http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFmDA2_yhg&feature=youtube_gdata
Wow, what an impressive usage of Nukes in this game, nothing short of inspirational. We often see players use Nukes to entice fear in opponent, or as an necessary late game nail in the coffin, but seldom do we see nukes actually strategically employed in combination with units, and intrumentall in altering the tide of a game. This was truly a captivating match featuring the phenomenal player “the little one” playing as the blue Terran and a player by the name of beautiful playing as the red Protoss at metalopolous. On a related note, according to HD in this video the little one has been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and was “Advised by his doctor” to discontinue playing SC2 entirely, but has evidently disregarded his doctor’s advice and continued to play SC2 at a professional level, and to be blunt, it hasn’t seemed to effect his gameplay in the slightest.
The game opens up very typically, no rush or cheese. The Little one begins with a quick Barracks-factory tech into a quick Command Center, as noted by HD a slightly safer build than going to a Barracks to “CC”, allowing him to get out some big guns to deal with early Protoss pushes. The Protoss player opens up with a Gateway followed immediately by a Nexus, both apparently looking to play a macro game. The Little one attacks first, getting a single probe kill with a few Hellions, impressively managing to micro his three Hellions away from danger, keeping all of them alive, just barely. Almost immediately after, he gets out some ghosts hinting the possibility of nukes. Not something that we haven’t seen before from The little one, he’s well known for his creative employment of Nukes.
On beautiful’s side of the table, his economic opening leaves him noticeably behind in unit production (aside from probes). At the ten minute mark it becomes clear the little despite his time away from SC2 is in control of the game, grabbing his third expansion around the same time as beautiful. However as the game progresses Beautifuls economic approach begins to pay off ,the unit count begins to even out. Because the little one simply waited to long to follow up with an attack, he allowed the Protoss player to gather up a scary ball of units. The little one notices that beautiful is going for Collosus and begins building Vikings to counter them, along with ghosts. He has a very well balanced composition, he has just enough Vikings to take care of the few Collusus. However out witting The little one, Beautiful enacts a switch up, seizing his production of Collusus and instead building Templars and researching Psionic storm and charge.
Making a critical mid game push, The Little one attempts and multi flanged attack at the red Protoss’s third expansion, spreading out his units into groups hoping to break apart the Protoss ball.. Remaining composed under pressure, the Protoss player manages to take care of it with apparent ease, leaving the Little one, who was initially looking good, very far behind. But immediately following this, as the Beatiful was beginning to make a push what he likely thought was going to be the final push, the Little one constructs two Nukes and incredibly, with only a small group of units, astoundingly completely wipes out Beautiful’s third expansion, killing several probes in the process, evening out the harvester count and bringing him right back into the game bringing about a few moment of stillness and no doubt shock on the Protoss’s side of the spectrum. But not for long. The little one again makes another push, this time employing the use of dropships and directing his attention to the Protoss’s main. Despite being scouted by the Protoss’s Probe, he apparently fumbles and isn’t able to get out Photon canons in time, the drop commences along with two, wow, two impeccably placed Nukes right in the Protoss’s main, keeping the Protoss player at bay, and doing critical damage right in the origins of the Protoss’s forces, taking out a number of important tech buildings.
If you ever doubted the effectiveness/practicality of Nukes in mid to late game, I encourage you to watch this video. Truly outstanding play by the Little one, hopefully his health doesn’t get in the way of him continuing to play SC2. Wow, what an exceptional use of Nukes. Henceforth, The little one truly is the king of the Nuke.
This is strategy commonly referred to as a “cheese” that can be highly effective in lower level to mid level games, however it completely relies on not being scouted, so there for it is a high risk strategy that is near impossible to recover from if it fails. Your goal with the Photon Cannon rush should be to cripple your opponents economy by carefully constructing a pylon followed by photon canon outside your opponents base or as close to your opponents mineral line as possible without your opponent seeing it. After you get out your first canon you want to begin pushing closer and closer by building each successive photon canon in front of the other. Early on Photon canons can do devastating damage and can be difficult to kill for most opening game units. Closing off the ramp can also delay an early push, biding you time, and prevent your opponent from grabbing his natural expansion.
