[2022] The URF Skirmish is an anthropological wonder.

It happens every game. Ten champs, top lane, duking it out until minions spawn in a one-ability rumble. It claims dozens of summoner spells and lives, hosts double, triple, and even pentakills, and surprisingly often, decides the game. What’s most fascinating about the URF Skirmish though is how it seemed to form all on it own. People change League all the time, finding optimal builds and strategies that require change in response from the game in a growing relationship. But the URF Skirmish is bigger than Lethality Xayah or Hybrid Kai’sa. It’s a precise set of rules and regulations that formed without a single explicit agreement between the player that engaged in it, and not out of practicality or optimization, but rather, unspoken consensus. Why not mid, the traditional NARAM lane? Why do teams with obvious and severe level 1 disadvantages still gather top lane before inevitably agreeing to split up and “decline” the Skirmish? In any case, it’s certain that archaeologists will look back in pained confusion as they try to understand why so many “FF”s in URF occurred at a minute and three seconds.