Latest thoughts

(joke)

Spoilers:

When I watch GSL, I check the players' hotkeys, and they almost always use only 3 or 4 the entire game: One for their CCs/hatches/nexuses, one for their production buildings, and one or two for their army.

I feel like I'm the only one who uses all 10 control groups ever in a game, ever. Not only that, but I like to use screen saves as well (nifty for jumping to a proxy pylon for warp ins mid combat).

Just to spark ideas for you, here is my general control group setup:
1: Army
2: Stalkers/Immortals/VRs (when doing a vr assisted warp gate push)
3: Sentries

I laughed pretty hard at these lyrics. I have no opinion on whether or not T is actually OP, and I'd have to go with "there isn't enough evidence one way or another to really decide", but the raps about it are awesome.

Original post on TL

Today I played a PvT. I secured myself a quick lead by engaging his army when it was vulnerable, and expanding safely and more quickly than him. From there, I continued to out-expand him and was in a seriously huge economic lead.

However, I suddenly hit the 200/200 mark, after playing defensively, not wanting to engage his tanks, and fending off his attempted drops. I went for an attack on his one expansion (his natural), thinking the longer I wait, the more time I waste being supply capped. Although I killed his army with feedbacks, storms, and good positioning, I also lost my entire army. Why? His natural was a planetary fortress, backed up by tanks, missile turrets, and a bio ball. Although my method of engagement was flawless, his defensive position was too strong for an all-in.

The mistake I made was a good lesson: Attack with a clear goal and withdraw when that goal isn't possible.

If you are in the lead, remember that what's keeping you safe is your superior army. If you waste that, even if you have the income to replace it, you might not be able to replace it fast enough, and the enemy could actually turn the game around on you.

This is why Zerg end-game armies are sometimes thrown away by high level players in a seemingly inefficient manner: he can replace it almost instantaneously, after doing significant damage to the enemy T or P army. Then he can push again with another 200/200 army to secure the victory, while the enemy is 100 supply short from the last engagement.

There is a lot of talk going around about this MU being imbalanced, that it's Terran favored. Idra, Sheth, Dimaga, MasterAsia, and other top Zerg players have all commented on the imbalance of the match-up at their level.

I doubt there's real game imbalance.

To understand my reasoning, first you have to understand the difference between imbalance at the top level and "high" level, that popularity isn't the same as strength, and what imbalance even means.

We've all seen mothership rushes before, I've even done proxy mothership rushes in 3v3. This is a little bit different, however. For one, this is the final of a money tournament, with $100 on this game. Also, his execution is flawless.

Finally, note how viable this strategy is. He's forced to make almost all zealots, but that's fine for defense against T, as long as he has just a bit of ranged to back it up. Then on the offensive, he's careful with his mothership, doesn't get it killed, and the scans just aren't enough, and eventually the Terran is forced out of the game.

Also the forge is hilarious.

So I've been musing on the topic of Zerg mobility lately, and wondering how potent it could be in a game when focused on more heavily than current top players. Then I saw this game:

Very impressive nydus work. Essentially, the idea is to use the combined sight of overseer and dropped changelings to bring up nydus networks in multiple locations in quick succession, making it very difficult for the enemy to react quickly. It's an abuse of the enemy's lack of mobility.

He did also use a changeling to hold position block the ramp entrance, but that's a bit of fanciness not key to the strategy.

Notice he retreats back out the nydus after dealing his damage, not wasting his army when he knows he can't win a straight up fight.

I decided to try out some nydus play today. I'm a toss player, and my zerg is a bit subpar. However, even though my macro was a bit terrible, if I had to 1v1 myself, I'm not exactly sure I, as a protoss player, could have handled what I was doing as zerg. At least not with most typical builds, which feature heavy warpgate aggression.

Yes, this post comes about a century late, but there is much to be learned from these games. The Razor sponsored, Day[9] organized King of the Beta tournament concluded with the American Zerg, IdrA, champion over the Korean Protoss, Tester. Theirs were truly amazing matches. Here are the final two (Match 4 and 5), commentated by Day[9] and JP.

Carefully observe Tester's micro, as it is truly game changing. In game 4, he defeats a far superior army with some perfect forcefields and colossus control. There is also much to learn from IdrA's coolheadedness in his macro decisions and perfect surrounds, which eventually win him the series.

Single Player Campaign:

So I just got around to playing through the entire single player campaign yesterday, and I was not disappointed. I won't spoil anything in here that's not already shown in trailers/teasers, if you haven't played it already yourself:

Carriers are somewhat a unit of mystery within the current StarCraft 2 metagame. Good players don't want to say they are inviable, yet at the same time, there are yet to be any powerful popular carrier builds.