Leaving for Warmer Countries

In a couple of hours I will be leaving this cold country and the Starcraft 2 Beta (that I didn’t get into) for Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I’ll be back in a month but hopefully get time to comment on that “thing” from different internet cafés wherever I go.

It seems like everybody else got in. AiurAdun got in thanks to some shady dealings. I hope this will make him update his gaming blog a bit. A ton of n00bs at DailyRush got in too. It really doesn’t seem fair when you have dedicated as much time to this game as I have.

Hopefully I will get a key and a second chance when I come back.

Until then I will enjoy the warmer climate of South-East Asia and Starcraft 2 at a distance.

Starcraft II Beta Impressions

I have of course been following the beta. I got lucky this time around. No beta key in the first wave means that I don’t have to test an unfinished game. I find way too many bugs in far more exiting financial applications as my day job, so I sure got lucky here.

(Well, yeah this line of reasoning does not work for me either. I just had to try).
So far I am pretty underwhelmed by what I have seen of the beta. I clearly remember getting Starcraft in April 1998 and upon starting it realizing that “it really didn’t look that great”. And Neither does Starcraft II in 2010.
This is a disappointment to me, but hopefully the game will be so great that we can ignore that it isn’t the prettiest it could be.
In game the units seems fragile when you look at them. Like stick men. Annoying when compared to the first games more solid and robust units. Everything also seems to take up less space and bases mine out faster. Will we ever see a Protoss base in Starcraft II with 15 gateways? Now there is definitely room for them in all bases.
Take a look the top screenshot. This is from a 2v2 where two allies are advancing together. Hard to see when the colors are so much the same. The second screenshot is showing how a red Terran almost look the same as the purple Zerg and the creep.
I’m sad that the original much brighter color-scheme of Starcraft II was ditched in favor of this.

80 Games Status

I have played 80 1v1 games on iccup thus far this season. Last season I only played PvT on Medusa and got to high D+. This season I have been mixing it up by playing one map-of-the-week and against any race.

As you can see my win rate against Protoss and Terran are around 50%, but against Zerg a lousy 27%! The decent results against Terrans i attribute to the practice I put into that match-up last season. Against Protoss I think it is mostly due to this match-up not being very well understood. Its like people aren’t even trying to understand mirror match-ups. I’ve found that I kinda like Protoss vs. Protoss games.

The insane number of loses to Zerg I simply don’t understand. I have a feeling that I out to work on putting more pressure on my opponent in the early mid game. Right now it is to comfortably to stay contained after you fast expansion. This leads to long games, but in the end I get run over.

(And yeah, I will comment on Starcraft 2 Beta soon. So far I’m one of the lucky guys who don’t have to test an unfinished game ;-()

Cut the Crap

So the comments to the previous posting were hilarious and all, but this is my blog and not the site where people go to flame each other (and more importantly me). In the future I will delete comments I find annoying.

So what do I think is okay?

1. Comments that directly and in a respectful manner deals with the topic of the posting.
2. It’s okay to hijack a comment thread with one comment to introduce yourself (if you are a new reader or old lurker).
3. If you engage in a conversation that is already approved (i.e. have not been deleted by me), that is also okay.

When offering advice – which is something I do appreciate – try to do so where relevant and in a useful fashion. This basically rules out most of Babytoss’s reviews of my old games. Also, try to notice the date of the posting you are commenting on: I have improved dramatically compared to back when I started this blog.

Player with a Fever

Taken literarily this is not a good idea. I wish I could report on a game frenzy, but unfortunately this is just fever.

I played a Terran tonight and misclicked so many times that I lost. No leg upgrade, no psi-storm and on and on. Just a mess.

Why do you scout?

Inspired by Babytoss’s posting frenzy I have wanted to write about why you scout. The reason why this question comes up is due to the discussion on whether the liquipedia is right when it suggests that 13 supply is the correct timing to start the cybernetics core or whether 14 supply is more optimal? The answer basically boils down to when you scout.

(Note that this posting assumes maps like Neo Medusa or Longinus).

If you scout at 8 supply (right after your first pylon), then you can’t afford the cybernetics core before 14 supply, but if you delay the scout to after you start the core, then you can afford it at 13 already.

So what are the pros and cons of scouting early?

If your opening is risky and have to adapt to whatever your opponent does, then you should scout early. If not, then your early game economy and the speed of your build is increased a lot, the more you delay.

The risk of the 10/15 gate opening against Terrans is mainly if they decide to cheese you by building proxy barracks. That is a real risk, but I have never once seen that done on the level where I play. So by scouting early you could see the cheese and decide that your first unit out should be a zealot and not a dragoon. Since zealots builds faster, that might give you a combat unit out slightly faster to defend against marines in your base.

Scouting earlier would also allow you to get inside his base before his wall-in is completed. When you do that you could potentially figure out whether he intended to fast expand or go double factories. Unfortunately your probe have to survive being chased by marines for awhile before you can figure that out. And to make matters worse, some of the signs are not reliable on my level of play.

For instance Terrans rarely takes SCVs of gas even though they are fast expanding, so you can’t really deduct that 3 SCVs on gas means a double factory. So usually my probe ends up dead before it figures anything out. And it was not that I cared that much anyway. My first 4-5 dragoons + 2 dark templars are both useful for delaying a fast expand and to stop a two factory push.

Basically my conclusion is that I don’t see the point in a very early scout. It delays my first dragoons, risk the scout getting killed and will rarely yield any information that I wouldn’t get equally well when scouting earlier.