Know Your Roots - SCII

[Shroom Man 777]

Those fucks.

[Artemis]

DERP.

[Mobius 1]

Siege and I were all "oh noes wtf blizzard" I've got a feeling there's some way to do it (legally), but I need to flex my google-fu before that happens.

[Siege]

After finishing the campaign (neatly wrapped up ending... A bit too neatly perhaps? I suppose we'll see in... HEART OF THE SWARRRRRM™) I've begun my hopefully long multi career in SC2. So far, so good: three games down and I've got two wins under my belt -- my first game resulted in a prompt disconnect as my stupid, stupid, stupid computer thought it necessary to inform me of something utterly RETARDED, resulting in a crash right as this Protoss twerp was trying a Warp Prism drop on my mineral line (and in range of my siege tanks).

Needless to say, I play Terran, as I did in the original. There's nothing better than mowing down your enemy with the gratuitous overkill that is a half dozen sieged tanks supported by a proper marine/marauder force. Anyway, so far multi seems fun and pretty much the same as the original (though with different units, obviously). The most important thing of all sure hasn't changed: reconnaissance! You need to scout, scout, scout: in both the games I won so far it was mostly because I was scouting and they weren't.

For example. Last game I played against Zerg. I wall of my ramp as per standard and begin pumping out the M&M (yeah, my build orders aren't that creative yet... It's my third game, sue me!), then send an SCV into his base. I promptly run into a morphing Roach Warren. Crap -- I'm not so confident in the effectiveness of my marines against those things, so I immediately throw down two refineries and begin construction of a factory to pump out tanks. My first two tanks are out, the roaches arrive, and are promptly mowed down on the ramp by tanks and marauders. By now I've got my Orbital Command up, and I'm thinking "if he's any good, he'll be abandoning roaches and going for Spire now". Scan his base, and lo: there's a morphing spire. By now though I've got a whole bunch of tanks, marines, marauders and three medevacs, so I cue up a few Vikings at the Starport and go for his main. Cue curbstomp, all because he didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Ah well. At least it's good to see the old Heavy Metal macro is still of use. That was always my favourite. Although I suppose it's more of a bio/metal build now...

[Blackwing]

At the risk of sounding a bit crude:

I recently purchased two games: SC2 and Mafia 2. While I like both, SC2 is definitely the most fap-worthy of the two. And considering that Mafia 2 has uncensored playboy centerfolds as collectible items, that's saying something.

I placed in the upper tier of the 2v2 Silver League with my brother the other day, which I found surprising, if not unwelcome.

The only thing about SC2 that could've been better is the way Custom maps work, but the patchnotes say they're looking at fixing that, so fingers crossed.

Apropos of nothing, my character code is 880, if someone who was European... Happened to have an interest in playing a few games.

[Siege]

Finished my 1v1 league placement. 4 wins out of 5 games -- it's platinum league, baby! They were pretty neat games, too: one against a Terran who really liked his cheese (Reaper harrass, Thorship, etc.) but who, after I beat back all of his attacks and counter-dropped first his expansion and then his main, ended up rage-quitting. The second was against a Protoss player who, if he'd pushed his big attack, probably would've taken my main. He didn't though and I ended up winning after beating his Stalker/Voidray combo with Thor/Tank/Viking, with enough marines and marauders to hold off the few Zealots he had.

I think I'll get my ass kicked in platinum leage though; my macro is pretty good but I can't micro worth shit. If anyone from Europe is up for a game, my handle is MaddogBCool, and the attached number thingie is 387.

[Blackwing]

Personally I'm so tired of every 'Toss player and his mother using chronoboost like an instant 'I win' button.

I was playing Zerg. ZERG! and some f-ing Protoss was out-producing me.

Though the worst part, from a Zerg perspective, to the 'toss is their f-ing cannons. With Guardians gone, Zerg have nothing to defeat cannons except throwing wave after wave of units at them. Roaches don't work as well as you'd think since Cannons are detectors, negating the burrow bonus. Which means that the 'toss can tech up and build Void Rays, Phoenixes and Carriers at leisure (with Chrono boost ensuring they can get those faster than you can get anti-air) while you're throwing units at them in a futile effort to prevent exactly that.

Against Zerg, the Protoss are better at turtling than the Terrans, something's flipping wrong here.

[Siege]

I don't have much experience playing as Zerg yet, but I haven't had any trouble with Protoss as Terran so far, chronoboost or not. I imagine the best way to handle a cannon-line as Zerg is to deploy the dreaded Overlord drop of doom (that tactic should still work, right?) in order to avoid his cannons entirely and simply go straight for the jugular. I'm curious -- do you have a replay? Most Zerg I've seen so far seem to go the fast-expand route, followed by mass Roach into mass Muta. Works awfully well, too -- as Terran, I find I pretty much have to conceed map control straight away. Of course you can always just turtle and spam MULEs to negate the income differential until you have sufficient Vikings to beat back the Muta swarm from hell.

Against Protoss I've noticed they can indeed produce an awful lot of stuff real quick if you don't watch 'em, but Marine/Marauder/Medevac seems to beat both Zealot/Stalker and Voidray rushes just fine, allowing you to segue into Vikings when they try for Carriers. Throw in a few Thors and you should be set for a good game. God I love Thors. You can't go wrong with them... Only problem is they cost so much sodding gas, but they're definitely worth it.

[Kingmaker]

Recently finished the campaign, and I'm not quite sure I agree that the ending was neatly wrapped up. Aside from some remaining ambiguities with Kerrigan, the Terran civil war still needs to be resolved, and I still want to know what the rest of the protoss are doing.

More importantly, SCII gives me a good excuse to force me to actually develop RTS skills like micro and multi-tasking. The original SC was one of the first RTS games I played (when I was ten) and cheating my way through the campaigns and AI matches did not encourage good gaming habits.

On the other hand, I am a little distraught by the popularity of SCII even though I like it. As has been mentioned, it is a very polished and well-made game, but it also brings very little new to the RTS table, and its success will probably encourage game developers to keep making the same sorts of RTS games we've been seeing for years.