SC2 theme bar tonight

My friend at ITU, who is also playing in the beta, have sent me an invite for a sc2 theme bar and well who could refuse such an offer he have likely conducted some new sc2 related drinks and can’t wait to find out what he have come up with,
If I where suppose to come up with some drink names it would be stuff like this:

Baneling,- small explosive shot
The swarm - big mix longdrink
Brood lord -
The Immortal - longdrink
Medivac - hehe imagining people at the bar yelling MEDIC! (TF2 style)
Hellion – Fiery shot
Proxy rush - shot
Pylon
Mothershp! – big mix longdrink

Well there are endless possibilities, those where just some that came to mind, it’s going be interesting to see if he came up with some of the same stuff or if he had a completely different approach to it :-)

Solo update

Well I am going to keep this short for once :-)

Gold League: Rank 13
42-39
Rating: 1379

I tend to win with:
An early game push just after the 2 immortal is out with zealots / stalker / sentries the mix depending on what I am up against, but the push seems to work well against all races
An early game zealot “rush” (3-4 gates)

I Lose to:
Muta's
Marine-Marauders
3-4 Gate Zealot "rushes"
Banshee rushes

Late Game.., not happening?

When thinking back on the original starcraft, some of the absolute best games I’ve had have been some of the longer games, where a game lasted from 30 min up to even an hour absolutely hectic games throughout the whole game.

In sc2 The Avg. game time is quite low I rarely get beyond the 12 min mark.
I don’t think I’ve had a game go into anything I would call a late game and the amount of games ive had where I actually got an expansion up and running without the coming push completely annihilating me can be counted on one hand, so basically Late game rarely occurs.

From my perspective there are 4 major reasons for this.

1: The Meta game hasn’t been developed yet:
Meaning if you want to get a Late game going you need I be aware of all possible timing attacks, knowing what counters it and when to scout for it, and the fact that a lot of players have no idea when they should do the timing attack it even makes countering it harder because you cant really anticipate what is going to happen at this point, There for going on an all in timing attack yourselvf hoping not to hit a hard counter seems to be the way most people approach the game because you have a larger chance for success then going in defensively and try to counter “everything”.
This will of course change as the players develops build orders and strategies for the game. So everything will become a lot more predictable.

2: Static defence is a lot weaker in SC2 then the original
I am actually biting my own tong for even writing this because I really HATED some of the static defences in the original, it where tremendously hard breaking a Terran fortification, but now it just feels like you can basically ignore it, and that isn’t fun either this needs to be balanced so its still a threat but not a complete game stopper like the original, right now it feels to weak.

3: High ground advantage:
High ground advantage is all but gone, you get some sight bonus but after the games ive had both 1 on 1 and 2 vs 2’s it really isn’t much of an advantage, the opponent gets sight almost straight away and gives 100% dmg rather then the original getting sight whenever something shoots and then having a large chance to miss.
In the old game having high ground meant something and it could turn a game around in sc2 you end up totally ignoring the high / low ground.
What i would like here is to see the old system back, this really is a way to get comebacks into a game and for watching games where comebacks are possible is a lot more fun and interesting then knowing who is going win after the first battle due to not being able to get any kind of upper hand as in high ground defence.

4: Micro not mattering enough
Its still only 3 weeks old and I’m not really writing the game of as of lacking micro or not being micro intense as I have seen other people do because there is a lot of possibilities for micro, but the problem from my point of view is that it doesn’t feel like you are getting rewarded enough for doing it.

An Example of the above problematic is I’ve had some Protoss games where I went for a 2 gate semi teching build getting around 5 zealots and 4 stalkers, when the enemy Protoss player engaged my ramp where my 5 zealots are holding position and my 4 stalkers hitting them from the high ground, but the 10 zealots still managed to get through the 2 lines of hold pos defence and after killing my zealots he could go straight to my 4 stalkers and even while attempting to micro them and get them killed off the zealots can get reinforced quite quick and even if i get the zealots killed of and 2 new zealots in pos at the ramp it feels impossible to hold back the next incoming waves / reinforcements of the other player, a 3 gate zeal stormp vs 2 gate tech zeal/stalker with high ground advantage the 2 gater should in my opinion win the battle without to much of a hassel.

And yeah i might not be the best player so my micro probably isn’t perfect but if you need absolutely perfect micro to be able to 2 gate and survive, then you are going to have short games because almost everyone will do the rush due to the difficulty required to defend.

Sorry about the wall of text I promise I will make the next posts a lot shorter :-)

Marauders and what they bring to messing up my table...!

After a few more 1 on 1's it feels like Marauders are the way to go for Terran against Protoss early game, along with marines (The new m&m's and if u got some medivacs latter in the game u got m&m&m's and that I tell you is a deadly combination!), but for this post I am going to manly focus on Marauders since they are really the ones making early game challenging as Protoss.

First let’s take a look at the units stats (for this patch at least)
Cost: 100/25
HP: 125
Type: Armored / Biological
Dmg: 10
+ 10 Dmg to Armored units
Range 6

With the extra passive ability
Concussive shell: Target hit by the Marauder is temporarily slowed

I'm not going in depth with the numbers or any of the math or nothing like that on my blog, I am sure you can find better blogs for the math-crafting, and besides the numbers are more then likely going to change in the coming beta months.

So Marauders are one of the units in the game right now I find dealing with especially.

