You're anxious. The time has finally come to play the team everyone has been talking about. They have players at every position that can beat you in lane. Their coach gives them advantages in the pick/ban phase by exploiting the other team's weaknesses through his own squad's extensive champion pools. You fiddle with your mouse, waiting for them to make their arrival.

They make their entrance onto the stage. Bunny ears attached to their headphones, vests that remind you of a prep school, and fancy ties that make you forget for a moment that they aren't waiters at some sort of maid cafe.

You start to break into a cold sweat as the game is about to begin. They might look outlandish, but there's no doubt about it - these cat waiters make up the best League of Legends team in the world.

The Unexpected Beasts

In the history of League of Legends we've had many teams that were considered the best in the world at a time: the unstoppable World Elite at IPL5; the Faker-led SK Telecom T1 squad that not only won the 2013 world championship but went through a Champions Korea undefeated; the Samsung White team that finally put the pieces together to rampage through the 2014 Championships in Taiwan and Korea.

The difference between those teams and the GE Tigers is that the former teams were expected to be great. They had current all-stars, legends and highly touted rookies on their rosters that made it clear that they would become an unstoppable force. The GE Tigers on the other hand, their team was made up mostly of outcasts that couldn't make the cut onto one of the six directly qualified teams in Champions Korea Spring 2015.

You had Smeb, an ex-top-laner from Incredible Miracle who was seen as a lost cause. He was one of the worst players on one the worst teams in Champions Korea, and he continually was a non-factor in games that ended up with his team being blown out.

Their jungler Lee was a rookie on NaJin Sword but was discarded due to them picking the veteran Watch over him. His play wasn't bad in his debut season, but his lack of a bigger champion pool and his mistakes, caused by inexperience, led him out the door.

Kuro was a solid mid-laner but that's all he was. You could pit Kuro against any of his peers in lane and he could go practically even, but his ability to make big plays was lacking compared to his competition in Ggoong.

The bottom lane came from two different worlds. Pray was once the best AD carry in Korea, selected as an all-star for his country in the 2013 season. He had a fall from grace as other players from his generation started to retire; it finally resulted in him taking an extended break from professional scene, making the fans wonder if he would ever play another pro game again.

Gorilla was the one player on the team that was coming into the GE Tigers on a high point in his career. While Pray had fallen into what could have been seen as a retirement before signing with the Tigers, Gorilla was one of the spotlighted stars at the 2014 World Championships.

His support play with Janna before and during the tournament made the champion one of his highest priority picks at World, and he was one of the biggest reasons why NaJin White Shield were able to top their Ro16 group and make the quarter-finals. Unfortunately, NaJin were stopped by the Chinese powerhouse OMG in the next round, and Gorilla found himself moving from an organization he helped become a championship contender to the unproven Tigers.

The team made up of former NaJin players and IM's castaway Smeb were brought together by their head coach NoFe, another ex-NaJin player that had retired from professional play a year prior.

They were expected to make it through the Champions Spring qualifiers, needing to make Top 2, placed in a group along with Smeb's former Incredible Miracle, a hyped up group of rookies on Xenics, and a Prime team that appeared to be canon fodder.

GE did well in the qualifiers, going 3-0 in three relatively easy games and moving onto the main season of Champions. Their play was crisp for a newly put together team, but the Tigers clean victories were mostly credited towards their massive experience edge over the competition. Most pundits pegged them as a middle-of-the-pack team with potential to rise higher, but no one expected would come next.

The Tigers were about to take over Korea.

Becoming the Best

The Tigers' opening match of the season against Incredible Miracle finished with GE taking a one-sided 2-0 win. Sure, they could beat IM but Pray still looked a bit rusty from his long layoff and it was a series they were favored to win.

Next for the Tigers were Samsung. Another dominating win followed for GE, but come on, it's the new Samsung filled with rookies. No big deal.

Then they beat Jin Air but they dropped a game. 3-0 was nice, but their schedule was about to come up on the best teams in the league. How would their play adapt against the team fighting specialists, CJ Entus, or the aggression heavy NaJin squad that most of the former Tigers came from?

The Tigers would go on to 2-0 CJ, KT Rolster and their rivals NaJin in a row before ending their first round undefeated with a close 2-1 win over Faker's SKT T1. The talk of them coming back to Earth or having a softer schedule was over — the Tigers had played all seven teams in the league and only dropped two maps the entire first half of the season.

GE haven't slowed down in the second half, winning their first three matches of the second round without losing a map to bump their incredible overall record to 10-0 with a map score of 20 wins and two losses.

So what changed to turn the GE Tigers from a perceived solid middle-of-the-road team into an absolute juggernaut? The first thing you'd have to look at is the champion pools of the players. Gorilla was an amazing playmaker on NaJin White Shield, but his champion pool was criticized heavily for relying solely on Janna and Thresh. The same could also have been said about Smeb and Lee from their previous seasons in Champions.

All of the Tigers' champion pools have expanded this season, each player opening their style to a new-type of champion. Kuro picked up Viktor after playing him repeatedly in solo queue, and Gorilla moved away from solely playing his two main champions to showcase the likes of Veigar and Leona in the bottom lane. The widening of the pools was a key to allowing NoFe to transform the Tigers into a versatile team that could play a series of different compositions and strategies.

