EPTOne year and four months ago, Reynor's world championship aspirations were dashed in the grand finals of BlizzCon 2019. At IEM Katowice 2021, Reynor brought a combination of meticulous preparation, natural talent, and unwavering confidence that allowed him to seize the opportunity. The Italian prodigy made a death-defying run to the finals, narrowly defeating elite players Stats, Dark, and Maru by 3-2 scorelines. In the best-of-seven finals against Zest, Reynor earned a respite from the heart-palpitating series of the previous rounds, taking a 4-2 victory to become the 11th ever IEM World Champion. The victory also earned Reynor the distinction of being the inaugural world champion of ESL Pro Tour—the successor to Blizzard's World Championship Series—as well as the first non-Korean player to win Intel Extreme Masters' ultimate prize.
No champion needs to defend or justify their victory—winning the trophy in itself is validation enough. However, certain victories are undoubtedly more memorable than others, be it soO's long awaited championship at IEM Katowice 2019 or NesTea's perfect Code S run. Likewise, Reynor's IEM Katowice is sure to take a special place in StarCraft II history as perhaps the most rigorous test of both skill and composure we've ever seen. Not only did he defeat four of the best players in the world, but he also beat them while facing the immense pressure of playing from behind. Of Reynor's twenty-one playoff games, seven of them were played on elimination point, with Reynor prevailing in all of them.
Reynor's odyssey to becoming a StarCraft II world champion is almost as old as the game itself, starting in 2010 when he was an eight-year-old playing with his father. As a full-time professional, IEM Katowice 2021 was the peak of a three-year career, one marked by almost uninterrupted ascent. In his first season as an eligible progamer, a sixteen-year-old Reynor very nearly clinched a berth in the Global Finals at BlizzCon 2018, missing out largely due to his July birthday coming too late for him to play in enough qualifying events. Reynor's second year saw him not only make it to the 2019 Global Finals, but also place runner-up in the grand finals against Dark.
2020 was the first year to bring anything that could be considered a serious setback, with Reynor beginning his campaign with a dud of a performance at IEM Katowice 2020, where he failed to even make it out of the group stage. However, by the summer of 2020, it seemed that Reynor had righted the ship, and some might have even dared to say he looked like the favorite to win IEM Katowice 2021. Reynor had won back-to-back DreamHack Masters: Europe tournaments—defeating previous regional king Serral both times—as well as the DHM: Fall Season Finals against the best players from Korea and the rest of the world. But time operates strangely in competitive StarCraft II, and the latter half of the 2020/21 EPT Season took Reynor through a fall and recovery that could constitute an entire career arc in a different sport.
Reynor's tournament performances fell off steeply in the winter months. While a second place finish in Europe's winter regional was nothing to scoff at, a string of poor results in international events seemed to tank his chances of winning IEM Katowice completely. King of Battles, DHM: Winter, TeamLiquid Starleague 6, and DHM: Last Chance all passed with Reynor unable to achieve anything better than a top eight finish.
The reason, as Reynor explained in a pre-Katowice interview with RotterDaM, was one of the simplest and most common in progaming. "I stopped practicing like the summer… ...Summer I was playing eight hours a day, I was full going like 'I want to win everything.' And then I was like 'I won everything, do I want to win more? Yes. Am I practicing enough to win more? No. But let's not admit it.'"
However, five weeks remained between the 2020/21 ESL Pro Tour's penultimate event at DHM: Last Chance and its grand finale at IEM Katowice 2021—almost an eternity in StarCraft II terms. And what Reynor achieved in that time—combined with the prodigious talent he had already shown—was enough to change his prospects once again. By the week of IEM Katowice, rumblings of Reynor's 'return' were surfacing, even if a single EPT Weekly Cup win was the only tournament-based evidence of it.
Besides a renewed focus on practice, Reynor also brought on friend and former QLASH teammate Lambo as a paid coach. The German Zerg's theorycrafting prowess was well-known through his streams, tournament commentary, and YouTube channel (and even TL.net interviews), and defeating Protoss' meta-defining 2-Stargate Void Ray opener became a priority ahead of Katowice.
