EPTI'd heard stories of this game: StarCraft: Brood War. I was intruiged. No automine? No smart cast? 12 units in a unit group? Only selecting one building at a time? Ridiculous! Who could stand to play a game like that? And yet... I was curious. I bought StarCraft Anthology from the Blizzard store and booted it up, deciding to go through the campaign.
Since I'm a Zerg player in StarCraft 2, I figured I should start with the Zerg campaign. I didn't want to play through the base game, oh no. I wanted to jump straight into Brood War. The graphical quality of the game put me off a bit after starting up the mission. What the heck, this game was made in '98, couldn't they have made it 3-D? If it's not already obvious, I'm from a generation where graphics actually matter. I told myself "Arctic, graphics don't matter in a game. If the game is fun, it will be fun with or without good grapics," and I went to play.
What were my second thoughts? "WHY WON'T MY UNITS GO WHERE I TELL THEM!?" I'd discovered the pathing. It confused me why my zerglings would surround so slowly if at all when I a-moved them. Why wouldn't they clump together either? When I a-moved zerglings, why did they form a conga line? This must be what I'd always heard about.
After trying (and failing) the mission several times, I finally beat it... ...and promptly got stomped on the second mission. In my frustration, I decided to play against the AI some. I picked Zerg against a Protoss AI and played on Lost Temple because it was the only map I could possibly know other than iCCup Fighting Spirit, since I played that map in SC2 some.
In this first attempt, I knew nothing of build orders in BW, I just did what ever "felt" right. Thus, in my not-so-infinite wisdom, I went 14 gas 14 pool, just like in SC2. A minute later, 7 zealots were knocking at my door. "No!" I shouted after losing that game. I figured after that "my pool felt really late, maybe I should go look up a build order." Thus I tried the overpool build... and got stomped again. Finally I found that 12 hatch worked great for me. My hatch came up in time for my additional production to kick in and make enough zerglings to defend myself. I finally won, after countless games.
Then I went on iCCup, because it was impossible to find a good game on BNet. I played... nine games or so. Lost every single one 'cause I had no idea what I was doing. I was so frustrated I reset my stats and quit. This was dumb, I should be able to win without practicing real build orders and learning to consistantly beat the AI!
Cut to three months (or so) later and I'm bored. I look at Brood War again and think to myself. "...time to give it another shot." I go and start playing against the AI again. I was determined to beat that danged Protoss AI consistently! What ended up working for me? Lurker Ling into Ultra Ling. My macro and micro were terrible, but it was good enough.
After memorising 12hatch and Overpool vs Toss, I decided it was time to try iCCup again.
I joined a game calling for D/D- players on iCCup Python. I'd heard of the map, but I'd never played on it. Not that that was going to stop me, of course. I scouted fairly early by BW standards and saw he wasn't rushing. That made me feel confident enough to drone up pretty hard and get my lair going. I sent in a zergling to check his natural, mostly 'cause I was looking for his unit composition. All I saw were zealots and cannons at his natural.
I was suspicious after that, so I sacc'd an overlord to look into his base. Then I saw them, the fear of low-level players like me everywhere: carriers. Yeah, he was carrier rushing. Not that it was much of a rush, as I was on 5 bases by that point to his 2. I'd read somewhere that devourers were pretty good against capital ships, and I was already going a mutalisk-heavy composition, so that would work! Especially since I can't micro scourges.
I interrupted my third attack upgrade to morph my greator spire, 'cause by that point, he had a lot of carriers, and I was afraid of him pushing out. Luckily for me, he didn't. I morphed about half of my mutalisks into devourers, since I wanted to make sure I had enough mutalisks left over to attack his base to make sure he couldn't resupply. I went ahead and got my ultralisk cavern so that once my lings died, I could make ultras with the gas I'd accumulated since hitting my supply cap. I'd hit 3/3 on my ground upgrades and I got all the ling upgrades, so I did the only logical thing.
I sent in the lings.
My hope with the lings was to make him panic and send out his carriers after killing my lings. The lings worked better than I'd ever imagined. His natural got destroyed and he lost his entire ground army. The rest of my lings were sacc'd in a futile attempt to breach his main. Of course they died, but they'd done enough damage both to his base and to his psyche that they were no longer needed. I started morphing some ultralisks for the next step in my plan.
Lucky for me, my plan worked! He panicked and sent his carriers out. He hadn't even scouted me, so he didn't know where I even was. Luckily for me, all he found was my fifth base. I went ahead and sacrificed that base so I could get my mutalisks and devourers into position. I was patient and watching carefully. I saw him moving back to his base, so that's when I moved in. I caught him out of position with my units and unleashed hell. For some reason, he'd just moved instead of a-moving back to base. But hey, what ever works for me, right?
I went ahead and moved on into his base with my units and continued attacking his carriers. Suddenly he realized "oh, my units are being attacked!" It took long enough, but eventually, he attacked back. It was looking tense for a while there, since I didn't micro my units at all. Lots of devourers and mutalisks were falling, faster than I'd thought. I realized half-way through the battle that I wasn't focus-firing, so I started doing that. When his carrier numbers were low, I sent in my ultras to start raiding his base.
Success! The last carrier fell and my mutalisks were free to attack the remaining structures. It was a good game, although my opponent quit without saying GG. I wasn't about to say it first (and I had no idea how to speak in all chat in a game instead of just allied) of course, but he just left the game.
It's been a... short road, admittedly, but it feels like a long one, and it's only gonna get longer. For a newbie like me, it was well worth it. I was just happy to win at Brood War against an actual human instead of just the AI. I love the feeling of winning against a human in the RTS game that all others are measured against. This is just the beginning and it's all uphill from here.
Now that I've written this, time to work on my next two challenges: a computer history essay, and beating the Terran AI.
tl;dr: I went to play BW from SC2, ragequitted BW after being unable to beat the AI or the campaign as Zerg. Finally beat the AI, got stomped on iCCup. Went back on iCCup, won against a 2basing protoss who was massing carriers.
EDIT: Oh, and I'm looking for practice partners! I'm ArcticVanguard on iCCup, and I main Zerg. I'm looking into trying Terran, as the feel of Terran is rather similar to the Zerg in SC2. Preferably someone who's a rather casual player like I am.
