StarCraft II Battle Report Four

[ChaosSmurf]

Full Article.

[Gifted]

Things I appreciate:

• Protoss: Showing a good display of zeolot versus workers. It's nice to see a good enough balance struck even with the new pathing
• Protoss: They had a few good moments of showing the interface for warp in allowing you to better picture how it works
• Protoss: Good representation of stalker play, between the main base harrass and general use as a counter, I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable with it now. (Remember the days that everyone cried "Stalker will own everything"?)
• Protoss: Psi storm animation is very impressive.
• Terran: Good to see a heavy metal strat which later converts to a bio-mech
• Terran: Generally impressed with the showing of medivac micro.
• Terran: The planetary Fortress fight overall was a great showing of how this can be a very useful building for a circumstance. Watch the Zeolots it hits, you can see 3-4 get slammed hard every shot. It probably killed 8 of them on it's own.
• Overall: VERY impressed with this battle report. In my opinion, the fact that it uses a varied amount of units and abilities we've had little exposure to allows it to be a very valuable asset to our discussions.

[SIL3NT-DE4TH]

Best Report to Date.

Nuf Said.


^ just like your Advatar.

Nuf Said.

[Xyvik]

Just gone done watching it. Amazing. Quite a lot happened, and as Gifted said, using units we've so far not been all that familiar with. A good one to sit back, have a nice drink, and analyze endlessly.

[Blazur]

An observation on these battle reports: very seldom do you see players rely on any defensive measures to defend a base. A few bunkers here or there, but generally you find players relying solely on units to defend a base. Protoss players simply respond by warping in units wherever there's a threat.

In the latest battle report, all Terran had to do was build maybe 2 or 3 turrets to defend his bottom-right island and keep the pressure off it. Considering how cheap they are it's surprising he didn't opt for that. I'm guessing they're mandated not to rely too heavily on defense for these battle reports, or are given explicit instructions on how not to do during certain games to test various scenarios. Because building turrets on that island just seemed like a natural move, especially considering his surplus of money.

[ArcherofAiur]

I think this Battle Report did a good job of showing two things

1) When you make an Orbital Command is a strategic choice that heavily factors into your build and how the game plays out.

2) Although you sacrifice allot of economy in making a Planetary Fortress it can still make up for this by killing a huge minerals worth of units and possible winning you the game.

[Crazy_Jonny]

This battle looks like it had everything.

[Nicol Bolas]

*sigh* Yet another wasted opportunity for the Protoss to go for air. Colossi? Really, that's your tech choice when going up against Terran Mech? You couldn't have afforded a few StarGates and Void Rays to carve those Thors up like a roast turkey? Maybe if you'd gotten a few Phoenix, you might not have been nuked repeatedly by a Ghost in a Medivac.

Really, the Terran player had no anti-air except the Thors. And even they aren't comprehensive at it. Phoenixes and Void Rays, with some ground support, into Carrier tech was the better choice than High Templar + Colossi.

And where were the Dark Templar? The Terran player only had scans for detection, and you can exhaust those quickly enough. If you're going to go HT + Colossi, you should have thrown some DTs + Warp Prisms in for harassment.

And I still can't believe the Protoss player actually left the Zealots he warped-in on the island expansion. Seriously, dude, your Warp Prism was right there. Just load them up and take them where they need to go.

[n00bonicPlague]

If I could've said anything to the Protoss player, I would've said this:

Hidden Content:

IMMORTALS — use them.

[Gifted]

@Nicol
You give some good points, but I think this battle report and your post are an interesting thing to suggest to you. You are exceptional at identifying strategies from an outside perspective, I'll give you that... but in terms of playing this game, you always exclude the human equation. There are times people forget things, or try things that are inefficient.

While your ideas would have been more efficient counters, I also believe 2 reasons exist on why these weren't implemented. First is lack of mass practice in the game. Let's face it, the majority of the "playbook" in SC2 is internal, it doesn't have millions of people contributing to it... yet. In counter-examination, for Starcraft, it has gotten to the point that a solid search on a few forums can provide information honed by hundreds of thousands of games by millions of players. Scoured over by mathematicians to a painstaking efficiency of understanding down to sometimes seconds. This has given birth to a basic chess-like format that identifies the course of the majority of "standard" games by identifying moves and how to react. Starcraft 2 has nowhere near the meta-game developed that SC1 has garnered.

Another important factor is what I call the "human equation". We make mistakes, that's what separates the great from the good. While things look good on paper, when placed within the chaotic cradle of a game, you will always have a battle against the limits of your mind. Some people have wider limits, others have limits that are more narrow. Some are more compatible with Macro mentality while others are more native to micro. Sometimes the pressure of it all can simply make obvious choices figured out minutes after the battle instead of seconds after an observation in the fray of battle.

A random final note... I also wouldn't be surprised if playing again Mr. Bigman himself doesn't apply a little bit of pressure on a person if it's an ongoing grudge match. He's #1 on the internal ladder, it's gotta be nerve-racking to play him sometimes.