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Okay, so I decided to write this up after losing several games due to the ladder reset because people HAVE to have ladder points. This is only part of the reason im writing this up. The other reason is because I have been doing alot of thinking about how to define "cheese" and what makes it "cheese" vs being aggressive.
Most people think of cheese as something that is usually a coin flip build or something that can be handled easily if scouted (such as 2 port banshee, 4 gate, roach rush, etc...). Most cheese can be dealt with accordingly (assuming that you know how to deal with it). But then what do you do vs HYPER aggressive builds? I dont mean aggressive like a diamond 2 rax conc push where you poke and if you can win go for it but if not run, I mean AGGRESSIVE as in "Im going to contain you and if you move out you are going to die" type of aggression.
Now I know Everyone is thinking "So whats the difference?". Well just from looking at it, you can tell that there are clearly different goals between the 2. Being aggressive is basically the same as being annoying as fuck. You are constantly harassing and taking pushing any advantage you have to the max while adding on to your army, teching, and getting upgrades (macroing). Cheese on the other hand is quiet the opposite and is a very confusing term for most people to understand. Cheese (basically known as an "all in") is when you have no plans of taking the game further than a certain point and if your attack fails you should understand that you lose.
(i.e Terran long term one base play, Zerg stopping at 30 drones on 2 base to get out a large amount of lings, Toss doing anything beyond 3 gate in a non-pvp matchup)
If you watch Koreans play and stream, you notice that the Korean players that have high mmr are quite commonly playing against players who are named "IIllIIllIIII", and that these players are almost ALWAYS doing something that COULD be considered an all in but have a masterful understanding of the game and basically just turn these "chesse" builds into the aggressive masterpieces. Whether its a 1-1-1, 3 Gate Robo, or a simple baneling bust, these players know how to stretch the game and THRIVE off of the simple mistakes most people make while trying to deal with this aggression.
Here is the reason why I added KR vs. NA to the title.
A majority of NA players that I see play do not and will not under any circumstance attack before the 10-11 minute mark simply because they dont feel safe. The ones that do simply dont know how to back it up so they just lose as the game goes on. The moment they are hit with some type of cheese, its either a win or loss at that EXACT moment, but most NA players dont know how to deal with these "cheese" attempts that aren't really cheese which is why they simply crumble to it. Why do you think so many Korean terrans can get away with an 11/11 rax bunker rush and still make a game out of it? Because they have enough understanding of the game to know how to press the advantages that they get out of doing these aggressive builds.
Here is an example. Nestea, we all know him as the zerg god. I cant remember vs what race, but his standard opening was the 7rr (7 Roach Rush) for a good amount of time and it worked for him and even if it didnt win him the game right then and there, he was usually able to keep whoever was defending it in their base until they had either a large enough army to move out and expo, or some type of tech that the roaches couldnt deal with. Now you take a regular NA high masters or GM player and tell him to 7rr and then make a macro game out of it and see what results you get. From my experience playing against these players, you wont get any good results at all simply because they dont know how to be aggressive, it's either all or nothing.
Players on the NA server consider EVERYTHING that doesnt lead to a 15-20 minute game to be cheese. If it isnt a 200/200 vs 200/200 battle or at least above 150/150, then its considered cheese. Thats when you start getting all these players bitching about a certain race saying "TOSS OP" or "MARINE TOO GOOD" or other simple shit like that. Everyone should know by now that a 200/200 3 base toss army is going to be strong. Why let them get to that point though? Why would you sit back and let a zerg player take a quick 3 bases and rush for hive and upgrades without punishing that greedy shit? Why would you let a terran get mech without having to deal with some losses for it? I will state it again. Because most NA players dont know how to be aggressive so they attempt to turtle and then when they are hit with a massive baneling bust they blame it on imbalance instead of punishing the player who attempted to baneling bust them.
For some reason, we (NA players) have this idea in our heads that every game should be either 5-7 minutes, or 10-12 minutes, or 20-30 minutes without actually doing much work besides taking expansions and turtling. Why not start doing more aggressive one base builds and take advantage of the economy that you can have on one base instead of taking a quick expo, dying, and then getting on TL to bitch about it? You dont have to fast expand every game, but the games that you dont fast expand dont need to end quickly either. If they do, thats bad because you are relying on luck and not skill (either that or there opponent just didnt scout >.<). I have a diamond smurf account that I play toss on and I found that I can literally sit outside my opponents base and contain them with my first 2-3 stalkers and take the map because they are scared to move out and either win or lose because they have shitty micro (I'm a diamond terran player btw but I dont want to switch to toss because terran is my favorite race).
