Looking Back on Brood War: Part 2

shindigs

United States4795 Posts

March 28 2011 06:37 GMT

Writing up a blog series that serves as a recollection of all my past experiences with the original StarCraft and Brood War. I hope that you find it an enjoyable read, whether you are new from SC2 or have been a dedicated BW fan. When I sit back and think about how long I've been playing StarCraft and now the upcoming major leagues in the US, it's pretty amazing to see how far we've come.

“FASTEST MAP EVER 3v3 NOOBS ONLY NR 20 MIN”

Around the age of 13-14, a good friend of mine in middle school got me back into StarCraft after I was heavily into Counter-Strike and also WarCraft III. The reason being it was the only game we could play together, as all he had was an old Mac laptop. His game of choice: Fastest Map Ever.

For those of you not in the know, Fastest Map Ever is an arena type map where you just had an insane stock pile of resources next to your main base that you could continually mine from, with virtually no need to expand. I don’t know why they called it Fastest Map, because the games could be drawn out pretty long with people turtling up like crazy.

[image loading]

A pretty noob friendly map, and there are definitely variations of this map in StarCraft 2 (ridiculous with mules lol).

Fastest Map helped ease me in to how the standard StarCraft game should flow, and introduced simple concepts such as when to tech/when to expand, how to scout, facing cheese, etc. Of course the scenarios the maps produced were extremely ridiculous, but the most important thing the map introduced to me was the concept of macro - managing your units along with your economy. I’m sure to this day, there are noobs being trained on Fastest Map Ever.

I started out playing Zerg through the advice of said friend, saying it was the easiest race to start out with. I’m pretty sure it’s relative, but for Fastest Map it was definitely Zerg for me. The larvae abilities were definitely a plus when you had about 10,000 minerals and gas.

I eventually switched my race to Protoss when I learned how imbalanced mass carriers were, and how ridiculous corsairs were at sniping overlords. My friend and I would look for games like 3v3 Fastest Map Ever Noobs Only NR 20 Min just so I could execute my “fast carriers” build and annihilate everyone. I even got “good” at massing carriers by mixing in a few arbitrers to stasis other Protoss carriers thus lowering their dps. I remember winning one game solely because I mixed in a few arbiters with my carriers, and I felt like a tactical genius.

Standard Protoss play

I stuck to Protoss even when I moved on to more serious play, not because of how cost effective their units could be, but because the only useful skill I had was making carriers. When I would play my friend 1v1 on Fastest, he would ragequit everytime he heard the interceptors launching at the corner of his Zerg base. Looking back I feel really bad for doing that crap all those games, but those were good times. Sorry Scott, I apologize for playing that race.

Arguably my first bid into competitive StarCraft was through Fastest Map Ever. It was time I hung with the big boys, and that meant 1v1 Fastest Map Ever - and you could rush anytime you wanted to. I needed to be keen, I needed sharp mechanics, and of course I needed the most up to date strategies.

What better place to find such amazing strategies but...Google! I wasn’t aware of TL at the time (2003-2004 was it?) so I just searched for SC strats through google while chilling at the public computers at a local library, and found some websites with stuff I didn’t really pay attention to because they pertained to “the real game”. The most memorable website I did manage to stumble upon to was StarCraft: Legacy. I went there not only to look for strats, but also for SC2 rumors, and of course: Pimpest Plays.

“And then I came upon the name...SlayerS_BoxeR”

The first time I ever laid eyes on the name of The Emporor himself was through reading SC Legacy’s Pimpest Plays articles, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t already.

http://sclegacy.com/feature/4-pp

Pimpest Plays was a recap of the best moments of pro Brood War in Korea. I don’t remember whether I found out that Korea had a professional scene before or after Pimpest Play’s, but I do know that Pimpest Play’s was the first time I saw the faces and games of the Korean BW scene.

Here I first read the names SlayerS_BoxeR, Nada, Yellow, H.O.T.-Forever, Grrr, and just skimming through now I see Liquid’Drone! TL history that I didn’t even know about. I didn’t know of Liquid’Drone then, but I definitely remember his pylon prison play and finding it absolutely hilarious while I was reading it in middle school and high school.

from: http://sclegacy.com/feature/4-pp/268-pimpest-plays-2003#4

For a while, Pimpest Plays was my only window into the Korean pro scene. I would check back every so often to see if the next years Pimpest Plays writeups were released, and sometimes they would even have video clips or gifs to accompany each play!

I didn’t watch full BW vods until they became more commonly available around 2006, an experience I’ll document in the next installment.

Previous Installments:
Part 1: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=204845