Starcraft

[Duragar]

DUR! Since we have a thread for every other inane passtime we have, time for a thread for Starcraft! Yay!

So I'm now playing Zerg for shits and giggles, and I would like to know what to look out for when I'm sending/preparing to send my hordes of hydralisks out there. I know psi storms make me cry, as do siege tanks if I'm not smart about them. Anything else out there that rapes Hydras?

And hey, after a conversation with Josh and doubt in my own knowledge of the game, I decided to field a few ultras in a prolonged battle. I now see why Ultras are actually usable. Damn, if they don't absorb hits, and now with the BW upgrades they can actually tear the shit out of things. I'm also trying to get my ability to micro with defilers up, but I always manage to get my zerglings killed before I can consume them. oops. I find it amusing when I blow up stuff with broodlings, but I'm also finding that parasites are really helpful for a prolonged fight (except when terran medics are on top of every-fucking-thing). Also, thanks to Josh and Brian's Zerg tips, I've gotten used to pushing my forces into the enemy base to maximize my damage without screwing the hydras in the back. Hopefully next time we LAN, I'll be a more potent force on the playing field.

So... Is it just me, or is zerg air just really fragile? Every time I've tried to send in a guardian/mutalisk combo, I get torn to shreds by air troops from the other factions. I've never been able to get Devourers to work, either. Every time I try to go air, the computer just counter builds the shit out of me. Just really annoying that the end all for Zerg offense is just, well, Zerging hydras. Other than those complaints though.... Zerg seems to be working the best for my playing style, relative to the other races.

And finally, an amusing game against the computer. So I'm fighting Terran, and they're just constantly counter-building the shit out of me. They put a Command Center in the middle of the bridge into their base, so that raped the flow of my Hydras up their ass, so they were actually able to manage it. I decide to gear up and send in a drop of helluva Hydras into their backside, because they have a nice little area where they haven't built anything. So, I gear up a precursor force to make sure the overlords are clear, and I go in... and get promptly and soundly gunned down by a Valkyrie squadron. As I die, I see five Goliaths and four siege tanks hunkering down at the edge of the drop zone. So... that was gonna be a bust. Finally I get tired of the shit, and dark swarm the command center, eat it with 4 ultras, then ram my zerg down their throat. And thus the Terrans ate shit and died.

So yeah. If that's any indication, this thread is to post Q&A, tactics you've seen work, bitch about the uselessness of stuff you think should be usable, and relate amusing stories of play, whether you find other human players to screw with or you're bored and go toe to toe with a computer or four. Have at it! ;D

[Pikachu]

Ultras are just funny, but by no means are they absolutely game winning. Of course, against something as dumb as the comp, they'll try to set aside a portion of their forces with air to "counter" your Ultras, which your Hydras take care of. But yeah, they soak up a lot of damage, be they psi storms and what not, then soften everything up for your Hydras to puree.

Zerg air is really ass. It takes many air units before they matter, and they're too apt to stack up for Corsair/Valkyrie/Psi pain. Plus, they're way too gas heavy, so if someone wants to attack you mid-game, you're probbaly gonna get crushed because you devoted too much resource and time to have enough Hydras to defend or retaliate. From a macro perspective, they burden your economy just too much. If you are in a position to get away with doing that, you're straight up superior to the player you're playing against, and you may as well just have slaughtered him with your Hydras. As a disclaimer, though, I've seen really good Muta micro before, but I'd never attempt that against 'Toss.

Devourers are ass. They take too much time to make, and you need too many before they mean a damn. Fuck Scourge. Even BC's can just hit hold position when they see 'em coming and fry a fuckton of them in an instant. Too much freaking gas as well... they're a really desperate or situational option.

While I'm on this rant... fuck Terrans. Fuck them and their end-game. They're so damn boring to play, too.

[buhwhyen]

Ultras are generally used to kill heavy base defense, ie photon cannons, sunkens and whatnot, more so photon cannons. Personally I hardly ever use them (ultras), but that doesn't make them any less viable.

As a general rule of thumb, zerg air units blow ass. The only time they're really viable is in a muta/ling combo, but that combo is also only good if you plan to rush with it, its less good the longer the game goes and stuff.

Hydras are the all purpose i dunno what the fuck else to build unit. Though, in the end you really have to mix it up, throwing in some zerglings, defiliers, and or lurkers into the mix generally helps a bunch to clear through whatever counter builds people come up with.

My general zerg strategy goes something like 1 sunken for defense, unless I think I'll be rushed, in which case i get 2. Then I tech for lurkers to solidify my ground defense, then I start pumping out hydras. If my first/second attacks fail, I generally either mix units or go for drops or use my attack as a diversion to drop some lurkers or something like that.

