EPT
The Boy Who Became King
It’s 2014, a 12 year old Reynor sits among his mYinsanity teammates and laughingly proclaims, “I don’t know how to play StarCraft.” Two years later he proves that he has some idea how the game operates, reaching the quarterfinals of DreamHack Valencia 2016 before being eliminated by one of Europe’s best Zergs—Snute.
After four years of toiling away in relative anonymity, Reynor scores the biggest cash of his career at WESG 2017 in March, 2018, earning 10,000 dollars for making it to the Round of 8.
A few months later, Reynor logs another Top 8 finish at WCS Valencia. From there, Less than 60 pass before Reynor is eliminated by Serral for the second consecutive WCS event in a row. But, unlike in Valencia, where Reynor once more fell in the quarterfinals, this time their showdown takes place in the finals—as Reynor defeats SpeCial, Neeb, uThermal and TIME before taking the Finnish Zerg to a full seven games, in what would prove to be Serral’s sternest test of the 2018 WCS Campaign.
Reynor, now 17, caps off the best year of his career by making it to the finals of the 2019 WCS Global Finals. Even in defeat, he announces himself as not only one of the best Zergs in Europe but in the entire world.
It’s winter 2021, and Reynor, who spent 2020 reaffirming his position as a dominant force outside of Korea, finally gets his long awaited World Championship at IEM Katowice 2021. He does so with four straight wins over Koreans in the Round of 12 onward, defeating Stats, Dark and Maru 3-2, before dispatching Zest to claim first place.
2022 yields another World Championship final appearance but, just as he had against Dark in the WCS Finals three years earlier, Reynor falls just short and is defeated by long-time rival Serral in a breathtaking ZvZ for the ages.
Fast forward to June 2023. Reynor is eliminated by Serral in the semifinals of ESL Masters Summer. Two weeks later he reverses the script, winning HomeStory Cup 23 after taking out Serral, ShoWTimE and Solar in the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals respectively.
It’s the first week of August 2023 and Reynor has inexplicably dropped his first match of Gamers8 to Classic, despite being the odds on favorite heading into their bout. From there, he promptly forgets how to lose, rattling of three straight wins over Oliveira, ShoWTimE and Solar, before beating beating ByuN, Clem and Cure in rapid succession to win 150,000 dollars and emerge victorious at an event as talent-laden as any World Championship to precede it over the past few years—posting a dominant 16-5 map score en route to ultimate glory.
Even the second best Terran in the world is no match for Reynor
It’s not that Reynor won Gamers8 that is astounding. Reynor has been one of the best Zergs in the world for half a decade at this point and victory on the greatest of stages is nothing new to him. What made this run so special was just how imperious Reynor became once he reached the Round of 8.
It was almost as if he was playing a different game than his opponents. ByuN, Clem and Cure are no slouches, but Reynor ran laps around them all. Ever-patient and consistently guileful, Reynor allowed his Terran foes to siege up and hold areas of the map before using their lack of mobility against them. Every time his opponent moved out, Reynor backstabbed, forcing his opponents to scramble here and there in a hopeless effort to put out fires. Even Cure, who had defeated Dark and Solar on his way to the finals, appeared hapless in games two through five. The Korean Terran tried anything and anything to keep Reynor in-check, but Reynor simply outpaced him—limiting the damage he took to drops and harassment—all while building an enormous economical advantage that he parlayed into victory after victory.
What Reynor showed at Gamers8 was one of the greatest displays of skill ever seen in StarCraft II history. In an event which included 10 of the top 11 ranked players in the world (according to Aligulac ELO), Reynor outstripped his peers, reaching a level of night-invincibility as the tournament went on. For someone who has been following StarCraft II since Reynor was eight years old—it immediately brought to mind players like Mvp, Dear and Zest, all of whom elevated their play to such transcendent heights that we still refer to those stretches of excellency with reverence. Reynor has never possessed the consistency of Serral or the mastery of preparation events exhibited by Maru. But, when Reynor is at his best, it’s possible there is no one in the history of StarCraft that can match him.