From zero to hero, Smeb has become one of the world's most dominating top-laners.

Besides their champion pools growing larger and NoFe's mastermind coaching, Smeb and Lee's emergence in the top lane and jungle has been remarkable and a key to their winning streak.

Smeb, who was mostly forced to play tanks on Incredible Miracle, has been given more freedom on GE and has delivered. He's still strong on tanks and is one of the most effective Lulu players, but he's been able to show that he can do damage as well with hard carry champions.

Lee has followed suit by taking advantage of GE's strong laning phase to play more aggressive and capitalize on strong team play. Even when his team is pushing a lane aggressively, Lee's knack to find the small window of timing to make a gank succeed his remarkable. He can still play too forward at times and make those inexperienced mistakes, but his eye to move into a lane or counter-gank at the precise moment makes him a dangerous opponent for anyone in the world to go up against.

So all the Tigers' players expanded their champion pools, their weaker players improved tremendously, and they have a head coach who is helping them broaden their styles by playing different types of compositions. They can beat you in lane, the objective game, and even the late-game, where they will win the war of attrition.

But the biggest reason why the Tigers have become the most unexpected best team in League history is one man: Pray.

He was dead in the water. He vanished for over eight months, looking more like a quiet retirement than a break to recharge his batteries. His return had a bit of hype behind it, but his final games with NaJin Black Sword drew a picture of a man whose best days were behind him.

Pray's games in the qualifiers and preseason were good but not great. He was still lagging behind the new generation of AD's in Korea and most of his big plays came from the movements of Gorilla and the team around him. This would change each game he played with the team, becoming more and more confident as a pro and learning his limits when it came to playing offensive in lane.

Now, with over thirty professional games under his belt since his return, it's safe to say that Pray is back. His synergy with Gorilla has made them one of the most dangerous duos in all the world, and he's averaging 5.7 kills a game while only dying a little over once per game. Teams will have to watch out for his Corki, the signature champion that has ripped through team after team this season. At an all-time record 24-9, it's hard to argue against Pray being the best Corki player on the planet.

How to Slay a Tiger

The Tigers can beat you in 1001 different ways. They have all shown the capability to expand their champion pools in a short period of time. If you get ahead of them, they know how to slow the game down and stage a comeback through smart plays. Hard engage, assassin-based picks, long-range poke, mid-game power spike rollover, or playing for the long-game - the GE Tigers have shown they can play any technique at an elite level.

So how do you beat them?

Well, looking at the two maps they've lost in Champions, there is some correlation. Most importantly, in the games SKT and Jin Air took off the Tigers, Kuro was held down early and often. Faker and GBM utilized mobile assassins (LeBlanc/Ahri) to disrupt the pillar of GE's team and never let him get going. Unlike Pray, who plays an in-your-face-24-7 style, Kuro is the calming waterfall that the other four hyper players rally around when the team needs to slow down the game's pace.

Jin Air tried this strategy again in their last match against GE. GBM put himself on a mobile assassin (LeBlanc) and matched up with Kuro's slower-paced Viktor. Everything went perfectly for Jin Air in the early-game as they killed Kuro twice in lane and got out to a fast start. But unlike the last time Jin Air and GE played, where Kuro was out CSed heavily and picked on early which led to a late-game loss, the Tigers knew how to respond. Kuro's Viktor eventually got rolling, the Tigers' late-game power out-scaled Jin Air's when it got past 35 minutes, and the calm and cool carry of GE finished with an 8/2/4 score after dying twice early.

The other game GE lost, this one to SKT, came down to GE giving SKT all their comfortable power picks and allowing Faker to play on his undefeated LeBlanc. Unfortunately for everyone at IEM, none of them have a game changing player at Faker's level who is going to be gifted his signature, undefeated champion.

Outside of disrupting the Tigers' steady pillar in Kuro or having Faker, other teams can exploit GE's lackadaisical play. Their pick/ban and clean play that follows has been a trademark for the Tigers so far this season, but they do have games where they simply look like they don't really care if they win or lose until they see they're down 4k+ gold. This happened against the league's bottom feeders, Samsung. The Tigers played extremely sloppy in the mid-game and allowed the hapless Samsung to outmaneuver them on the map and take free objectives.

Of course GE finally turned on the switch, played seriously and took out Samsung in the end, but the Tigers' on/off switch can be abused by better teams. Against SKT, it didn't matter if they flipped on the switch and played well after a weak draft phase; the Tigers are a great team, but there are elite squads out there that can match them in talent and cut them down quickly if they don't take them seriously from the start.

The Tigers are ready to take over Katowice (Source: Inven.kr)

The GE Tigers aren't unbeatable or perfect. They don't have the best player in the world like SK Telecom T1 K's reign, and their roster isn't as stacked as last year's Samsung White, but the Tigers greatest strength is their constant evolution. From their strategies to champion pools, the team that's only been playing together for a few months is growing stronger by the day.

This weekend their evolution continues, and the seven other teams in Katowice will have the job to stop them. They might wear pink vests and dress like school boys, but underneath the flashy exterior rests a monster that hasn't reached its full potential.

Good luck beating them.

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for The Score eSports, and will be bringing in-depth coverage of the IEM LoL World Championships in Katowice. If you hadn't already guessed, he's picking the GE Tigers to win it all. You can follow the Tigers hype man on Twitter.