Starcraft II: Staying Alive

Yep, it’s me again.

So without further ado…

D-bagging 101

In this game, I was playing 2v2, all players, on High Orbit (I think?). We were all Terrans, and I wouldn’t be wrong if I were to say that my opponents were well coordinated.

The game started pretty standard; I had absolutely no idea what my opponents were doing, while my ally and I were massing marines and marauders. Of course, my friend was able to mass more quickly; he seemed to macromanage much better than I could ever, considering he had a well organization of 30+ SCVs, and his army was soon easily double mine, medivacs included, though they would come later. We fended off a few forays from the enemies, consisting of a fair assortment of marines, marauders and tanks. One of them tried to expand, but we got to it quickly enough, and really eliminated the enemy presence from the greater part of the map.

That was when one of the enemies left.

So I thought, “oh, this would make things much easier!” Boy, was I wrong.

It turned out that on their starting platform, the quitter (Green) massed a bunch of siege tanks, set to siege mode, over a large area. His friend (Blue) did the same, only he supplemented the tanks with a sprawling set of missile turrets. When we scanned the area, we thought, “okay… how do we fight that?”

Here, I should note that Terran had surprisingly little counter to the turret-tank combo nuisance. While they could send battlecruisers, that would take a while to build an adequate fleet, and all other options were essentially ineffective. Zerg could mass mutalisks, or if they had the resources, brood lords. Protoss had void rays, which would accumulate enough damage to sufficiently remove the turret threat.

My first instinct was to go with banshees, to overcome the ground-only damage of the tanks. That was before I realized the turrets in their midst, and to my dismay, their range was greater than my banshees. We tried to break down Green’s defunct base (which went successfully), as well as Blue base, with relative ease (they massed their tanks at the ramp, and we transported our troops around them). Of course, when we walked a bit further we hit a big wall of tanks; I lost a majority of my troops while my ally decided smartly to remove his.

While I’m still scratching my head at getting around this, my overly superior friend decided: “I’m going to nuke them.”

And really, that wasn’t a bad idea. His ghost could stay out of range of the turrets (he never built ravens, so he had no mobile detector), while destruction ensued.

To put it simply, it worked. It took a few nukes to completely wipe out the orgy of siege tanks, plus a bit of infantry backup to scrub the last of them, but Blue was effectively eliminated from the match. As an odd note, he tried to rebuild a command center back at his base, a good ten minutes after we scrapped it in the earlier raid.

Tag Team, Redux!

Take two: Co-op vs. AI, 2v2, all Terran. And interestingly enough, it almost repeated my dismal experience last time around.

Like always, the player and I massed a few barracks, meaning (say it with me) marines and marauders. I plunked a bunker down at the ramp, and sent my troops there, because, lo and behold, the AIs attacked at about seven minutes. They too brought a mix of marines and marauders; however, my bunker saved a good lot of them, even though my army was scrapped; fortunately, my ally sent in his own forces and easily repelled what remained of the opponents’ forces.

As I find out, that would be their only raid. They didn’t send much more to attack our base directly. Yes, we did have skirmishes in the middle of the map, as well as other off-sites where their army situated themselves, but we didn’t suffer any more harassment. Which was good; I decided to send a few tanks to supplement our armies.

In the final, crucial push into their bases, they had a few siege tanks and a reinforced bunker as defense; not a bad military wall, to be truthful. What did my friend do? The most viable choice: medivac his soldiers around them. While the AIs scrambled to face the threat (removing the tanks from siege mode), I waltzed up the ramp with my own marines, marauders and tanks.

Yea, they were toast. With stim-pack, they stood no chance against steroid-induced soldiers.

Distract, Divert and Destroy

My final experience that I will blog about is a 1v1 melee between myself and a Zerg player.

As I have no indication about what skill level my opponent is at (no quick match option for Starters, boo), I quickly walled off my base and began spawning marines, and began working on tanks. I think I was too obvious; although I eliminated his zergling scout, he came back with… a little more than I expected.

Banelings. Those suckers busted down my wall (and marines) with surprisingly little issue, though I managed to take a few with me. Their zergling escort got to my stationary siege tank, wrecking it, before my new, second tank scrubbed them.

I endured two more waves of zerglings (with slightly improved results each time), before I decided (a bit too late) to scanner sweep. And what did I find? Mutalisks.

And that was when I knew the game was over. I had no adequate missile turret placements, and even though marines are a fair anti-air defense unit, the mutalisks’ glaive worm attacks made such clumped-up soldiers easy meat.

My twenty or so marines stood up against a dozen or so mutalisks. Massacre ensued, and that was that.

My kindly opponent pointed out that I should have moved in with my army of marines earlier. That probably wasn’t a bad idea; since he was teching to mutalisks, he had to dedicate a fair amount of time and resources to building the spire and mutalisks, the latter of which was gas-heavy to make. I could have gotten the drop on him, but his baneling bust at the beginning really threw me off, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten a chance to raid after that.

Miscellaneous

Anyone still playing Maplestory? Like, on the actual game?

If so, how was Hot Time?