As just a general piece of advise for everyone, just from what I've noticed from destroying your bases =), you guys should be building a lot more drones/probes/scvs. Especially since we've been playing on BGH, where you don't have to worry much about expanding and running out of resources. If you're playing zerg, you should be able to support around 6 hatcheries pumping out hydras and still have enough resources to upgrade ranged attack/carapace. If you're protoss you can support something around 6-8 gateways. Though terran are always limited by how much gas you can gather, since I think they're the most gas intensive race in non ladder type maps, anyways.

I dunno what else to write, so if you have more specific questions/problems or what not I'll try and help where I can.

[buhwhyen]

Oh hey..I just realized I more or less completely ignored Chip's question. Things to watch out for when you're sending hydras, the big ones..hehe big ones, are tanks, lurkers, psi storm, and reavers. Or..if your opponent is a manfag, they'll hallucinate their reavers and only have 1-2 actually reavers. Same trick applies to templar and psi storm, though to a much lesser degree. Other than those..you have to watch out for teching zerg players, defiliers/zergling combo will wreck your shit if you're not prepared for it (you prepare for it by making lurkers).

Oh, and on the note of defiliers, I know I've probably mentioned it before, but dark swarm is not beneficial to just the player who casted it. So...if you see someone dark swarm their hydras or whatever units, you can run into the swarm and the hydras won't be able to hit you either. This is particularly cool if you have zealots and they have hydras, or firebats...but nobody in the right mind would build mass firebats.

[buhwhyen]

www.iccup.com/maps.php

A new site I found with quite a few league maps. But as I've mentioned before the problem with league maps is they're typically 4 players max, so for the most part useless to us.

www.panschk.de/mappage/newsscript/viewnews.php

The redirected version of broodwarmaps.net, another decent place to find maps, though I think I've got all the decent 6-8 player maps and most of the 4 player ones.

[phetus]

I have read nothing in this thread except the first line. I have no useful information to contribute. I just wanted to point out that we do not have a thread for all of our insane past times. Can I start a thread about fucking? Or would posting to myself daily get on everyone's nerves?

[Duragar]

Inane is a different word from insane, dude.

Insane = mentally unbalanced
Inane = stupid.

So... I doubt fucking is either of those, so even if it would probably get annoying for the rest of us, you are certainly not obligated to start a new thread on the subject, since it's not inane. ;D

[Pikachu]

I have to beat Brian to this response:

No, please don't start a thread about fucking, or Brian will post his Alfred fucking stories, his misadventures while lost in Hope's festering, crusty cunt cave, and his travels through the folds of Bryn's fat.

That is all.

[buhwhyen]

Nor do you want to hear Josh's adventures playing with his dildo..and manus.

[buhwhyen]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1HlUHhLyOo&feature=related

2v2 is crazy.

[Pikachu]

Protoss Vs. Zerg has become such a rapefest for Toss.

Protoss vs. Terran, however, has become a rapefest for Terrans. What the fuck is going on? I've seen hella Toss players just neglecting Storm, and the same story happens time and time again... Protoss harasses with DT's/Reavers (good). Toss pushes back initial tank push with a solid ground force and some Carriers (good). Terran cranks out fucktons of Goliaths and Tanks still. Toss player runs out of ground forces to defend with, is down to just his Carriers, gets raped by Goliath tentacles. WHERE THE FUCK DID THE TEMPLAR GO? Can you explain this one to me, Brian?

[buhwhyen]

I'm honestly not exactly sure myself. Personally I still think carriers are very situational and even more map dependent than any other unit, but you can force a terran player to go almost exclusively goliaths in order to deal with like 6-8 carriers while you mass dragoons while he has little to no tank production. Its...kind of the recent trend with how toss players are dealing with tank/vulture pushes because most terran players now either build 2-3 goliaths or bring 2-3 scvs to build turrets to deal with shuttles/limit observer movement.

Most TvP games for terran are pretty standard. Most people go either 1 factory then expand in anticipation of a late mid game attack or just late game build, or they go straight 2 factories and go for an early mid game push(most of the time the latter). The protoss way of dealing with this early mid game is with shuttles and dropping zealots, also known as "zealot bombs," so the tanks blow each other up. But terran players, as stated before, have started to bring either goliaths or build turrets as they advance to nullify shuttle harass. So..now its near impossible to do any real damage with units in a shuttle, which makes it increasingly difficult to use reavers because they get killed so easily and move too slowly without a shuttle. They also can't move to a place where there are no mines and will still be in range to attack most of the time. The same logic applies to templar.

