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ChaosSmurf also brings you a little piece on Terran Infantry, his new favourite friends:
The Men - StarCraft II Terran Infantry Remember when you played Terran for the first time, back in the StarCraft demo?
Mechanical units, what makes Terran look like Terran and what keeps them interesting in the face of organic hell-aliens from the depths of space and the noble, robotic blue-plasma Protoss. Missiles, servos and lots and lots of heavy guns using the power of carbon emissions to get the job done.
StarCraft II - we've got all that, from the Barracks. Oh
yes. Let's rap.
Marines "But, they're the same as the original!" WRONG. Or, as Dr. Cox would say, "Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG WROOONG!"
But in a way, yes. 50 minerals, no gas, built from the Barracks, have Stim, will travel. But it gets more complicated: no Medics! How will Marines ever be good!?
Here's how: Combat Shields and Reactors. Ten free health for your cheapest unit, along with other upgrades from the Engineering Bay, is pretty nice and only needs a Tech Lab. You don't need to keep the Tech Lab on your Barracks. See where I'm going?
Four barracks with Reactors can pump eight Marines at a time, with your Factory on the Tech Lab you built earlier. Using MULEs effectively gives a ridiculous number of minerals and can use your gas on Tanks. Stimed Marines can take on anything without area of effect attacks and are direct counters to some of the big worries for higher tech armies - particularly Immortals.
Marauders For a start, their voice over is hilarious. Secondly, I haven't been using these nearly as much as I should have. M&M is now Marine and Marauder, and is as strong as its namesake.
To go back to the aesthetics for a moment, the character model is amazing - based, I believe, on the Firebat model that we saw
oh so long ago. The rockets they fire also look really cool and in general, they're just an awesome feeling unit.
MECHANICS! They slow units down. Say it with me: "Slow,
they go" This is what we in the business call, very strong. Zealots cannot get to you. Dark Templar cannot get to you. Zerglings cannot get to you. Banelings cannot get to you. They have a bonus vs. armoured targets. Their utility is excellent and their general damage is useful.
Any other day, they would be the best thing about the Barracks with the Tech Lab; some will likely disagree with me on the following point and say they are. These people need to appreciate jet packs more.
Reapers JETPACKS! Reapers have the coolest movement animation. They can jump over cliffs. They dual-wield pistols. They throw bombs. They have an amazing character portrait.
The Reaper has bonuses vs. Light armor on a unit that can jump over cliffs and has a movement speed upgrade that has it dashing across maps (and into mineral lines) faster than anything else this early. 40 damage attacks vs. buildings enabling five Reapers to destroy a pylon in two attack cycles (and a little bit).They are cheap, able to run from the base units of other races, can take some of their supposed counters head-on with enough numbers, very good vs. base defenses.
I could go on, but in general I've seen it accepted that, if not over-powered, Reapers are incredibly strong. They're also a lot of fun to use and transition into other units and strategies can take advantage of the economy damage they can cause.
Liable for a nerf, use them (or watch them) while you can.
Ghosts Starting with EMP and with what I define as "nuke-tech" (Cloak and nukes), there is some real utility, damage and harass potential on what used to be one of the more useless units in Brood War.
Battle Report 4 showed us the power of nuke-harass and Gifted confirmed this in his stream recently. EMP is the perfect counter to Immortals countering your heavy damage units and could prove to be the key ability in mech TvP in the future.
Without much use from myself, there isn't much I can say except to confirm, just by looking, that Ghosts are not the husks they once were.
Thanks for reading, look out for more by me in the future and be sure to check out my stream when it is up.
I lose a lot.
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