Sunday, May 30, 2010

#8 - StarCast: "Christmas comes early with an extra week of beta"

News
SC2 beta gets extended for another week June 7th specifically
No battlenet chat rooms, SC2 is region locked, and no LAN
Blizzard strikes a deal with a new broadcast company for e-sports in Korea
Kyle plays some Custom Maps
3v3 and 4v4

Strategies
David covers High Templars, Archons, Psionic Storm use, and Colossi in his segment this week.
Joel Duggan shows a "whole lotta love" for the Marauder in his Terran segment
Josh from Seattle writes in with an extensive Zerg strat (read below)

*Josh's Zerg Tips
Creep Advancing
Creep Tumors are important.  Creep not only reduces the time it takes to get your units in a forward position, but it also provides map vision as well.  Considering how invaluable map intel is in SC2 and the fact that all creep advancement will cost you is attention and some energy from your Queen, this is an approach that should be used in every match.  Practice it until it becomes an automatic command you issue every game.


Burrow can save lives!
Any player worth his salt is going to send an auxiliary force at your money line.  Since its usually a suicide squad (if land based), they are unlikely to include detection with that group.  This obviously isn't all that useful against Terran due to Scan, but against Zerg and Protoss, it can usually save you a lot of grief the first time you get caught like this.


NEVER stop Spitting!
Being Zerg, your goal is to overrun your opponent with mass units with superior macro as early as possible.  After you have gotten good at producing enough drones and expanding, the surefire way to further improve your massing capacity is to practice Queen spitting throughout the entire match.  It doesnt matter if you are control capped, light on minerals, or whatever, just keep spitting as often as possible.  The main point to consider is that larva do not expire as long as they are on creep, so you need to constantly be producing larva throughout the match nonstop.  This also includes expansions as well!
The more larva you have at your bases, the easier it will be to stay at control capacity throughout the match, which as zerg, is precisely what you need to do to win.  Having a flood of larva at your disposal with a strong economy means that you will be able to bounce back from engagements faster than your opponents.
Say for example you and an opponent trade forces in the middle of the map... you look back at your bases and you are sitting on 8 - 10 larva at each hatchery... within 30 seconds of both players losing most of their units, you could have 60 zerglings as a follow up force to wreck any (now undefended) expansions, or just go straight for their main money line.
Numbers account for everything as zerg, and Queen spitting is the last piece of the great zerg macro machine... just after drone production and expanding of course.


Tech Switching
This is somewhat related to Larva production.  Even if you don't think you will need a particular unit, diversify your military buildings, because one of the best things Zerg can do is instantly respond with something unexpected.  Having the ability to start with one strategy and instantly flip to another is a great advantage that is not shared by the other races.  This capacity to switch production on the fly will keep your opponent guessing and can possibly be used to exploit a discovered weakness.
This can be explored in greater depth when one gets into a meta game conversation about mid game (trying to keep the email brief as is).  So, in summary tech switching is one of the advantages zerg inherently has to take advantage of, as their units don't have the utility that Terran and Protoss do, so use it as needed!


Infestor Importance
Infestors are the backbone of mid and late game play.  Get them early so they are full on energy when you engage.  Without a doubt Fungal Growth is the greatest equalizer Zerg has against Colossi and massed Siege tanks.  Fungal Growth will also work well against Medivacs, as it not only stuns the Medivac, but all the units beneath it.  Infestors are the best answer Zerg has to AoE damage and Capital Ships, hands down.

Monday, May 24, 2010

#7 - StarCast: "Patch 13, who killed the Starcraft beta?"

On Episode 7 of Starcast we have a news avalanche.  Patch 13 came and destroyed everything we hold dear in Starcraft II.  Crashes, bugs, and a slew of terrible things befell the beta this week.  Blizzcon tickets go on sale.  Wings of Liberty collector's editions are selling out at major retailers.  Korea gets a censored version of SC2.  And a scandal in Korea's pro-gaming circuit. 

We also had a wealth of emails and calls this week.  Big thanks to Joel, David, and Patrick for the segments they sent in for the strategy segment. 

8 Bit Starcraft

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Blizzcon Tickets On Sale June 2 and June 5


Brush up on your queue sitting everyone.  At 7 pm (Pacific time) on June 2nd Blizzcon tickets will go on sale for $150, with a second round of tickets going up at 10 a.m. on June 5th.  $150 seems a little steep but honestly they could charge whatever they want and all the tickets would still be gone and scalped on eBay for an even higher sum.  I hopefully will be going but money is an issue as well as the fact that it's Blizzcon so getting tickets can be rough.

Monday, May 17, 2010

WHAT!? the beta is over in 2 weeks!?

Blizzard has annouced today that the Starcraft II beta will end on May 31st.  According to a post on the official forums by Nethaera, the beta will be brought back online a few weeks before Wings of Liberty's July 27th release date.  So at the very least we all won't have to wait AS long for our Starcraft fix after what is sure to be a long month without the game.  Get ready to strap yourselves to the bed as we prepare for SC2 withdrawl.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

#6 - StarCast: "Give me Hydralisk goop or give me death"


On this week's Starcast we cover Patch 12, the upcoming beta restart and with it the promise of 3v3's and 4v4's.  We also discuss the extensive Blizzard developer chat via Twitter, now available for your viewing on Blizz's forums.  We get some Protoss love from David, a listener from Garrett's home state of Florida.  As well as an our first e-mail question.

Beta Patch 12
Blizzard's Developer Chat
David's Wall in Segment
David's Protoss VS Zerg

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Recording Tomorrow

If you want the juicy details you can read about our slight delay over on Garrett's personal blog.  But everyone can look forward to episode six this upcoming Monday.  If you have any Starcraft related questions or even just a shout out you would like to hear on the show tomorrow, send us mp3's and e-mails to Starcastshow@gmail.com

See you in the beta! -Saint.gare

Sunday, May 9, 2010

#5 - StarCast: "July 27th a date that will live in awesomeness"

We have a date!  July 27th we will all be losing a lot of sleep playing Starcraft II.  

Again, Kyle and I can't thank everyone who has subscribed to Starcast this past week and even more thanks to those of you who left 5 star reviews.  You all PWN!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

#4 - StarCast: "Tidings of Doom"

This week we cover the single player campaign of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. Zeratul stops by to deliver tidings of doom. And Kyle and I develop our first and last line of defense strategy for the new 2v2 maps in the beta.