The Starcraft Thread

So starcraft is played professionally in south korea (and elsewhere, but particularly south korea) with sponsored teams and individual tournaments. Recently there's been a big push by a few guys to provide english commentary on the more important games on youtube, and a korean tv station just hired a guy to move to korea and give english commentary on korean tv. I wouldn't be surprised to see some games showing up on tv in the US and europe in a year or two.

Anyway, I just watched a totally ridiculous game between flash, who plays terran, and free, who plays protoss. If you've never watched a starcraft game, this is a pretty damn good place to start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjrZmcxVpwk

It gets a little slow in the middle, but the first five minutes and end are insane.

I am a big fan of bisu and savior, both of whom have been slumping a little lately. I like flash quite a lot also, he is an up and coming terran player who made a name for himself when he beat bisu, the dominant player at the time, but using the same rush strategy three times in a row in a best of five matchup. Bisu didn't stop it once. I don't know much about Free, he's a solid protoss player but nothing amazing.

Oh, if you are interested in seeing more the accounts of the guys providing english commentary are:

www.youtube.com/klazartsc
www.youtube.com/diggitysc
www.youtube.com/moletrap

They occasionally post joint commentaries on
www.youtube.com/violetak

You can get the games without English commentary within a day of them happening usually at
www.youtube.com/jon747

Steve, I have to admit, I opened up this thread withs ome hesitance, but it was good enough to make me youtube this.

EDIT: ok this is sort of awesome in a nerdy way.

cool, hope you enjoy.

this guys voice hurt me man

HE HURT ME

That recording is abnormally abrasive because he just lost his microphone. Or you're talking about how fast he talks, which is pretty insane, yeah.

Starcraft 2 is coming out in 2008 or 2009


ok probably 2015, but it's coming I swear.

I don't know if it will replace starcraft. I'd like it too, but starcraft is a pretty high hurdle to jump.

I would settle for something at higher than 640x480.

Crazy, short game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHdsVGJGHSg

This is from a show where they bring a pro on and he plays against a battle.net user while answering questions, and they show e-mailed in comments from people watching. Anyway, in this episode the battle.net user is Nal_rA, another pro, and he stomps on yellow before revealing who he is, to the amusement of all.

It also includes one of the most hilarious lines of text I've ever seen - "STOM WII NERVER STOP"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vHH2eKXqwAM

does Boxer not play anymore?

He used to be the best Korean terran player

http://www.sclegacy.com//content/pimpest-plays-3/

Boxer is in mandatory military service, but still plays on the airforce team, which is a new team in the proleague this year. He isn't at the level he used to be at though, having had to take some time off and not getting as much time to practice anymore. Plus he is older now.

These guys really are insane. The micro in firefights even when they are building two bases and attacking from two directions is just so impressive. All their men seem to be dancing.

Awesome game: http://youtube.com/watch?v=oNUFhrLCkuQ

Terran usually goes Supply Depot -> Barracks -> Refinery -> Factory as fast a possible while training SCVs against Protoss and branches out from there while utilizing mech units from factories. Going bio with marines and medics is generally suicide, because High Templars eat them for breakfast.

Here SangHo takes Nada's gas before he can put a refinery down though, delaying his factory by a minute or so. Usually Terran players will respond to this by making a few extra marines, but still transitioning to factory units as fast as possible. But Nada goes straight into a barracks build, putting down another two, and pumping out of all three for the rest of the game. It's pretty amazing to watch, hopefully even if you aren't familiar with the regular Terran vs Protoss modes of play.

Nada had a reign of dominance but has been struggling lately. He is in a poor team, and a lot of people have been blaming his slumping on him being overworked, having to play far too often for the team events and not having enough time to prepare properly for each game. Hopefully that is starting to turn around.

I thought T v P is all about siege tanks/ghosts?

At least it was, when Boxer was playing an insane amount..

I haven't kept up for a few years, but there's a few good sites (including the one I linked) where they show "pimpest plays" from each of those years. Boxer has a lot of insane ones, including him lockdowning 12 carriers in under 2 seconds or so.

www.battlereports.com has a lot of good stuff too.

Late game protoss either goes carriers or arbiters, and that play was impressive because the usual counter to carriers is goliaths, and boxer went for ghosts instead. People also sometimes go for cloaked wraiths against carriers, and fly in with a scan and kill the observer really quickly and then go to town.

Usual midgame build in TvP is tanks and vultures. Tanks are good against dragoons and vultures are good against zealots.

i usually win by going MASS CARRIERS!!!!11111


now that that's out of the way, starcraft is fun, but i've gotten bored of single player and i suck at multiplayer, so i'm playing red alert 2.

Me too, mabye we can get the old broken servers to give us a game or two sometime.

you should mass high templar :B

Dark Archons are the coolest counter to Carriers. So you made 12 carriers. Cool. Now I will kill you with them.

This is why starcraft is so good there is a counter to everything, if they mass unit X then you can build Y and stop them.

Damn, this is really making me want to look up my dormmate who moved to SK for a while to play, but I forget his name. Is there any easy way of looking him up? It would have been in the Spring of 2000 or so.

I don't know of one. I assume it'd be hard with his name anyway since he'd probably be referred to by his sn.