Road to BlizzCon 2019: Elazer (#7 WCS Circuit)

On the Cutting Edge of History

by Wax

"Has the gap really closed?" That's a question the foreign StarCraft II community has been asking itself for years, since the first Jinro run to the semifinals of Code S to Serral's triumph at the 2018 Global Championship. Somehow, even as non-Korean players win more tournaments than ever before, the answer always seems to come back: inconclusive.


Consider the events of this August, for example. ASUS ROG/Assembly Summer 2019 (Oct 1-3) had all the signature components of an old-school DreamHack or IEM event from Heart of the Swarm. With a mid-size prize pool, a modest but potentially significant number of WCS points, and a convenient location in Europe, several of the best foreigners gathered to compete at the event. As for Korean attendees, they were limited to a handful that had a team to foot the travel bill. Only a couple could be called true Code S title contenders; the rest were more of the GSL rank and file.

And just like any of those old-school events, it produced a result that could only fill foreigner fans with dull despair: Six Koreans in the Ro8 playoff bracket, ending in an all-Korean final. Reynor, the supposed next-big-thing from Europe? Not even good enough to take out a diminished GuMiho. Even the home country's hero, Serral, ended up disappointing in a semifinal loss to Stats.

So much for closing the gap!

Then, two weeks later at GSL vs. The World, we got something close to the exact opposite result. Right off the bat, Elazer defeated Dark 3-2. At the time, Dark was widely praised as the best Korean Zerg and championship contender in any tournament. #8 Circuit seed Elazer had rode in on a wave of criticism for leaning on a Polish YouTube star to obtain a glut of fan votes needed to qualify, and was regarded as undeserving by a section of the SC2 fanbase. Elazer's victory might have been the biggest upset of the entire year.

The string of foreigner victories continued, with Neeb defeating Stats, TIME defeating soO, and Serral annihilating his entire half of the bracket. This time, the tournament ended in an all-foreigner affair, with Elazer giving up the title to Serral.

Oh, maybe the skill-gap did get narrower. Or not. Uhhh, I guess it's complicated?



It's rather apt that Elazer was the central figure at GSL vs. The World 2019, because he's always been a central figure in the "are foreigners really getting better?" debate throughout region-lock history. No, he hasn't reached the same heights as Serral or Neeb, but that's exactly why he's so important. There's a reasonable argument to be made that parity isn't achieved through the success of singular, exceptional players—instead, it's reflected in the accomplishments of the group known as 'everyone else,' however you may define it.

In our ShoWTimE preview, we mentioned how the 2016 Global Finals helped validate the controversial decision to implement a half-Korea, half-Circuit spit for the sixteen players. A whopping three-foreigners (still the most ever) managed to get past the group stage, far outperforming the perception that foreigners lagged vastly behind the Korean establishment. But if Neeb and ShoWTimE at least had championships on their resumes, Elazer's success was totally unexpected. His best Circuit result on the year had been top eight—the very definition of upper-middle class. It was his run to the semifinals that could draw the most radical interpretations from either side of the fence, whether it was "Koreans suck now that KeSPA is dead" or "the foreigners have really caught up in the new system!"

Ever since then, Elazer has continued to be a lens through which to see the shifting Korea-Circuit dynamic. It's as if his single person represents an entire generation of foreign players, like a Forrest Gump character in a movie about Legacy of the Void. For instance, his constant poor performances at IEM Katowice mirrors that of many other top foreign pros, becoming a part of a larger tale of how IEM Katowice has been a bastion of hope for Korean elitists over the last three years.

On the other hand, Elazer also seems to be around whenever an unexpected foreigner achieves success. When SpeCial made his shocking semifinal run at BlizzCon 2017, Elazer was right behind him as the only other foreigner to advance to the playoffs, having eliminated Dark in the group stage. Similarly, when Scarlett became the second foreigner to win a major StarCraft II title on Korean soil at IEM PyeongChang, Elazer had played a part by crushing Zest in the quarterfinals before he himself was eliminated by Scarlett. Each time, we heard the familiar old cries. "See! This time it means they've caught up for real."

Even Elazer's mid-2018 slump and subsequent failure to qualify for BlizzCon was somehow emblematic of a larger phenomenon. The fact that one of the more successful foreigners of the modern era was struggling in Challenger and the group stages of Circuit tournaments reflected a heightened level competition inside of the WCS Circuit itself. Nevermind the Korea-World gap—the distance between the 8th best circuit player and 16th best Circuit player seemed narrower than ever.

This year, Elazer returns to the Global Finals as the #7 seed, having eliminated PtitDrogo (#9) at WCS Fall to lock in his spot. Their match was that of two players who had once been rising stars in Legacy of Void, but were now facing each other as members of the old guard. Once they fought for championships; now they fought desperately to seize whatever bits of success the newer generation of players had left for them.



One wonders what aspect of these current times Elazer will end up reflecting in these Global Finals. Maybe it will be his results, specifically, that will lead us to look back years later and say "Ah, Zerg was indeed OP at the time!" Or, maybe his performance will be the one that gives us the final piece of damning evidence that Korean Zergs really did not know how to play Zerg vs Zerg in this era. There is, however, a more intriguing and ambitious option, if Elazer can partake in a new historical trend. Maybe he can be part of making 2019 the year when the gap truly did close, and everyone at the Global Finals really had a fighting chance to win it all.