• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 06:46
CEST 12:46
KST 19:46
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Team TLMC #5 - Finalists & Open Tournaments0[ASL20] Ro16 Preview Pt2: Turbulence10Classic Games #3: Rogue vs Serral at BlizzCon9[ASL20] Ro16 Preview Pt1: Ascent10Maestros of the Game: Week 1/Play-in Preview12
Community News
BSL 2025 Warsaw LAN + Legends Showmatch0Weekly Cups (Sept 8-14): herO & MaxPax split cups4WardiTV TL Team Map Contest #5 Tournaments1SC4ALL $6,000 Open LAN in Philadelphia8Weekly Cups (Sept 1-7): MaxPax rebounds & Clem saga continues29
StarCraft 2
General
#1: Maru - Greatest Players of All Time Weekly Cups (Sept 8-14): herO & MaxPax split cups Team Liquid Map Contest #21 - Presented by Monster Energy SpeCial on The Tasteless Podcast Team TLMC #5 - Finalists & Open Tournaments
Tourneys
RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series Maestros of The Game—$20k event w/ live finals in Paris Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament SC4ALL $6,000 Open LAN in Philadelphia WardiTV TL Team Map Contest #5 Tournaments
Strategy
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 491 Night Drive Mutation # 490 Masters of Midnight Mutation # 489 Bannable Offense Mutation # 488 What Goes Around
Brood War
General
ASL20 General Discussion ASL TICKET LIVE help! :D Soulkey on ASL S20 BW General Discussion NaDa's Body
Tourneys
[ASL20] Ro16 Group D [ASL20] Ro16 Group C [Megathread] Daily Proleagues BSL 2025 Warsaw LAN + Legends Showmatch
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Muta micro map competition Fighting Spirit mining rates [G] Mineral Boosting
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Path of Exile Borderlands 3 General RTS Discussion Thread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion LiquidDota to reintegrate into TL.net
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
UK Politics Mega-thread US Politics Mega-thread Canadian Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread
Fan Clubs
The Happy Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion MLB/Baseball 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Linksys AE2500 USB WIFI keeps disconnecting Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread High temperatures on bridge(s)
TL Community
BarCraft in Tokyo Japan for ASL Season5 Final The Automated Ban List
Blogs
I <=> 9
KrillinFromwales
The Personality of a Spender…
TrAiDoS
A very expensive lesson on ma…
Garnet
hello world
radishsoup
Lemme tell you a thing o…
JoinTheRain
RTS Design in Hypercoven
a11
Evil Gacha Games and the…
ffswowsucks
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 1444 users

MtG and SC2 - Deck types and game plans - I

Blogs > bertu
Post a Reply
bertu
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
Brazil871 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-10-30 23:29:08
October 30 2013 22:07 GMT
#1
Starcraft and magic:the gathering ("mtg") share a great ammount of similarities. With both games being about hidden information, resource management and assymetrical balance as core components, it's easy to draw parallels between game mechanics (the 3 races component of the original starcraft were based in the 5 color scheme of mtg, according to one of the original developers).

For instance, mining is essentialy drawing cards (increasing the amount of potential stuff you can have access to in the future), production facilities are lands (how fast can you convert this potential stuff into actual stuff), and life points are the game clock.

What is surprising to me, is how "game plans" can be similar between the games as well.

[Please reference to this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=433514]

In mtg, your deck is set before sitting on the table. In starcraft, the game plan is more fluid, but a lot of decisions and premisses are still made before you can gather any ammount of useful information about the opponent.

Because of that, I think it's possibile to compare starcraft "game plans" to magic:the gathering deck constructed archetypes (aggro, control, aggro-control and combo). Those archetypes are never definitive, but represent different points in a spectrum.

By doing this, hopefully I can apply my 15+ years of experience in competitive mtg mind-set to decision making in starcraft. Obviously, this is just a fun thought exercise. Examples will be loose. The goal is to help think and maybe better understand starcraft.


CONTROL AND "MACRO".

