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    Thursday, May 28, 2020

    Starcraft Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of blades

    Starcraft Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of blades


    Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of blades

    Posted: 27 May 2020 09:38 PM PDT

    Purity & Industry will be removed instead of Eternal Empire next season.

    Posted: 27 May 2020 04:03 PM PDT

    Jim Raynor Cosplay X-Post from r/gaming

    Posted: 27 May 2020 02:27 PM PDT

    I was bored so I made a BC out of dominos

    Posted: 27 May 2020 01:47 PM PDT

    Baneling by Tamas Gyerman

    Posted: 27 May 2020 04:19 AM PDT

    TY is a mastermind

    Posted: 27 May 2020 03:55 PM PDT

    Warning: long text post ahead, I'm a big TY fanboy and I don't think many people truly appreciated the strategic genius of TY vs PartinG game 6 due to how futile it looked. This post has nothing to do with balance, simply a fanalysis on one of the greatest strategic mindgame in my opinion in recent televised matches. </warning>

    There's been a bit of talk about the 6th game of TY vs PartinG in the recent GSL semifinals, but I don't think anyone has highlighted the strategic ingenuity that TY put into this game, drawing not only on how the series was currently going, but also with how PartinG's previous series versus Maru went, potentially even reaching back to PartinG vs Bunny in Ro16.

    PartinG's macro playstyle roughly breaks down into 3 stages:

    • blink stalker pressure utilizing warp prisms and observers
    • fast economic growth backed by map control provided by blink stalkers in addition to robo based core army
    • gateway explosion into sacking massive amounts of gateway units into runbys / two prongs off of a stronger economy as terran tries to gain map presence

    PartinG's lategame is best summarized as having a mobile army that heavily exploits any time terran is out of position, either via warp prism in mains (Maru G4), catching Terran drops (Maru G5), and spamming blink DTs (Bunny G2). All of these work off of a strong 70-80 probe economy with 10-15 gateways. This style has served PartinG so well that he has not lost a TvP beyond 11 minutes this entire GSL. Not versus Dream ro32 (twice), not versus Bunny ro16, and not versus Maru ro8.

    However, there is one distinct weakness to this approach- PartinG's stubbornness to go stargate. Even in the face of ranged Liberators in PartinG vs Bunny game 2, he continued to rely on gateway based counterattacks to catch Libs out of position.

    TY's game plan in game 6 is designed to bait PartinG into doing this strategy that he has already shown effectiveness vs all the other Terrans in GSL so far, then counter it in using the weakness mentioned before regarding PartinG's refusal to go Stargate by focusing entirely on an absurdly powerful anti-ground composition.

    First, he opens with a 3 tank 1 raven opener, which defends blink stalker pressure very well (and it did), at the cost of having essential no map presence or harassment option until the stalker pressure is over. However, this is often the goal of PartinG's first phase- if the blink stalkers don't straight up kill the Terran like it did to TY in game 5 or to Maru in game 1, it at least kept Terran home for the protoss economy and tech to grow. When the stalker phase ended and both sides stabilized at ~7min, PartinG's third is finishing, he is up 11 workers (53-42), thermal lance is ~1/4 done with the first colossus almost out, as well as charge at ~1/3 done. TY does a discrete scan on the protoss 3rd at 7:10 to confirm this is indeed going according to plan as the nexus is finishing with plenty of probes already ready to mine.

    The next series of moves from Terran looks stupid on paper, but given TY's caliber I'm tempted to think this was fully intentional to keep PartinG's plan on track. TY lifts his factory for a production round, and produces 2 widow mines, then lifts his factory again to go back into continuous tank production for the rest of the game. He then loads the mines into 2 medivacs full of bio units, and makes the silliest drop play on the Protoss natural. Why is this silly? 1- there are blink stalkers sharking around the map (although this is partially alleviated by the simultaneous fake moveout of the ground bio units from the terran natural), 2- there is nothing else happening on the map to distract Protoss attention, 3- the blink stalker aggression phase just ended, meaning protoss is powering with his army *at home*, the defense will be there. TY knows this, which is why he committed so little to trying to make it work. He flies in, drops not even 4 units, lifts up and gtfo's back to his own base. You can tell even PartinG was expecting a little more effort when he warps in 5 defensive chargelots on the 3rd base to preempt the two prong.