The two hyped up a special counter-strategy before the tournament even started, with Reynor set to go into a Protoss-heavy round-of-24 group against Trap, Zest, Astrea, HeroMarine, and Dream. Interestingly enough, the so-called "Void Ray killer" build never really came into play, with Protoss players employing mind-games and feints rather than going for orthodox versions of 2-Stargate Voids. No matter—Reynor was still able to take down Trap and Astrea with strong PvZ fundamentals on his way to a 4-1 record in the round-robin. However, a 0-2 loss to Zest pushed Reynor to second place in the group, forcing him to start on the bottom rung of the RO12 playoff bracket. Furthermore, he gave up a number of maps even in winning series, ending the group stage with a relatively modest map score of 8-5 (the poorest among 2nd place finishers).
At the time, it seemed to throw some cold water on Reynor's chances. But in hindsight, it was probably wrong to expect Reynor to completely crush his group opponents. Even during his championship spree in the summer of 2020, Reynor was often pushed to the limit by the likes of Serral, Clem, and Trap, as he defeated them at the end of close battles. That is to say, the most successful version of Reynor we had seen thus far hadn't won titles on the back of being utterly dominant, but by combining top-tier skill with god-tier mental that made him an even stronger player under pressure. If Reynor was truly 'back,' then we'd see it when elimination was on the line.
Thus began one of the most gripping, heart-pounding, and clutch runs ever from a major tournament champion. In each of the three rounds leading up to the finals, Reynor faced what might be considered Korea's holy trinity of Legacy of the Void: Stats, Dark, and Maru. And in each and every series, Reynor came back from a deficit to win by a 3-2 scoreline.
The first match against Stats saw Reynor go down 1-2 on self-admitted defensive errors, droning at the wrong time against an Adept-Immortal push on Submarine (elaborated on during the Pylon Show), and more comically, failing to wall-off correctly against an Adept run-by on Oxide. However, Reynor's prowess against Void Ray openers allowed him to recover and take the 3-2 victory. While Stats' twists and deceptions prevented Reynor from using the blind-counter all-in he had prepared beforehand, he was perfectly fine kicking down Stats' front door with other attacks. Reynor served up a variety-pack of Queen-backed busts, once with Lurkers, another time with Hydra-Bane, and also with good ol' Roach-Ravager to shatter the shield of Aiur.
The quarterfinal match against Dark involved personal stakes outside of IEM Katowice 2021, with Dark being the player who defeated Reynor 4-1 in the finals of BlizzCon 2019. Reynor had failed to get revenge since, having lost 2-3 to Dark in December's TSL6 playoffs. Things got heated before the match even started, with the two players exchanging playful barbs (or not so playful?) in a pre-match interview segment. Dark declared himself a 'human counter' to Reynor, while Reynor vowed to take revenge.
The series lived up to the hype of a grudge match, with the two players battling it out until the final map. But while Reynor won game five against Stats rather one-sidedly with a Queen push, his duel against Dark ended in a far more closely contested brawl where the outcome seemed uncertain until the very end. Dark predictably went for his favored Mutalisks, daring Reynor to stop him. Reynor accepted the challenge and seemed to come out on top, dealing a painful blow to Dark with an early-game attack. However, Dark survived to get Mutalisks out on the map, and from that position he showed why he could afford to telegraph the Zerg flyers. The Mutalisks seized back control of the game in increments, with each skirmish, raid, and trade chipping away at Reynor's lead.
Still, Reynor had a high-tech ace-in-the-hole of his own, with it seeming like he would put Dark on a death timer once he stabilized and established both Lurker and Viper tech. But the game wouldn't have been one of the best of the tournament if Reynor had calmly waited—instead, he launched a hasty Hydra-Lurker attack that backfired miserably, putting Dark firmly in the driver's seat. From there on out, the game descended into carnage and chaos, with the two players scrapping it out until the match's bitter conclusion. In the end, Reynor's superior tech did what it was supposed to, with a consolidated force of Vipers, Hydras, and Lurkers wringing the third GG out of Dark.