In mtg, control decks win by figuring out a way not to die to the most common aggressive strategies in the metagame, while gradually building card advantage (ie, having access to more cards than your opponent, or surviving until a stage of the game where you can play cards that trade unevenly). The kill card itself inconsequential (old mono blue decks would kill with nothing but lands). The game is won simply when the opponent's resources are depleted ("runs out of gas"), but yours are not, and still alive.

The classic example would be the UW or UB decks with cheap counterspell, some spot removal, mass removal, card drawing and maybe a powerful creature like an Aetherling for closing games.

The starcraft counterpart is, what most would call, the passive "macro game", Idra's dream, where you scout aiming not to die, out-expand your opponent and gain incremental advantages throughout the game.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that "macro" always means passive. More on that later. But some game plans most certainly can be passive and hence would be similar to control.


AGGRO AND RUSHES.

Again, an easy comparison. Aggro decks win by creating a stronger board presence before the opponent can defend. Any rush strategy that invests in production early would be very similar to a classic aggro deck, like white weenie or mono red.


COMBO AND TIMINGS.

Here things get more interesting. A combo deck is one built around sinergies where individual cards kind of sucks alone, but creates a game winning situation when all pieces are in motion. The winning condition in combo means that everything else about the game up until the point becomes irrelevant. When a Storm deck gets going, it doesn't matter how many cards the opponent drew, his board presence or your life points. He is DEAD. The kill and game play are rarely interactive.

Starcraft doesn't really have pure combo game plans. I'd say that cheeses represent part of the spectrum of the metagame that combo occupies - high-risks that punish careleness or greed. if no one is putting Rule of Law in their sideboard, they are dying to Storm, in the same way that lack of early scouting or a greed opening would die to proxy barracks.

But, more interestingly, I think that combo decks play out in a similar way that strategies that are heavily focused on exploring timing windows. The best example I can think of is the way Creator played PvT (and PvZ and PvP to an extent) in wings of liberty. With his double forge build, it didn't really matter if he was reasonably behind in expansion timing or that he didn't even have the rest of his tech fully developed (no storms!). Suddenly, the game wasn't about the stuff games are usually about (economy, tech, even army size). What really, really mattered was his upgrade advantage. His how game plan was about getting that advantage and exploring it asap. Of course, he would run some risks to reach it (what if I die before my upgrades complete?), and the combo wasn't strong enough (compared to mtg combos) to completely ignore everything else, but the principle holds.

I was recently playing a PvT while my team mates were watching. The Terran invested heavily in drop play, dealt a lot of economic damage, expanded much earlier and had a supply lead. But, during all this time, I kept thinking to myself of how fine I was doing, because I would hit a 3/3 x 1/1 timing and my army didn't completely suck. I was assembling my combo. I crushed him in a single engagament and won the game. My team mates (two zerg players) were surprised with this result, because they didn't see the combo. They kept thinking the game was about how much damages the drops were doing.

The same princilpe holds in the Maru x Dear game 1 round of 4 match on WCS s3 finals. Maru dropped often and brilliant. Dear lost workers, nexus and then won the game, because he attacked with colossus/storm against no ghosts and a low viking count.

I honestly think that casters not identifying those timing windows, or combos, is the number one reason why you see results being prematurely called in a wrong way.


AGGRO-CONTROL AND PRESSURE

In MtG, aggo-control decks adapt their role according to the opponent. When UB Faeries played against monoR, it would try to survive until it come manage to lock the board and kill in a few flying counter-attacks. When Faeries played 5color control. it would commit one or two creatures on the board to pressure, not outright kill, and make the game being about effective mana usage and key counterspells.

In Starcraft, game plans start as a preconceived idea but can change during the game based on information gained about the opponent. This means that most good sc2 game plans actually involve playing the aggro-control role. Those are plans that mix early game safety and middle game pressure, so you know you can react to either rushes or greed.

Of course, this necessarily mean much more developed and complex game plans. Suddenly you have to account to everything. How not to die, how to gain advantages and how to execute a kill move when the opportunity develops. For me, this is a more accurate description of a macro game.

This also the most exicting way to watch and play starcraft, but it won't necessarily be the most effective.

Aggo-control differentiates from pure control because of the ability to apply pressure earlier (invest some resource in creatures). Never to kill (but killing is a possibility), but to dictate pace. In starcraft, this correlates to applying pressure and harassment at key times to disrupt the opponent and play, and dictate how the game will be played, by narrowing down his choices.