    So why do it? Why risk Maru G5 with such a move? I think it's to convince PartinG to take his 4th base and continue his macro plan. Ask any Terran player who knows a cahoot about the current TvP meta: what do you do when you're stuck turtling in your base with tank bio while Protoss has been unhindered the entire game harassing you with blink stalkers? A large majority would likely say- PULL THE BOIS (unless you're Innovation, in which case you might double ninja expo in opposite corners of the map). And for good reason, SCV pulls have been so prevalent in abruptly ending games that blizzard is actually putting it in their patch notes. So going back to why the drop was important- what do you *not* do when you're SCV pulling? You don't send drops, because why risk losing 16 supply of an army when its true power comes from having everything in a deathball burrito wrapped by SCVs? By sending this drop, TY signals to PartinG that he intends to go a "normal" game with bio mine, and for PartinG to continue with his macro plan. Of course, the drop could've also been simply to bring Protoss home so TY can take the 3rd, TY's army should've already been big enough to simply push the stalkers back.

    At 10 minutes is when PartinG's stronger economy kicks into full gear, and when the game often snowballs out of Terran control. Protoss is up 36 supply, 30 of which is army supply. Protoss has 2 colossi while Terran doesn't even have a single viking. Honestly, even though TY intentionally took an extremely late 4th in preparation for this, I still feel like PartinG had potential to break the army if the raven wasn't used well. However, due to PartinG's miscontrol moreso than TY's brilliancy, the attack was piecewise and easily held.

    After this attack, TY continues making the most insane anti-ground composition ever. Not just with double tank production, but with PFs surrounded by turrets and orbitals, as well as full sensor tower coverage of his base. At this point, PartinG makes his transition into his 7 base 89 probe stage and begins warping in chargelots and blink DTs everywhere. And this is where things go south for the returning Protoss.

    TY's approach to the remainder of the game is similar to how Protosses traditionally play PvT- take donations sent by the Terran and just wait. TY had zero interest in moving out on the map, or even scouting any transitions PartinG may do, because PartinG is busy dumping all his money into pointless warp prisms and chargelot-dt squads. In committing to these attacks, PartinG sacrifices his own transition into more powerful anti-tank compositions like stargate, which then leads him to continuously wash up against the wall of PF and tanks until eventually he exhausts himself out more than TY's doing. Over the course of multiple failed expensive attacks:

    • 12:05 dead prism full of units
    • 13:45 9 zealot 4 dts lost for nothing
    • 14:40 3 zlot 3 dt for 6 bio units
    • 16:10 6 zlot 7 dt for nothing
    • 17:10 3 zlot 8 dt 2 stalker for 2 tanks
    • 17:25 protoss supply drops from 169 to 120 off camera while terran supply doesn't change

    After the 17:25 giant blunder by PartinG, the game effectively swings into the Terran's favor- Terran now has a bank despite being on fewer bases, a stronger ground-to-ground army, and ghosts dropping nukes on various Protoss bases. PartinG struggles to remax for the rest of the game as he continues bad trades with gateway units all the while dropping lower and lower in worker and base count. And the saddest part of all? PartinG did this to himself. All TY had to do was look at his minimap for sensor tower dots and move some units around. PartinG did all the hard work of being active and flashy, while TY reaped the benefits.

    Yes, at the end of the day, game 6 looks like a simple game of "wow no skill turtle Terran does nothing but sit back and defend fuck Terran", and of course strategy was not the only thing that won TY the game, since he was already very strong at this style of defensive play. And yes, even if PartinG were to deviate from his stubborn ways and transition to stargate and play a more passive game, that no way guarantees a win or even an advantage. But TY knew PartinG wouldn't. Why would he? He's riding off a 2 game high, he's comfortably settled into the same type of game that he's strong at, and with one more he would have erased all the embarrassment of games 1-3 to even the score up at 3-3. For TY to take PartinG's momentum, both from his previous successes versus Dream, Bunny, Maru, as well as his current momentum coming back from 0-3 to 2-3, and make PartinG lose his own game... that, in my opinion, is peak SC2.

    ggwp

    submitted by /u/XiaoXiaoo
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    "Who called in the fleet?" The Dark Horse Battlecruiser model came in today, and my armada grows.

    Posted: 27 May 2020 02:30 PM PDT

    Artosis up to his old tricks again.

    Posted: 27 May 2020 08:40 PM PDT

    Blizzard doesn't care(Not balance complaint)

    Posted: 27 May 2020 07:45 PM PDT

    I've played this game for more than 3 years. I haven't encountered this issue before a couple months ago. My friend sent me a link to a guy streaming on YouTube with maphack playing archon ranked. The video got removed by the user and I had idea of who it could be(The Russian sc2 community is pretty well known for me). A couple weeks ago me and my friend were playing archon we play a guy that we call out for maphacks because we suspected it was him that streamed. He pings in the fog of war on units. replay . I did some research turns out there are a lot of players that played with map hack. Some tournament players too.

