Starcraft II

[Wood]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT! Did you see the finals?! Sweet Jebus it's a such a good Final! Please tell me you watched it!

[Ekkebus]

I didn't think it was that good only because it was sooooo lopsided. Still, as a demonstration of just how much better MC is than everyone else right now it was a fun watch.

Did you watch the TSL today? I already like it because the live stream is in the afternoon plus you get to see a lot of different play styles. People getting the energy upgrade for Medivacs!!!! I actually had to look up what it did because I'd never seen anyone get it before.

[Wood]

I'm watching the VOD's today. I'm glad it's different gameplay styles than what the GSL is producing, so that's very nice. Hopefully I'll catch these live streams more, considering it's in the afternoons.

[Ekkebus]

The only thing I wish is that they weren't using the exact same map pool as GSL. It would be nice to have a little bit of variety. Where did you find the VODS? I was looking on Team Liquid's youtube and they didn't have them up yet. Live stream was definitely cool to have on in the background of my computer yesterday. Looking forward to todays matches. MC, Jinro, WhiteRa, MorroW, Loner AND Huk all playing on the same day. Hopefully I can catch a lot of it.

Side note: are we both watching more SC2 than we're actually playing at this point?

[Wood]

I think the VOD's are in the forums under the tournament title. The streaming was skipping a lot for me, so I didn't get to see a lot of it. And for me, I have been only watching a ton of StarCraft 2, rather than actually playing the game. I'm blaming it on the medication I'm on.

[Ekkebus]

The new patch is out and there were a couple of surprises. A revised Shakuras Plateau has been added back into the ladder map pool as well as Tal'Darim Altar! And to boot I just discovered that you can vote down up to 3 maps so that you play them less on the ladder. That would have been helpful to know back in the Steppes of War days.

Also, when I was talking about the patch changes on the last page those 'slight' changes to Infestors didn't really hit me until i read an interview with Idra about it. What didn't register is that Fungal Growth now does bonus damage against armored. Previous to this patch zerg hasn't had a single unit with that bonus where Terran and Protoss have had at least two. Suddenely zerg has an incredibly viable weapon vs Stalkers, Collosus and Void Rays. Music to my ears. I can't wait to get on the ladder tonight.

[Wood]

Dude! Friggin 2nd GSL Team Final was awesome to watch again this year. Have you seen it yet?

Also, I didn't know they made BC's faster in this patch. They're not as fast as vikings, obviously, but they're fast enough to where they're not able to be kited infinitely by Vikings. Always a nice change. Still difficult to be able to tech to them, but I can see them being very useful in narrow maps in TvT.

[Ekkebus]

Yeah there were a few sneaky little changes in this patch that could make a big difference. That BC speed thing is definitely one of them. It puts one big ass tool back in the Terran toolkit. Watching MVP bust them out and win was just awesome and I think actually a first in the GSL that someone has used them effectively.

And yeah, once again the team league trumps the regular GSL as far as drama and action goes.

[Ekkebus]

I hope you've been watching the World Championships because they've been great so far.

The other big news is that the first "season" of SC2 Battle.net play came to a close yesterday. All W-L records and bonus pools have been reset and you have to play another placement match. Now I'm at the bottom of Gold league instead of the top. I'm guessing resetting everything sorted out the people who weren't playing the game regularly anymore, so that's good. Exciting time to be playing though. Fresh record, new patch and new maps.

[Wood]

Unfortunately, I just haven't had time to go back and play SC2 lately. I really should try again. I may be able to get out of bronze from the get go...or it might be that I may have to stay in that league some more. I watched the finale of the team battle, and it was actually pretty nuts. Though I'm still behind on the RO 16 tournament though, so I'm not entirely sure who's in and who's out. Will it be won by one of the Korean players? Or will the foreigners (my mind is still wrapping around seeing North American players as "foreign") take it? I'm just glad to see they're giving Korea a run for it's money in terms of skill.

[Wood]

GSL Finals actually came out really well! I'm glad to see MKP is doing way better now. I know a lot of people were really hoping for him to win, but you have to hand it to him, he's consistent. Something that seems very lacking in professional e-sports is consistency.

