Road to BlizzCon 2019: HeroMarine (#6 WCS Circuit)

Big If True

by Soularion

When HeroMarine made his first major splash on the WCS Circuit with his run to the semifinals of WCS Summer 2016, it almost felt like a joke. Who was this kid, a foreign Terran at that, taking advantage of the WCS region lock to dare take a semifinal spot? Before that, he hadn't even qualified for a WCS event in Legacy of the Void, and had been bounced from the Ro32 in the last WCS Circuit tournament of 2015. Headed into WCS Summer in 2016, he hadn't even qualified for any of the other Circuit events that year.

Now, HeroMarine is attending his second straight WCS Global Finals. "Big Gabe" is also one of the most popular memes of the WCS Circuit, surpassing even Juanito's Doritos. Oddly, that might be the biggest sign that this region-lock thing worked out, even more so than the BlizzCon runs made by other Circuit players. It means that you don't have to annihilate everyone like Neeb in 2017 or Serral in 2018 for people to care about you—if you consistently play well, it turns out people will pay attention and appreciate it (being a prolific streamer probably helps, too). While that may seem like an obvious thing to state, it wasn't always something you could take for granted in the foreigner-verse.


It would've been easy for "Big Gabe" to never happen. After WCS Summer 2016, HeroMarine really did seem like a flash in the pan. He didn't break through the qualifiers for a single WCS Circuit event in 2017, and didn't even attempt to brave the open bracket.

WCS 2018 started out just as poorly, as HeroMarine went 0-4 in the first European regional qualifier, losing to both Elazer and Harstem. But it was just his luck that the first WCS Circuit tournament happened to be in Leipzig, giving the German Terran a chance to fight his way up from the open bracket. Starting from the bottom, HeroMarine got his revenge on Harstem, defeated Nerchio, and even stole a game off Neeb on his way to a Ro16 finish. That result ended up being the spark he needed to start his transformation into the consistent force he is today. It gave him the confidence to test the open bracket at WCS Austin as well, though it would become a moot point as he would earn a paid-for flight by breaking through the European Challenger tournament for the first time. HeroMarine would one-up his Leipzig performance by reaching the quarterfinals at Austin by beating DnS, a result he would again improve upon by reaching the semifinals at WCS Valencia with a victory over uThermal.

While HeRoMaRinE was making major personal progress, he was also rather unlucky. He frequently found himself crossing the Circuit railroad tracks when the Serral hype-train was passing, and their matches were some of the more brutal ones on the Circuit (HeroMarine went 1-13 against him on the year). And yet, despite those inopportune run-ins, HeroMarine was consistently strong against just about everyone else, finishing off his 2018 Circuit campaign with a top-eight finish at WCS Montreal to secure his first ever spot at the Global Finals. That experience didn't go so well—he was whooped by sOs and Zest on his way to a 0-4 elimination in the group stages. It was an apt summation of his year: for better or for worse, he beat everyone he was supposed to, and lost to everyone he was supposed to.

2019 has been a mixed-success attempt to raise that ceiling. Did you know that HeRoMaRinE actually ended his losing streak against Serral by beating him 2-0 at the round robin for WCS Winter Europe this year? It was largely overshadowed when Serral subsequently adapted and 3-0'd him in the playoff gauntlet, but it was an important milestone nevertheless. He straight-up out-macroed the macro-king in that BO3, joining INnoVation as the only Terran to defeat Serral in 2019.



However, HeroMaRinE's experience on the 2019 Circuit also felt like a bit of a hamster wheel, running in place en route to consistently high, non-finals finishes. Most importantly, he found a new roadblock to surmount in Reynor. At WCS Spring, he rode a fortunate bracket to the Ro16 before being just barely thwarted by the Italian Zerg. HeroMarine achieved his best finish of the year at WCS Summer by reaching the semifinals, where he was again thwarted by Reynor (not so close a match that time around). At WCS Fall, he defeated ShoWTimE in one of his best performances of the year, only to run into Serral on the warpath. He slipped from the 5th seed last year to 6th this year, despite only ever being eliminated by Serral and Reynor at WCS Circuit stops.

The other area for improvement in 2019 was matches against Koreans. While SpeCial has come through in the past with big upsets at BlizzCon, HeRoMaRinE still bears that dreaded mantle of 'foreign Terran.' These are the players who clearly possess supreme talent and perform excellently in competitions among their regional peers, but cannot seem to overcome the dreaded Koreans in matches that really matter. HeroMarine's showing at HomeStory Cup 19 really encapsulated all of this. He placed second in a tough Ro32 group with Zest and soO—not because he beat either of them Zest—but because PtitDrogo beat Zest, and then HeroMarine beat all the other foreigners. He actually stomped Reynor at that tournament, but was ultimately eliminated by Zest in the playoffs.

Other tournaments have begotten more mixed results. At Assembly, he eliminated fan favorite TaeJa and then scored an upset over GuMiho in an initial group stage match, only to lose the rematch to GuMiho in the group decider. At IEM Katowice, he was eliminated in the open bracket with losses to KeeN and Dear, but managed to eliminate Cure himself. Most notable of, he played Trap to a vaguely competitive 1-3 loss at GSL vs. the World, a textbook glass-half-full/empty scenario that fans of foreign StarCraft are quite familiar with. The team-match at GSL vs. The World added another wrinkle to how we perceive HeroMarine. His relative stature among fellow progamers was laid bare when he was picked last in the team draft, but he offered a strong retort by defeating Trap to in the deciding game of the showmatch.



All that goes to say that HeRoMaRinE is not doomed to an eternity of toiling under the great players of his time. Many players have looked like they might be stuck in that position, before finally breaking through. Elazer was primed to be in much the same position at 2017, but seized the opportunity to become a champion at WCS Valencia. Trap wore the consistent-but-unremarkable badge for most of LotV, before flipping a switch and becoming a legitimate title contender this year.

In the case of HeroMarine, he hasn't even been in this zone for long for us to say he's even 'stuck.' It could just be a temporary pit stop before he makes a leap. Think back to the start of 2018—he was minuscule; a scattering of mediocre, forgettable runs, surrounding one bright showing—until he grew to become something else entirely. Last year's Global Finals was something that was never meant to happen, an unexpected surprise that carried no expectations. This year, we'll see if there's more to it than just being happy to be there—if we're about to see the biggest Gabe performance yet.