Coming off one of the most entertaining series of the tournament until that point, Reynor somehow managed to one-up himself in his semifinal match against Maru. Reynor's early-game play looked near perfect throughout the series, as he barely took any damage from harassment, established huge Drone counts, and spread creep at will. Reynor credited this to using StarCraft II's largely neglected archon-mode to practice, playing against three, four, or even five players at once. Reynor's group stage game against Dream was the perfect demonstration of how archon-practice let him overwhelm Terrans who were playing with only one pair of hands, with Reynor even picking it as his best game of the tournament in later talks with Harstem and CatZ
However, the problem for Reynor was that Maru just didn't seem to care about giving away complete early/mid-game control. Instead, Maru was perfectly happy to commit to extreme turtling reminiscent of his triple-crown run in 2018 (when he wasn't proxying, anyway). This flummoxed Reynor on the first two maps of Oxide and Deathaura, with his attacks using Lurkers and Vipers proving to be suicidal against multiple layers of defending Tanks, Ghosts, and Planetary Fortresses. Frequently taking trades at 2:3 ratios or better, Maru was able to outlast Reynor and grind out a 2-0 lead.
It seemed as if Reynor had finally met an opponent he had no answer for—he even admitted later that he had never faced a late-game player quite like Maru. However, even with all the momentum on Maru's side, Reynor stayed calm, learned from his mistakes, and made the necessary adjustments to keep his world championship dream alive.
With the two most turtle-friendly maps out of the way, Reynor found it much easier to push his mid-game advantage in game three on Romanticide. Also, Reynor made a key adjustment in his army composition, ditching Lurker tech to play a swarming Muta-Ling-Bane style backed by his roaring economy. Maru found himself unable to fully enter into a turtling stance, forced to constantly scramble his forces to defend against another wave of Zerg forces crashing in from a new angle. Maru dragged out the proceedings as long as he could, but he was eventually battered into submission.
After Reynor took a fortunate build-order win with a pool-first strategy on Lightshade, the two players headed to Pillars of Gold for their final showdown. Yet again, Reynor emerged from the early game with a powerful economy and control over the map. Even a rare defensive lapse against an early Marine-Tank push didn't faze Reynor that much, and he put himself in position to swarm over Maru with Muta-Ling-Bane once more.
Indeed, Reynor's Muta-Ling-Bane was able to keep Maru in check, keeping the Terran player in survival mode while Hatcheries and creep covered almost every corner of the map. However, Maru wasn't about to concede game five in such a one-sided manner, and flashed his killer instinct by capitalizing on a slim window of opportunity. When Reynor discarded his Mutalisks to remax on Ultralisks, Maru launched a sweeping, multi-front counter-attack. In the forty odd seconds needed for Ultras to hatch, Maru took to the uncontested skies and razed the majority of Zerg expansions on the map, dealing a huge blow to Reynor's economy.
Maru's decisive move kicked off what could be described as an eight-minute long closing sequence, where neither player seemed certain about who exactly was ahead (to say nothing of the audience looking on). The hostilities continued almost completely unabated, with both players grasping at ephemeral leads. After being forced back into Muta-Ling-Bane, Reynor eventually found the breathing room to squeeze out a few Infestors—a key component of late-game Zerg play since Wings of Liberty. The spellcasters gave Reynor the ability to hamper the mobility of Maru's Medivac-Marine-Marauder based forces, allowing him to finally consolidate his gains and complete the reverse sweep.
For any other player that won three 3-2 victories in a row, one would be tempted to use the expression 'he has ice in his veins.' But that wouldn't have fit Reynor at all—he grew more emotional and animated after every victory (even damaging a piece of hardware after beating Maru). Instead of keeping calm through cold stoicism as we've seen from greats like Serral or INnoVation, it seemed more like Reynor's positivity and self-confidence were blocking out any doubts.