Also, because you totally called me out on your podcast, I decided to get back into multiplayer. After one match, I was sent back to bronze league, though right now I have 100% win rate this season! Though it's out of 4 games thus far. Really, it's less of me "winning" and more the opponents "snatching defeat out of the maw of victory".

[Ekkebus]

You should be able to get out of Bronze this season if you keep at it. You're already started better than I did. I opened the season with like six straight losses.

I was shocked that MKP was able to beat MC, so I didn't expect him to beat MVP though I did expect a closer series than in January, which it was. Of course now the reigning World Champion has to go defend his title in Code A...just think if he blows his first match he'll be out of the GSL completely. So crazy.

[Wood]

Yeah, the nature of GSL is just crazy. As seriously good these pros are, they can just simply disappear in 1 or 2 seasons, champions or not. Especially with how difficult the qualifiers sound. MKP beating MC surprised everyone, to include Tastosis. Granted it was because no one expected him to win 3 in a row. All in all, I'm getting more and more impressed with MKP, as his builds are getting more varied, and his decision making is getting better and better. That proxy barracks rush was absolutely well done, and constant push against the battlecruisers was what won those matches. That hero siege tank was just crazy how that played out.

But I'm worried about the better players in my bracket. The last game I played seemed desaterous on my part, but I still one. It was a TvZ where I opened up blue flame Helion drop and quickly switched to siege tank/marine/medivac. Guy had a baneling nest, but never made banelings. I lost just about all of my hellions to a ton of zerglings, but I took a lot of them down as well, probably not enough to have those hellions pay for themselves. Then he tried switching to mutalisks, but kept attacking maybe 6 at a time, and parking them over my marines. Meanwhile, my macro seriously suffered from not playing for a month. Just about every match I was supply blocked multiple times, and at one point I somehow sent all of my SCV's to one refinery. "Hey, where's my minerals, I need to buildOhFUCK!"

[Ekkebus]

Oh yeah, well one of the guys ahead of me in my bracket is SlayerSBoxer, so imagine how I'm going to deal with THAT.

(seriously, that's the guys user though I highly doubt the Emperor is hanging around in Gold league)

With a bit of practice you'll get back into the swing of things. I started at the bottom of my Gold league but moved up into the top 25 or so after a week of play. I finished Top 8 in my division last season so my goal is to make that again. For me working out the new maps has definitely held me back a bit though I almost always can take games on Tal'Darim Altar which I attest to having seen it in the GSL for two months already. I'll also say that by the very nature of the game, there will be games that you should absolutely win that you completely blow and games that you should have lost that you'll pull out anyway, so it all evens out. I had a ZvZ yesterday where I had killed his expansion, two queens and all the lings he had on the map...but I still went on to lose because of a couple bad decisions.

I also had a couple of crazy ZvPs recently. One on Scrap Station the guy put minimal defenses at his main while meanwhile expanding to the gold and building all of his production facilities down there. I pretty much shit a brick when I found it and then had to play a bizarre game where my ability to expand was really contained because all his forces were at the bottom middle of the map. I ended up expanding to the island and was eventually able to rip him apart with Mutas but it was just super weird for most of the way. Then I had another ZvP on Slag Pits where the guy ransacked my main and my expo but fortunately I had two more bases on the opposite side of the map. So while what was left of his army was cleaning up my main I was rebuilding all my tech structures on the other side of the map. At this point his economy is starting to stall out because he's been sitting on two base, he ends up sending over waves of DTs that took out my 3rd and my 4th at seperate times but somehow I was able to kill enough probes and block his expansions long enough that he couldn't build anything else. Totally crazy. I love this game.

[Wood]

Ok, I need to advice. I want to take the advice of some of these pros and master one build opening to get the mechanics and macro down, but the dilemma is which one do I go for? I've had a lot of success going 3 racks and pushing marine maurauder, but I also really like going blueflame Helion drop transition into marine/siege/medivac. What's your advice?