Idk, maybe I went into a little too much but basically what im saying is, learn to play the game instead of either basing your play off of luck. There is no need for you to sit in your base for 10 minutes because you are scared to move out, but there is also no reason to bring all of your units and workers to the opponents base and out right die because they scouted what you were doing. If NA players can learn to be aggressive with there builds instead of ALWAYS trying to get a 200/200 army then a-moving your way to a win/loss. Work on your mechanics and be active around the map and trying to press any advantage you can get.
Sorry if I offended anyone and sorry if this is really long, I have just been thinking about this for a long time but finally became fed up and decided to write this up today after losing to a fair amount of cheese and being bitched at by friends because they got cheesed on ladder.
Thanks!
Edit: wanted to add that not all of na plays the way I described that they do, its just that most of them play the way I described (even some "pros") so I decided to leave it like that instead of breaking it down by league. If you noticed, the ones that are successful are the ones that can effectively multitask and make decent decisions.
 
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What ya smoking? i've pulled off many 2 gate proxies in PvP and won 10 minutes later, or 1 gate in Terran base in PvT and chrono out 2 zealots and go fuck em up. Or cannon rushes ( PvZ / PvP ) and again won 10 minutes later.
I play on NA alot ( main is EU account ) and i can be uber greedy because players have their exact moments in time where they attack. i.e. PvT 10:30 2 medivac pressure, MAYBE a 2 rax ( which is too easy to scout ) which i then crush with a 3 gate pressure expo.
I dunno, most people don't want to push themselves, simply because most people don't wanna ( or can ) go pro. And i think only when you are or want to be pro, then you need to know how to turn hyper agressive ( AKA cheese ) builds into a macro game, because it could be $10K on the line.
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On April 11 2012 18:05 TechSc2 wrote:
What ya smoking? i've pulled off many 2 gate proxies in PvP and won 10 minutes later, or 1 gate in Terran base in PvT and chrono out 2 zealots and go fuck em up. Or cannon rushes ( PvZ / PvP ) and again won 10 minutes later.
I play on NA alot ( main is EU account ) and i can be uber greedy because players have their exact moments in time where they attack. i.e. PvT 10:30 2 medivac pressure, MAYBE a 2 rax ( which is too easy to scout ) which i then crush with a 3 gate pressure expo.
I dunno, most people don't want to push themselves, simply because most people don't wanna ( or can ) go pro. And i think only when you are or want to be pro, then you need to know how to turn hyper agressive ( AKA cheese ) builds into a macro game, because it could be $10K on the line.
Yes, but those are cheese builds, not aggressive builds (referring to cannon rush and proxy gateways). You might be able to get away with 2 gate but if its scouted and your playing a player who knows how to respond, you might as well gg so either way its a coin flip.
As far as what you were saying about how most people attack at exact timings, that is what people should be trying to break form as they are so easy to read now.
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Shout to the person that gave me the one star vote for my blog.
*bumps chest twice
much love
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Good points ^^
And thats why I play protoss. I'm a lazy bum :D
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On April 11 2012 18:54 ReketSomething wrote:
Good points ^^
And thats why I play protoss. I'm a lazy bum :D
lol start annoying people with those stalkers.
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If it's not something that makes ppl giggle then it's always 1 star
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5 stars in the name of cheese
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On April 11 2012 18:55 AeroEffect wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2012 18:54 ReketSomething wrote:
Good points ^^
And thats why I play protoss. I'm a lazy bum :D lol start annoying people with those stalkers.
And get them raped by concussive shells marauder and lose the game.... yeah
Playing offensive as protoss is so dangerous against T and Z because a Protoss does not have good scouting information and when caught in the open field either loses many units to Lings/ConcMaurader or has to waste much energy. Its hard to play aggressive without going "all-in" because its very dangerous.
