Gaming

xPeke gives us his take on the All-Star EU team

We caught up with the legendary midlaner turned ADC before the beginning of All-Star 2016.
Written by Justin Mahboubian-Jones
5 min readPublished on
Xpeke had to be included in the EU squad

Xpeke had to be included in the EU squad

© [unknown]

Enrique Cedeño 'xPeke' Martinez’s own League of Legends team, Origen, failed to qualify for the World Championship this year, so one may ask exactly why he, Soaz, and Rekkles (both of whom belong to Fnatic, another team which also failed to qualify) were chosen to represent the EU at All-Star 2016. The simple answer to all three may be, quite simply, popularity, in addition to the fond memory of both Origen and Fnatic reaching the semifinals in 2015.
In the case of xPeke, however, it just wouldn’t be an EU squad without him. Few players have an in-game tactic named after them, and if Europe has a single star on the scale of Faker, the Spanish League veteran is it.
We met up with Xpeke, or as he’s sometimes known, Enrique Martinez, to discuss the upcoming All-Star tournament in Barcelona and the prospect of facing Faker and Smeb at the same time.
Do you expect to win the public vote to be part of the EU LCS squad.
xPeke: I was not sure if I would win the vote for the All-Stars mostly because this year I played AD carry during the last split so it was a bit weird if people would actually vote for me, I was not sure, but they did in the end. It was a surprise and it was nice to see that fans would still like to see me.
How does it feel playing the All-Star game in your native spain?
It’s gonna be really cool to play there because the fans are going to be crazy just because I’m Spanish as well. It’s always good to hear them cheer to hear them talk in Spanish. It’s a really unique experience because I don’t get to play in front of a Spanish crowd all the time.
It’s a reunion of sorts with Rekless and Soaz. Are you looking forward to playing with them?
It’s going to be fun. It would been fun to have the entire team there, but it’s still some of them. It’s going to be fun for all of us, that’s what the event is about anyway: enjoying it and having fun.
Do you think it will be easy to start playing together again after so long?
The thing is, we haven’t played together for a long time, the three of us, so it’s going to be a little bit different now because things have changed, but I’m going to enjoy it. We’re going to be remembering the good old times and if we are actually doing fine or having fun it’s going to be even better.
What do you think of the EU lineup with Mithy and Yankos on the team?
Like I said, it would have been funny to have YellOwStaR and Cyanide there as well, but maybe we can do that by ourselves some other time. But I think it’s going to be cool to play with Jankos and with Mithy, it’s going to be a weird mix of things, like we’ve played with Mithy in Origen before, but not one of us has played with Jankos before. So it’s gonna be a new experience, and I’m interested to see how it goes because I have only played with a few players in Fnatic and Origen, and adding new players to the mix is going to be fun because I have no idea how the team is going to work. It’s going to be interesting to see.
Do you think you’ll be able to keep up with teams from other regions?
I have no idea about that. Obviously for these events no one is preparing super hard. No one has been practicing for the last month, but at the same time, everyone wants to show something good. I don’t know what to expect there, but I think that at least we will have a decent performance. I hope we get to practice beforehand so we can do well.
As I said, everyone has different teams and duties so we can’t all make time and meet up every day to practice. I do think that we’re still going to try and do it before the event, maybe if we’re enjoying it we’ll practise harder.
Give us your predictions. How do you think NA and South Korea will do?
South Korea will probably win, I think that’s almost for sure, but for the rest of the regions, it’s gonna be an incognita, because I really don’t know our level or America’s level. It’s hard to tell because even if you put some players together who are good, they don’t necessarily know how to work together as a team. I really can’t predict anything.
But do you think any other regions will stand a chance against Korea at all?
I think that other regions could actually face Korea and get close to beating them, it’s going to tricky, as I said, because if one of the teams have the synergy, for instance, in Europe we have synergy because we’ve played together in the past, then maybe we will have a chance, but I think it’s hard because these teams are more used to playing together.
We have synergy because we’ve played together in the past.
Do you think you will thrive with Europe behind you?
There is some pressure. Even though All-Stars doesn’t really matter, you want to perform and I haven’t played mid-lane in a long time so it’s going to be tricky to adapt to this new patch and meta. There is a lot of pressure on me because of that but I don’t mind because in the end it’s for fun and I will try my best.
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