    This is where the fun begins. I haven't downloaded it and am not going to because I think it will ruin the game for me so I'm going to be honest with the information I found out. Me the same friend are snipping streamers in 2v2. We play with our smurfs and meet 2 other guys that are trying to snipe them. Mid game they spam something like "thanks to Alex007 for the advertisement, buy map hack or get a trial version website link". We go through with the link with a vpn obviously it doesn't even have https in the URL. It's a redirect to a discord server.

    Fucking hell this is a whole community. Over 100 members. Previews of the maphack/discord details of the owner. I message the owner and pretend to be a customer. I ask for the price. For the curious ones here is the price but I'm not sharing the discord server because I don't want these people to ruin the game for everyone else. prices in USD.

    Interesting. Today I'm on a discord call with my friend and I bring this up. He's a gm player and he played around with it in HOTS for a couple weeks but hasn't used it since. Apparently it makes your game run slower and you drop about half the frames. And he thinks about a fifth of gm are people with map hack or people that have used it. I don't know how true this is but they definitely exist.

    Blizzard please do something.

    submitted by /u/OpTiMiStC
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    What actually happened during TY vs PartinG Game 6 (gif taken by GSL staff, uploaded in kr community)

    Posted: 27 May 2020 04:39 AM PDT

    Fully functional Battlecruiser created with LEGO parts! Maybe it can also fly? Amazing work, just sharing.

    Posted: 27 May 2020 09:20 AM PDT

    [LEGO Fan Art] Terran SCV

    Posted: 27 May 2020 04:28 PM PDT

    Moletrap is back casting Brood war!

    Posted: 28 May 2020 12:07 AM PDT

    No matter how hard I micro, I'm still a mvoe race

    Posted: 28 May 2020 03:05 AM PDT

    New SC1 Tournament Casted by Tastosis

    Posted: 27 May 2020 09:36 AM PDT

    Not sure if this has been posted on this sub, but I just found out about this today and I feel like it hasn't been advertised considering the first video only has ~2k views. It's called Starcraft Remastered Racewar and it is hosted by The Esports Night (T.E.N). It features some of the best players in the world casted by Tastosis. There are 3 players for each race (3t/3p/3z) and one of each gets put into a group to duke it out.

    Here's the channel with the videos, they're in round 3 now.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg09K8v8qVY

    https://www.twitch.tv/theesportsnight_en/

    I think there is a lot of interest for this sort of content, so let's advertise it as a community so that we can continue to have tournaments like this in the future.

    submitted by /u/Spasticated
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    Congratulations to the first GSL finalist!

    Posted: 27 May 2020 04:11 AM PDT

    TY takes it over PartinG 4-2! Rocky start to the match for PartinG but he started pulling it back before losing a drawn-out game 6.

    submitted by /u/JebusMcAzn
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    This is impressive

    Posted: 27 May 2020 02:09 PM PDT

    Best play I’ve ever done

    Posted: 27 May 2020 09:55 AM PDT

    Legacy of the Void: Terran Edition will be released is less than a week. AMA! I'm here to answer any questions you have.

    Posted: 27 May 2020 12:59 PM PDT

    If there are no unexpected delays, LOTVTE will be out in less than a week. It will feature a difficulty choosing system, Lab Research (which you can also choose before each mission), Armory upgrades and Mercenaries.

    Feel free to ask any questions regarding LOTVTE or any of my other projects.

    submitted by /u/Synergistic96
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    Send in your GSL Cheers signs! If they like it, it will be shown during the finals itself. These are those normally drawn or written and displayed in the crowd, now can be sent online.

    Posted: 27 May 2020 04:23 AM PDT

    Attention - Tychus Findlay was spotted in Russia, if you find him retrieve only the suit��

    Posted: 27 May 2020 05:54 AM PDT

    Comments on the last game from GSL this morning from FPVOD

    Posted: 27 May 2020 03:16 PM PDT

    I was watching Parting's FPVOD for last night's 6th game vs TY (http://vod.afreecatv.com/PLAYER/STATION/57070961), to see what happened during two key moments: the messed up big army engagement at TY's third, where half the army didn't attack, and the 50 army supply donation already clipped on the front page (missed by the observer during the live cast).

    tl;dr - first one seems to be a hotkey mistake, second one maybe a super brief lapse in multitasking