During the Pylon Show, Reynor said "Even if I'm down one, two [maps] in these clutch situations, I always keep the calm. That's one of my superpowers, I think." Reynor suggested he would have played even better in a live venue, saying "That's why I prefer to play on stage because most players actually feel the pressure of the stage and everything but I don't, so that's a good advantage for me."
The consecutive 3-2 series may have been edge-of-you-seat watching for the fans and commentators, but Reynor later referred to them as 5-0's in an interview with Harstem. Given Reynor's easy-going demeanor, it's hard to tell what percent he was being serious, and what percent he was speaking in jest. But even if Reynor said so with 100% conviction and sincerity, could you really blame him? That neverending confidence played a huge part in getting him through those series in the first place.
After such a thrilling playoff run, the grand final was a letdown in comparison. Reynor faced off against Zest, who had returned to the IEM Katowice finals for the second straight year. Back in 2020, Zest had caught Serral off-guard in the semifinals with his newly developed Glaive-Adept opener, scoring a huge upset against the Finnish Zerg. However, by the time of the grand finals, Rogue had gathered enough scouting info to counter the novel approach to ZvP, and took an easy 4-1 victory.
In the finals of IEM Katowice 2021, it initially seemed like Zest had caught another European Zerg by surprise, masking a mass Zealot all-in behind a 2-Stargate opener to take the first map off Reynor. However, the rest of the series played out more like Zest's series against Rogue, with Reynor able to largely predict and counter whatever Zest tried to do. A mid-game Chargelot-Archon timing? Shutdown by droning-up precisely and churning out mass Roach-Ravager. 2-Stargate Voids into Templars? Killed with a Queen-Lurker bust, just like Stats. A different kind of mid-game attack, this time with Chargelots, Archons, and Immortals? Once again, blocked easily by swarms of Roaches and Ravagers ("A-move you" was how Reynor described Zest's style in a nutshell).
In game five, Zest finally managed to justify some of the pre-tournament commotion around 2-Stargate Voids in PvZ, surviving Reynor's aggression and achieving the Skytoss dream. But all that did was keep the score respectable, giving him the two points needed to make it a 'typical' SC2 final and not a terrible one. There wouldn't be another elimination-point match for Reynor, as he closed out the series in straight-forward fashion with a Roach-Ravager-Queen bust in game six.
Like many a world champion, Reynor's reaction was elation mixed with disbelief. Talking a few days after the finals, Reynor recalled the moments immediately after: "The first thing when I actually won, I checked the score three times… ...I'm not very good at counting because I play Zerg—I'm like, '3-2, I won one more, 4-2, best of seven. So I won?' I asked Smix three times before the interview, did I actually win?'"
When it was actually time to talk to Smix, Reynor said: "I'm too happy honestly, I felt like I was about to cry… ...I can't describe how happy I am. It's insane, it's such a feelsgoodman."
In a curious juxtaposition to Reynor's infinite well of confidence throughout the tournament, there were moments of humility that came once he won the championship. Even after being pressed and goaded by Smix in the post-match interview, Reynor was rather reluctant to agree that winning IEM Katowice made him the best player in the world.
"If I say yes, people are gonna say 'reynor is cocky.' But I'm just going to say yes, because I'm not cocky, just confident. Right now, maybe yes, maybe yes."
There's no need for Reynor to hedge his words. Winning the World Champion, by default, makes you the best player in the world. The title may only last until the next major tournament comes around, but before then, there's no arrogance or exaggeration in claiming that title for yourself.
Still, perhaps this shines a light on the nature of Reynor's unique, personal brand of confidence—the kind that let a sixteen-year-old Reynor ask for Serral in his first ever tournament finals, and the kind that let him look back at some of the most nerve-wracking 3-2 series in IEM history and call them 5-0's. Maybe, that kind of confidence has less to do with believing you are better than all others, than it simply has to do with believing in yourself at all costs.
