From Nothing Comes All

Lambo has come from nothing. It's a well-worn trope in StarCraft. Hard, invisible work, toil for uncertain rewards. It's where we get many of our most treasured stories. Stories of narrow margins, surpassed expectations, realized hopes. In a story reminiscent of Elazer in 2016, Lambo arrives at the WCS Global Finals with the narrowest possible margin, getting in through last-minute nail-biters and a good bit of luck. It has been a rocky year and an uneasy career for Lambo; but he’s here. A player most of us would have discarded as irrelevant not long ago has made it to the grand event.

One could easily be forgiven for forgetting who Lambo was prior to this year; he made only one WCS event in all of 2016, where he got 3-1'd by Polt, and while he had some scattershot runs here and there, they were neither deep nor consistent enough to give him any accolades. Prior to 2018, his best career placing in the international scene was either a top 16 at WCS Austin where beat SpeCial (then MajOr), or a top 8 at IEM Gamescom where he got summarily swept by soO . Three years have passed since that event, the first one at which Lambo accomplished much of anything, and now he stands one group stage away from the BlizzCon stage. soO, the legendary Zerg who 3-0'd him so easily then? At home, fallen short.

There has been no yearly transformation for Lambo. He is not a player characterized by year-by-year improvement and a grueling crawl toward an eventual break-out moment. He’s not your fairytale hero. Lambo represents the volatility of the scene at its most uneven; at WCS Leipzig, he defeated reigning champion Neeb. At IEM Katowice a month after, he lost 0-2 to Bunny and was knocked out in the Round of 44. Lambo’s entire year has been a ping pong match between remarkable success and the most gripping, hollowing failure.

Success strikes hard, as Lambo was able to lean on momentum and a Zerg-dominated bracket to make a semifinal run in front of a ravenous WCS Austin crowd, defeating TRUE and Nerchio on route to his most worthy success. Yet, crowned by his greatest run ever, the ground fell from beneath Lambo, and he fell hard. Harder, and more painful, than ever before.

He was eliminated by DeMusliM in the Round of 48 at WCS Valencia. An unusual low even for Lambo, who had made himself out to be at least a regular to the Round of 32. Not this year. Not that day. For any reasonable player, that loss would’ve doomed them. Not just out of BlizzCon dreams, but out of the conversation of being a top-tier foreigner at all. The math was grim, the challenges great, the odds stacked against him. Just two months removed from the highest peak he ever reached, Lambo was now once again teetering on the brink of nothingness.

Many stories have ended there. Three-fourths of an upset, one upset, two upsets, maybe even three, and then silence. No ascension, no championship, no return to form, no second miracle. Just a flame briefly blazing before fading completely. A strange, temporal mistake soon corrected. After all, Has made the finals, and he hasn’t been back to a quarterfinal since, and MaNa went from a WCS finalist to not even being at the Global Finals at all. Why should Lambo, who didn’t even make the finals, be any different?

This is where the tightness of margins in StarCraft is put at full display. It all came down to the tightest of moments and the kindness of fate. Fate gave him an easy start; TIME, Kelazhur and Zanster are solid players, but not having to face a single true contender until the quarterfinals helped his run. There, he found ShoWTimE who, while sometimes easy to gloss over, still ended the year 2nd in WCS points with strong runs both domestically (WCS Leipzig) and internationally (his fantastic performance against Korea online, and his play against Zest at GSL vs the World), it’s clear that he was an elite player and a worthy obstacle for any rising star. It was a tough set. ShoWTimE, while not at his peak still played well, and, despite ceding an early 0-2 deficit, was in it to fight. He fought all the way to a climactic game 4 where Lambo started pulling away; and once the Zerg began to take hold he never stopped.

Lambo had done it. He had won the most important set of his entire year, getting his name firmly into the WCS Global Finals conversation, a feat which had seemed impossible just a month before. He was matched up against the first foreigner in years to truly strike fear into the hearts of anyone. Serral quickly put him down to a rough 0-2 situation. Down on his luck against the same player that had ended his streak in Austin. Down against the titan of the foreign scene, the three-time reigning champion whose losses to foreigners over the year amounted to essentially nil. Down as someone who had barely ever even come close to the finals stage. Down as someone who was once no one; down as a ghost, breathed back to life by two runs which saw him face the odds and win.

Lambo was not about to lose again. He came out fighting in game 3, legitimately outplaying Serral over the course of a game and getting his first win onto the board. Game 4 was scrappy, tough and short, but no less impressive. There, his +1 all-in with queens and roaches overcame Serral, despite a defender’s advantage and a worrying concave. Even the casters lost their faith, figuring that Serral would swat away the attack like any other; but Lambo was not just another player anymore. He was someone bigger, someone capable of going the distance. Even though he lost in an absolute brawl during game 5, Lambo had made his mark. He let the world know – no longer was he nobody. He would not accept a return to anonymity.

To see Serral succeed in game 7 of a similarly hard-fought set against Reynor (who would’ve qualified for the Global Finals over Lambo had he succeeded in that series) felt like fate finally telling Lambo ‘you have done enough’. As though the universe recognized the run Lambo had, the incredible duality of his performances at both Austin and Montreal, where he legitimately looked like one of the few players capable of wounding Serral and dominant against all else, and gifted him safe passage onto the next step of the journey.

Some point to that moment, where a fortunate mix of luck, skill and Serral's skill proved just enough for him to eke out those crucial deciding points, as the moment of his year, as the pinnacle of all he amounted to. That sweet, blissful moment where he finally made it to the Global Finals in one of the most astonishing miracles of Legacy of the Void thus far. It says something about the status of the competitive scene that a player's fortunes live and die with others, not only themselves. But for a single map, Lambo would have fallen short. Even after showcasing what he was made of in Austin and Montreal, where he forced himself into contention, the margins were still as narrow as could be.

Lambo enters the Global Finals in a completely different position to most underdogs; he enters as someone who has known what it’s like to compete against the best, as someone who has played tight sets with Serral and very nearly found the upset, as someone who had felt the sting of defeat and the bliss of victory both. The Lambo of today is someone with a dream; a dream of conquering titans and felling gods. A dream of that BlizzCon stage, shiny and bright. A dream realized in tense sets and fed by bitter loss; a dream grown in the shadow of defeats. Of all the players competing for their spot at BlizzCon, Lambo is the outsider in the bunch. Outmatched, no, but far from a certain quantity. Fresh-faced, maybe, but not one to be overlooked. Punching above his weight, yes, but demonstrably comfortable in that position. There are question marks still, but Lambo has made a point of showing that the unknown need not be all negatives.

If the Lambo from last year entered a group with Maru, TY and Neeb, he’d be little more than a mouse in a cage of tigers, insignificant in their shadows. That Lambo, once nameless and faceless among a swarm of European Zerg, is gone. His successor might still be small, still a little outmatched, but he is no longer toothless. If a year can be a statement, then Lambo has spent his year saying one thing:

"Discount me at your peril".