    • At 1:33:28 (I can't figure out how to timestamp Afreeca VODs), Parting splits his army, warps in from the prism, and hotkeys half his army to hotkey 1. He then selects the other half of the army, but does nothing with it, instead seemingly pressing 2. You can tell he's expecting the second half of the army to be on control group 2, since at the actual big fight (1:33:32), he selects his main army, clicks past TY's army, then selects his warp gates and also clicks past TY's army, which obviously makes no sense. He probably meant to CTRL+2 his second army, but misclicked and just pressed 2 instead.
    • At 1:40:25, PartinG is blinking back stalkers and DTS (to set up the storms), then he selects his main army (control group 1) and right clicks right on top of TY's army next to the landing CC. You can watch the army disappear on the minimap while he's storming. It's clear this isn't a hotkey mistake. I'm guessing he was planning to apply pressure at bottom left again and was setting up for it, but saw juicy storms and forgot he move commanded just before. Pretty understandable when so much is going on all over the map, but pretty costly.

    If PartinG had just used Alt to split the army for the first fight, rather than manually grouping (probably muscle memory from before the steal hotkey was introduced), it would have gone much better: at worst, the army doesn't split properly, but still fights all at once.

    Anyway, was just skimming the VOD for fun and thought I'd check these two moments out! I think the FPVOD streams are really cool to watch.

    submitted by /u/yubo56
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    The Final Regular Season Tournament of The Pizza Pie is live now! Who is going to get some last minute Pizza Points!

    Posted: 27 May 2020 05:36 PM PDT

    Viewer strats day ! I'm playing any strat with Terran on my ranked MMR. Follow and you can ask one !

    Posted: 28 May 2020 12:18 AM PDT

    GSL Code S 2020 S1 | Ro4 | Day 1 | Rundown

    Posted: 27 May 2020 05:52 AM PDT

    Has there ever been a time when the anticipation for a Semifinal was on this level? Lets get right into the thick of things with our first Ro4 match:

    TY vs PartinG

    Although these two have duked it out it out in relatively close series over the course of their recent history, a lot was going in favor of TY here, getting to watch PartinG bring out everything he had in PvT to even make it to this Round was certainly a big factor heading into the series, couple that with the change in the tides as Terran Season has become undeniable and even the return to form for the big brain player caster hybrid himself... the expected result could certainly start feeling undeniable.

    Still, counting out someone going through a career renaissance is more than a little silly - especially when it's a player who's lifted trophies on the biggest stages and been under tremendous pressure a hundred times over - and not to mention PartinG certainly had one significant advantage going for him skill-wise, namely his ridiculous ability to micro out of seemingly any trouble he might have put himself in i.e. essentially what brought him to the dance.

    Ultimately, this match - in my mind at least - would come down to the key element that separates Code S from every other tournament i.e. who has the better preparation, because both these players had already shown to be more than capable of winning when they "weren't supposed to" in the previous Round.


    Warning: Spoilers Ahead, Obviously


    From taking complete control of the series by bringing the fire from the start to closing things out by putting on a true masterclass performance in the lategame, this day belongs to TY.

    M1 | TY [ 4 : 2 ] PartinG | ★★★☆☆ | The Last Stand

    • Ever Dream | Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, which is exactly what TY demonstrated as he put down the proxy Barracks in virtually the only location that didn't get scouted, allowing his Marauders to catch an unfortunate Stalker in the middle of nowhere, essentially sealing the Protoss player's fate then and there.

    • Golden Wall | PartinG did the same scout he already tried on the initial map and saw an identical setup from the Terran, to be more precise he didn't see anything as TY had walled off his ramp two games in a row now, only to mix things up by going for a Hellion drop this time instead and a poor reaction from his opponent resulted in that harassment nailing 16 Probes or so, meaning the game was snowballed completely out of control and the Terran made sure to push not long after, making sure the outcome was secured.

    • Simulacrum | This time getting to scout the lack of base inside his opponent's base, PartinG must have felt marginally better even after already being significantly down in the series and the perfect handling of the Reaper Bunker pressure back at home should have also given him a morale boost. The response counter pressure by the Protoss that not only slowed down the CC but even pulled off a cancel on it made things feel like the shoe was finally on the other foot, only for TY to once again bop his Warp-Gate-less opponent with a critically open natural, diving in with an unreasonable amount of Hellions and Reapers and massacring a million Probes or so to obtain match point in record time.

    • Eternal Empire | The relatively calm opening from both players simply telegraphed a storm was coming, namely the Terran player wreaking havoc once more, this time thanks to a distraction that allowed another Hellion drop to sneak in and murder 12 Probes, at which point I'm pretty sure we all thought the series was over. Instead, the Protoss player remember his own words from earlier - no regrets - so he bet it all on his control and raced across the map to cause any damage he could off his coveted Blink Stalkers & against all odds PartinG finally delivered, taking out SCVs, Bunkers, Tanks, Infantry, literally everything in his way as the Protoss forces danced on the edge of death, finessing his way to kick off the start to the unlikely comeback.