Or, maybe that's just reading too deeply into the words of a teenager who's more than willing to laugh at his losses and call himself an idiot. In any case, we're sure to be talking about Reynor's IEM Katowice matches for years to come. It was a rare case where the champion's mental facilities outshined their technical skill—which is all the more remarkable given how impressive Reynor's mechanics were throughout the tournament. Although, from Reynor's perspective, he might be wondering what all the fuss around his world championship run is about. After all, when was the outcome ever in doubt?
No champion needs to defend or justify their victory—winning the trophy in itself is validation enough. However, certain victories are undoubtedly more memorable than others, be it soO's long awaited championship at IEM Katowice 2019 or NesTea's perfect Code S run. Likewise, Reynor's IEM Katowice is sure to take a special place in StarCraft II history as perhaps the most rigorous test of both skill and composure we've ever seen. Not only did he defeat four of the best players in the world, but he also beat them while facing the immense pressure of playing from behind. Of Reynor's twenty-one playoff games, seven of them were played on elimination point, with Reynor prevailing in all of them.
Reynor's odyssey to becoming a StarCraft II world champion is almost as old as the game itself, starting in 2010 when he was an eight-year-old playing with his father. As a full-time professional, IEM Katowice 2021 was the peak of a three-year career, one marked by almost uninterrupted ascent. In his first season as an eligible progamer, a sixteen-year-old Reynor very nearly clinched a berth in the Global Finals at BlizzCon 2018, missing out largely due to his July birthday coming too late for him to play in enough qualifying events. Reynor's second year saw him not only make it to the 2019 Global Finals, but also place runner-up in the grand finals against Dark.
2020 was the first year to bring anything that could be considered a serious setback, with Reynor beginning his campaign with a dud of a performance at IEM Katowice 2020, where he failed to even make it out of the group stage. However, by the summer of 2020, it seemed that Reynor had righted the ship, and some might have even dared to say he looked like the favorite to win IEM Katowice 2021. Reynor had won back-to-back DreamHack Masters: Europe tournaments—defeating previous regional king Serral both times—as well as the DHM: Fall Season Finals against the best players from Korea and the rest of the world. But time operates strangely in competitive StarCraft II, and the latter half of the 2020/21 EPT Season took Reynor through a fall and recovery that could constitute an entire career arc in a different sport.
Reynor's tournament performances fell off steeply in the winter months. While a second place finish in Europe's winter regional was nothing to scoff at, a string of poor results in international events seemed to tank his chances of winning IEM Katowice completely. King of Battles, DHM: Winter, TeamLiquid Starleague 6, and DHM: Last Chance all passed with Reynor unable to achieve anything better than a top eight finish.
The reason, as Reynor explained in a pre-Katowice interview with RotterDaM, was one of the simplest and most common in progaming. "I stopped practicing like the summer… ...Summer I was playing eight hours a day, I was full going like 'I want to win everything.' And then I was like 'I won everything, do I want to win more? Yes. Am I practicing enough to win more? No. But let's not admit it.'"
However, five weeks remained between the 2020/21 ESL Pro Tour's penultimate event at DHM: Last Chance and its grand finale at IEM Katowice 2021—almost an eternity in StarCraft II terms. And what Reynor achieved in that time—combined with the prodigious talent he had already shown—was enough to change his prospects once again. By the week of IEM Katowice, rumblings of Reynor's 'return' were surfacing, even if a single EPT Weekly Cup win was the only tournament-based evidence of it.
Besides a renewed focus on practice, Reynor also brought on friend and former QLASH teammate Lambo as a paid coach. The German Zerg's theorycrafting prowess was well-known through his streams, tournament commentary, and YouTube channel (and even TL.net interviews), and defeating Protoss' meta-defining 2-Stargate Void Ray opener became a priority ahead of Katowice.
