EPTFor 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