I think this is how Nony approaches the game. Ever since the beta, his best build relied upon investing the minimal ammount in structures in the early stages of the game (aggro-control decks are usually land tight as well, creating virtual card advantage) and being on the opponent's face to punish greediness. His current PvZ build, for me, is equivalent of U/B Faeries o UW fish. He opens supersafe, stays on 3 gate production until a third is saturated and use recall timings to keep the opponents economy in check. It's like how faeries would have 3-4 points of damage (usually flying and invulnerable) on the board that were never designed to kill an opponent, but it meant that the opponent had to deal with them in given clock. The faeries player would use that opportunity to gain incremental advantages and get a lead in the game, using Crypt Command to draw cards, spending mana more efficiently with counterspells, or adding a scion of oona or sprite to trade favorably.

Early during wings of liberty, aggressive strategies were king. There was too much rush possibilities and no one knew how to react properly. In a second moment, control and combo came to place, because it was beneficial to do so. Protoss knew how to defend and turtle until a deathball was ready; zergs did the same with infestor/broodlord.

Very rarely, we had true aggro-control gameplays and, when they did, it was from Terran players.

Curiously, that's how most mtg metagames develop. When playtesting a new format, aggro decks always won more on the begginig, followed by control decks that learned how to defend against them and, later on, true great aggro-control decks would emerge.

Also interestingly, you would have a lot of really, really good MtG players favoring aggro-control decks, because this meant the game would the most interactive as possible. With a lot of interactions, there are more room for mistakes from the other side. There is a reason whey Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa was the god of the UB Faeries deck and Finkel would excel with Fish. I also think this is a reason why great Terran players also dominated most of sc2 results, specially in wol (not necessarily because of race imbalance, but because sc2 terran allows, at the highest skill ceiling, a more adaptative game plan based on putting pressure and forcing interactions). With Heart of the Swarm, more races have access to better pressure options, which is great for the game.

As I said, this was just a fun thought exercise, but it helped me see more clearly how to develop game plans, what they should try to accomplish. More on that later.

Take care,
bertu

*****
SEKO SEKO SEKO
Kingsky
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
Singapore298 Posts
October 30 2013 22:44 GMT
#2
This reminds me of something Artosis(i think?) said, regarding something on the lines in identifying the aggressor and defender in card game // sc2 matchups? and those skills apply?
Why do people hate the Colossus? Because the Colossus is like banksters from Wall Street: “too big to fail”. - TheDwF
bertu
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
Brazil871 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-10-30 23:10:19
October 30 2013 22:56 GMT
#3
I think so. The fundamental question of magic is "who is the beatdown?", which means knowing when you have to attack and when you have to defend. In magic, this is answered by essentially analysing decklists. The useful part in creating all the nomenclature about archetypes is to facilitate answering "who is the beatwon", it's just a tool to better think about the game.

If you are control ("macro") and know you are facing ("aggro"), you intutively know what your game plan needs to be. Of course, this a clear cut example, and the interesting situations are in the betweens.

In starcraft, the question of "who is the beatdown" is a lot more fluid. You have to ask, given scouting information, who is strongest at a given time in game, and try to gain your advantages from there.

The classic example would be knowing when to take map control and abuse it (expand, threaten harrass, get better scouting information), which changes a lot during the game, usually based upon the development of tech. For instance, terran has early map control with marines and reapers, then protoss take it with a stalker, then terran takes it back with medivacs.

Other matchups have a similar pendulum of strength in them, and correctly identifying which side you are at it would mean finding the most efficient way to gain an advantage.
SEKO SEKO SEKO
Mothra
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United States1448 Posts
October 30 2013 23:33 GMT
#4
Wish I knew how to play Magic. Seems pretty fun but intimidating to jump in to. Having to constantly spend money is a real turn off too.
Galfi
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
Brazil56 Posts
October 31 2013 00:39 GMT
#5
primeiro que seu inglês é zica, sempre considerei meu inglês muito bom, mas invejei seu vocabulário aí.