The two hyped up a special counter-strategy before the tournament even started, with Reynor set to go into a Protoss-heavy round-of-24 group against Trap, Zest, Astrea, HeroMarine, and Dream. Interestingly enough, the so-called "Void Ray killer" build never really came into play, with Protoss players employing mind-games and feints rather than going for orthodox versions of 2-Stargate Voids. No matter—Reynor was still able to take down Trap and Astrea with strong PvZ fundamentals on his way to a 4-1 record in the round-robin. However, a 0-2 loss to Zest pushed Reynor to second place in the group, forcing him to start on the bottom rung of the RO12 playoff bracket. Furthermore, he gave up a number of maps even in winning series, ending the group stage with a relatively modest map score of 8-5 (the poorest among 2nd place finishers).
At the time, it seemed to throw some cold water on Reynor's chances. But in hindsight, it was probably wrong to expect Reynor to completely crush his group opponents. Even during his championship spree in the summer of 2020, Reynor was often pushed to the limit by the likes of Serral, Clem, and Trap, as he defeated them at the end of close battles. That is to say, the most successful version of Reynor we had seen thus far hadn't won titles on the back of being utterly dominant, but by combining top-tier skill with god-tier mental that made him an even stronger player under pressure. If Reynor was truly 'back,' then we'd see it when elimination was on the line.
Thus began one of the most gripping, heart-pounding, and clutch runs ever from a major tournament champion. In each of the three rounds leading up to the finals, Reynor faced what might be considered Korea's holy trinity of Legacy of the Void: Stats, Dark, and Maru. And in each and every series, Reynor came back from a deficit to win by a 3-2 scoreline.
The first match against Stats saw Reynor go down 1-2 on self-admitted defensive errors, droning at the wrong time against an Adept-Immortal push on Submarine (elaborated on during the Pylon Show), and more comically, failing to wall-off correctly against an Adept run-by on Oxide. However, Reynor's prowess against Void Ray openers allowed him to recover and take the 3-2 victory. While Stats' twists and deceptions prevented Reynor from using the blind-counter all-in he had prepared beforehand, he was perfectly fine kicking down Stats' front door with other attacks. Reynor served up a variety-pack of Queen-backed busts, once with Lurkers, another time with Hydra-Bane, and also with good ol' Roach-Ravager to shatter the shield of Aiur.
The quarterfinal match against Dark involved personal stakes outside of IEM Katowice 2021, with Dark being the player who defeated Reynor 4-1 in the finals of BlizzCon 2019. Reynor had failed to get revenge since, having lost 2-3 to Dark in December's TSL6 playoffs. Things got heated before the match even started, with the two players exchanging playful barbs (or not so playful?) in a pre-match interview segment. Dark declared himself a 'human counter' to Reynor, while Reynor vowed to take revenge.
The series lived up to the hype of a grudge match, with the two players battling it out until the final map. But while Reynor won game five against Stats rather one-sidedly with a Queen push, his duel against Dark ended in a far more closely contested brawl where the outcome seemed uncertain until the very end. Dark predictably went for his favored Mutalisks, daring Reynor to stop him. Reynor accepted the challenge and seemed to come out on top, dealing a painful blow to Dark with an early-game attack. However, Dark survived to get Mutalisks out on the map, and from that position he showed why he could afford to telegraph the Zerg flyers. The Mutalisks seized back control of the game in increments, with each skirmish, raid, and trade chipping away at Reynor's lead.
Still, Reynor had a high-tech ace-in-the-hole of his own, with it seeming like he would put Dark on a death timer once he stabilized and established both Lurker and Viper tech. But the game wouldn't have been one of the best of the tournament if Reynor had calmly waited—instead, he launched a hasty Hydra-Lurker attack that backfired miserably, putting Dark firmly in the driver's seat. From there on out, the game descended into carnage and chaos, with the two players scrapping it out until the match's bitter conclusion. In the end, Reynor's superior tech did what it was supposed to, with a consolidated force of Vipers, Hydras, and Lurkers wringing the third GG out of Dark.
