Magicamy Joins Tempo Storm: An Interview

On January 1st, 2015, only three days ago, Tempo Storm picked up its newest recruit, Magicamy. And just a few short days after her pickup, she won week 6 of the ESL Challenger series, advancing her to the LAN finals in Burbank, California later this year. I sat down with Magicamy and got to know a bit more about her, her background, and experience as a Korean female competitive Hearthstone player.

Note that this interview was done before Magicamy had won in her week of the ESL Legendary Series.

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Hi Magicamy! Can you introduce yourself and your background in gaming and esports?

Sure! My name is Hyerim Lee, I am 26 years old from Korea with a major in fashion industry. I have been following and participating in the world of esports since early age in highschool, starting with the Korean scene of Starcraft:BW and eventually started following pretty much all the major esports that developed in Europe/America such as the major FG, CS1.6, Warcraft III etc... Mostly I participated in the organization of medium/large events of Starcraft in Korea and it is probably the where performed the most since I started very early and had the chance to practice with the best.

Do you mean Starcraft or Hearthstone?

Starcraft! I was infinitely better at Starcraft BW than I consider myself good at Hearthstone.

Were you better than Tossgirl? =D

If my parents would have let me I am sure I could have done at least as good as Seo (:

So after being involved with Starcraft for so long, how did you first get involved with Hearthstone, eventually becoming one of the best players in the NA scene?

Close to the only thing I have to thank for actually introducing me to Hearthstone is Twitch. I worked very hard on my English in the past couple of years and one of the entertaining way I found to practice was to watch popular streamers. I started watching LoL streams solely for the purpose of improving my English without actually knowing too much about the game and eventually I think it was Trump I saw on the front page of Twitch playing the early closed beta of Hearthstone (If you ever read this Trump, I miss the piano please bring it back ㅠㅜ) and started watching because nothing else I liked was on. I got instantly addicted and started watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of his stream until I actually got my hand on a beta key myself.

So thanks twitch and thanks Trump for being an amazing broadcaster (:

So you're kind of like Kranich, the Korean Blizzcon Hearthstone player? He mentioned that he worked on English by watching popular Hearthstone streamers in his interviews.

Yes pretty much! But for as much as I tried to invest myself in the Korean scene for Starcraft, I actually haven't had ANY contacts at all with the Korean Hearthstone scene. Or very very limited ones.

After you got into the scene, the thing you were probably most known for is team magicamy. Can you tell me the story of how that team formed?

First of all I want to let people know, it wasn't actually my idea to name the team that way =P. Now that that's out of the way, the first reason I formed Team Magicamy was to create an "official" group to help Tarei prepare for Blizzcon.

I found out that making things the most professional possible when working towards something that should be handled the most professionally possible is the right way to go. I hope you can make sense of what I mean =P

All of us actually worked extremely hard on the decks he brought to the New York qualifiers and it might be stupid but I have a strong feeling that things would have been very different in a worse way had the official "team" not been created.

If the purpose of the team was to help Tarei practice for Blizzcon, what was the plan after blizzcon? for example, you recruited Silentstorm onto the team afterwards

The original plan was to probably disband the team but Tarei actually ended up doing quite well at Blizzcon and after that we simply considered it would probably be best to keep the "team" alive and help each other prepare for other major events in the future.

Silentstorm (whom I still think is one of the very best player at this game) was still without a team at the time and we just decided to pick him up since he was already a friend of ours. We mostly used the team as a practice and theorycraft circle and I saw no reason to not have him be part of it if he was interested.

What exactly was your role in the team? The team was called team magicamy, after all.

After hanging out with me I think a lot of my close game friends almost see me as their mother. I like to think of myself of a very dedicated hardworking and structured person. It's no secret that westerners can be very lazy at time so I did my best with what I learned in my Starcraft past to keep people focused and motivated. I also simply practiced with them as well.

I would like to think I did a good job since I managed to keep my people focused and work very hard the entire time when all I had to pay them was Korean candies

Haha did you really send them Korean candies?

Yes yes! need to keep the troops motivated.

With your move to TempoStorm, what will become of your team though?

Team magicamyless? =(

Seems like a problem when the team is named after you.

I talked to the players already but didn't really think things through as what the actual team will become. I really don't think the players will have a hard time finding a new home if the team completely disband as I consider them to be the very best players in the game even if they haven't participated in much events that brings a lot of exposure. But they are some of the smartest players with whom I had the chance to practice/talk with.

Alright, so let's talk about your recent addition to TempoStorm. How did that process go down?

I actually knew almost all the members of TempoStorm quite well. I have been friend with Gaara since before he won Dreamhack Bucharest and met Hyped a little before he ended his famous season at rank 2 and 3 on the ladder. I have been discussing with him about ways to optimize the old Miracle Rogue deck and we worked quite a bit together since then.

It was actually Gaara that approached me right after the last ESL two weeks ago and told me if I would be interested in joining TempoStorm. I discussed with him, Reynad and Frodan and not long after I was their newest member (:

What does joining tempo storm mean for you? Will we be seeing magicamy streaming soon? Going to oversees events? Maybe even making TempoStorm videos?

I only very recently started to actually take Hearthstone seriously. I am not quite ready to start streaming at the standard at which I would like to start at but it should be coming soon. I will work very hard on my tournament results and on the team motivation and organization in general. I will start making guides and videos for the TempoStorm website in the near future and streaming should follow shortly after once I decide my spoken English is ready.

One thing is for sure is that you will see a lot more of me around now that I invest myself in this full time (:

I am not sure about overseas events quite yet but there is a strong chance I might be moving to New York for a couple of months with one of my brother so it's possible I might be able to participate to some events not too far around there.

Cool, i'm from New York too. Too bad there's not really any events on the east coast.

Hopefully the Hearthstone scene keeps developing rapidly and there might be some soon enough (:

When it was announced that you were joining TempoStorm, the fact that you're a female player was the hottest topic. With Hafu stepping out of the constructed Hearthstone scene, you're now pretty much the only competitive female player in the scene. What does that mean for you?

It's actually adding a lot of pressure to me since I don't really have a stream to fall back on or anything of the sort quite yet. I want to prove that Reynad did not pick me up just because I am a female "decent" player but because of my performance as a player and the help I could bring to his organization. I know for a fact that me and Rumay are not the only girls that play Hearthstone at a high level. I hope me joining TempoStorm will encourage more of the other high level Hearthstone female players to try to make themselves a place in the scene. China and Korea have already a few that I know could already compete with the very best of the game so hopefully it's just a matter of time before we see more of us (:

One final question. Two of your definitive traits that Frodan kindly pointed out during your ESL games were that you have all golden decks (including golden Control Warrior and Handlock) and that you have to TeSPa card back. My first question is how important are golden decks and my second is how did you get that coveted card back?

Haha! Some girls like their shoes, I like my gold cards! It's actually a lot less expensive than people may think if you consider this as one of your only "extra" living expense. I don't drink much, I don't smoke and I barely go out or shopping so it left me some room to be able to get my precious golden cards. I am not quite to the point where I have them all but I am slowly working on it! As for the TeSPa cardback it was a gift from a Korean friend studying in the US right now (: (I hope i am not putting me or him in trouble for saying that haha)

Thanks a lot for the interview, Magicamy. Do you have any final shoutouts you want to give?

Thanks a lot for your time Monk. Thanks to all the fans I have made recently that started supporting me and obviously a big thank you to my new team TempoStorm! I love you all!

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