Say Boxer has seiged his tanks outside Bisu's natural expansion (the expansion directly outside of your base is commonly refered to as your "natural"), and he has built 4-5 turrets around his 12 tanks and 18 vultures and planted a lot of mines in front of his vultures which are also in front of his tanks. From here, he will slowly push into Bisu's base. Bisu would be forced at this point to build zealots almost exclusively because they will trigger all the mines and run into the tanks causing them to kill each other through splash damage or splash from the mines, meanwhile Bisu has to psi storm whatever he can before all his zealots die(which tends to be rather fast). This sounds great in theory, but most of the time it doesn't work out that well. Zealots generally get raped by tanks/vultures and the dragoons get in the way of the templar. If the templar is too far in front of your dragoons they generally get blown away by the tanks and odds are the toss player doesn't have enough zealots to even come close to getting into the tank line, let alone past the vultures. Using templar requires the toss player to really just have a LOT of units to soak hits while they run up to storm, not to say its impossible, but they still die pretty easily from splash damage too. Also note that it does take 2 storms to kill tanks/goliaths at full health.

On the other hand..with the recent trend of carriers, the terran player is forced to switch up his army when he sees carriers. The micro battle goes something like..carriers attack goliaths and start to run back. Goliaths run forward and shoot at the carriers via the hold bug until they run out of space to move and then run back and repeat till someone loses most of their carriers/goliaths. But..if Bisu managed to get out 8 carriers and still have about 8-12 dragoons still living, Boxer would be hard pressed to kill any carriers because the dragoons limit the space the goliaths can move and therefore reduce the damage on the carriers. Since goliaths are gas intensive, compared to say dragoons(same gas less minerals), Boxer would be forced to essentially cut off his tank production and probably most of his vulture production. Carriers + dragoons > goliaths + few tanks.

On paper, its a stupidly good counter. But it just takes way too much time and resources to really mass that many carriers when the terran player just needs to drop down 4 factories and expand once before he starts his mid game push. I still think that arbiters/templar is the way to go because of stasis/psi storm, but its another resource intensive build that really does require the toss player to have 3 gas otherwise it cuts into their dragoon production.

Oh..and a lot of toss players go overboard with the number of carriers they get. More than 6-8 is too many, pure carriers rarely will win games, but if you mix in dragoons/zealots it becomes a real bitch to deal with.

EDIT: I really don't like English commentary much, only found one good commentator. But in this one... just terrible terminology. Watch it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNnksFPwqgM

[Pikachu]

I watched the game without English commentary, but dude.. hella bitter rivalry or something going on there between SKT1 and Khan. That was a brutal victory lap.

Anyhow, that game wasn't so much of what I was talking about, since Stork planned a crazy good timing attack where he got to blast oov's Factories. The kind of shit I'm talking about is like Mind vs. Bisu, or some other recent PvT games. It's kind of what you said about toss players banking everything on Carriers, rather than giving enough ground support to overcome the Goliaths. Every game I've seen recently where this happened, the Goliaths just keep coming again and again, like Aleks bothering Craig, and eventually the Carriers just die and GG. There were much fewer tanks and plenty of opportunities for Storm just to soften up or outright rape the Goliaths, and it just didn't happen. Carriers also seem to like whoring cliffs now to get advantage.

[buhwhyen]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpZpB_1M3jE
This is the commentator thats pretty knowledgeable, he actually explains shit and has some reasonable insight into the game. He was the commentator at some other blizzard events, I think some games in the 2007 blizzcon invitational.

Carriers are only good on their own if you can abuse terrain, cliffs and water, so goliaths can't run them down.

EDIT:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P39gP4QnXxE
This video is hilarious and really kind of disturbing. For example..."computer nerds in south korea are the sex symbols of the 21st century," or Nal Ra saying "I make more money than most other pro gamers. I make a lot of money."

EDIT2:
I did some reading a while back about mutalisk micro and frankly, its way beyond worth learning. Basically its a fuck ton of clicking, you have to group your mutas with either an overlord or a larvae so that they stack on top of each other then after that you have to constantly be clicking in order to do the hit and away you see zerg players like Savior do. To do the hit and away bullshit, you click towards the units you want to hit, once in range you manually select a target to attack and immediately after the shot goes off you have to click behind your mutas to turn them around. If you're too slow, the mutas decelerate and you eat shit, too fast and they don't shoot. Heres the real kicker though, you have to manually turn them around before you tell them to attack again otherwise they decelerate and again eat shit. So..click move towards desired target(can't use attack move or attack yet) -> attack -> click move back(turn around) -> repeat.

And dragoon micro against marines is more difficult than it first seemed. Dunno how you get them all to attack the same target with the hold bug.

The lurker bug where they don't attack even when burrowed is done by just putting them on hold. To make them attack, select the lurkers and hit stop, attack move, or attack.

And ultras rape terran so bad, its actually pretty funny.

[Pikachu]

youtube.com/watch?v=GjSszGzw_-E

A match I might normally overlook, but I have to watch this series, since it looks like KAF isn't gonna roll over and die to Khan... they made it to an ace match. Anyway, in this match, I just have this gut feeling that the Starcraft world hates Samsung Khan at the moment. Just watch and you'll know what I mean.