Starcraft II: Continue the Insanity

By now, you’re probably all sick of my SC2 blogs, since half of the front-page blogs are them. However, none of you have yet expressed dire outrage at my posts, so I shall take the freedom of continuing.

Sacrifice Everything

Look, I’m not much of a hotkey-oriented person. That essentially translates to “I will get totally boned by pro players.” For that reason, I was very hesitant to vie for the “Sacrifice Nothing” achievement for “The Evacuation.” The achievement dictates that I must not lose or salvage any structure on hard difficulty.

The problem with that achievement wasn’t that it was difficult. Rather, it was a tricky achievement, because that meant that you had to protect existing bunkers that were prepared on the map at specific choke points. Only two such bunkers existed; the first one was not far down the road, and would be unmolested for the first group of refugees you’re transporting. The second, however, would be immediately beset upon by zerglings, and with a good surround, it could be very easily lost.

It was that vital moment that I found very irritating to control, because there was barely time to identify the bunker, much less defend it. The trick I used was to bring along an SCV with the initial pair of firebats and medics, use the firebats to lure the zerglings and use the SCV to immediately repair the bunker before it went into permanent disrepair.

After that, things went a bit more smoothly, though not by much. The initial bunkers were still at risk of being overrun by increasingly tougher or numerous enemies, primarily zerglings, though possibly with hydralisk or roach escorts. The key to winning these engagements was to understand the timings between attacks, then quickly send extra SCVs and firebats to reinforce the locations. The workers should build an extra bunker to be loaded with marines, to further reinforce the choke. The same assembly should be done for the middle choke point, which was initially open and not reinforced with an initial bunker. Whether to risk the extra structures for the sake of the achievement is up to you; personally, it really helps defend the colonists as they evacuate, and by the last group, each choke had a dozen marines in two bunkers, a pair of firebats, two missile turrets, a medic and three SCVs.

With that configuration, it should be easy to complete the objectives. It does help to snipe off the first nydus worm when it appears, to prevent the spewing of incessant zerglings. The worm at the third choke only spits out periodic roaches, so you don’t need to destroy it, per se.

Protoss Ingenuity

This is another famous 2v2 on Discord IV. A Protoss ally and I versed a single Terran player (with the extra resources of another Terran player who disconnected or something). That player turned out to be surprisingly resilient.

First, I went for a marines-only build. Of course, I’d get bored of that soon enough–okay, it wasn’t boredom, it was a well-stationed planetary fortress with three bunker defenses–so I followed up with tanks and medivacs. Considering my foe was primarily Terran, I didn’t really need marauders, since mechanical units are not generally the backbone of a Terran army. However, they did go 1-1-1 (or the rough equivalent, I don’t know), as they supplemented their own marines, marauders and tanks with a sizable force of banshees with cloak. That proved to be slightly annoying, but not as much as I’d expect.

You see, what my Protoss ally decided to do (and how it worked I’ll never know) was to go purely into sentries. Yes, you heard me right, he went only to those gas-heavy, spell-casting robots, supplemented with +3/+3/+3. I supposed he took advantage of our number advantage–our opponent decided to use the other command center to mine at the rich mineral field on our side of the map, which I destroyed fairly early on.

So, instead of investing my army to supplement his (though I did for several skirmishes), I took advantage of scanner sweep to decloak the banshees when we spotted some. It was hilarious; the banshees would cloak, do trivial damage, then were spotted, and wow, that many sentries can really take down a banshee in record time.

For the final push, despite all of the marauders, marines, tanks, banshees, and whatever else was in that base, the force of, what, 30-40 sentries rolled over the entirety of it all (with a little help from scans, of course).

That was a GG I was not expecting.

Outnumbered, But Not Outmatched

In this Discord IV, 2v2, it was me, plus extra who quit me, against a Protoss player and a Terran newbie. Since the Terran player was a newbie, I was not very concerned with him; who I was concerned about, was the Protoss, since I expected some very skilled play from him.

Well, I didn’t quite get a skilled play, but I did get a bit of cheese; he decided to place a proxy pylon right into the center of the camp, within line of sight and all, and tried for a cannon rush. I was actually too slow to react to the pylon, but pulled the SCVs from my proxy mineral line to squash the unfinished cannon and pylon. A second proxy pylon was found right below the front of my base, and that too went down in short order.

So at this point I’m a little jumpy. I ended up building about six barracks, three with reactors and three with tech labs, and made a big bioball of doom, consisting entirely out of marines. At +2/+2, I scouted to the center of the map, as well as send a reaper for a swing by the enemy bases (nothing quite out of the ordinary). And yes, I still went with tanks and medivacs this game; I found tanks being placed on the outcrops in the center of the map really fun, even though as of the few games I’ve implemented it very little damage had been done.

With an army of 100 supply (marines and medivacs), and +3/+3 upgrades, I pushed forward. I was not expecting how underpowered my opponent was going to be.

With stim and combat shield, my marines ate through the small force of stalkers and zealots with such ease, before I stumbled on a gold mine: my Protoss foe was trying to mass void rays. He had about five, and that would have certainly did significant damage to my base had he done a raid. Unfortunately, they did not fare well against an army of marines. No, not at all. His poor pylon placement–only one for hall of his warp gates–also gave me an easy advantage.

It was a matter of time before I steamrolled this Protoss baddy, though I decided to let the Terran player go (for now). Soon enough, the ‘tosser surrendered, and his mate followed suit.

I was honestly expecting a damning loss. I was certain I was going to lose against a superior number of foes, especially with my proxy units doing nothing but mining (it had one barracks, but that was just for the orbital command).

Where is anybody? David, Joaco, I don’t see any of you online when I do. Cmon, maybe we can shoot some hoops (or zerglings, whichever is preferable).