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On April 11 2012 19:28 gaymon wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2012 18:55 AeroEffect wrote:On April 11 2012 18:54 ReketSomething wrote:
Good points ^^
And thats why I play protoss. I'm a lazy bum :D lol start annoying people with those stalkers. And get them raped by concussive shells marauder and lose the game.... yeah Playing offensive as protoss is so dangerous against T and Z because a Protoss does not have good scouting information and when caught in the open field either loses many units to Lings/ConcMaurader or has to waste much energy. Its hard to play aggressive without going "all-in" because its very dangerous.
A Warp Prism will let you play harassment games regardless of how the opponent opens. Neither Terran nor Zerg has a unit that can chase down a warp prism in the early game, and it can scoop up your valuable units if they get caught out by zerglings or concussive.
If you have vision from observers, or blink, or zealots in front of your army, your stalkers can maraud against Terran without fear of being chased down.
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You will have neither observers warp prisms or blink in the first ~8minutes after going for a reasonably fast expansion which is required as protoss. Terran or Zerg can have Stim/Lingspeed though. The only chance to have a Warpprism out fast would be either playing extremely greedy (Nex first like) or go one base which is more or less allin in todays playstyle, especially as protss (no qq intended)
Edit: Playing aggressive as a protoss is generally not really favorable imo, especially cause i just watched oz lose so much sentry energy/units against fin while going "aggressive"
mean AGGRESSIVE as in "Im going to contain you and if you move out you are going to die" type of aggression.
Is possible if P goes for 3 gate Expansion and gets to the opponent base, but as i allready said, the danger of gettin caught in the mid of the map is really dangerous. And even then its only possible until Medivactiming.
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Australia676 Posts
A bit of a long ramble, but you're entitled to it since it's your blog.
I kinda agree with your statements; further, I think a 'safe opening' is defined by the stability of said opening to deal with a wide variety of aggression like you describe. I don't have problems with that; instead I hope you realise that no matter how correct your arguments are, when a friend of yours just loses a ladder match, they're going to be full of negative emotions and will be looking to blame anything other than themselves for their loss, hence cries of 'imba' or 'cheese' even if it may not be so.
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A one gate core that aggressively chronoboosts units can control the field early on, and for quite some time if the Terran fast expands (especially if you open zcorez). You can follow it with a fairly early nexus and still have a heap of units.
A one gate robo prism opening can expand at a reasonable time, and can guarantee some damage with no risk unless you screw up your control; a 2-3 gate robo prism is quite economically delayed, but is in a position to inflict a great deal of damage, trading shields and maybe forcefields for Terran units. A warp prism lets your stalkers behave a lot like a void ray.
Though I've not tried it, a one gate core nexus robo prism build should be perfectly safe if you confirm Terran's FE, and still let you harass with a prism at a reasonable time.
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I'm usually hanging around in some public communities on the EU ladder and as a zerg I'm no allowed to be aggressive until I have 60+ drones on 3 bases. Otherwise it's an all in and I suck and my mom has cancer yadda yadda. I liked your post but I dont really know how to respond to it 
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Only noobs play aggressively. NA P/Z is all about turtling until you have your imba death ball.
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Holy crap its been how many years?!
ALL-IN =/= CHEESE
A cheese is an all-in before the 6 minute mark (ergo no tech), why do people still get confused?!
2 port banshee is an all-in, not a cheese, although it does fit some definitions of a cheese (being easy to stop if scouted).
You can roughly classify builds by the following types, obviously its more complex, but the general rule applies to roughly all builds and play styles.
Cheese includes stuff like 6 pool, proxy 2 gate and proxy 2-3 rax with a lot of scvs pulled. Its almost impossible to recover if you fail.
All-ins are different, they come later, often involve tech and generally just rely on brute force to win, ie being scouted, while being less than ideal doesn't mean you've lost if its a good all-in build. Generally being all-in is a difficult state to define, however an all-in build will generally be considered something which has no plans for an expo, this can be deceptive at lower levels as players don't have good macro or defend properly or counter so people can recover after an all-in fails.
Aggressive play is different still, aggressive play often involves delaying an expansion to put pressure on, but still having space for it eventually in your build, aggressive play often forces the other player to compensate and play safer, if you scout they don't you can often just throw down more production instead of an expo and go all-in. Or your objective might just be to trade.