Besides that, it's great to know from someone who played both games, the intricacies that make both games look so much alike, and start to find out what makes MTG and SC2 amazingly popular.

very well writen sir.
"I'm not young enough to know everything"
Salivanth
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
Australia1071 Posts
October 31 2013 03:28 GMT
#6
Mothra: The game is easier to achieve basic competence in than SC2 is, I'd say. Thanks to it's local scene, you can also enter the local tournaments and have a good go of it without being an expert. I was one of the best players at my local store, and I was about the equivalent of high Diamond league in Magic, based on ELO rating. Imagine a high Diamond player trying to enter a local SC2 LAN, he'd get slaughtered.

One of the good things about the luck element in Magic is that it's always possible to score an upset for a worse player. The tournaments are also Swiss, so if you lose the first round you're not down and out.

The money thing, however, is a big problem, and it's the reason I stopped playing.
<@Wikt> so you are one of those nega-fans <@Wikt> that hates the company that makes a game and everything they stand for <@Wikt> but still plays the game <@Wikt> (like roughly 30% of blizzard's player base, maybe much more...)
ejozl
Profile Joined October 2010
Denmark3411 Posts
October 31 2013 08:38 GMT
#7
This is so great, Magic the Gathering has really taught me a lot, specifically how to see combo's.
I can now say I'm an aggro-control player.
SC2 Archon needs "Terrible, terrible damage" as one of it's quotes.
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
RSL Revival
10:00
Season 2: Playoffs Day 5
Maru vs ReynorLIVE!
Cure vs TriGGeR
Tasteless793
Crank 563
IndyStarCraft 129
CranKy Ducklings90
3DClanTV 68
Rex64
IntoTheiNu 30
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
Tasteless 793
Crank 563
IndyStarCraft 129
Rex 64
StarCraft: Brood War
Calm 8095
Bisu 1290
Horang2 515
Hyuk 382
actioN 317
Stork 313
ZerO 201
Pusan 197
Mini 172
Hyun 160
[ Show more ]
EffOrt 144
Snow 132
Light 115
Soma 111
Last 91
Liquid`Ret 70
sorry 68
ToSsGirL 57
ggaemo 51
HiyA 50
Soulkey 50
Mind 31
Sharp 27
Free 27
Rush 21
hero 18
scan(afreeca) 17
SilentControl 12
Sexy 11
Terrorterran 8
Icarus 3
sas.Sziky 1
Dota 2
singsing2430
XcaliburYe172
Counter-Strike
olofmeister1621
shoxiejesuss623
x6flipin428
allub200
Other Games
XaKoH 142
DeMusliM68
NeuroSwarm55
Pyrionflax24
Trikslyr11
Organizations
StarCraft: Brood War
Kim Chul Min (afreeca) 735
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• iopq 1
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Jankos1403
Other Games
• WagamamaTV179
Upcoming Events
Map Test Tournament
14m
The PondCast
2h 14m
RSL Revival
23h 14m
Zoun vs Classic
Korean StarCraft League
1d 16h
BSL Open LAN 2025 - War…
1d 21h
RSL Revival
1d 23h
BSL Open LAN 2025 - War…
2 days
RSL Revival
2 days
Online Event
3 days
Wardi Open
4 days
[ Show More ]
Monday Night Weeklies
4 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
4 days
LiuLi Cup
6 days
The PondCast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2025-09-10
Chzzk MurlocKing SC1 vs SC2 Cup #2
HCC Europe

Ongoing

BSL 20 Team Wars
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 3
BSL 21 Points
ASL Season 20
CSL 2025 AUTUMN (S18)
LASL Season 20
RSL Revival: Season 2
Maestros of the Game
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1

Upcoming

2025 Chongqing Offline CUP
BSL World Championship of Poland 2025
IPSL Winter 2025-26
BSL Season 21
SC4ALL: Brood War
BSL 21 Team A
Stellar Fest
SC4ALL: StarCraft II
EC S1
ESL Impact League Season 8
SL Budapest Major 2025
BLAST Rivals Fall 2025
IEM Chengdu 2025
PGL Masters Bucharest 2025
MESA Nomadic Masters Fall
Thunderpick World Champ.
CS Asia Championships 2025
ESL Pro League S22
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.