Road to BlizzCon 2019: Reynor (#2 WCS Circuit)

Test of Faith

by Soularion

Going into 2019, one of the biggest questions of the WCS Circuit was how Reynor would fare in a full, complete year of competition. In just two Circuit events in 2018, Reynor finished #9 in the WCS Circuit standings and was just one game away from toppling Serral at WCS Montreal to qualify for the Global Finals. He impressed outside the Circuit as well, reaching the round-of-16 in Code S and finishing top eight at the WESG Grand Finals.

A cursory glance at Reynor's 2019 results suggests that he has already blown by the lofty expectations set in 2018. He's won back-to-back Circuit championships, following in Serral and Neeb's footsteps as the third repeat champion in Legacy of the Void. He's clearly the second best player in WCS Circuit competitions, going 2-2 with the seemingly invincible Serral in BO5+ series. No one on the Circuit has really challenged Reynor for second place either, as he's won every single offline series against non-Serral players.

So, what gives? How is that not successful? Why is this entire intro setting up a huge "HOWEVER...."?


Let's go back to that Code S Season 2 Ro16 run in 2018, which was a major component of the Reynor hype at the time. Before Reynor was even age-eligible to play in his first WCS Circuit event, he had already gone over to Korea to train and try his hand at GSL Code S. In a surprising turn of events, the fifteen-year-old Reynor managed to make it through the qualifiers on his first attempt. Even if the players he beat weren't the strongest (TOP, Trust, Rookie among others), fans were pleasantly surprised that a kid who couldn't even compete on the WCS Circuit had managed to qualify for an even more difficult tournament.

While Reynor had been hyped as a rising prospect on the ladder, no one could have expected how well he'd perform once he actually sat down to play in the AfreecaTV studio. At first, he looked like a token foreigner there to hand out free wins, losing 0-2 to the previous season's semifinalist in Classic (arguably a top three player in the world at the time). But the loss hardly seemed to discourage Reynor—in fact it ended up being more of a warm-up match. Reynor roared back by defeating Ryung 2-0, and then won a shocking upset against Classic in the decider match to eliminate him from the tournament. In the Ro16, Reynor actually came within a single map of reaching the Code S quarterfinals, reaching match-point against Maru in the winners match (he'd lose, and then lose to Neeb in the decider match). All told, Reynor won three series against Korean players in Code S that season (Classic, Ryung, Impact), and even gave Maru a run for his money.



After beating three Korean players in a single Code S run last year, Reynor has just barely matched that number in offline matches in 2019 (wins vs PartinG, Solar, and Creator). IEM Katowice might have been his most disappointing showing of the year, where he failed to escape the Ro76 after losing to GuMiho (#11 WCS Korea) and Creator (#26). He followed that up with another disappointing showing at WESG, where he blew a 2-0 lead against Neeb to lose their single-elimination Ro16 match in a reverse sweep.

All the other tournaments without the words "WCS Circuit" in it have gone similarly. Stats and GuMiho sent him out of Assembly Summer in the Ro16 group stage, while HeRoMaRinE swept him out of HomeStory Cup 19 to a meager top 12 finish. The most telling result might have been his loss to SpeCial at GSL vs. The World—Reynor had been undefeated against the Mexican Terran in three prior WCS Circuit meetings, but gave up a 0-3 sweep to a SpeCial armed with GSL-style™ preparation. All-in-all, Reynor's Ro16 run in Code S from 2018 is looking more and more like the singular outlier, with the talented young Zerg unable to recreate his success outside the WCS Circuit on any other occasion.

This isn't anything new for top foreigners. WCS 2016, one of the heavily segregated seasons in the history of StarCraft II (even the HomeStory Cup somehow ended up being Circuit-only), didn't see Korean and WCS Circuit players collide in a meaningful event until the Global Finals. It's there that the top foreigners, having been mixed into an interchangeable jumble all year, were sorted into their proper order. Nerchio, for all of his consistently great play on the year (#3 seed), was essentially forgotten after a disappointing showing. ShoWTimE, just one rank above Nerchio on the Circuit, was celebrated as a hero for defeating ByuN and Dear to reach the quarterfinals. Whether it's fair or unfair, success against Koreans has always been the measuring stick for foreigners. If you asked any of NaNiwa's contemporaries about how good he was in his prime, they'd probably say he wasn't that much better than the other Europeans. But, because he went to the GSL, and because he faced and beat the Koreans, there was no choice but to rate him as being a class above. Snute and Scarlett, who never impressed domestically yet often performed well at mixed-region events, commanded far more respect than Lilbow and his single WCS Circuit title.

Even Serral, who had won two Circuit titles and placed top four at IEM Katowice by the midway mark of 2018, was still heavily doubted until he won the championship at GSL vs. The World 2018. Thus, it's understandable that Reynor, despite having won two WCS Circuit titles and having a 2-2 major match record against Serral on the year, is the recipient of the same kinds of doubts. It's why TL.net's Neeb preview posited that Neeb is still the 2nd best Circuit player, even if this makes no sense when you go up and down the Liquipedia results sheet. Unless Reynor delivers in the biggest, most difficult tournaments in the world, all of his Circuit success will end up as just shadows on the wall, a tantalizing outline of what could be.

Time forces one to rethink Reynor's surprise Code S run, which is now over a year old. Now, we have to wonder what Reynor's 'normal' level is. Is it that Code S run, or his WESG 2017 run where he beat every foreigner in his path before going 0-8 against the Korean big three of Dark, Classic and Maru? Is it that Code S run, or his performance in Nation Wars V where he all-killed* China and Norway, but was helpless to prevent INnoVation from all-killing Italy?

All that puts foreigner fans in that familiar position of facing gnawing uncertainty as Reynor heads into his first Global Finals. It's not quite 'Lilbow vs Life' level dread, but more like that of when Scarlett, Neeb, and NaNiwa were headed into the Code S quarterfinals. We all know Reynor is excellent, we all know he has a chance to beat the odds, and we all know that if he does advance from his Ro16 group, we're going to say we saw it coming all along. But history has also conditioned foreigner fans to expect disappointment, to know that moments like these exist to remind us of Korea's supremacy at StarCraft.



herO, in many ways is the worst possible initial opponent—an unpredictable and aggressive player who has a knack for coming through in the clutch. There's not much glory to defeating a faded star like herO, but there's every chance of suffering a one-sided defeat where you barely get to play StarCraft. And sneakily, herO is one of the most successful vs foreigner players of all-time, with an all-time match record of 50–6. Classic has been more shaky against foreign opposition with a 31–8 all-time record, but the meticulous build order preparation he's shown this year will be unlike anything Reynor has experienced on the Circuit.

This whole region-locked WCS Circuit experiment has been a giant test of faith, as foreigners slowly begin to compete with Koreans. And I don't mean just Blizzard's faith in talented young gamers that they'd grow, rather than stagnate, inside of their protected pastures. It was a gamble that fans around the world would watch the WCS Circuit, be excited by the matches, and become invested in the players, believing that what happens on the Circuit actually mattered in the big picture. Reynor's BlizzCon journey carries with it all the weight of that belief. For Neeb and Serral, their success validated Neeb and Serral. In Reynor's case, his success will validate the Circuit.