In many ways, Reynor’s triumph at Gamers8 feels reminiscent of Rogue’s first place finish at IEM Katowice in early 2020. Like Reynor, Rogue could never claim to be as dependable as some of the other all time greats but, in winning his third World Championship in three years, Rogue made it clear that, on his day, all the consistency in the world mattered little in the face of his unstoppable might. Reynor didn’t show us anything new or revolutionary in Riyadh, but he proved for the umpteenth time that he can be as untouchable as Rogue, or any one else in StarCraft II history for that matter, when in the zone.
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/reynor_young.jpeg)
Marcus Aurelius has nothing on this Italian tactician and strategist
Of course, it’s impossible to bring up Reynor and not speak of Serral. The two European Zergs have gone a long way towards defining one another’s careers, but Serral showed some uncharacteristic shakiness in the group stage, losing a match to Classic before ultimately being swept in a Round of 8 series against Solar in which Serral was never able to secure a foothold. Reynor, on the other hand, gained momentum with each match, becoming an increasingly honed killing machine as opponents and challengers fell by the wayside.
In some sense, it harkens back to the days of yesteryear, where INnoVation’s steady parade pushes and Maru’s frenetic aggression made them the best Terrans in the World for much of 2013-2017. INnoVation’s style was the more predictable of the two, but it was undeniably powerful. His builds were stable despite his tendency to lean into greed and were relatively replicable for any Terran with solid enough macro. Maru’s play, meanwhile, was built on feel, tempo and a variety of calculus only he understands—using his incredible pace to pry his opponents apart rather than grinding them into the dirt with an endless tide of marines as INnoVation was wont to do.
In some respects, Serral and Reynor represent opposite sides of the same coin which divided INnoVation and Maru in years past. Serral is likely the best player in StarCraft II history at scouting, predicting and correctly answering his opponent’s moves. He plays Zerg how it was designed to be played—using the race’s ability to rapidly switch from one tech tree to another to stomp out what was coming his way before it even started.
Reynor, however, is every bit as daring and intrepid as the once upon a time Jin Air Terran. Reynor may not have medivacs available to him, but his runbys and counterattacks take advantage of Zergs mobility in a way few players have before him.
Zerg in a manner that leaves his opponents floundering. Trying to match Reynor’s pace when macroing is a big ask for anyone, but when you have to do so while dealing with never ending run bys and the constant threat of a flanking attack from nowhere—well, that can look downright impossible. The games at Gamers8 might not have been as humiliating as Maru’s legendary beatdown against MyuNgSiK all those years ago, but the Italian Zerg made Code S, World Championship and Starleague champions look like rank amateurs.
And, for those who held out hope that Cure, who has been far and away the second best player in Korea this year, would fare better than lesser players like ByuN and Clem, Reynor proved just how irrelevant Cure’s prowess was in the face of Reynor’s inexorability. It’s both terrifying and awe-inspiring to see someone of Cure’s quality humbled in such a way, but that is the nature of Reynor—whether or not he wins events depends little on the talent of others. The only question is which version of Reynor shows up during the event.
With his victory at Gamers8, Reynor has, for the fourth time in five years, reached the finals of a World Championship (or equivalent event) in four of the past five years. And, while some of the results in between those masterful performances failed to live up to the absurdly high bar Reynor set for himself, when Reynor plays at the level he did this past weekend, there is no stopping him.
And, now, all we can do is wait and wonder. ESL Masters Winter is more than four months away—and there is no guarantee that Serral and Maru will capitulate in the fashion they did at Gamers8. If Reynor wants to win the 13th (or 14th if he also wins ESL Winter Europe) Premier Event of his career, he will have to show out every bit as much as he did at Gamers8.
But, that has never been an issue for Reynor. The boy who claimed to know nothing about the game to which he has dedicated his life is gone. He has grown and matured, assembling one of the most decorated careers in StarCraft II history. As Reynor stood on stage, the trophy clutched in his hands and a logo on his shirt that looked unnervingly like a crown, he reminded us that, even in a game full of legendary players, he is the boy who became King.
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/Reynor_tweet.jpg)
Suspect spelling aside, Reynor was perfect on the weekend
