This month, Clem won his first Homestory Cup! Frankly, it’s more unbelievable that he hadn’t won one earlier, given he’s collected so many other trophies by now. 

But even though Homestory Cup has that easygoing, Summit-esque energy, it’s usually a difficult bracket. This year was no exception, with Clem needing to beat Heromarine, Showtime, and the GOAT himself — Serral — atop a host of Europe’s best players. A lot of these players were further powered up by the recent Protoss meta that’s overtaken StarCraft, too. Not that it mattered much, Clem only lost two games through the entire tournament. 

Now that the French Terran has picked up Protoss himself, he’s in a good spot to have an even better year. TvT was his bane, his worst matchup, and now he gets to run hordes of Blink Stalkers and drag the other Terrans into the style of game he likes to play. And given that StarCraft LANs seem to be dwindling, his online tournament grind may pay off double too.

I sat down with Clem to discuss why Homestory Cup has challenged him, his approach to Protoss, his feelings on the state of StarCraft, and most importantly, which Dragon Ball Z style fusion form is stronger: him and Reynor (Clemnor), or Serral and Cure (Curral). 

This is your first HomeStory Cup win in your career. How does it feel?

It feels great. I've played a lot of HomeStory Cups before, maybe 10 or something, and I never won any. People were kind of surprised when I was like, “I never won a HomeStory Cup before.” It's nice to win one, finally. 

I was surprised too. You've won one of everything else, so it's like, “Where's HomeStory Cup?” Do you feel there was any reason, any mental block? 

I made it to the finals a couple of times, like one time against Gummiho, and against Serral and I lost. So I was getting close, but not quite good enough. Yeah, also at HomeStory Cup I usually stay up at the TakeTV bar pretty late at night, so it's not always the easiest to play the day after. [Chuckling] So maybe that's a little part of it as well.

You're having too much fun.

Yeah, exactly. I'm very happy that I won though. A couple weeks ago, I wasn't feeling too sure because I felt like I was struggling in the online tournaments. 

You're always entering tournaments. It feels like if there's an online tournament in Europe, Clem is there. How do you balance the grind with the burnout?

I do play a lot of tournaments, but other people would just play ladder instead. Not sure if [tournaments are] necessarily the best, but I think it suits me, it's always fun playing in tournaments as well because it feels like matches matter more.

Also if I play a tournament, then I can pick what race I want and I'm never going to get a matchup that I don't want to play. If I play a Terran, I can pick Protoss. If I play on the ladder, I'm going to be Terran against Terran, and I don't want to play this. 

In Super Smash Bros, people would do a money match to get a top player to really try during practice games. So they would say, “Okay, $10, $20, $50 on this game.” And that was a way for new players to get top players to lock in during practice. Are online tournaments kinda like that?

In a way. I think it's more fun to play if there's something to win, prize money, and stuff. I like competing in general, playing tournaments, and seeing who's better than who. If I play custom games against other pros for practice, it gets boring to play the same person a lot in a row. And maybe the opponents try a bit harder when there's something to win. So yeah, maybe that's right.

You beat Serral with a commanding 3-0. How did that feel after the prior losses, EWC?

I'm always very happy to beat Serral because he's the GOAT. I also have a new TvZ style as of very recently, where I tend to skip Ghost, and I get Liberators very quickly. I hadn't really played it before then in tournaments, so when I was playing against Serral, it was a test to see if it actually works. It was nice to see that it worked pretty well.

‍

Yeah, you got him with that Liberator — I don’t know if you would call it cheese — where it’s in that spot that Zerg can’t hit

Oh yeah! [Chuckling] That one is very tricky. Very, very tricky. 

Some people have been talking about Serral looking a bit rusty, less-practiced — still obviously a great player. Did you feel he was playing at his peak at Homestory?

It's always hard for me to tell, but I think he was playing slightly under his level. It could be a confidence thing. I know he's been struggling a little bit in some matches recently. Sometimes in StarCraft, you lose your confidence because you lose a few matches and then it goes badly, and then you regain that confidence, and it goes very well again. So I'm expecting him to very soon start winning everything, every match he plays again. I have no doubt about that. 