    • Zen | Finally having taken back some semblance of control over the series, PartinG put down the proxy Gate in an attempt to keep that same energy up, only for TY to instantly hunker down and stop his aggression cold. PartinG nevertheless composed himself and went into a contain as he expanded back at home and teched up, showing initially stellar defense as he grew his lead. What followed was a crazy Liberator from TY that did some serious work, however the Terran then got overeager and wanted to force his opponent back, meaning he kept trying to walk out in the middle of the map with small squads of units which got styled on basically each and every time thanks to the Protoss player's immaculate control over what Blink Stalkers he had left, in the end meaning the actual Terran army's numbers were significantly reduced so when TY tried taking his third expansion a wave of PartinG's forces washed over him - backed up by some disgusting Storms - allowing the Protoss to smash through to victory and takes us deeper into the series.

    • Nightshade | It was relatively calm openings o'clock again and predictably enough PartinG's Blink Robo play wasn't far behind. TY handled it as best he could while still going up to three CCs but mostly hunkering down on two bases for a while. It wasn't long before the Protoss realized he wasn't going to break through, so he expanded and teched up back at home accordingly, growing his econ lead and setting himself up for the win. The response from the Terran? Hunker down even harder, putting down buildings to mess up pathing and a Sensor Tower to gain more control over his own side of the map, in addition to churning out Tanks like there would be no tomorrow. PartinG kept expanding like he was playing Zerg, only to finally lose his nerve and attempt a two pronged attack on the entrenched Terran, which failed miserably when half the Protoss army didn't even move. TY used Liberators across the map, handled the Warp Prisms sent his way marvelously and slowly kept adding on even more power to his composition, namely Ghosts and Nukes to go with them as his Tank count also became near insurmountable. PartinG then basically imploded as he kept making round after round of Blink DTs and Zealots which kept washing up against the Terran walls, getting obliterated accordingly. As time went on the Protoss army complexity and bank alike significantly deteriorated, there was no transition in sight and no way out of what increasingly felt like an impossible situation; the map once red was becoming more blue by the minute and as the Production tab became completely empty for the PartinG it was clear not only had the Terran survived the onslaught, TY's turn had finally come to go across the map and take his well earned victory as there was nothing left to stop him.


    This series was almost about to be a one star nightmare but then we somehow made it to G6 anyway and for that I am thankful.

    • Map of the Night - I think realistically there are two ways of going about it, you could easily say G4 from PartinG because with his back against the wall he had to play absolutely perfect to micro his way to victory there which was incredible to watch or you could pick G6 from TY where in a difficult position he showed tremendous patience and resolve, took his opponent to the deepest waters imaginable and then simply drowned him.

    Finally, here are some of my closing thoughts on each player:

    • TY could have very well secured the 4-0 today, the amount of pressure he put on and also forcing his opponent to work for every inch of the map over the course of the series... it was just incredible to watch. Now, it's TvT for him again in the Final and fortunately this time it won't be against Maru; unfortunately, it's very likely to be another person on the short list for greatest GSL players of all time i.e. none other than INnoVation, provided things go "according to plan" on Saturday. In any case, if we absolutely must have a mirror Final, this is the closest to a dream scenario we're going to get & here's hoping TY finds it within himself to overcome the cursed 2nd place and finally lift that coveted trophy.

    • PartinG was about to get bopped in humiliating fashion and then showed some unreal fighting spirit to not only get back into the series but for even the briefest of moments make believers out of us all. Pulling off the reverse sweep isn't just easier said than done, it's borderline impossible when you're going up against such a strong opponent and although I'm sure lots of people will still be disappointed due to how the match started, PartinG made it abundantly clear he wouldn't just roll over and die & if he keeps up this form I'm sure this won't be the last time we see him make a deep run in sc2's most difficult tournament.


    As always, if you think differently let everyone know why in the comments below.

    Catch you on Saturday May 30th for the second Semifinal between INnoVation and Cure, which is now bound to be even more intriguing considering they have to take into account anything they show can and will be used against them by the player caster hybrid waiting in the Final.

    Thanks as always for reading & see you when I see you! (:

    -M

    P.S.

    Ro24 Rundowns:

    Groups A | B | C | D | E | F

    Ro16 Rundowns:

    Groups A | B | C | D

    Ro8 Rundowns:

    Day 1 | 2

    submitted by /u/d1MnZz
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