This is the build order:
- 7 Probe
- 8 Probe
- 9 Probe
- 10/10 Pylon
- 10/Forge
- 11-13 Proxy Pylon
- 12-14 Canon
Send a probe after warping in your first pylon to find your opponent’s main. You should begin warping in your proxy pylon when your forge is about halfway finished. Do your best to ensure your intentions are as discreet as possible, this means avoiding letting your opponent see your probe and keeping your proxy pylon out of site, if possible. The first cannon is usually built more defensively because the opponent probably will try to attack it with workers. But once you get the first canon up it will quickly dissipate workers, you can almost breathe a sigh of relief at this point. But you’re not done yet, throw up another canon, one in front of the other.
There’s more than one way to execute a proxy rush. Another way of doing this is to place a pylon on the low ground and building Cannons on the high ground along with more Pylons later. Also used to block Zerg in base by building pylons at the ramp and cannons behind it, denying any expansion.
Terran is probably the most versatile and balanced of the three races, although they’re often overlooked as a “beginner race”the rugged space hicks are actually not as linear as players often play them. Lets look an effective rush that can often catch even top-tier players off guard.
The Reaper, is a powerful early game unit, equipped with a jet pack, that allows it to hover over high cliffs and gain entry into territory that other infantry units cannot. This super fast, versatile, “scouting unit” can take out worker in three shots, when micro’d correctly three Reapers can wreak havok on a players vulnerable economic line, simply by breaching the back via jumping up the cliff and picking off workers. You can do devastating damage to a player early on before the player even has a single unit. In order to get your first Reaper as quickly as possible, you need to immediately construct a barracks followed abruptly by a Refinery Barracks and Refinery, all prior to the first supply depot. Attach a tech lab to your first barrack and get the Reaper ASAP.
Note: This build (like most rush builds) is an economic shot in the foot early on, there for your intent should be to inflict more economic damage to your opponent than you have done to yourself. In low-mid levels of play, groups of 2-3 Reapers will be gathered first before an attack. However, in higher level play, players can smell a Reaper rush a mile away, and so, the Terran player will send his first Reaper to attack as soon as it emerges from the Barracks.
Reapers are basically invulnerable to tier 1 melee units (when micro’d accordingly), you can simply employ hit and run tactics while stopping to pick off drones. Remember if you have three Reapers, that’s one shot from each them per drone. So naturally it is advised that you wait till you have three to begin your assault. The only instance where the Reaper rush may not be as effective is against Zerglings on Creep or Speedlings. These can easily catch up to Reapers and quickly surround them. However with the Reapers innate ability to jump up and down cliffs, it is still possible to deduct some hefty economic damage if you catch a Zerg player off guard.
However it’s best not to use the Reaper rush as your main rush. Just like early Zergling rushes, Reaper rushes can be defended against, and if it is rendered ineffective, you’ll have done more harm to yourself that to your opponent. For this reason it’s best to use the Reaper Rush against Terran or Protoss players. Avoid using it against Zerg unless you have superb micro.
If you missed Yesterdays opening match between Jinro and Choya you’re going to want to watch this video. Jinro was playing as the red Terran and Choya was the Yellow Protoss. Wow, the game appeared to be overwhelmingly in Choya’s favor climaxing with both players massive balls of units colliding nearer to Jinro’s base and starting to appear in Choya’s favor with Jinro microing his units back towards his base almost in retreat. But just when you though Choya’s ball was too much for Jinro to handle this happened………..
The new 1.3.5 patch has at last arrived, but don’t worry, there’s no major changes to the gameplay if that was your main concern. Nothings been “nerfed” or altered in the way of damage dealt, rather the new patch primarily addressed the new regionally linked ladders. Blizzard fixed a lot of the minor bugs that still lingered and altered tye Hellion’s infernal pre-igniter icon upgrade which has now been updated to depict more blue flames, but than again this doesn’t really effect the gameplay either. Anyhow here’s a run down of exactly what Blizzard fixed with the 1.3.5 patch and what you can expect.
General
- Players from Latin America and North America will soon be able to play games together, add each other to their in-game friends list, and compete on the same ladder. - Several performance and memory improvements have been made. - “Player Left” messages will once again appear in replays. - The Hellion’s Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade icon has been updated(now with more blue flames!).
StarCraft II Editor Improvements -UI errors will now go into a newly-created Error Display Message window. - Cooldowns shorter than 1/4 of a second no longer display on the command card