Coming off one of the most entertaining series of the tournament until that point, Reynor somehow managed to one-up himself in his semifinal match against Maru. Reynor's early-game play looked near perfect throughout the series, as he barely took any damage from harassment, established huge Drone counts, and spread creep at will. Reynor credited this to using StarCraft II's largely neglected archon-mode to practice, playing against three, four, or even five players at once. Reynor's group stage game against Dream was the perfect demonstration of how archon-practice let him overwhelm Terrans who were playing with only one pair of hands, with Reynor even picking it as his best game of the tournament in later talks with Harstem and CatZ
However, the problem for Reynor was that Maru just didn't seem to care about giving away complete early/mid-game control. Instead, Maru was perfectly happy to commit to extreme turtling reminiscent of his triple-crown run in 2018 (when he wasn't proxying, anyway). This flummoxed Reynor on the first two maps of Oxide and Deathaura, with his attacks using Lurkers and Vipers proving to be suicidal against multiple layers of defending Tanks, Ghosts, and Planetary Fortresses. Frequently taking trades at 2:3 ratios or better, Maru was able to outlast Reynor and grind out a 2-0 lead.
It seemed as if Reynor had finally met an opponent he had no answer for—he even admitted later that he had never faced a late-game player quite like Maru. However, even with all the momentum on Maru's side, Reynor stayed calm, learned from his mistakes, and made the necessary adjustments to keep his world championship dream alive.
With the two most turtle-friendly maps out of the way, Reynor found it much easier to push his mid-game advantage in game three on Romanticide. Also, Reynor made a key adjustment in his army composition, ditching Lurker tech to play a swarming Muta-Ling-Bane style backed by his roaring economy. Maru found himself unable to fully enter into a turtling stance, forced to constantly scramble his forces to defend against another wave of Zerg forces crashing in from a new angle. Maru dragged out the proceedings as long as he could, but he was eventually battered into submission.
After Reynor took a fortunate build-order win with a pool-first strategy on Lightshade, the two players headed to Pillars of Gold for their final showdown. Yet again, Reynor emerged from the early game with a powerful economy and control over the map. Even a rare defensive lapse against an early Marine-Tank push didn't faze Reynor that much, and he put himself in position to swarm over Maru with Muta-Ling-Bane once more.
Indeed, Reynor's Muta-Ling-Bane was able to keep Maru in check, keeping the Terran player in survival mode while Hatcheries and creep covered almost every corner of the map. However, Maru wasn't about to concede game five in such a one-sided manner, and flashed his killer instinct by capitalizing on a slim window of opportunity. When Reynor discarded his Mutalisks to remax on Ultralisks, Maru launched a sweeping, multi-front counter-attack. In the forty odd seconds needed for Ultras to hatch, Maru took to the uncontested skies and razed the majority of Zerg expansions on the map, dealing a huge blow to Reynor's economy.
Maru's decisive move kicked off what could be described as an eight-minute long closing sequence, where neither player seemed certain about who exactly was ahead (to say nothing of the audience looking on). The hostilities continued almost completely unabated, with both players grasping at ephemeral leads. After being forced back into Muta-Ling-Bane, Reynor eventually found the breathing room to squeeze out a few Infestors—a key component of late-game Zerg play since Wings of Liberty. The spellcasters gave Reynor the ability to hamper the mobility of Maru's Medivac-Marine-Marauder based forces, allowing him to finally consolidate his gains and complete the reverse sweep.
For any other player that won three 3-2 victories in a row, one would be tempted to use the expression 'he has ice in his veins.' But that wouldn't have fit Reynor at all—he grew more emotional and animated after every victory (even damaging a piece of hardware after beating Maru). Instead of keeping calm through cold stoicism as we've seen from greats like Serral or INnoVation, it seemed more like Reynor's positivity and self-confidence were blocking out any doubts.
During the Pylon Show, Reynor said "Even if I'm down one, two [maps] in these clutch situations, I always keep the calm. That's one of my superpowers, I think." Reynor suggested he would have played even better in a live venue, saying "That's why I prefer to play on stage because most players actually feel the pressure of the stage and everything but I don't, so that's a good advantage for me."