Harrassment is when you are 'annoying as fuck', that involves the smart use of units, or abuse of mobility to do damage in a situation where you either have less units, or you can't do direct damage, like in TvT against a tank player. This can be used to keep a player pinned, similar to straight up aggression (the difference being where you hit and with what units), and often allows you to play greedy in some sense if your harassment is effective. The best example I can think of is going for a drop style vs 2 collosus push in TvP, you harass them with medivacs to keep them pinned until you can get enough vikings to deal with the push, rendering it much less potent, and potentially risky for protoss.
Passive play is when you use a small number of units, often including key tech units, and you do not move out, you position units defensively to protect for things like drops, usually done when you are being greedy with econ or tech.
Both passive play and harassment styles should generally include some kind of aggressive timing as well, not all-in or even to do damage, but just getting on the map and flexing a bit to ensure your opponent isn't being overly greedy.
A passive or harassment play can also lead into a 2 base all-in. What makes really good players is being flexible in what they choose, allowing flexibility in their builds to switch from one path to another.
These principles are what you should be worried about once you've got things like macro sorted, so yes, players under high diamond / masters have more important things to worry about. Once you get to that level of play you'll start to notice players using smart aggression more and the dynamics of the game open up more. Smart aggression can include cheese (at least in a BoX series).
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To everyone that thinks that you can be aggressive as toss early game, look at ST_Parting. He has a build where he is aggressive off of one gate and basically keeps any terran in check while he secures 3 bases. The terran can be aggressive in almost the same way if he/she would do a little thinking about how to handle it instead of rushing to expo
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On April 11 2012 23:50 adwodon wrote:
Holy crap its been how many years?!
ALL-IN =/= CHEESE
A cheese is an all-in before the 6 minute mark (ergo no tech), why do people still get confused?!
2 port banshee is an all-in, not a cheese, although it does fit some definitions of a cheese (being easy to stop if scouted).
You can roughly classify builds by the following types, obviously its more complex, but the general rule applies to roughly all builds and play styles.
Cheese includes stuff like 6 pool, proxy 2 gate and proxy 2-3 rax with a lot of scvs pulled. Its almost impossible to recover if you fail.
All-ins are different, they come later, often involve tech and generally just rely on brute force to win, ie being scouted, while being less than ideal doesn't mean you've lost if its a good all-in build. Generally being all-in is a difficult state to define, however an all-in build will generally be considered something which has no plans for an expo, this can be deceptive at lower levels as players don't have good macro or defend properly or counter so people can recover after an all-in fails.
Aggressive play is different still, aggressive play often involves delaying an expansion to put pressure on, but still having space for it eventually in your build, aggressive play often forces the other player to compensate and play safer, if you scout they don't you can often just throw down more production instead of an expo and go all-in. Or your objective might just be to trade.
Harrassment is when you are 'annoying as fuck', that involves the smart use of units, or abuse of mobility to do damage in a situation where you either have less units, or you can't do direct damage, like in TvT against a tank player. This can be used to keep a player pinned, similar to straight up aggression (the difference being where you hit and with what units), and often allows you to play greedy in some sense if your harassment is effective. The best example I can think of is going for a drop style vs 2 collosus push in TvP, you harass them with medivacs to keep them pinned until you can get enough vikings to deal with the push, rendering it much less potent, and potentially risky for protoss.
Passive play is when you use a small number of units, often including key tech units, and you do not move out, you position units defensively to protect for things like drops, usually done when you are being greedy with econ or tech.
Both passive play and harassment styles should generally include some kind of aggressive timing as well, not all-in or even to do damage, but just getting on the map and flexing a bit to ensure your opponent isn't being overly greedy.
A passive or harassment play can also lead into a 2 base all-in. What makes really good players is being flexible in what they choose, allowing flexibility in their builds to switch from one path to another.
These principles are what you should be worried about once you've got things like macro sorted, so yes, players under high diamond / masters have more important things to worry about. Once you get to that level of play you'll start to notice players using smart aggression more and the dynamics of the game open up more. Smart aggression can include cheese (at least in a BoX series).
Im high diamond but that really has nothing to do with it as I dont ladder often anyway and when I do, its easy. As anyone will tell you, League has nothing to do with how much you know or can do in this game. Its not a good measure of skill at all.
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EPT