Protoss, playing fast, and the new world of StarCraft

I wanted to ask about Protoss and the meta. I think that Protoss is seen as cheesier, outcomes decided more by build order in lower-level StarCraft, especially. Do you feel that transcends to a higher level of StarCraft?

I think to some extent, for sure, Terran against Protoss is definitely way more build-order-decided than, let's say, TvZ. Against Zerg. When I play Terran, it's like I can pretty much do the same micro builds over and over again, and it's usually the better player, mechanically and in the longer game, that wins. Against Protoss, it's way more, “Is your build good against his build?

In terms of “cheesy,” I don't really see that. It used to be the case a long time ago, maybe, but nowadays they can cheese sure, just like Terrans can cheese. I think it's just a very good macro race, honestly. Who gets the advantage early on is really decisive.

Snowball-y but not cheesy.

Exactly.

How do you feel about Protoss being very good right now? And don't worry, you can give your honest opinion. I won't tell Victor.

[Chuckling nervously] Balancing StarCraft is always a little bit difficult because it's really hard to measure. I definitely think Protoss is really good right now against Terran, at least. But the matchup is weird because Terran is really, really good in the late game. If you survive for 20-30 minutes, you usually end up winning, but Protoss has really good openings in the mid-game, so they can usually snowball. It makes for really weird games where if the Terran can pretty much play tower defenses, then they end up winning. In terms of who's favored in the matchup, I would say Protoss, but not by that much.

You've picked up Protoss yourself, and it feels like you use it especially against other Terrans. Walk me through that. Why do you go Protoss against Terran?

First, my TvT was never that good. It was always my weakest matchup and often why I was losing in the bigger tournaments; I would play against a Korean Terran, and I would lose.

[TvT] just didn't really fit me that well. It's a slower pace, more positioning-based matchup, whereas I like something more active. A big part of TVT is picking the right build order kind of blindly, guessing what your opponent is doing, and taking risks here and there. I don't really like taking risks in StarCraft in general. The super slow, methodical kind of play just doesn't fit me that well. I like to have action all over the place — micro this, micro that. When it comes to PVT, it fits me because you can be very active and multitask a lot and try to outspeed your opponent.

Also at first I thought Protoss was very, very favored against Terran. When I think about it overall, I think it was a good move because I just enjoyed it more as well. I think that's also a big factor. I really believe that if you enjoy playing something more, you can get better at it because you have more passion for it.

You're known for your Marine Medivac, your bio movement, your ability to micro. How similar or different is running Blink Stalkers and Marine Medivac, and how much or little did your past experience help with learning that?

Well, the way you micro them is really different, because they're very different units, different spells, but I think their usage is similar. If you play Marine Medivac, TvZ, If you're very active you can always kill some stuff for free and then pick up and go. It's kind of the same with Stalkers, you poke forward, you kill a few units, you blink away, so it rewards how active you are.

StarCraft has been shrinking as an esport. What is the mood among the top competitors? Do you feel everyone is still putting in a similar level of effort in the game?

The thing is as the Starcraft 2 pro scene gets smaller and smaller, the top players can still make a good living out of it and they can play in a lot of tournaments. They still put in as much effort. 

The main thing is some of the pros that are not at the top, they have a harder time making the same amount of money as they were making before and qualifying to the same tournaments. As it continues [shrinking] the people that suffer from that are mostly not the top, top pros, but the semi-pros, I'd say.

Do you know Dragon Ball Z?

I know the anime but I’ve never really watched it.

Do you know, the characters will fuse with each other? If you and Reynor fused and Serral and Cure fused, which fusion form wins a best-of-seven grand finals?

[Laughing] Oh my god. Well, I think me and Reynor would get it. Serral and Cure sounds very scary as well. They’re two very methodical, very smart players. Me and Reynor are just super fast, very mechanical players. It would be an entertaining one that me and Reynor would win.

‍