The consecutive 3-2 series may have been edge-of-you-seat watching for the fans and commentators, but Reynor later referred to them as 5-0's in an interview with Harstem. Given Reynor's easy-going demeanor, it's hard to tell what percent he was being serious, and what percent he was speaking in jest. But even if Reynor said so with 100% conviction and sincerity, could you really blame him? That neverending confidence played a huge part in getting him through those series in the first place.
After such a thrilling playoff run, the grand final was a letdown in comparison. Reynor faced off against Zest, who had returned to the IEM Katowice finals for the second straight year. Back in 2020, Zest had caught Serral off-guard in the semifinals with his newly developed Glaive-Adept opener, scoring a huge upset against the Finnish Zerg. However, by the time of the grand finals, Rogue had gathered enough scouting info to counter the novel approach to ZvP, and took an easy 4-1 victory.
In the finals of IEM Katowice 2021, it initially seemed like Zest had caught another European Zerg by surprise, masking a mass Zealot all-in behind a 2-Stargate opener to take the first map off Reynor. However, the rest of the series played out more like Zest's series against Rogue, with Reynor able to largely predict and counter whatever Zest tried to do. A mid-game Chargelot-Archon timing? Shutdown by droning-up precisely and churning out mass Roach-Ravager. 2-Stargate Voids into Templars? Killed with a Queen-Lurker bust, just like Stats. A different kind of mid-game attack, this time with Chargelots, Archons, and Immortals? Once again, blocked easily by swarms of Roaches and Ravagers ("A-move you" was how Reynor described Zest's style in a nutshell).
In game five, Zest finally managed to justify some of the pre-tournament commotion around 2-Stargate Voids in PvZ, surviving Reynor's aggression and achieving the Skytoss dream. But all that did was keep the score respectable, giving him the two points needed to make it a 'typical' SC2 final and not a terrible one. There wouldn't be another elimination-point match for Reynor, as he closed out the series in straight-forward fashion with a Roach-Ravager-Queen bust in game six.
Like many a world champion, Reynor's reaction was elation mixed with disbelief. Talking a few days after the finals, Reynor recalled the moments immediately after: "The first thing when I actually won, I checked the score three times… ...I'm not very good at counting because I play Zerg—I'm like, '3-2, I won one more, 4-2, best of seven. So I won?' I asked Smix three times before the interview, did I actually win?'"
When it was actually time to talk to Smix, Reynor said: "I'm too happy honestly, I felt like I was about to cry… ...I can't describe how happy I am. It's insane, it's such a feelsgoodman."
In a curious juxtaposition to Reynor's infinite well of confidence throughout the tournament, there were moments of humility that came once he won the championship. Even after being pressed and goaded by Smix in the post-match interview, Reynor was rather reluctant to agree that winning IEM Katowice made him the best player in the world.
"If I say yes, people are gonna say 'reynor is cocky.' But I'm just going to say yes, because I'm not cocky, just confident. Right now, maybe yes, maybe yes."
There's no need for Reynor to hedge his words. Winning the World Champion, by default, makes you the best player in the world. The title may only last until the next major tournament comes around, but before then, there's no arrogance or exaggeration in claiming that title for yourself.
Still, perhaps this shines a light on the nature of Reynor's unique, personal brand of confidence—the kind that let a sixteen-year-old Reynor ask for Serral in his first ever tournament finals, and the kind that let him look back at some of the most nerve-wracking 3-2 series in IEM history and call them 5-0's. Maybe, that kind of confidence has less to do with believing you are better than all others, than it simply has to do with believing in yourself at all costs.
Or, maybe that's just reading too deeply into the words of a teenager who's more than willing to laugh at his losses and call himself an idiot. In any case, we're sure to be talking about Reynor's IEM Katowice matches for years to come. It was a rare case where the champion's mental facilities outshined their technical skill—which is all the more remarkable given how impressive Reynor's mechanics were throughout the tournament. Although, from Reynor's perspective, he might be wondering what all the fuss around his world championship run is about. After all, when was the outcome ever in doubt?
