Starcraft 2 Battle Report 3

Just a heads up, this has nothing to do with Warcraft. I am a massive Starcraft fan as well and will be covering a lot of the content very soon so if you’re a Starcrfat fan then by all means join in.

Personally, this match was pretty one sided with David Kim (the protoss player) obviously having the one up from the very start of the match. I played Starcraft 2 for kind of a long time last year at Blizzcon and obviously the game’s alpha has been changed significantly in the  months since; but there’s one cardinal rule when it comes to skirmishes like this – don’t neglect your economy. Here’s what I pulled from watching this 3rd installment of Blizzard’s Starcraft 2 Battle Report.

If you’re fighting zerg, you must tech into a detector unit or structure. Dealing with roaches constantly burrowing to regen back at 100% HP in only a few seconds can be very frustrating and otherwise time consuming.

Micro management of individual forces and raiding parties in SC2 has become incredibly important and can be a lot of fun. Using a scout unit (probe, SCV, drone) at the very start to help disrupt and otherwise block/shutdown enemy production is a brilliant way to give yourself the lead on resources which will almost always mean a win.

Protoss Nullifyers are incredible counters to zerg surrounds. Splitting zerg forces and kiting them away with the forcefield or flat out cutting off a retreat or zergling rush every 10 seconds or so can get you a lot of mileage for the resources spent on one single unit type. As well, using the base structures along with the mineral clusters, you can pretty much box up your probes so they can continue to make you money without interruption.

Stalker’s Blink ability if used properly can mean a world of difference for kiting roaches and other hard to kill units as well and stopping overlords and other slow units from escaping. Remember, every unit killed is another sum of money the enemy has to recoup and if you’ve been disrupting the flow (like the protoss player did in the movie) then it’s really nasty.

Certain combos like using a pheonix to anti-grav up a high HP unit and then the void ray to nuke it down flawlessly is going to be really hard to combo. Little commando type moves like this can hurt since more expensive units like queens and ultralisks and such can be taken out in a manner of seconds with little risk. Hydralisks are great for this since their spines can do solid damage to the protoss colossus as well as hit air units like the prism and the pheonix/void ray combo I just mentioned. It’s a worthwhile unit to produce.

Baneling ambushes from underground are fucking devestating to large clumps of protoss units. This is an amazing way to get rid of slow moving clusters of nullifyers, unupgraded zealots, and immortals.

If corruptors are on the field, target the strongest unit around (like the colossus) and try to force the enemy into blowing cooldowns or retreating. A mind controlled nullifyer might be a great way as well to cutoff a retreat or just to simply split the attackers in half.

Getting some anti-air from the start is important against protoss since they have a lot of nasty guerrilla type attacks like the phase prism warp ins or stalker blinks that can essentially drop an entire army right in the middle of your base, bypassing all defenses and then cutting them off with forecfields (nullifyers).

Finally, the zerg player could have used his roach micro better. Don’t go chansing after stalkers when they blink away and always focus fire down the zullifyer as it’s a slow unit. If you’re blocked by forcefields then burrow and regen back to full until it’s gone. That early in the game you don’t have to worry about endless fields coming from too many nullifyers. Pop out, kill a few units, hide again. It’ll keep the enemy player busy dealing with you instead of clicking over to build more units or to attack your base.