Rumble, but playing less champions seems like a godsend after Overpow’s constantly shifting spectacle.

The roster really seemed to click with the addition of Rasmus “MrRalleZ” Skinneholm. MrRalleZ rarely puts himself in the line of fire, acting as almost a polar opposite to Woolite. His safer positioning allows him to output a decent amount of damage and frees up more peel resources for Nukeduck.

There are still many pain points for ROCCAT. Nukeduck has branched out into the meta to find more champions that suit him, but whether or not he actually puts on a strong performance makes him seem as fickle as ever. In the series against Unicorns of Love, wins were found when MrRalleZ picked up Kalista and leveled up ROCCAT’s team fighting, but this isn’t a mistake another team is likely to make.

ROCCAT are favored to get past Giants, but if Giants have — however unlikely — grown enough into their name, they could surprise a tentatively stable ROCCAT. Origen have all the right tools to unseat ROCCAT by pulling away key champions. Top laner Paul “sOAZ” Boyer stated that Origen used Fnatic top laner Heo “Huni” Seunghoon’s inexperience playing against Gangplank to unseat the team. It shouldn’t be difficult, with the wide arsenal of champions sOAZ has at his disposal, for the team to deny Steve’s safety net to shake up ROCCAT.

As for the bottom lane, Origen has often been bottom lane focused in terms of their carry role. Troubling a more timid MrRalleZ may appear less challenging. Oskar “VandeR” Bogdan may be the gem within ROCCAT’s deep bramble patch, but Alfonso “mithy” Aguirre Rodriguez has powerful synergy with his own jungler, Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider and AD carry Jesper “Niels” Svenningson enough to pressure the lane.

If one cardinal rule of ROCCAT has remained true, pressuring the side lanes to draw attention away from Nukeduck usually spells disaster for the team. Origen do their best work in the side lanes.

One advantage ROCCAT have over Origen is a 2-0 record in the regular season, but Origen seem confident that ROCCAT won’t be a challenge if they don’t try to hit them too hard too early. Origen have made dramatic gains in drafting and coordination since their last encounter with ROCCAT. It’s time to see if ROCCAT have done the same.

The last stop in the Gauntlet are the Unicorns of Love. Since the start of the season, a lot of the love that made the Unicorns work seems to have evaporated. As other teams picked up deeper strategy, the Unicorns relied too heavily on pick compositions or scaling poke. The team hinges greatly on engagements from Zdravets “Hylissang” Iliev Galabov, who doesn’t quite seem to understand the problems plaguing his team.

This year, Unicorns surprised their opposition with off meta picks that could make games go almost 50/50. A lack of direct shotcalling or focus coined the term “chaos style,” but over the season, other teams began to ignore the flash and uncover core instabilities in strategy.

In Origen’s first encounter with Unicorns of Love, they bided their time until a power spike against UoL’s double Tear of the Goddess composition. When UoL opted into the fight, it became clear the team didn’t necessarily understand how to execute their picks.

That was only the beginning. UoL continued to try to find a balance between late game scaling and early-to-mid game pick style with disastrous results. The team fell further out of sync, and jungler Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek left.

If the season were longer, new addition Cho “H0R0” Jaehwan could provide some focus in shotcalling and early aggression for the Unicorns, but as it stands there isn’t enough time to establish synergy or overcome the language barrier. Without a clear answer to some of their problems, the Unicorns seem to have lost the power of Love as well as their confidence. They seem like even worse contenders to take down Origen than either Giants or ROCCAT, Kayle or no Kayle.

All told, Origen’s triumph in this Gauntlet is almost a foregone conclusion, much like Fnatic’s control of the season. While Origen spent the summer establishing change and improving upon their flaws, the other contenders stagnated. They’re about to pay for it.

Kelsey Moser is staff writer for theScore eSports. You can follow her on Twitter.