The Art of War (SC Annotations)

"War", of course, is Starcraft. "The State", in our case, is the collection of people for who "war" is waged: the E-Sports community.

War is not waged only for the warriors but for the benefit of the entire state. We have an obligation to improve our play so as to enhance the state of E-Sports as we know it. Traditional sports fans can recognize a 4-4-2 formation or know when the right time to bunt is. By enhancing our play, we provide opportunities for spectators to appreciate the subtleties in game tactics, be it a 6pool or a 21-minute timing push.

Good Starcraft play is the result of several distinct skill sets:

Sun Tzu is unspecific here as to whether the "people" and "ruler" mentioned are warriors and commander or civilians and ruler (in the sense of marshaling conscripts to raise an army).

If we assume the first interpretation, then Moral Law is the micro of the player, allowing the player's units to behave exactly as the commander intends.

If we assume the second interpretation, then Moral Law is being well-mannered. As the Moral Law allows all people (not just the warriors) to obey the commander, so do good manners command the respect of all the E-Sports community. Grace outside of battle will translate to grace under fire.

These are all factors that exist completely separate from the war but that govern the waging of war - in other words, they change war, but are not changed by it. Heaven, then, can be seen as the 'metagame'; that knowledge that exists separate from the individual match but nonetheless dictates the flow of the game.

The Earth is the map. We must respect rush distances, chokes and positioning, and the placement of expansions when considering our battle plans.

The Commander, in this case, is the player, whose abilities to form game plans, adapt, theorize and execute are foremost in assessing the game situation. All the APM in the world are useless if they are used to make more zerglings to counter the opponent's banshees.

Method and discipline: control grouping, teching/upgrades, supply count, and spending minerals - this is some combination of micro and macro, depending on how you interpret the meaning of Moral Law.

You can be a good starcraft player by knowing the metagame or having good macro or possessing any combination of these skills, but the best players, the bonjwas, possess all five.

Who has better micro or is better mannered? Better micro will mean seizing the unit advantage during confrontations, better manner will win you the respect and consideration of the tournament officials when they're analyzing that replay of the game your opponent dropped.

Having a better grasp of the theorycraft for each matchup will allow you to allocate your resources more effectively, yielding either a unit advantage when your unit composition counters your opponent's, or an economic advantage when you are able to fend off an attack with minimal forces.

These both are out of the control of the player. Sometimes the metagame doesn't have a counter to terran mech and sometimes you play on Desert Oasis. These things can upset the balance of an otherwise even match, but both can be prepared for.

Who has the stronger micro/macro? Better micro will net you short-term unit advantage that can be converted into economic advantage while better macro will yield a consistent unit or tech advantage throughout the course of several battles.

Who has the supply advantage?

Who has the tech/upgrade advantage?

The interpretation of this consideration is slightly abstract since nobody kills their own workers if they don't harvest minerals fast enough. Consider the effects of said constancy as applied to warriors: the more good deeds are rewarded and the more misdeeds are punished, the better disciplined the army will be and the more likely to follow the commander and the more likely the commander is to see his plans executed. Therefore, we can interpret this constancy of reward and punishment to be the level of execution of the player - all the theory, micro and macro in the world will go to waste if you make a crucial mistake at a critical moment - forgetting to hold position against a ling runby, mispositioning your lurkers, or mis-rallying your void rays towards that MMM ball.

The player who applies himself to learning how best to macro/micro and how to respond to each situation in the game will find that s/he wins more often than not.

Sometimes, rules are made to be broken. Sometimes BoxeR beats your siege tanks with a bio ball because he has to. (Side note: which game was that? Some TvT played on the medusa tileset - I don't remember the specific map. But he went pure bio against a T who had tanks and basically won because of high ground and walling off alternate paths brilliantly.)

A game is a fluid situation, always shifting and changing. If you plan to go void rays into expand PvZ but are able to snipe the hydra den, deviating into a void ray all-in can win you the game right then and there.

Scouting provides incomplete information about the enemy. If you scout a Terran and don't find a rax, is he fast-expanding or is he in the middle of a proxy BBS? For a few seconds, you don't know, and those seconds will buy you critical advantages - you are forced to either commit to defending the all-in or waiting those extra 5 seconds to check the natural expansion, both of which can put you behind if you choose wrong. This is an advantage purely based on you not having information. The less information you allow your opponent to have, the more options he has to defend against - meaning he's either spread too thin or simply not defending against an option.

All of these are extensions of the concept of deception as they relate to positioning and aggression. Timing pushes are based on hitting your opponent when he is weak or when he has allocated resources towards an advantage that will not materialize for a couple minutes (an expansion or tech/upgrades). If your opponent doesn't know where your army is, you have the advantage in that he always has to be prepared for a flank from some direction, especially if your army is more mobile than your opponent's.

Manipulating your opponent into disadvantageous situations will net you significant advantages. There are a multitude of ways to bait players into such situations. Most of these, again, involve abusing your opponent's partial information or assumptions. If your opponent sees your hydras retreat up your ramp, he may not be expecting the zergling flank. Alternately, you can infuriate your opponent when he finds out his corruptors were all killing hallucinated colossi and are now useless.

If you yourself cannot scout your enemy, make sure that you are prepared against "win right now" strats such as banshees, DTs, mass void rays, or lurkers. (Basically, get a bare minimum of detection and anti-air.) If he comes out with a superior ground force, micro your units away until you have the positional advantage or until you can reinforce.

If you're playing IdrA, cheese him. Use terrible foreigner strats to confuse him.

If your opponent seems to be stationary, harass him. If you let an opponent macro uninterrupted, oftentimes you will find yourself on the bad end of a battle later when his tech advantage materializes. The best way to attack a turtling opponent is by poking with small harass - drops, reavers, etc. Small advantages gained while harassing, combined with map control and being able to expand freely, will be needed when the opponent pushes out.

Utilizing multi-pronged attacks can be very useful against enemies whose armies are less mobile than yours or ball-like in nature (Terrans, looking at you). Engage the front but send a drop into the back. Alternately, attack two expos at once. In situations where multiple engagements occur, the aggressor almost always has the advantage simply because the defender has to react separately to two simultaneous situations.

Harass, harass, harass. Scout for expos constantly, and attack those bases whose positions are furthest from the army. Every army movement by your opponent creates a weakness - by correctly anticipating your opponent's reaction to a control group of speedlings running to his third, you can either take out the expo if he doesn't send enough forces, crush the reinforcement with your main army, or just walk up his ramp.

If you stumble upon a revolutionary build order, don't tell anyone about it until the finals. Alternately, if you have tech your opponent doesn't know about, don't let him see it until you're using it against him.

Go into each game with a plan. Best is a plan that gives you an optimal chance to win, next best a mediocre plan, while freestyling is worst of all. Even if your plan is mediocre, the fact that it lends decisiveness to your play is an advantage over the man without a plan who hesitates while deciding what crazy tech to go for.