A match against a “decent” Terran player would usually go like this:
I go for 2 gates getting some zealots and in time some stalkers to provide some defence against a possible reaper harassment and if there is a ramp for high ground defences
Then the Terran decides to attack and I get pummelled like there where no yesterday.

But why am I getting pummelled?
Well if we take a quick look at the Protoss early game units we got.
Zealots:
This unit is very much kite able especially with the slow attack of Marauders
So an all zealot army won’t stand a chance
Stalkers:
are Armored units and therefore take a huge amount of dmg from Marauders and goes down really fast, all though they also deal extra dmg to armored themselves but Marauders seems to have the upper hand especially with marines backing them up.
With a mixed army og zeals and stalkers they will just keep kiteing until my zealots are down and then finish off my stalkers.

I’ve yet to find an easy counter for this that doesn’t leave me vulnerable early game
But I have managed to eat it down a few times, but those games where just a straw away from toing the Terran’s direction when the push came.

The 3 plausible solutions to the Marauder marine rush:

1: The Choke!
Trying to keep a really tight choke (only doable at a ramp where u can use the advantage of higher ground (on low ground it gets quite a bid more messy.)
From there you can go in some different directions the immortal being the "secure choice", but you have a few other options here as well, but I would suggest getting the robotics no matter what direction you take.

2: Fast teching to Immortals
If you expect a marine & marauder rush (and well I can’t remember a Terran game where he dident go for the m&m rush)
You do have some free time at the beginning focusing really hard on your economy and teching straight for immortals only getting 2-3 zeals for the choke and 2 stalkers for an anti reaper safety and as soon as your robotic gets warped in use you’re chrono boost to get the immortals out fast because at this point your opponent will most likely be knocking at your front door.

3: Zealot Charge!
Another way to go is to get the speed upgrade for your zealots, this includes getting quite a bid more zealots then you usually would, but you shouldn’t forget your stalkers because if the timing push comes before the charge upgrade is done you want them to hold them back just a little until the charge upgrades finishes especially if u have a ramp stalkers will make the difference
This tactic requires quite a bid of gass upfront compared to going for immortals but if u get the charge before he can push in you are in a really good position to get in and win the game right there.

Well at least I have had some luck with these 3 tactics, but bare in mind that it’s only my own experiences and I am by no means a good player so I might be completely off here.

I however, even with the 3 strategies, do tend to lose quite a lot Vs Terran opponents, but then again I tend to lose quite alot to all my opponents, no matter the race :-)

Day 2

Well my 2 day of sc2 Beta went more or less like this.

I Started off with some Vs AI games, which basically means you are on a map more or less on your own since blizzard turned the AI down in such a degree that they aren’t really playing sure making 5-7 units doing a mini attack now and again but otherwise they are completely harmless, this does however give you the possibility to try and make every single unit and building of the game and get a look at and try their abilities.

I went through most of the Terran army and quite a bid of the Zerg and Protoss armies as well, but after some time I felt my hands itching for some online action

So I decided to get my 10 placement matches done for both solo and RT 2vs2 done

In solo I ended up in the Gold League while playing as Protoss where I went 7-3, and in 2 vs 2 I ended up in the silver league with 4-6 while playing as Random.

The League structure looks like this pro > platinum > gold > silver > bronze > copper > practice, although I don’t think Pro is included in the beta yet, but seeing as how many really skilled players there are in the beta I wouldn’t be surprised to see them introduced latter in the beta.

I ended the evening with some 2 vs 2 games with 2 mates, going 2-0 and 3-0

All in all I’m having a great time with the game.

Sc2 Beta

Fianlly! I got it a beta key for SC2! The most anticipated game in the last decade, for me at least.

The feeling of downloading, installing and creating my account for a game I have been waiting for, for so many years, is quite unreal!, Goosebumps and small chills while the installation bar went to 100% and the countdown for the very first game went to 0... Fantastic!, even though it's "just a beta" it just felt like this is it.

The next months I am going to dedicate this blog as a dedicated SC2 Blog, sharing my experience with the beta.

I played my first few games 1x: 1 vs 1, 3x: 2 vs 2's and 1x: 1 vs 1 vs 1 ffa with 2 friends who are also participating in the beta and it felt really cool getting into the action.

When I get home from work tonight the plan is to take it easy and make 3 games vs the AI and get a good look at all the races what they got and how to get it.

Then I’m most likely going to go a bid more into the Protoss race, they seem to match my play style and well my nickname pretty much says it all!

In 2 Vs 2's I am going to stick to random to get some experience with the other races as well

If you are interested in adding me on battle.net 2.0 my nickname is AiurAdun.fighting

Regards!

Back

Well it’s been a while since I last updated this blog, actually almost 10 month. I’m not sure why I haven’t written, I guess the normal excuses for not doing stuff apply, to busy at work, not enough spare time, yeah I guess they do apply but still… and well as time passed I more or less forgot about it.

Yesterday I where talking to a colleague of mine and while discussing the pros and cons of Twitter, blogs, Facebook and other online communication tools, I where reminded of this blog, and I’ve decided to start posting some stuff again, I’m not sure what triggered this yet, but im not exactly sure what triggered it in the first place.

Also if you haven’t noticed I’ve decided to post in English, since I don’t get to write a lot of English at work I figured it would be a good way to recover some lost English writing skills.

So I guess I’m back hope it will last a little longer this time around.